Addressing Social Class and Classism in Vocational Theory and Practice

Abstract

The emancipatory communitarian approach to vocational development is congruent with previous calls to counseling psychologists to be oriented to social justice in their research and practice. However, even in the current emancipatory communitarian approach, an implicit upward mobility bias favors some vocations. To help understand how to better apply the emancipatory communitarian approach, a social class and classism framework is incorporated to explore how upward mobility bias distorts and ignores negative aspects of higher status and higher prestige jobs and does not recognize potential positive aspects of lower status and working-class jobs.