Sociology Department Colloquium: Erin Cech

Date
Thu February 25th 2016, 12:30 - 1:45pm
Location
Mendenhall
Sociology Department Colloquium: Erin Cech

Please join us for a colloquium being given by Erin Cech, Assistant Professor at University of Michigan.

The Passion Principle: Self-Expression and the Reproduction of Occupational Inequalities

Self-expression is a ubiquitous cultural practice in the United States.  Although seemingly positive and benign, what role might self-expression play in labor market processes of inequality? In this talk, I draw on two empirical projects to explore this relationship.   First, using qualitative interviews with 100 college students, I describe the “passion principle”—a cultural schema that elevates self-expression as a central guiding principle in career decisions—and discuss how this schema challenges the cultural legitimacy of using college as a tool for economic mobility and frames patterns of occupational segregation as the aggregate outcome of passion-based choice.  Second, I use 5-year longitudinal survey data of college graduates to investigate the empirical connection between self-expressive career choices and the reproduction of occupational sex segregation.  I end by discussing the implications of this work for considerations of self-expression and inequality more broadly and note the policy conundrum inherent in these mechanisms.