Recreating a Plausible Future: Combining Cultural Repertoires in Unsettled Times

Abstract

This article analyzes how young adults draw on cultural resources to understand their identities, aspirations, and goals when taken-for-granted scripts of success are perceived as less desirable or achievable. Drawing on pragmatism, we propose the concept of "plausible futures" to capture how people rearrange elements within cultural repertoires as a practical and moral project to define their identities, aspirations, and goals. We draw on interviews with 80 college students concerning how they understand their future aspirations, including how they define personal success and broader social goals, when they face unpredictability in, and dissatisfaction with, achieving dominant meritocratic and socioeconomic ideals. We find that respondents combine elements from four cultural repertoires to work toward and envision their future: the American dream and neoliberalism, the therapeutic culture, ordinary cosmopolitanisms, and a "Gen Z" cohort narrative. The combining of elements from each repertoire enables a hybrid set of cultural tools that hold to tenets of hard work and self-reliance while accommodating the quest for greater recognition and inclusion. We show that respondents combine cultural elements based on their ability to connect elements to futures perceived as viable and valuable.

Tales of me: storytelling identity work, authenticity, and impression management during new CEOs’ work role transitions

“…When telling their stories, individuals test different strategies in terms of style, attitudes, language, humor, and intonation, for example, which lead to different dramatic effects (Sharma and Grant, 2011). Some of these strategies are seen as more successful for identity work goals and become incorporated into the personal narrative repertoire and, consequently, into personal identity (Zilberstein et al, 2023). However, others tend not to be retold because they did not achieve their initial objective and are omitted and discarded from the self-construction process (Ibarra and Barbulescu, 2010).…”