Career plans and advice may potentially represent a way in which to study how people anticipate when and how to employ cultural repertoires in the future. Career plans are narrative maps of the future filled with expected problems and solutions. There are better and worse plans. Those rooted in concrete goals and actions that also accommodate for potential obstacles represent greater knowledge of the occupation/occupational field and/or greater thought about the future, whereas a general plan like "to be famous" is a desired goal without anticipation for how to plan to become famous and possible issues that might arise in the process. Career advice on the other hand, at least some career advice, represents the transmission of knowledge from one person to another about potential obstacles and how they can be overcome. There is also a process of transmutation that occurs as experiences from one person's past become resources for problem-solving in another's future. Advice adds a dimension of history to the cultural repertoires people develop, a history that only becomes clear in the stories people tell.
How could I approach this project? One way would be to focus in on a single occupation and do in depth interviews, on-the-job fieldwork, and content analysis of any industry related material. The advantage here would be multiple sources of plans and advice, particularly the advice that gets transmitted in the process of socializing into a career. Alternatively two or three occupations could be studied, with an eye toward the role of social context in developing plans and transmitting advice from one person to another. Use only in depth interviews; fieldwork and content analysis would be too much for a single research project.
Acting seems like a particularly good locus of study. There are lots and lots of autobiographies that record professionals' experiences and expound the advice that results. Plus it might be a way to approach the Actors in Hollywood project I have always had simmering in the back of my head.
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