Sustainable Development Career

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Sustainable Development Goals Series
Quality Education

Laura Nota
Salvatore Soresi
Ilaria Di Maggio
Sara Santilli
Maria Cristina Ginevra

Sustainable
Development, Career
Counselling and
Career Education
Sustainable Development Goals Series
World leaders adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Providing in-depth knowledge,
this series fosters comprehensive research on these global targets to end
poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change.
The sustainability of our planet is currently a major concern for the global
community and has been a central theme for a number of major global
initiatives in recent years. Perceiving a dire need for concrete benchmarks
toward sustainable development, the United Nations and world leaders
formulated the targets that make up the seventeen goals. The SDGs call for
action by all countries to promote prosperity while protecting Earth and its
life support systems. This series on the Sustainable Development Goals aims
to provide a comprehensive platform for scientific, teaching and research
communities working on various global issues in the field of geography,
earth sciences, environmental science, social sciences, engineering, policy,
planning, and human geosciences in order to contribute knowledge towards
achieving the current 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
This Series is organized into eighteen subseries: one based around each
of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals, and an eighteenth
subseries, “Connecting the Goals,” which serves as a home for volumes
addressing multiple goals or studying the SDGs as a whole. Each subseries is
guided by an expert Subseries Advisor.
Contributions are welcome from scientists, policy makers and researchers
working in fields related to any of the SDGs. If you are interested in
contributing to the series, please contact the Publisher: Zachary Romano
[Zachary.Romano@springer.com].

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15486

Laura Nota Salvatore Soresi
• •

Ilaria Di Maggio Sara Santilli

• •

Maria Cristina Ginevra

Sustainable
Development, Career
Counselling and Career
Education

123
Laura Nota Salvatore Soresi
Larios Laboratory Larios Laboratory
University of Padua University of Padua
Padova, Italy Padova, Italy

Ilaria Di Maggio Sara Santilli

Larios Laboratory Larios Laboratory
University of Padua University of Padua
Padova, Italy Padova, Italy

Maria Cristina Ginevra

Larios Laboratory
University of Padua
Padova, Italy

ISSN 2523-3084 ISSN 2523-3092 (electronic)

Sustainable Development Goals Series
ISBN 978-3-030-60045-7 ISBN 978-3-030-60046-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60046-4

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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Introduction

Nowadays, we have to deal with the future, the time that has yet to come, as
the French say, happen and occur, for ourselves and our sons and daughters,
for the people we care about, even if it is very difficult to predict it and
describe it with enough precision. The future, as we know, also concerns the
working activities that young people and the new generations will be
involved in. These people are already considering what is going to happen to
the world of work, their dreams, their wishes, and they are looking for new
meanings and interpretations. All these aspects cannot be ignored by people
in the field of career counselling and vocational designing.
For quite some time, it has been become clear that, even in these fields, it
is not possible to avoid admitting that we are living in very different times
with respect to the ‘80s and ‘90s, characterized by high growth rates, wide
professional opportunities and a standard employment model with perma-
nent fulltime contracts of indefinite duration, until retirement. Today, unlike
the past, the combinations that used to define the topic of choice and
professional inclusion, such as qualification and job, choice and decision,
personal profile and placement, supply and demand, age and professional
stability and so on, seem to not be effective anymore, giving room to other
definitely more worrying combinations, such as uncertainty and insecurity,
flexibility and precariousness, market and competition and so on. Today,
people in the field of career counselling and vocational designing have to
take into consideration that dealing with the future is the management of the
paradoxical requests, despite everything above mentioned, to become more
competitive, more resilient, to ‘constantly’ be ready and adequate for
unexpected opportunities, to be self-employed even without an actual capital
to put into play. It implies also help to reflect on the ways to face some global
threats such as increasing inequalities, wealth and job polarization, increasing
migration rates, the destruction of natural resources, the impact of technology
on the world of work and quality of life, and the presence of more and more
precarious and less and less stable working conditions.
Despite the different nature of these threats, they all seem to be connected.
Together they create a growing global crisis, so that many international
institutions such as the United Nations are preparing to face this crisis by
defining plans of action. The most recent one, ‘Transforming our World,
The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, was adopted in 2015
by the UN General Assembly. This Agenda defines 5 critical areas for the
future of mankind and of the planet, 17 sustainable development goals and
v
vi Introduction

169 targets. The risk is that, if this UN Agenda remains unheeded, people
planning their personal and career life may ignore both the consequences
of the growing global crises for themselves and their communities, and also
the main lines of action defined in this Agenda (Guichard, 2018). Educational
and career choices, in particular, not only represent an important psycho-
logical function in the lives of the individuals, as they can contribute to the
satisfaction of personal needs and bring to self-fulfillment, but can also
acquire an important social dimension—functioning as a bridge between the
individual and the social context, from ‘I’ to ‘us’ to the ‘Earth’, aiming at the
realization of more inclusive and sustainable life conditions and contexts
(Međugorac, Šverko & Babarović, 2019).
It seems clear that career counselling and vocational designing, in these
times of change and transition, cannot rely on matching theories, on the
rudimentary models based on the comparison and classification of people, of
coupling personal and professional contexts’ characteristics, because these
approaches are superficial, not to say ordinary and harmful. Career
counselling and vocational designing have to go beyond, leaving the past
behind, focusing on new trajectories in order to manage the challenges that
we are facing, working to promote the growth of the individuals and social
development, ‘moving’ from a mainly individualistic view of growth and of
people’s realization, to a more markedly contextualistic view, focused on a
representation of the future that involves a high attention focused on the
‘social’, on the common good and on sustainable development.
In order to do this, according to us, career counselling and vocational
designing have to understand that they are ‘children of the time’ in which
they operate, they have to become able to analyse contexts and realities at
different levels, to be more conscious and to detect the modalities that can
better help people to face the times they live in. We know that the context is a
collection of circumstances that characterize living environments and
people’s functioning that relationships are intertwined and depending on
other relations among macro-, meso- and microsystems. The macrosystem
regards the social and cultural conditions, politics, socio-economic condi-
tions and the way to conceptualize vulnerabilities. The mesosystem regards
the areas of life, cities, towns, communities and organizations where there are
professional and educational lives and the support of the services. The
microsystem regards the individual and his/her family (Bronfenbrenner,
2005). It seems clear that, when analysing the situation of an individual, it is
necessary to avoid simplifications and banalizations. On the contrary, it is
important to take into consideration the highest number of aspects possible
and the fact that there can be opposite requests coming simultaneously from
different individuals and contexts, as the idea that the entanglements we are
talking about tend, even unpredictably, to change in faster and closer times.
It will soon appear clear that career counselling and vocational designing
should be a more and more important part of the disciplines that practice and
underline the so-called ‘alethic right’. The term ‘alethic’ comes from the
Greek and it means ‘truth’: ‘Aletheia’ is a concept that in its semantic
deepness concerns the intention to ‘reveal’ in order to touch the ‘reality’ and
encourage a form of knowledge ‘made out of facts’, able to highlight ‘the
Introduction vii

way in which things are’. This is about building a ‘strong’ truth in order to
create a society in which the truth does not have to suffer the dictatorship
of the individual subjectivity, that is to say, to be individualistically and
subjectively intended and understood (Milanesi, 2020).
Thus, with this volume, we wanted to follow a path that could help us to
understand that career counselling and vocational designing have been, as a
matter of fact, a result and an expression of the time, as a response to specific
needs of professional and social contexts, with the purpose to encourage a
reflection on the role that today they can have, in light of the socio-economic
conditions that characterize us. More specifically, this volume will contribute
to an in-depth understanding of the relationship between inclusion,
sustainability, social justice, career counselling and career guidance, with
particular attention to Sustainable Development Goal 4 ‘ensure inclusive and
equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for
all’, Sustainable Development Goal 8 ‘promote sustained, inclusive and
sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent
work for all’ and Sustainable Development Goal 12 ‘ensure sustainable
consumption and production patterns’.
The Chap. 1 analyses two main historical periods: the first goes from the
beginning of 1900 until World War II and the second is called the ‘Glorious
Thirty’ or Keynesian period which goes from the end of World War II until
the ‘70s, characterized by the birth of career counselling and vocational
designing. In the first, career counselling is both a field of research and
psychosocial intervention, in the second it expands and strengthens, in par-
ticular in Western countries, in relation to the increasing educational and
professional possibilities. Overall, we can define this historical period ‘the
golden age of career counselling and vocational designing’ in which, even if
in response to the needs coming from the economic world, it seems clear that,
since its origins, career counselling aimed at having a socially relevant role
regarding the relationships between the professional, personal and social
well-being.
The Chap. 2 focuses on some socio-economic conditions that evolved in
the last few decades until our times, highlighting what is considered to be a
neoliberal ideology, with phenomena associated to it that seem to be the basis
of constant economic crises, the destruction of natural resources and the
increase of inequalities. In the field of career counselling and vocational
designing, there has been a return to old ways of operating, such as those
focused on the idea of the right man in the right place, or those that suggested
the concept that the responsibility of what happens in one’s future only
depends on him/herself. The absence of reflexivity and of analyses of the
conditions that revolve around people’s lives, in particular around prob-
lematic ones, leads us to denounce the fact that this way of operating is only
able to maintain the status quo, damaging the majority of the population.
Even in this field, we need a new deal, a rainbow one rather than green.
These colours should help us to remember that we should reshape new
economic, cosmopolitan processes, aimed at the expansion of rights and
social justice.
viii Introduction

The Chap. 3 wants to help the reader to take into consideration alternative
ways to those that have hitherto been practiced because of an unprecedent
complexity that also affects people’s projects about their future. It starts from
the work carried out by the Life Designing International Research Group,
from the trajectories outlined in the 2009 position paper (Savickas et al.,
2009), to the latest reflections that push us to carefully consider the issues of
sustainable development. Therefore, we move on to the deepening of the
concepts of inclusion, sustainability and social justice, which are gaining
more and more value in the latest literature, and also to career counselling
and vocational designing that, since they suggest work paths essential to
ensure our presence on the Earth, can no longer avoid to consider the growth
of communities, the well-being of all people and a qualitative professional
future designing. Less ‘ego-centric’ professional designs that are more
focused on building inclusive, sustainable and social justice-based contexts
require new forms of thought, resources and skills that encourage greater
attention to the general context and to the community’s well-being.
The Chap. 4 is focused on cosmopolitanism and on the abilities one has of
designing his/her own future, while taking into account both local and global
phenomena, curiosity and imagination, in order to favour critical and con-
scious decisions about the future. This chapter also focuses on the courage to
design the future, despite the sense of discomfort that current times can
create, and on activism, in order to work for different futures. In dealing with
these constructs, assessment instruments and suggestions for their promotion
in schools are presented as part of specific laboratory activities.
Lastly, the Chap. 5 aims at giving the reader ideas for career education
interventions focused on supporting young people in vocational designing
processes. These interventions have to be based on inclusion, sustainability
and social justice, allowing people to give voice to their aspirations and to
think of the challenges they might consider in their future in order to improve
their future and also the well-being of humanity and the world in which we
live in general. The project ‘Stay inclusive, sustainable, curious, cos-
mopolitan, aspirant’ is introduced. It is developed by the Laboratory of
Research and Intervention in Vocational Designing and Career Counselling
(Laboratorio di Ricerca e Intervento per l’Orientamento alle Scelte) LaRIOS
of the University of Padova as an example of laboratory action to train young
people to identify the intentions, responsibilities and their 'mission possible'
for the future. This has to be realized with the collaboration of professionals
able to fully share the goals described.
In reading the various chapters, it should be clear to the reader that in our
pages there is a fil rouge that, at least in our intentions, aims at bringing out
the close relationship between career counselling and vocational designing
and the context, or between career counselling and the socio-economic
realities, in which it develops. It is necessary and urgent for careful
considerations of present times to become useful instruments to build a better
world and an inclusive and sustainable future for everyone. A future that
seems to be waiting to be decisively started, built and, in many ways, still
imagined. Career counselling and vocational designing we are considering
propose educational and training opportunities capable of mobilizing
Introduction ix

thoughts and reflections, emotions and behaviours, aspirations and perspec-

tives, that is to say, in one single expression, people’s agenticity, also in order
to support the pursuit of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
In this perspective, a different career guidance, a ‘positive’ and quality
one, that is not aimed at training the homo adaptus, ‘the right man at the right
place’ who promptly responds to calls and demands in his/her contexts, not
the homo economicus mostly worried to be and to be perceived as attractive
and competitive in the market and in the world of education and production.
The homo sapiens we have in mind, in the context of a career counselling and
vocational designing that aims at an equal, sustainable and inclusive future, is
the one that is recognized as reciprocus, solidalis and prospectus (mutual,
supportive, future-aimed) for the attention he/she gives to the well-being
of the community and for his/her inclination in favouring the future, for
his/her ‘mania’ to try to anticipate what will happen and to regulate, in this
regard, agenticity.
For all these reasons, career counselling and vocational designing should
help people, especially the younger generations, to designing their future in
an agentic way, in emerging from the ‘fog of the present’, to project
themselves in the future we should build, together with the world of research
and the most accredited international institutions, from an inclusive and
sustainable perspective, ‘coming out from their own backyard’ and ‘taking
care of the common garden’, in order to ensure a better future for everyone.

References

Bronfenbrenner, U. (2005). Ecological Systems Theory (1992). In U. Bronfenbrenner

(Ed.), Making human beings human: Bioecological perspectives on human develop-
ment (pp. 106–173). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Ltd.
Guichard, J. (2018). Life Design Interventions and the Issue of Work. In V. Cohen Scali,
J. P. Pouyaud, M., Drabik Podgorna, G., Aisenson, J. L Bernaud, ... J.V Guichard,
(Eds.), Interventions in career design and education: Transformation for sustainable
development and decent work (pp. 15–28). Paris, France: Springer, Cham.
Međugorac, V., Šverko, I., & Babarović, T. (2019). Careers in sustainability: an
application of social cognitive career theory. International Journal for Educational and
Vocational Guidance, 1–23.
Milanesi, V. (2020). Prefazione [Preface]. In L. Nota (Ed.), La passione per la verità.
Come contrastare fake news e manipolazioni e costruire un sapere inclusivo
(pp. 11–24). Roma: Franco Angeli.
Savickas, M. L., Nota, L., Rossier, J., Dauwalder, J. P., Duarte, M. E., Guichard, J., ... &
Van Vianen, A. E. (2009). Life designing: A paradigm for career construction in the
21st century. Journal of vocational behavior, 75(3), 239–250.
Contents

1 Career Counseling and Vocational Designing,

from the Origins to the End of the Last Century:
The Moment of Maximum Possibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 From the Early 1900s Until World War II and the Birth
of Career Counseling and Vocational Designing . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 The ‘Glorious Thirty’ or Keynesian Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4 The Growth and the Contribution of Career Counseling
and Vocational Designing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.5 Conclusions: Social Significance… in Favor of a Part
of the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2 Threats and Challenges of the XXI Century and the Role
of Career Counseling and Vocational Designing . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.1 Introduction: From the Recent Past to Present Times . . . . . . 15
2.2 Neoliberal Ideological Derivations of the Present Era . . . . . . 15
2.3 And Again: Globalization, Precariousness, Competition,
Financialization, Migration, Robotization, Outsourcing,
Externalization, Privatization, Exploitation of Natural
Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.4 Inequalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.5 The Myths of the Current Period: Meritocracy
and Self-employment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.6 Conclusions: What About Career Counseling
and Vocational Designing? Could They Be a Tool
for a ‘Rainbow New Deal’? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3 Life Designing for an Inclusive, Sustainable and Equitable
Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.2 Complexity in Career Counseling and in Professional
Designing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.3 The Life Design International Research Group . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.4 Towards Life Design Processes in Order to Build
Inclusive and Sustainable Futures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.5 Inclusion and Sustainability to Build the Future . . . . . . . . . . 47
xi
xii Contents

3.6 Rediscovering Social Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

3.7 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4 New Dimensions Instruments for An Inclusive Sustainable
Career Counseling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.2 Cosmopolitanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.3 Curiosity and Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.4 Courage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.5 Activism for Our Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.6 Conclusions: Acting and Demonstrating for an Inclusive,
Sustainable and Socially Just Future . . . . . . ............. 76
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ............. 78
5 The Project “Stay Inclusive, Sustainable, Curious,
Cosmopolitan, Aspirant, Etc.” : An Example of Operational
Paths and Trajectories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
5.2 Give a Voice to People and Promote Inclusive
and Sustainable ‘Aspirations’ Towards the Future . . . . . . . . 82
5.3 Today’s Adolescents and the Necessity to Encourage
Aspirations Towards an Inclusive and Sustainable
Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
5.4 Career Counseling and Vocational Designing
Workshops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.5 The Project “Stay Inclusive, Sustainable, Curious,
Cosmopolitan, Aspirant” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5.6 Doing Basic Workshops with High School Students . . . . . . 92
5.7 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Appendix A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Appendix B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Appendix C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Appendix D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Appendix E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Appendix F . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Appendix G . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
 Career Counseling and Vocational
Designing, from the Origins 1
to the End of the Last Century: The
Moment of Maximum Possibilities

combine with interests and abilities, the above-

1.1 Introduction
mentioned pairing: all these phenomena owe
their existence to elements that are present in
When preparing this chapter, we thought about
people’s life contexts and are able to encourage
the stories of people who stood out in culture,
and foster them (Vallerand, 2010).
sports, arts, show business, science, politics.
The beautiful professional life stories of
People who gave a large contribution to the
middle-aged people could be the result of
above-mentioned fields, and they experienced
extraordinary personal talents, of particularly
levels of satisfaction, recently described by a
‘rich and inspiring’ environments, of unique sit-
colleague in a volume (Scandella, 2019). When
uations, or, more simply, of a particular historical
reading those professional life stories and look-
period, the one between the ‘60s and ‘80s (Sor-
ing also at other narrations of people that today
esi, 2019). This period is characterized by very
are between 50 and 70 years old, we thought that
different working conditions with respect to the
it is quite possible that these stories revolve
ones we are experiencing nowadays and that
around the pairing of interests and abilities, and
young people who are in school today will live.
are often the result of unintentional initiatives of
In order to give birth to ambitious professional
different actors, belonging to family, social and
projects, young people will have to learn how to
working contexts. In contrast to what is often
not be inhibited by social pressures, by rules, by
seen today, those stories do not present high
the desire to obtain satisfaction and fulfillment in
levels of discomfort coming from worries asso-
the present, in the here and now, in the short
ciated with the topics of unemployment,
term.
underemployment, precariousness, mobility and
With this chapter we would like to let the
professional retraining (Soresi, 2019).
readers ‘jump into the past’, in order to encour-
Moreover, in those stories passions play a
age them to consider the historical periods that
central role: these activities are considered
precede the current one, from the early 1900s
interesting, pleasant, able to ‘absorb’, they make
until World War II and ‘The Glorious Thirty’,
time pass faster and they allow people to expe-
that is to say from the end of World War II to the
rience a sense of happiness and wellbeing. It is
‘70s. This examination of history will allow
important to distinguish between ‘positive’ pas-
understanding why the majority of young people
sions, the ones that encourage to act and to
during ‘50s and ‘60s experienced the above-
deepen topics productively, and ‘negative’ pas-
mentioned stories and how career counseling and
sions, the ones that should be controlled in order
vocational designing were born to face the
to avoid worrying addictions which are bad for
requests of specific periods, detecting
health and for life quality. Passions tend to

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1
Switzerland AG 2020
L. Nota et al., Sustainable Development, Career Counselling and Career Education,
Sustainable Development Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60046-4_1
2 1 Career Counseling and Vocational Designing, from the Origins …
procedures, tools and operational tracks useful
for the past ages, taking up this social significant
role. The emphasis on all these aspects should
help us to underline that what was good in that
moment of the past and could have supported the
construction of satisfying professional lives is
nowadays inadequate, also in a perspective that,
in a fairer way, takes into consideration the
people and the lands of those who do not come
from Western countries.
1.2 From the Early 1900s Until
World War II and the Birth
of Career Counseling
and Vocational Designing
Western history is characterized in many respects
by the rise of capitalism, which shaped our way
of acting, thinking, doing. This word means “the
economic system based on the use of capital—
composed of money and physical goods—with
the purpose of developing activities aimed at
producing goods and provide a profit to whom
employed the capital. The owners of capital are
called capitalists. The capitalistic development
happens when capitalists, after having bought
machines and raw materials for their businesses,
after having paid workers’ salaries, after having
sold the goods, and after having received a per-
sonal gain, make a profit. This surplus enlarges
and improves the production process” (Treccani
Vocabulary).
The origins of capitalism can be found during
the Middle Ages. During that period, Europe has
seen an increase in trading, a more consistent
monetary circulation, higher consumptions and
the emergence of professional figures such as
bankers and merchants. In addition, many geo-
graphical discoveries have been made during the
XV and XVI centuries, which permitted import,
at the expense of the colonized lands, raw
materials, gold, and silver, making commercial
trade easier. Thanks to bankers and merchants-
entrepreneurs, capitals were used to buy raw
materials, in order to give them to small busi-
nesses and to finally bring the produced goods on
the marketplace.
Arrighi (1994) states that the economic prac-
tices tend to become ‘institutionalized’ in Europe
between the XIV and XV centuries and concern
the possibility to buy or sell, in a free market,
goods, capitals, and work: the so-called factors of
production. All of this is associated with the
spread of Adam Smith’s thought. Smith is con-
sidered the father of the economic thought and
his concept of the ‘invisible hand’ is the
cornerstone of the liberal doctrine of laissez-
faire: “following their egoistic preferences, the
owners of capital prefer to invest in activities
located in their own country, creating in this way
benefits for it and its society, even if this was not
their intention”. The basic concept is that, in
following their personal interests, individuals
manage to create social order and to develop,
even if in an unintentional way, a context that is
not free from government policies but it is from
unproductive activities (Mazzuccato, 2018).
Many factors contributed to the expansion of
modern capitalism: the industrial revolution, the
invention of steam machines, larger factories,
mass production, the expansion of the market on
an international scale and the adoption of more
efficient accounting criteria. As a consequence,
capitalism spread in England first and in the
United States after, which in the early 1900s
become the most important industrial power.
From the Early 1900s until World War II.
During the first decades of 1900, mostly in the
United States, there was a period of prosperity
and socio-economic progress driven by the
automotive sector, which functioned as a stimu-
lus for the development of other sectors such as
metallurgical, rubber, transport and construction
industries. During the ‘20s, the American econ-
omy experienced a constant and fast growth
thanks to industry and agriculture, sectors that
exported a good part of production towards
Europe, since in the old continent production
facilities were still in the phase of post-war
reconstruction (Milanovic, 2017).
In this period of economic expansion, the
concept of Laissez-faire took shape, intended as
the idea that the State should not interfere with
economy and society. Companies, industries and
so on were put at the center of the scene, with
1.2 From the Early 1900s Until World War II and the Birth of Career …
specific necessities such as workforce: people
who can deal with specific tasks that do not
require high qualification. The arrival of immi-
grants covered the necessities of workforce for
low qualified jobs.
After World War I and with the completion of
the reconstruction, it began a progressive over-
production, most of all in the field of agriculture.
This caused a general price drop and, as a con-
sequence, a return to protectionism. After this
period, there is the so-called ‘Crash of 1929’ and
the Great Depression: overproduction and Wall
Street Crash of 1929 caused a structural crisis,
companies stopped to invest, there was a pro-
duction drop and the raise of unemployment.
The crisis that hit the United States rapidly
spread to the rest of the world. As a matter of
fact, the United States were the most important
financial center in the world. During the ‘20s,
American investment in Europe constantly grew,
most of all towards Germany. With the Wall
Street Crash, this flow of capitals was inter-
rupted, jeopardizing Western economies. The
greatest crisis was obviously in Germany, where,
in addition to the economic crisis, there also was
an institutional one that overwhelmed the weak
Weimer Republic and brought to the power
Hitler’s National Socialists. The recession
pushed the countries to go towards protectionism
and to underline both economic and military
contrasts, which became the premises for World
War II.
Galbraith (2009) pointed out that the biggest
problems of this period of capitalistic manage-
ment regarded a bad income distribution, inade-
quate companies’ management and a scarce
efficacy of banking and financial systems,
excessive speculative loans and the mistakes
made by economists who aimed at keeping the
State outside the economy, because it was con-
sidered a penalizing factor. All these problems
created a historical period with high rates of
inequality both in terms of income and richness.
In order to face the difficult situation of the
time, the economic programs, that is to say the
public spending, were essentially based on rear-
mament and colonialism, avoiding the interna-
tional treaties that forbade it. As a matter of fact,
3
capitalists needed to find a profitable use of their
saving surplus outside their countries, so they
opened new doors to ‘colonialism’. This process
was characterized by the physical control of the
place and by a kind of a ‘colonial contract’ for
local development so that colonies could trade
exclusively with the colonizer country and could
not produce finished products. There was some
sort of division, since some European countries
aimed at colonizing Africa, Russia aimed at
Siberia and the United States at Mexico (Mila-
novic, 2017).
The crisis, the economic difficulties of the
majority of the population and the perceived
inequalities determined a delegitimization of
capitalism and of its abilities to prevent unem-
ployment. The doubts increased, even if it was
hard to think about something else, as the words
of Keynes show: “Capitalism is not smart,
beautiful, fair, virtuous and does not keep pro-
mises. In short, we do not like it and we are
beginning to despise it. But when we wonder
about what to put in its place, we are extremely
puzzled” (Keynes, 1933). As time went by,
people realized that, by raising productivity and
lowering salaries, capitalism creates inequalities,
reduces consumption capacity and creates a sur-
plus of goods that have no market. During the
‘30s, there was a need to overcome the crisis and
look for prevention methods. The economists of
the time, led by John Maynard Keynes, begin to
state that capitalism should be subjected to reg-
ulation. Solutions needed to be applied with the
intervention of the State, that allows to reduce
unemployment, raise salaries and encourage
goods’ demands by consumers, in order to
guarantee a constant economic growth and social
wellbeing, giving birth to a compromise between
capital and work (Hickel, 2012).
At the turn of this period and the consecutive
one, there was also what Milanovic (2017) calls
First Kuznets Wave, which goes from the
industrial revolution until more or less the ‘80s,
and that is associated with the growth of
inequality. The greatest levels are observed
between the end of the XIX and the beginning of
the XX century, with the following decreasing
until more or less the ‘70s/’80s.
4 1 Career Counseling and Vocational Designing, from the Origins …
The Birth of Career Counseling and Voca-
tional Designing. Taking into consideration the
expansionary moments of the above-mentioned
historical periods and thinking about the birth of
career counseling and vocational designing, we
should focus our attention on what happened first
of all in the United States. More precisely, we
should focus on the mass arrival of people
coming from Europe: they were desperate,
deprived of everything, encouraged to leave and
go somewhere else, towards a country that nee-
ded workforce to support its industrial develop-
ment (Pallante, 2018). There, in that period, the
first ‘counseling’ actions are observed. Back
then, European people did not have an elevated
culture: the most frequent condition was illiter-
acy, which tends to be associated with a higher
difficulty to perform introspective analysis and to
highlight what could be more adequate for them
from a professional point of view. It begins to be
obvious that something needs to be done in order
to help people who are looking for a job and,
more importantly, for a means of support. They
should be helped to detect a ‘solution’ that suits
their own characteristics. This is how the first
steps in the fields of career counseling and
vocational designing have been made: in 1909
the work by Frank Parsons, engineer, marks the
birth of career counseling. He introduced tools to
detect ‘the inclinations’ and to support the
detection of the ‘most suitable’ workplace to this
multitude of individuals without specific abili-
ties. This is how the ‘matching model’ is born,
which consists of matching the person’s charac-
teristics and working context’s ones. At that
time, different instruments focused on sensorial
and perceptive abilities and reaction times started
to be used. These tools came from the field of the
rising psychological studies and of psycho-
physiology and were used in order to verify if
the individual could operate specific working
performances regarding most of all assembly line
actions.
With the development of psychological stud-
ies, in particular of psychometry, during the ‘30s
and ‘40s, interests started to be taken into
consideration, that is to say, the
affective/cognitive component of working per-
formances. For this purpose, we can mention the
work by Strong with his Vocational Interest
Blank and the work by Kuder with his Kuder
Preference Record Vocational at the end of the
‘30s (Crites, 1974; Soresi & Nota, 2000).
It should be underlined that all of this, at that
time, could be considered innovative. As a matter
of fact, before this historical period, people were
‘trapped’ into their social class, they were not
‘used’ to choose a job, there were no jobs to be
chosen or to be prepared for. The school itself
was constructed as a ‘status confirmation’ sys-
tem, that aimed at keeping the existing differ-
ences between higher social classes and lower
ones that had a basic education (Collins, 1979).
On one hand we can say that matching was
useful for companies interested in finding ‘suit-
able’ people, on the other hand we can also say
that these ‘counseling’ activities were useful for
individuals, in particular for those with the big-
gest vulnerabilities, who, for the first time, were
asked what they were able to do and what they
preferred to do. Vocational designing was
‘placed between the company and the individ-
ual’, giving space to the individual and gaining
social importance (Fig. 1.1).
1.3 The ‘Glorious Thirty’
or Keynesian Period
It is a period that goes from the end of World
War II to the ‘70s, characterized by an expan-
sionary stage and by a recession, with its dis-
tinctive features. In this period counseling
models are born, aimed at helping people to
detect a satisfying option for their educational
and professional life, having many different
possibilities.
Expansionary Stage. In Western societies,
there was a delegitimization of unbridled capi-
talism and of its abilities to prevent unemploy-
ment and the social crises that brought to World
War II. At the same time, there was The Great
1.3 The ‘Glorious Thirty’ or Keynesian Period
Fig. 1.1 The origins of
career counseling and
vocational designing
Beginning of 1900
1909
Parson
The right place
Matching
‘Attitudes’
Sensorial, perceptive
aspects and reaction times
Leveling, born in socialist countries and associ-
ated with the idea that it was necessary to create
economic management systems that were par-
tially not capitalist, with public investments. In
these countries, most of the companies were
nationalized, simplifying a different richness
distribution and the compression of salaries.
Moreover, the nationalization of production
means implicated the abolition of business
incomes and of incomes coming from patrimo-
nial estates, since companies were banned. In
addition, there were guaranteed job opportuni-
ties, the absence of unemployment, pensions and
the presence of basic products. Basically, edu-
cation and property, two essential elements in
market-economies, became irrelevant. In this
way, the ‘prize for education’ is also reduced,
since the salaries of low qualified workers were
quite high, and the salaries of high qualified
workers were quite low. There was a certain
amount of hostility towards technology and little
attention was given to innovation. This will
create problems in the long run: Milanovic
(2017) states that there has been an excessive
push to equality that discouraged people in terms
of commitment to work, education, and
innovation.
Thanks to this and to the work done by the
left-wing parties, the consensus towards socialist
forms of economic management spread among
European and American working classes, even if
with authoritarian turns. It became necessary to
create conditions that could limit this consensus
by investing in more balanced relationships
5
World War II
Psychometry Development
Affective/Cognitive Components
Interests
Vocational Interest Blank- Strong.
1927, 1938
Kuder Preference Record Vocational
Kuder, 1938-1941
between workers and capitalists. As a conse-
quence, rich classes tended to accept measures
able to create a wide middle class, because of the
fear of new socialist movements and capital
expropriations.
It is also important to underline that, thanks to
the effect of investments and to scientific dis-
coveries, in Western countries there was a second
expansion of the manufacturing and commercial
sectors. This expansion is associated with the
manpower transfer from agriculture to manufac-
turing, from the rural areas to urban ones. It is
also associated with the reduction of the gap
between urban and rural contexts and of the
respective inequalities. The population was
gradually becoming older, with much higher
numbers with respect to the past, which impli-
cates a higher demand for social services such as
social welfare and healthcare. Moreover, educa-
tion was extended to the majority of the popu-
lation: this implicates, also in Western contexts, a
reduction of the prize for education (Goldin &
Katz, 2008).
School took on two goals: supporting upward
social mobility and preparing a qualified work-
force. For the first time school is considered a
resource of social policies, aimed at overcoming,
rather than confirming, the existing social divi-
sions. This change of pace regarding education is
related to the spread of social rights but also to a
considerable demand for a more qualified work-
force as concerns the clerical and technical sec-
tors. Education started to be perceived as what
could support the national economy. For Italy in
6 1 Career Counseling and Vocational Designing, from the Origins …
particular, Ricuperati (1995, p. 732) stated that
“if in the fifteen-year period that was about to
come there had not been the correct preparation
for the over 700.000 graduates needed, the
almost 3 million technicians and qualified
employees, the economic development would
have been stopped or irreparably damaged”. In
Italy, these visions are the foundation of laws that
establish compulsory education until 14 years
old, middle school education in 1962 and the
liberalization of University in 1969.
As can be seen, space has been given to pol-
itics that hold together socialist visions and less
extreme visions of capitalism, so that the State
has to set goals such as full employment, eco-
nomic growth and citizens’ wellbeing. State
power has to act freely next to market mecha-
nisms, also by replacing them when necessary, in
order to achieve its goals.
This is how Keynesian economic policies take
shape: Keynes is an English economist who
leaves the neoclassical tradition and proposes a
new economic model called Keynesian theory,
which is different from the previous one, based in
a more significant way on Laissez-faire.
According to him, the biggest failure of the free
market consists of the inability to offer a per-
manent workplace to those who want it. When
the demand for products is not high and impli-
cates an excess of unsold goods that have no
market, businesses need to reduce their activity
with consequences on the number of employees.
In order to limit this phenomenon and reduce the
waste of human and social resources during mass
unemployment situations, the intervention of a
third subject is necessary. This subject is the
State, which is external to the market and needs
to provide full employment. The State needs to
rebalance markets and rule them in order to avoid
wastes and inefficiencies (Pallante, 2018). The
essential task is to manage public spending in
order to increase demand. By increasing public
spending and the demand for goods and services,
the production of businesses can be increased
too, and, as a consequence, so is employment.
The three cornerstones of economic policies are
public investments, progressive taxation, and
social protection. Keynes proposed public works
as the antidote to the crisis: from that moment the
construction of streets, railways and houses
began. He also proposed changes in the eco-
nomic policies which favored rich people, based
on what above-mentioned, with higher taxes for
rich people in order to finance better social
cohesion and the creation of different welfare
systems (healthcare, education and so on).
It is important to consider that all of this did
not mean, in Keynes’s opinion, to abolish the old
paradigm or reverse the forms of private capi-
talism, but, on the contrary, to save them through
the “widening of the functions of the government
[…], the only possible way to avoid the complete
destruction of the existing economic powers, and
also the condition of a satisfying functioning of
individual initiative” (Keynes, 2006, p. 338). As
a matter of fact, the State participates at an
unprecedented level, in order to re-establish a
consensus spirit and the collaboration by
workers.
Regarding the market’s processes and
entrepreneurial/business activities, a new condi-
tion is created, called ‘embedded liberalism’.
This condition involves social and political
restrictions and a series of rules aimed at limiting,
sometimes at guiding, the economic and indus-
trial strategies. There was the will to guarantee a
dignified family salary in exchange for a sub-
missive and productive workforce, providing to
the middle class the means to consume essential
goods of industrial production.
All of this was obviously supported by
Western countries’ governments, which imag-
ined that in this way it was possible to guarantee
global economic stability and social wellness,
and to prevent another World War. The Bretton
Woods1 institutions were created, that is to say,
the ones that later became the World Bank, the
1
The Bretton Woods Agreement is the result of a series of
negotiations made from the 1st to the 22nd of July 1944,
in Bretton Woods near Carroll, New Hampshire (the so-
called Bretton Woods Conference). On that occasion,
different rules were written. These rules regarded business
and financial international relationships among the main
industrialized Western countries. As a matter of fact, they
are the first example of a ‘monetary order’ negotiated
among States, aimed at characterizing their monetary
relationships.
1.3 The ‘Glorious Thirty’ or Keynesian Period
International Monetary Fund and the World
Trade Organization, in order to solve the prob-
lems regarding the balance of payments and to
foster the reconstruction and the development of
a war-torn Europe (Hickel, 2012).
At the same time, there was higher attention
towards rights, with an extension of social rights
(Milanovic, 2017). The first generation of rights,
that goes back to French and American revolu-
tions, brings civil freedoms such as the freedom
of religion, expression, residence, and trade. The
second generation brings into societies social
rights such as healthcare, social services, and
assistance. The Welfare State was born, which
aimed at policies created to protect individuals
from the so-called ‘five giants’: misery, disease,
ignorance, squalor, and idleness, through the
creation of national healthcare, public education,
public housing and full employment policies
(Beveridge, 2010).
On one hand, this social change can be the
result of a ‘political strategy’ to limit the socialist
wave, but on the other hand, people are now able
to strive for a minimum social status level, that
involves education, health, social safety, jobs,
and houses. On one hand, as Kennedy stated, all
of this was useful in order to limit the growing
threat that a more combined and powerful
working-class movement represented for the
constant accumulation of capital, on the other
hand, it is clear that social rights become citi-
zenship rights and no longer represent charitable
actions (Popkewitz, 1991).
Recession Stage. In the late ‘60s, embedded
liberalism started to split apart, both on a national
and international level, for different reasons such
as the rise of inflation and the reduction of State
tax revenues for social spending. Moreover, there
was a merging between working-class move-
ments and urban social ones, that gave the
impression of a stronger socialist alternative to
the social compromise between capital and work,
that successfully formed the basis for post-war
capital accumulation.
Communist and socialist parties gained
ground and were about to succeed in a large part
of Europe and in the United States. Popular
forces were mobilizing for an extension of
7
reforms and State interventions. The concern for
the above-mentioned situation is associated (or
gives birth to) with the upswing of the work of a
small group of thinkers: Mont Pélerin Society,
founded in 1947. It takes its name from the Swiss
thermal location where there was the first meet-
ing between economists, historians, philoso-
phers, scholars, who gathered around the famous
Austrian philosopher and economist Friedrich
von Hayek. Among them, there were Ludwig
von Mises, the economist Milton Friedman and,
at least once, the famous philosopher Karl Pop-
per. They called themselves ‘liberals’, as a ref-
erence to the liberalism of the European tradition,
for their essential commitment in favor of the
ideals of personal freedom. They aimed at rein-
troducing the importance of setting the economy
according to capitalistic rules and without forms
of control (Harvey, 2007).
1.4 The Growth
and the Contribution of Career
Counseling and Vocational
Designing
Thinking about people and their professional life
in Western countries, we may say that some of
the most important elements in this historical
period are the following:
– The spreading of education;
– Population aging;
– The increase of job opportunities in the
manufacturing and clerical sectors;
– The increase of educational options;
– The possibility to start a ‘career’;
– A higher ‘specialization’ of professional
contexts.
A growing labor demand is observed. Quali-
fied performances are required, both in the
technical and in the clerical sectors, so that
education becomes an investment for the overall
economic development. Rights are extended, and
closer attention is given to population wellness
levels. Citizens are gradually more educated, and
they can choose which professional path to take.
8 1 Career Counseling and Vocational Designing, from the Origins …
Greater attention is given to individual requests,
to professional fulfillment, and the idea of ‘ca-
reer’ gets into the thoughts regarding profes-
sional life.
Choices, reflections on the best option, the
analysis of one’s own desires, etc. acquire great
importance in this scenario. Vocational designing
processes, in line with the development of psy-
chological and social sciences studies, begin to
take into consideration all of this (Brown, 2003).
Interests become important because they were no
longer considered as mere preferences, but as
traits, personality aspects. If interests are ‘satis-
fied’ in working contexts, that is to say, if they are
cultivated thanks to specific working environ-
ments that allow doing so, they facilitate career
satisfaction along with career performance.
Holland’s Work and RIASEC types. In this
context, it is important to keep in mind as the
person that makes a professional choice ‘looks
for’ the situations that respect his/her counseling
hierarchy” (Holland, 1959). The choice becomes
something that involves many different personal
features: motivation, knowledge, abilities, and
personality. Different instruments are created in
order to measure interests, classify contexts,
check congruency and so on, validated by hun-
dreds of researches. From these researches, it
stands out as the majority of people can be
described using one of the ‘types’ that Holland
himself detected and clarified through decades of
research and counseling regarding vocational
designing. These types are: Realistic, Investiga-
tive, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conven-
tional. Likewise, also the working environments
can be differentiated using the same types. The
implied hypothesis of this approach consists of
considering career choices as the expression of
an individual’s personality. People doing the
same jobs would be characterized by similar
personality traits and life stories (Swanson &
Fouad, 1999; Soresi & Nota, 2000). Congruency
levels between the person and the environment
are based on the adaptation between personality
and interests and the type of working environ-
ment in which the individual is put or aspires to.
Social Cognitive Career Theory. During the
‘80s, there are the first ideas that question the
concept that supported the existence of a linear
relationship between personal characteristics and
environmental ones. Between the person and the
context, there are much more complex relations
than those traditionally hypothesized: both of
these elements are often characterized in terms of
emphasized flexibility and variability (Hackett &
Betz, 1981). On the basis of Bandura’s works
regarding his construct of self-efficacy (1977) and
his theories of social learning (Bandura, 1984,
1986), other dimensions of the ‘self’ gain
importance, such as work motivation, profes-
sional values, and efficacy beliefs. All these
elements refer to the opinions that a person has
regarding his/her own abilities of organizing and
accomplishing everything that is necessary in
order to learn how to carry out specific tasks,
included professional ones. The person has also
to know the factors that can foster these abilities,
in the belief, supported by data, that keeping in
mind these variables during decision-making
processes allows more accurate decisions
(Hackett & Lent, 1992).
An important model is the one created by
Lent, Brown, & Hackett, (1994), the Social
Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), that consists in
three intertwined models that focus on (a) inter-
ests’ development, (b) choice and (c) perfor-
mances and persistence in educational and
professional paths (Lent, Brown, & Hackett,
1994). Hundreds of researches have been made,
highlighting how the beliefs that people have on
their abilities are formed, what the determiners of
those beliefs are, and the consequences in terms
of preferences for specific actions, motivation,
commitment, etc. These researchers question the
solidity of some traditional and ‘objective’
measures, giving particular relevance to mark-
edly ‘private and subjective’ dimensions (such as
self-efficacy beliefs and outcome expectations).
Importance has been given to how much
people think they are able to perform specific
actions, that is to say, how many efficacy self-
beliefs they have for specific tasks and actions, as
we would say in technical words, in the aware-
ness that a lack of confidence is associated with a
lack of investment. For example, a lack of self-
confidence regarding mathematical skills is
1.4 The Growth and the Contribution of Career Counseling …
associated with a minor effort in this subject. The
origins of efficacy beliefs have been deeply
analyzed, along with the range of activities and
gratifications to which every person is exposed
since a very young age.
Through the ‘repetition’ of certain actions, the
presence of models and feedbacks given by
important people, children and adolescents
gradually develop their abilities and interests.
They also promote self-efficacy in different tasks,
along with a series of expectations regarding
what could happen if they are able to use and
take advantage of these abilities also through
specific professional preferences (Nota & Soresi,
2000). Researches clearly underline that all the
cognitive and social predictors together represent
from the 37% to the 67% of interests’ variance
and from the 46% to the 75% of choice goals
(Sheu et al., 2010); the 43% of choice actions (in
the STEM degree; Lent et al., 2018); and the
20% of professional performances (Brown, Lent,
Telander, & Tramayne, 2011), the 19% of aca-
demic performances and the 28% of academic
persistence (Brown et al., 2008). Learning
experiences arrive at 36% and 42%, respectively,
of self-efficacy variance and outcome
expectations.
Making Decisions, Managing Indecision,
Supporting Career Development. Because of the
fact that people have to choose educational paths
and professional fields, decisional models start to
be examined. It is important to mention the
research and practical studies by Itamar Gati,
who studied the modalities in which individuals
make decisions about their future and how these
can be facilitated. In this context, the works
regarding compensatory and non-compensatory
decision-making strategies and PIC model (Pre-
screening; In-depth exploration; Choice) for
professional choice have been of particular rele-
vance. This prescriptive model helps to detect a
small number of promising options, to perform a
deep exploration of these options in order to
identify the most suitable ones, and then choose
the best alternative (Gati, 2013). These studies
examine when and how much people use effec-
tive decision-making strategies and if they use
adaptive or maladaptive decisional styles, such as
9
avoiding difficult decisions, postpone them to the
last minute, delegate them to others. On the other
hand, people can make an effort in the choosing
process by analyzing the options, gathering
information, comparing them and so on, with the
awareness that the maladaptive strategies reduce
effort but bring, more probably, to less advanta-
geous solutions (Nota, Mann, Soresi, & Fried-
man, 2002).
Another career theory that should be consid-
ered is the so-called ‘Planned happenstance’
that, thanks most of all to John Krumboltz
(1996), recognizes fundamental importance,
mostly in presence of choices and successful
professional planning, to people’s ability to seize
events and unplanned opportunities. It is impor-
tant to grasp and take advantage of these random
events, also in favor of the construction of the
‘professional career’. Being in the right place at
the right moment, being in a particular situation,
facing an unpredicted and surprising meeting,
getting to know an unexpected information: all
these situations would not be, according to this
theory, just a matter of ‘luck’, but the proof of the
existence of a series of advanced cognitive and
emotional skills, that would enable people to
consider the effects of these events and to facil-
itate their happening. In the presence of a lack of
these skills, the task of vocational designing
would be to train people to handle unexpected
events, with coping strategies that help to look
for directions and goals perceived as interesting
and attractive.
We have to mention also the work by Peter-
son, Sampson, Reardon, and Lenz (1996), who
reconsidered the cognitive theory concepts
regarding information processing and created a
specific theoretical framework focused on the
career problem. This particular problem regards
the difficulty to make decisions in the presence of
a situation perceived as ambiguous, not clear,
that gives little information that can help to find
an immediate and efficient solution. They offer a
well-structured series of cognitive operations, the
so-called ‘career problem solving’, regarding the
recognition of a state of indecision, the analysis
of its causes, the formulation of solving
hypotheses, the detection of different alternatives
10 1 Career Counseling and Vocational Designing, from the Origins …
and the choice of the most suitable and conve-
nient option for each individual (Nota et al.
2002).
Even if we are aware that we are reducing a
summary that is already too brief with respect to
the existing work of many colleagues and that it
should include many more perspectives than
those we have examined so far, we would like to
take into consideration another aspect. During
the ‘50s, the world of work has allowed a certain
number of people (today we still would say ‘a
minority’), usually Caucasian males, to profes-
sionally evolve. In terms of career, they moved
from an inferior working position to a superior
one, with greater responsibilities and a better
salary. The concepts of career and professional
development begin to appear. They were inclu-
ded in the ‘human being development field’,
similarly as other fields (linguistic, motoric, etc.),
that bring forward the idea that as time goes by it
is preferable to support, in career counseling
activities, inclinations, and skills that help people
to make advantageous choices, to ‘move’ better
among different possible options, and to pass
from an inferior level to a superior one in
working contexts, that is to say, to build a career.
One of the most important scholars is Donald
Super, who has the merit of collocating career
development into the life cycle and of providing
a series of useful suggestions both for ‘practical
uses’ and for research in the field of professional
psychology. His ‘Life Career Rainbow’ (Super,
1957, 1974) is very famous. Super’s work is
extended, enlarged and renewed by Mark Sav-
ickas, who introduced, during the ‘90s, the
Theory of Career Construction (2005, 2011).
Career counseling and vocational guidance
take into account the work of these researches
and aim at fostering the individual, at highlight-
ing dimensions and skills that characterize the
choice decision-making process, that are many
and intertwined. These dimensions and skills
involve motivations, interests and professional
values, decisional efficacy beliefs, professional
problem-solving skills, visualizing professional
goals, decisional strategies, social skills con-
nected to choice and so on. There are remarkable
studies, tools, invitations to foster these skills.
Starting from a ‘macro-systemic’ view, we
mention, in line with Milanovic (2017), that in
this period it is essential to aim at the construc-
tion of a wide middle class that allows to absorb
industrial productions from an economic point of
view, and to have a stronghold with respect to a
collectivistic and socialist society, to establish a
sort of control from a social point of view. Career
counseling and vocational guidance, with their
activities, placing themselves on the person’s
side, tried to ‘enrich the self’, to give space to the
individual in order to improve his/her life quality
through his/her working experience. We would
like to say that, even in this historical period, in
Western countries, career counseling is able to
keep faith to its mission and to the possibility to
have social relevance, especially when carried
out strictly. From this perspective, vocational
designing is characterized as a process that
strengthens the possibility to make convenient
professional choices, as we also used to affirm in
Larios Laboratory at University of Padova,
defining it as a process that involves the supply
of assistance aimed at supporting the individual
in the actions concerning the gathering, pro-
cessing and use of educational and professional
information, in planning decisions in this field
aiming, as far as possible, at the improvement of
the skills involved in this process” (Soresi, 2000)
(Fig. 1.2).
1.5 Conclusions: Social
Significance… in Favor of a Part
of the World
This chapter highlighted how career counseling
and vocational designing processes, their instru-
ments, their practices, are basically the result of
the times in which they are born, created by
people that cannot avoid being influenced by the
historical period they are living. It seems clear
that, at the early stages, there was the belief that it
is possible and convenient to use congruency
measures between people’s characteristics and
the educational and professional contexts’
expectations, that is to say, the matching para-
digm. As time went by, there appeared new
1.5 Conclusions: Social Significance… in Favor of a Part of the World 11

Between 1950 and 1970 80s – 90s

Holland’s Model Super’s Professional Betz, Hackett and Pic-Gati’s Model

Motivations and Development Model Lent’s Social Aspects for the

Personality Traits Life Career Rainbow Cognitive Career professional choice

Life roles Theory

Savickas’ Model
Efficacy Beliefs,

interests, values, of Career

determiners Construction

Environmental

Peterson and requests

Compensatory and
Introspection
non-compensatory Sampson’s IPP

decision-making Model

strategies Indecision and

professional problems

Irrational ideas

Fig. 1.2 The development of career counseling during the ‘Glorious Thirty’

possibilities and opportunities for many people,
for example, young people who were studying
both in high school and at University. It became
possible to be neutral, impartial, to mediate
between demand and offer, between Person’s
necessities and the Environments’ ones, the P-E
model, born with Parsons (1909) and developed
and enriched over time with the works and
studies of many colleagues, as we tried to
underline, who opened the way to reflections
regarding education, development, skills’
improvement, inclinations, beliefs and so on.
It was important for us to underline that, in the
previous century, all of this has been possible
since things went definitely well. In that period, it
was still possible to make quite accurate predic-
tions, thanks to the fact that both people and
educational/professional environments were rel-
atively stable and predictable, to the point that
these environments ensured, more or less for
everyone, to have the possibility to be safe and
improve careers, remaining in the same
workplace. Furthermore, both people and pro-
fessional environments could be ‘explored’,
analyzed, evaluated and described by using the
same guidelines (inclinations, interests, owned
skills) facilitating, at least theoretically, the
mythical need to match demand and offer.
Career counseling and vocational designing
could develop and improve people’s lives, hav-
ing, in most cases, as a social discipline, a social
value. This discipline tried to make people think,
plan, look to the future, considering what they
cared about the most, their wishes, their interests,
their ambitions. These elements would have
fostered, if practiced and nurtured, higher levels
of professional satisfaction, a higher investment
and commitment and, as a consequence, also a
higher efficacy in the working contexts that
received them.
Regardless of the theoretical approaches sup-
ported, there is a general agreement on the fact
that career counseling finds its validation in the
idea that all the people have the right to choose
12 1 Career Counseling and Vocational Designing, from the Origins …
regarding their educational-professional future.
In the world of work, people can have the
opportunity to show their characteristics, inter-
ests, values, ambitions by expressing, in this
way, their own selves. Based on these concepts,
vocational designing built a sort of bridge, able
to connect people and educational and profes-
sional environments.
It probably contributed to the general well-
being, at least in Western countries, mostly when
counselors who practiced career counseling
worked in a professional way, with a proper
education, on the people’s side, as the charter of
the Italian Career Counseling Association, born
in 2000, states in its article 3: “The vocational
designing expert considers his/her goal to pro-
vide assistance aimed at allowing informed
educational-professional choices and decisions.
In order to reach this goal, as a consequence,
there can be both educational and support inter-
ventions, for the person that requires them,
regarding the actions of gathering, processing
and using the educational-professional informa-
tion, of planning and realizing decisions, aiming
at the development of the client’s skills, with the
goal to foster an independent and informed
choice. This because every person is considered
able to evaluate the result of his/her behavior and
to act in order to modify the environment in
which he/she lives, through the acquisition
and/or development of higher awareness levels
and useful skills in order to foster and predict
interactions with others, respecting and support-
ing, at the same time, one’s own developmental
path”.
On the basis of everything above-mentioned,
and in particular with the conviction that career
counseling and vocational designing are useful
means to improve people’s skills to build a sig-
nificant future, we as well, in Larios Laboratory,
have studied, have done researches and have
created materials. With our studies, volumes,
training, portfolios, that we developed, realized,
tested, our goal was this: fostering abilities and
skills regarding the satisfying management of
professional life, in particular for those who had
lower levers of choice possibility and of self-
expression. The data we gathered allowed us to
highlight remarkable differences. Some people
thought about their future in a superficial way,
perceiving an elevated sense of worry, even
thinking to not have goals to achieve, to have few
perspectives and little hope. Other people per-
ceived that their future job would not have rep-
resented a satisfying expression of their
characteristics and possibilities. We believed that
career counseling and vocational designing had
most of all to facilitate the learning of new
abilities, interests, beliefs, values, working habits
and personal qualities that allow every client to
build a satisfying life in a constantly changing
working (Nota & Soresi, 2000, 2004).
However, things have greatly changed nowa-
days, as we will try to examine in the following
chapter, and how many colleagues are confirm-
ing, among which Lent (2018) who states that
economists’ predictions can no longer be trusted,
as much as the tendency to use measures able to
suggest high adaptability profiles, suitability and,
employability in this or that professional field.
Development models and future models that are
envisaged, present contrasting prediction rates, to
the point that there are few predictions left to be
promoted with enough certainty.
We cannot omit the fact that what is written in
this chapter, in terms of possibilities and well-
ness, regards the Western countries and the
illusion, maybe unconscious, maybe fostered,
that this kind of prosperity was something infi-
nite. What we have experienced in terms of
options, means, goods, welfare, increase of life
quality, developed on the shoulders of actions
that can be defined ‘imperialistic’, colonialist, of
ecological and resources destruction of almost
every other part of the Earth, with rural poverty,
famine, conflicts, the uncontrolled increase of
illegal and informal activities, shantytowns,
oppression and discrimination forms (Marshall,
1972; Mingione, 2019). The ideas about the fact
that nature did not have limits and that the fossil-
fuel age and the possibility to exploit resources
would have not ended, (have) fostered in Wes-
tern countries a sort of production and con-
sumption acceleration. These were a source of
life improvement for many people, without car-
ing about anyone else, without asking questions,
1.5 Conclusions: Social Significance… in Favor of a Part of the World
without reflecting on what was going on in other
parts of the planet (Pallante, 2018; Rifkin, 2019).
The way of thinking “based on profits’ extraction
and on unlimited growth is never questioned”
stated De Rosa (2019, p. 227). Now we may say
that we have been absorbed in a self-centered
bubble, in which almost every discipline has
been trapped, including career counseling and
vocational designing, creating, despite the good
intentions, a series of prerequisites for the living
conditions we are experiencing.
According to us, we can no longer keep
offering the same models and practices of the
past. We need to change course, as we will
underline in the following chapters, most of all if
we want to be useful and socially relevant, with a
broader vision that involves the entire humanity
and the planet we live in.
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 Threats and Challenges of the XXI
Century and the Role of Career 2
Counseling and Vocational
Designing

capitalism (Hickel, 2012). During the late ‘60s

2.1 Introduction: From the Recent
and the beginning of the ‘70s an offensive was
Past to Present Times
launched in order to counter the egalitarian
actions and to support the idea that it is necessary
As we already had the opportunity to highlight,
to safeguard both rights and freedoms, with
the ‘Glorious Thirty’ has been a period of social
particular attention to that of ‘being rich’. The
progress for the Western context. During the said
belief that people were starting to belittle rich-
period, sectors of society that used to have a
ness begun and, in some instances, it was pos-
passive role began mobilizing making their
sible to witness cases of ‘persecution’ against
instances clear, widening and spreading rights.
people who had it. A push toward a different
From an economic standpoint, financial institu-
social model was recorded and neoliberal poli-
tions were entrusted with the task of fostering
cies started to acquire shape. This happened
opportunity with the circulation of resources and
thanks to phenomena such as globalization and
using a regulatory system to which banks were
technological advancements (Galli & Caligiuro,
required to join. These regulations involved
2017). In this chapter, we are keen to draw the
currency speculation and the export of capital.
reader’s attention to the different conditions that
Differentiation between commercial banks and
characterize our times. With the awareness that,
investment institutions was included in the
on one hand, we are carrying out a simple sum-
above-mentioned regulations. As a result, risky
mary of topics that deserve an in-depth analysis
investments were limited, especially the ones that
and study of the work of different colleagues
could have led to negative outcomes for the cit-
from different disciplines. On the other hand, it is
izens. Companies mostly operated in order to
important to have an initial form of awareness of
favor productive processes, having their best
what is happening so that we can find the
interest in the state of health of said companies,
strength to create new operational paths.
from which derived the general well-being. This
led to a mostly well-rounded development that
hinted at the possibility of sharing the same
process with the poorest populations. Everything
2.2 Neoliberal Ideological
was fine because the richest kept having their
Derivations of the Present Era
slice of pie and their wealth remained untouched.
Some authors (e.g., Adams & Markus, 2004)
Things changed in the ‘70s, when the growth
affirm that during these last decades there has
stopped. Wealth loss was immediately blatant,
been the spreading of a different cultural
and the holders of capital tried to exploit the
approach that has its origins in a political-
crisis as an excuse to dismantle the embedded

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Switzerland AG 2020
L. Nota et al., Sustainable Development, Career Counselling and Career Education,
Sustainable Development Goals Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60046-4_2
16 2 Threats and Challenges of the XXI Century and the Role …
economic movement named ‘neoliberalism’.
This movement is characterized by ideas,
behaviors, and beliefs that deeply affected social
and institutional structures, not always in a pos-
itive way (Adams & Markus, 2004). We are
taking into account a sort of ‘philosophical
belief’, a vision of reality that, albeit its elabo-
ration derives from a potpourri of different eco-
nomic and political doctrines that differ
depending on the places and circumstances, has
outlined modalities of conceiving the individual
and social life that led to the spreading of vul-
nerabilities (Beattie, 2019). We are well aware,
together with other scholars, that the term is
being overused (Hooley, Sultana, & Thompson,
2017). Furthermore, while considering this cul-
tural pattern, it would be naïve of us to think that
behind all of this there is the work of a ‘specter’
that operates behind our backs in order to
deliberately give birth to the social problems of
the present day.
The society in which we live is complex, it
requires an articulated network between wealth
redistribution processes and the creation of the
said wealth. It requires inclination to stability and
social status quo and to social openness. These
factors are to be connected every time with dif-
ferent socio-economic conditions, even medi-
ated, aimed at the softening of problems
(Mingardi, 2019). Anyway, a big amount of data
is supporting the fact that during these last dec-
ades we had the opportunity to witness the work
of multinationals distributed on a global scale
and stronger and stronger business groups that
wanted to favor global markets. In order to be
able to produce at the lowest possible costs and
without any regard for the human factor, they
used operations of delocalization and unregulated
capital movement.
The focus of the economy shifted away from a
production-centered situation, typical of the pre-
vious historic context, to one that had its main
interest in financialization. This is linked to
complex exploitation of capital, aimed at bene-
fitting personal enrichment and at the expense of
long-term economic investment and that strives
to depletion and destruction of natural resources
when in absence of rules and controls (Gidron &
Hall, 2017; Mazzucato, 2018). In recent times,
since the 2008 crisis, in Western countries, we
have witnessed actions on public spending that
had the purpose of saving funded institutions and
banks considered to be ‘too big’ to fail. This has
to be put in relation to the large and often
uncollectable debt of households and businesses
that were caught in the stranglehold of con-
sumerism and credit practices (Mazzucato &
Jacobs 2017).
Nowadays, we have the inclination to main-
tain a certain state intervention that has the ability
to repurpose forms of banking and financial
regulation and to outline an environmental reg-
ulation that charges polluting companies. This
inclination seems to be associated, among those
who have considerable interests to safeguard,
with the idea that globalization does not help to
maintain wealth and that maybe a sort of ‘na-
tional neoliberalism’ is necessary (Colantone &
Stanig, 2019).
Leaving transformations and chameleon-like
formulas aside, what gives these trajectories a
proper characterization is the idea that economy
is the core of everything and that it may “divorce
itself from social costs, that it doesn’t have to
deal with matters of ethical and social responsi-
bility” in order to support markets (Nevrakadis &
Giroux, 2015, p. 450).
In name of the economy, there has probably
been an exceed of deregulation of professional
and environmental protection, fueled by the idea
that privatization is the only successful strategy.
The thought that the individual wellbeing is
strictly connected to a series of objects and their
functionality and consumption started to spread.
We assisted to commercialization processes and
the spreading of market laws in a lot of fields of
our lives that even concern public water supplies
and dating. Constant improvement is essential;
there is tireless research for new products, new
markets, and new ideas. Competition and rivalry
are what allow this, the ‘source of social pro-
gress’, to the benefit of the individual (Dardot &
2.2 Neoliberal Ideological Derivations of the Present Era
Laval, 2013; Galli & Caligiuri, 2017; Nevrakadis
& Giroux 2015); Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian
philosopher, considers neoliberalism a doctrine
in which “you are free to do anything, as long as
it involves shopping” (2008, p. 51), and that
makes us consider the push that derives from the
economic, financial and entrepreneurial world.
Said push was given to worldwide politics in
order to give space to property, free markets, free
trades, to the re-interpretation of the role of the
State. This should be considered in the same way
as an institution that creates cultural and fiscal
basis to support all of this. We have the
impression that what was born to defend the
values of liberalism, of the free market, became
something that is everything but free, based on
monopolies, financial speculations and tricks
created to preserve the wealth of those who
already have it (Mason, 2019).
Birth and Spreading of Neoliberalism. The
birth of neoliberalism as a partially organized
intellectual and politic movement conventionally
dates back to 1947, date of the constitution of
Mont Pelerin Society and to its actual blooming
in 1970, with the works of the School of Chicago
started by some professors of the University of
Chicago. They integrated the neoclassic econ-
omy with some elements of the Austrian School.
During the course of time, this school, because of
the above-mentioned worries, begins to receive
financial and political backing, from the United
States in particular, on behalf of billionaires and
companies’ big executives that were against
every form of intervention and regulation of the
State in the economic processes. The movement
started to gain the spotlight, especially in the
United States and in Great Britain, supported by
various think tanks that were well-funded by
prestigious institutions like the London Institute
of Economic Affairs and the Washington Her-
itage Foundation. It also synergistically worked
with the academic world institutions, among
which we have to highlight the role of the
University of Chicago where Milton Friedman,
an important figure of the above-mentioned
approach, covered a role of paramount impor-
tance. He was also awarded the Nobel Prize in
economics in 1976, just a few years after the one
17
that was given to Hayek in 1974, that highlighted
the neoliberalist thought (Harvey, 2007).1
Friedman’s receipt contain three main ingre-
dients: (a) deregulation, intended as the elimi-
nation of the rules that regulate economic life and
that can limit profits; (b) privatization, intended
as the replacement of public services with private
services, giving advantage to the latter; (c) re-
duction of social expenses, particularly true for
the pension system, healthcare, and unemploy-
ment support. The market needs a bigger space,
given its ability of autoregulation and of giving
birth to an exact number of products at the right
price, created by workers that receive salaries
that are sufficient to buy those same products: a
perfect world of full employment, creativity and,
more importantly, perpetual growth.
Once these ideas begin to take shape, we
assist to a process of ‘planetarization’, with ‘ex-
periments’ and actions in different parts of the
world that determine an assumption of these
policies at a global level. It is important to recall,
in this frame, that only the commitment of the
British Conservative Party in the late ‘70s starts
policies marked by neoliberalism. The same
applies for what Ronald Reagan did in the late
‘80s with the Republican Party in the United
States: implementing measures to contain trade
unions, to deregulate industry, agriculture, and
exploitation of resources, and to liberalize
financial activities at a national and world level.
Reagan was also sure that giving more money to
the rich was a way to stimulate economic growth,
assuming that they would invest their finances in
the improvement of production capacity, creating
additional profits that would gradually “trickle”
down towards the remaining society (trickle-
down theory). Supporters of the neoliberal shift
began occupying largely dominant positions in
research and education, especially in Universities
and wealthy private research institutions, in
1
Harvey (2007) underlines that the prize for economics,
even if it carries the name ‘Nobel’ with it, is officially a
Swedish Bank prize for economic sciences, in the
memory of Alfred Nobel, that has nothing to deal with
the other prizes that are called with the same name, and
that is under the strict control of the Swedish banking
élite.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 ⁷But be ye strong, and let not your hands be
slack: for your work shall be rewarded.
7. be ye strong, etc.] The prophet’s warning is continued in this
verse.

⁸And when Asa heard these words, and ¹ the

prophecy of Oded the prophet, he took
courage, and put away the abominations out
of all the land of Judah and Benjamin, and out
of the cities which he had taken from the hill
country of Ephraim; and he renewed the altar
of the Lord, that was before the porch of the
Lord.
¹ Or, even.

8. and the prophecy of Oded the prophet] Some words have

fallen out of the text. Read, even the prophecy which Azariah the
son of Oded prophesied.

the abominations] compare 1 Kings xiv. 23, 24, xv. 12, 13.

the cities which he had taken) A loose reference to those said to

have been captured by Abijah (xiii. 19). There is no record of any
taken by Asa himself.

the hill country of Ephraim] The term describes the hilly country
between the plain of Esdraelon and the territory of Benjamin.

that was before the porch] Compare vii. 7, viii. 12.

 ⁹And he gathered all Judah and Benjamin, and
them that sojourned with them out of Ephraim
and Manasseh, and out of Simeon: for they
fell to him out of Israel in abundance, when
they saw that the Lord his God was with him.
9. them that sojourned with them] Compare x. 17, xi. 16, 17, xvi.
1.

out of Ephraim and Manasseh, and out of Simeon] In view of the

evidence of Kings and the special character of Chronicles this
statement cannot be regarded as having historical value for the time
of Asa. Taking it in connection with similar notices in 1 Chronicles ix.
3 (Ephraim and Manasseh), xii. 8, 19 (Gad and Manasseh), 2
Chronicles xxx. 1, 10, 11, 18, xxxiv. 9 (Ephraim and Manasseh; also
Zebulun, Issachar, and perhaps Asher) we may infer that these
references have significance for the time of the Chronicler (or his
source) and were inserted either (a) to gratify the wishes of certain
orthodox families in Jerusalem who counted themselves
descendants of North Israelite families, especially of Ephraim and
Manasseh, and were eager to think that their ancestors had
associated themselves with the fortunes of the true Israel at an early
date after the separation of the kingdoms or at least in pre-exilic
days. Or (b)—an interesting suggestion first advanced by Stade and
recently developed by Hölscher (Palästina in der persischen und
hellenistischen Zeit, 1903, pp. 30‒37)—we may suppose that the
reference is not to families resident in Jerusalem but to persons
living in the territories once occupied by Ephraim, Manasseh, etc.,
and loyal to the faith of the orthodox community in Jerusalem. The
former view seems favoured by 1 Chronicles ix. 3, the latter by 2
Chronicles xxx. 25 (despite the last words); and on general grounds
the latter view seems preferable to the present writer. If so, we have
in Chronicles the first traces of the extension of Judaism northwards
from Judea into Samaria and Galilee. Hölscher thinks that the
evidence of Chronicles can be supported from the late chapters
Zechariah ix.‒xiv., and from passages in Judith.
 Simeon] The territory of this tribe lay in the South (1 Chronicles
iv. 28‒43; Joshua xix. 1‒9), and it is natural to think that at the
disruption Simeon followed Judah in allegiance to the house of
David. Here, however, and in xxxiv. 6 it is reckoned as one of the ten
tribes forming the Northern Kingdom, for what reason it is hard to
say. The traditions relating to the tribe are far from clear (see
Encyclopedia Britannica s.v. Simeon).

¹⁰So they gathered themselves together at

Jerusalem in the third month, in the fifteenth
year of the reign of Asa.
10. in the third month] In this month the Feast of Weeks (i.e. of
wheat harvest) was held; Deuteronomy xvi. 9.

¹¹And they sacrificed unto the Lord in that

day, of the spoil which they had brought,
seven hundred oxen and seven thousand
sheep.
11. the spoil] Compare xiv. 13‒15.

¹²And they entered into the covenant to seek

the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all
their heart and with all their soul;
12. they entered into the covenant] Compare xxix. 10; 2 Kings
xxiii. 3.

¹³and that whosoever would not seek the

Lord, the God of Israel, should be put to
death, whether small or great, whether man or
woman.
 13. should be put to death] According to the Law; Deuteronomy
xvii. 2‒7.

¹⁴And they sware unto the Lord with a loud

voice, and with shouting, and with trumpets,
and with cornets.
14. shouting] The word (terū‘āh) is used to denote a blast with the
festal trumpets; see next note.

trumpets] The word (hăṣōṣĕrāh) means a special kind of trumpet

used only for religious purposes; Numbers x. 1‒10; 1 Chronicles xv.
24 (note). Driver, Amos, pp. 144‒6, gives an illustration derived from
the Arch of Titus.

¹⁵And all Judah rejoiced at the oath: for they

had sworn with all their heart, and sought him
with their whole desire; and he was found of
them: and the Lord gave them rest round
about.
15. he was found of them] A fulfilment of the promise given in
verse 2.

16‒19 (1 Kings xv. 13‒15).

Other Religious Measures of Asa.

¹⁶And also Maacah the mother of Asa the king,

he removed her from being queen ¹, because
she had made an abominable image for an
Asherah ²; and Asa cut down her image, and
made dust of it, and burnt it at the brook
Kidron.
 ¹ Or, queen mother. ² Or, for Asherah.

16. And also Maacah] “Maacah the daughter of Abishalom” is

described as the mother of Abijam (Abijah) in 1 Kings xv. 2 and as
the mother of Asa in 1 Kings xv. 10, although Asa is described as the
son of Abijam (Abijah) in 1 Kings xv. 8. Most probably Maacah was
the grandmother of Asa but retained her position as queen mother
during two reigns, i.e. until removed by Asa.

from being queen] Or, as margin, from being queen mother.

an abominable image] Exactly what is meant by this phrase is

uncertain. The image was one of peculiarly repulsive appearance, or
perhaps of specially degrading significance.

for an Asherah] Revised Version margin (rightly, as representing

the meaning of the Chronicler) for Asherah, since Asherah here and
in a few other passages (1 Kings xviii. 19; 2 Kings xxi. 7, xxiii. 4, 7) is
to be translated as the name of a goddess, about whom however
very little is known. Excavations at Ta‘anach have revealed that a
goddess named Ashirat (= Asherah) was worshipped in Palestine
from an early period. The references here and in the passages cited
above would therefore seem to be to this goddess. That conclusion,
if sound, disposes of the opinion that the Chronicler was mistaken in
imagining that “Ashērah” was anything more than a common noun
denoting the wooden symbol of a deity. We must of course translate
according to the meaning of the Chronicler whether he has fallen into
an error or not. See also the note on xiv. 3, p. 224.

the brook Kidron] On the east of Jerusalem, an unclean place;

compare 2 Kings xxiii. 4, “in the fields of Kidron.” Bädeker,
Palestine⁵, p. 80.

¹⁷But the high places were not taken away out

of Israel: nevertheless the heart of Asa was
perfect all his days.
 17. the high places] Hebrew bāmōth. These were not necessarily
places of idolatrous worship, but they were sanctuaries rigorously
forbidden by the Law from the Deuteronomic period onwards, which
in the opinion of the Chronicler of course meant from the time of
Moses. Failure to “remove” the high places was therefore reckoned
by him as a sin in any of the kings, no matter how early in the period
of the monarchy.

were not taken away ... days] So also 1 Kings xv. 14, but a direct
contradiction of the Chronicler’s statement in xiv. 3! Two
explanations seem possible; either, “Israel” (contrary to the frequent
usage of the word in Chronicles, see xi. 3) here denotes the
Northern Kingdom as distinct from Judah, in which case xiv. 3 is to
be taken as referring only to Judah, or perhaps these verses 16‒19
are an addition to Chronicles inserted by someone who thought the
Chronicler had wrongfully neglected 1 Kings xv. 13‒15.

perfect] i.e. “whole, undivided in its allegiance.”

¹⁸And he brought into the house of God the

things that his father had dedicated, and that
he himself had dedicated, silver, and gold, and
vessels.
18. the things that his father had dedicated] Probably spoils of
war; compare 1 Chronicles xviii. 11. It is implied that Abijah had
vowed a portion of his spoils, but that Asa first actually presented
them in the Temple. The verse is quoted verbatim from 1 Kings xv.
15, and is most obscure, so that there is probability in the view that it
is only a misplaced repetition of 1 Kings vii. 51b. No stress can
therefore be laid on the suggestion that we may see in this statement
an indirect confirmation of Abijah’s victory recorded in 2 Chronicles
xiii.

¹⁹And there was no more war unto the five and

thirtieth year of the reign of Asa.
 19. there was no more war] This statement can be reconciled
with 1 Kings xv. 16, 32 only by interpreting it broadly to mean that
nothing serious occurred until the war with Baasha had been going
on for several years: a forced interpretation. Perhaps the Chronicler
deliberately contradicts Kings “there was war between Asa and
Baasha all their days,” assigning to Asa’s reign a time of peace
which seemed appropriate to his piety.

Chapter XVI.
1‒6 (= 1 Kings xv. 17‒22).
Asa asks help of Ben-hadad.

¹In the six and thirtieth year of the reign of

Asa, Baasha king of Israel went up against
Judah, and built Ramah, that he might not
suffer any to go out or come in to Asa king of
Judah.
1. the six and thirtieth year] According to 1 Kings xvi. 8 Baasha
was succeeded by his son Elah in the six-and-twentieth year of Asa.
The number thirty-six may therefore be wrong. It should be noticed
however that the thirty-sixth year of the separate kingdom of Judah
corresponds with the sixteenth year of Asa, so that possibly two
different reckonings are here confused and we should read, In the
six and thirtieth year, that is, in the sixteenth year of Asa. So in
xv. 19 we should read, in the five and thirtieth, that is, in the
fifteenth year of the reign of Asa. This scheme of Asa’s reign,
however, agrees badly with the dominant ideas of the Chronicler, for
the religious reform and covenant in the fifteenth year (verse 10)
ought not to have been immediately followed by war in the sixteenth
year, but rather by a period of peace and prosperity. Hence thirty-six
may after all be the original text, and we must suppose that the
Chronicler either ignored or overlooked 1 Kings xvi. 8; or perhaps
that he quoted from a midrashic source, having a different system of
chronology from that in Kings.

Ramah] The modern er-Rām, situated on a commanding hill

about two hours north of Jerusalem. Bädeker, Palestine⁵, p. 216.

²Then Asa brought out silver and gold out of

the treasures of the house of the Lord and of
the king’s house, and sent to Ben-hadad king
of Syria, that dwelt at Damascus ¹, saying,
³There is ² a league between me and thee, as
there was between my father and thy father:
behold, I have sent thee silver and gold; go,
break thy league with Baasha king of Israel,
that he may depart from me.
¹ Hebrew Darmesek. ² Or, Let there be.

2. silver and gold] In 1 Kings, “all the silver and the gold that were
left.”

Ben-hadad] At least three kings of Syria bore this name, the two
others being severally (1) a contemporary of Ahab (1 Kings xx. 1 ff.),
(2) a contemporary of Jehoash the grandson of Jehu, 2 Kings xiii.
25.

that dwelt at Damascus] The epithet distinguishes the king of

Damascus from other kings of Syria, e.g. from the king of Hamath.

Damascus] Hebrew “Darmesek”; see note on 1 Chronicles xviii.

5.
 ⁴And Ben-hadad hearkened unto king Asa,
and sent the captains of his armies against the
cities of Israel; and they smote Ijon, and Dan,
and Abel-maim, and all the store cities ¹ of
Naphtali.
¹ Hebrew storehouses of the cities.

4. and they smote] The places smitten were all in the extreme
north of Israel.

Ijon] The city cannot be identified, but the name is preserved in

Merj ‘Iyūn, a table-land north of the Jordan valley. Bädeker,
Palestine⁵, p. 291.

Abel-maim] In 1 Kings, “Abel-beth-maacah”; compare 2 Samuel

xx. 14, 15. No doubt the two names designate one place.

all the store cities] In 1 Kings, “all Chinneroth ” (i.e. the district
west of the Sea of Galilee). As this was a very fruitful district, the
“store cities” of the Chronicler may be only another name for it.

⁵And it came to pass, when Baasha heard

thereof, that he left off building of Ramah, and
let his work cease.
5. and let his work cease] In 1 Kings and dwelt in Tirzah
(Hebrew), and returned to Tirzah (LXX.). Baasha (like Jeroboam; 1
Kings xiv. 17) fixed his seat of government at Tirzah in the centre of
the Northern Kingdom in order to be able to watch Syria as well as
Judah. The Chronicler takes no interest in the home of Baasha.

⁶Then Asa the king took all Judah; and they

carried away the stones of Ramah, and the
 timber thereof, wherewith Baasha had builded;
and he built therewith Geba and Mizpah.
6. took all Judah] In 1 Kings summoned all Judah (so translate);
none was exempted.

Geba and Mizpah] The names signify, “the hill and the watch-
tower.” Geba is mentioned in 2 Kings xxiii. 8, evidently as being on
the northern boundary of Judah. Yet, be it noted, it was only 7 miles
north of Jerusalem, whilst Mizpah was about 5 miles north-west of
the capital. For Mizpah see Jeremiah xli. 1‒9. See also note on xiv.
6‒8.

7‒10 (not in 1 Kings).

The Intervention of Hanani.

The Chronicler stands alone both in recording the condemnation

of Asa in this passage and in himself condemning him in verse 12. In
1 Kings no blame is passed on Asa.

⁷And at that time Hanani the seer came to Asa

king of Judah, and said unto him, Because
thou hast relied on the king of Syria, and hast
not relied on the Lord thy God, therefore is
the host of the king of Syria escaped out of
thine hand.
7. Hanani the seer] Hanani as a seer is known to us from this
passage only; but in xix. 2 and xx. 34 (also 1 Kings xvi. 1) Jehu the
prophet is called son of Hanani.

the seer] an ancient title, elsewhere applied only to Samuel.

Compare 1 Samuel ix. 9 “he that is now called a Prophet was
beforetime called a Seer.” In consequence of this phrase it has been
supposed that the story of Hanani is a genuinely old tradition. This is
possible, but the evidence of this one phrase is not sufficient to be
convincing. The term may be a deliberate archaism of the Chronicler.

therefore is the host of the king of Syria escaped] The prophet

declares that if Asa had not detached Syria by his presents, he might
have smitten Israel and Syria combined.

⁸Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubim a

huge host, with chariots and horsemen
exceeding many? yet, because thou didst rely
on the Lord, he delivered them into thine
hand.
8. and the Lubim] The Lubim are not mentioned in xiv. 9‒13, but
as they were auxiliaries of the Egyptians (xii. 3) it is quite possible
that they represent the help given by Egypt to the Arabian Cushites
as they passed the Egyptian border on their way to invade Judah.
Compare note on xiv. 9 (three hundred chariots).

⁹For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro

throughout the whole earth, to shew himself
strong in the behalf of them whose heart is
perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done
foolishly; for from henceforth thou shalt have
wars.
9. run to and fro] i.e. no event escapes the Divine vigilance,
compare Zechariah iv. 10.

¹⁰Then Asa was wroth with the seer, and put

him in the prison house ¹; for he was in a rage
with him because of this thing. And Asa
oppressed some of the people the same time.
 ¹ Hebrew house of the stocks.

10. in the prison house] Render, in the stocks (literally in the

house of the stocks). Compare xviii. 26; Jeremiah xx. 2.

oppressed] literally brake in pieces, an expression which when

applied to things would mean made spoil of, when applied to
persons treated outrageously, tortured, ἐλυμήνατο LXX.

11‒14 (= 1 Kings xv. 23, 24).

The Epilogue of Asa’s Reign.

¹¹And, behold, the acts of Asa, first and last,

lo, they are written in the book of the kings of
Judah and Israel. ¹²And in the thirty and ninth
year of his reign Asa was diseased in his feet;
his disease was exceeding great: yet in his
disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the
physicians.
11. the book of the kings of Judah and Israel] In 1 Kings the
appeal is to “the book of chronicles of the kings of Judah.” See
Introduction § 5.

he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians] Physicians

(Hebrew rōph’īm) are condemned by implication here, perhaps as
using incantations and adjurations. Contrast Ecclesiasticus (Ben
Sira) xxxviii. 9‒15, especially verse 15 (Hebrew text), He that sinneth
against his Maker will behave himself proudly against a physician.
Curtis notes the connection of the art of healing with the prophets;
compare 1 Kings xvii. 17 ff. (Elijah); 2 Kings iv. 19 ff. (Elisha); 2 Kings
xx. 7 (Isaiah).
 ¹³And Asa slept with his fathers, and died in
the one and fortieth year of his reign.
13. in the one and fortieth year] Compare 1 Kings xv. 10.

¹⁴And they buried him in his own sepulchres,

which he had hewn out for himself in the city
of David, and laid him in the bed which was
filled with sweet odours and divers kinds of
spices prepared by the apothecaries’ art: and
they made a very great burning for him.
14. in his own sepulchres] In 1 Kings with his fathers.

which he had hewn out for himself] This clause is absent from 1
Kings.

divers kinds of spices] Mark xvi. 1; John xii. 3, 7, xix. 39, 40.

a very great burning] Compare xxi. 19. What is here meant is not
cremation of the body, but only a burning of spices; Jeremiah xxxiv.
5.

Chapters XVII.‒XX.
The Reign of Jehoshaphat.

Chapter XVII.
 1‒6.
The character of the reign.

The reign of Jehoshaphat is one of the most interesting sections

of Chronicles If these chapters, xvii.‒xx., be compared with the
references to Jehoshaphat in Kings (viz. 1 Kings xxii. 1‒35, 41‒50),
it will be seen that much new material appears in Chronicles (chapter
xvii., and xix. 1‒xx. 30), with the result that the prosperity and piety
of this king are greatly enhanced. As to the historical value of the
Chronicler’s account, see the head-notes to the various sections
below.

¹And Jehoshaphat his son reigned in his

stead, and strengthened himself against
Israel.
1. And Jehoshaphat his son reigned in his stead] These words
are from 1 Kings xv. 24. All the rest of this chapter is without any
parallel in Kings.

²And he placed forces in all the fenced cities

of Judah, and set garrisons in the land of
Judah, and in the cities of Ephraim, which Asa
his father had taken.
2. the cities of Ephraim] Compare xv. 8.

³And the Lord was with Jehoshaphat,

because he walked in the first ways of his
father David, and sought not unto the Baalim;
3. in the first ways of his father David] Omit David (so LXX.), the
person referred to being Asa (1 Kings xxii. 43). Asa’s first ways
(chapters xiv., xv.) were good, his latter ways (chapter xvi.),
according to the Chronicler, were evil.
 unto the Baalim] Baal is not a proper name, but a title meaning
“Lord,” which was given to false gods generally. Israel might not call
Jehovah, “My Baal” (Baali), Hosea ii. 16, 17. See the note on 1
Chronicles viii. 33.

⁴but sought to the God of his father, and

walked in his commandments, and not after
the doings of Israel.
4. after the doings of Israel] Compare xiii. 8, 9.

⁵Therefore the Lord stablished the kingdom in

his hand; and all Judah brought to
Jehoshaphat presents; and he had riches and
honour in abundance.
5. brought ... presents] Probably congratulatory gifts at his
accession; compare 1 Samuel x. 27.

riches and honour] Compare xviii. 1.

⁶And his heart was lifted up in the ways of the

Lord: and furthermore he took away the high
places and the Asherim out of Judah.
6. furthermore he took away] But in xx. 33 = 1 Kings xxii. 43 it is
said that the high places were not taken away. It is remarkable that
the contradiction finds an exact parallel in what is said of Asa (see
xiv. 3 and xv. 17 = 1 Kings xv. 14). How can the presence of these
curious contradictions be explained? It is held by some that the
Chronicler in both cases has incorporated contradictory traditions,
and that “such discrepancies did not trouble the Hebrew historian.”
To the present writer it seems more probable to suppose that only
xiv. 3 and xvii. 6 (the statements that the high places were removed),
are from the Chronicler himself; the passages which assert the
contrary, viz. xv. 17 (= 1 Kings xv. 14) and xx. 33 (= 1 Kings xxii. 43)
being later additions. They were added by someone who, troubled
by the divergence between Kings and Chronicles, judged it desirable
to supplement or correct the Chronicler’s words by adding a more or
less exact transcription of the summaries of the reigns of Asa and
Jehoshaphat as recorded in Kings. If xv. 17 and xx. 33 are later
additions, it is evident that the Chronicler asserts the same reform to
have been made in two successive reigns. But this is not a serious
difficulty. He may easily have supposed that the removal of the high
places (i.e. the discontinuance of worship at these local sanctuaries)
was but a partial success, an official rather than an actual reform;
and one suspects also that the phrase for the Chronicler was largely
conventional: a reform with which all “good” kings should presumably
be credited.

the Asherim] See note on xiv. 3.

7‒9 (no parallel in 1 Kings).

Jehoshaphat’s Provision for Teaching the Law.

⁷Also in the third year of his reign he sent his

princes, even Benhail, and Obadiah, and
Zechariah, and Nethanel, and Micaiah, to
teach in the cities of Judah; ⁸and with them the
Levites, even Shemaiah, and Nethaniah, and
Zebadiah, and Asahel, and Shemiramoth, and
Jehonathan, and Adonijah, and Tobijah, and
Tobadonijah, the Levites; and with them
Elishama and Jehoram, the priests. ⁹And they
taught in Judah, having the book of the law of
the Lord with them; and they went about
throughout all the cities of Judah, and taught
among the people.
 7‒9. These verses state that Jehoshaphat was not content with
the usual reforming measures of a pious king (verse 6) but
proceeded to confirm his people in loyalty to Jehovah by sending
leading laymen, Levites, and priests, to teach the Law throughout the
land. If verses 7‒9 be compared with xix. 4‒11 the two passages will
at once be seen to be so closely similar that they may well be
variations of the same tradition. Still the description in xix. 4‒11 is
fuller and suggests arrangements of a permanent character; and,
whilst xvii. 7‒9 deals with teachers of the Law, xix. 4‒11 deals with
administrators of it (judges). It is argued with force that this single or
dual tradition is entirely unhistorical (so Wellhausen and Torrey).
Certainly the arrangements for the judiciary and for instruction in the
Law correspond with conditions circa 100 b.c. (see Schürer,
Geschichte³, II. 176‒179), conditions which probably in the
Chronicler’s day were partly existent and which he may have hoped
to see more fully realised. That he should wish to ascribe the
institution of such a system of instruction and justice to an early date
is also agreeable to his habit of thought; and for such a purpose
Jehoshaphat was obviously most suitable: a good king, whose name
denoted “Jehovah is judge.” Mark further the similarity of the
conclusion of each reform: “And the fear of the Lord was on all the
kingdoms of the lands ...” (xvii. 10 and xx. 29) and the remarkable
prosperity which properly rewarded such pious action (xvii. 11 ff. and
xx. 1‒28). Yet the possibility that the Chronicler in these passages
has incorporated a really old tradition associating Jehoshaphat with
some reform or development of judicial affairs in Judah remains
open. Some see an old trait in the conjunction of laymen (princes,
xvii. 7) with the priests and Levites. Again the judicial system
indicated in xix. 4‒11 has no little resemblance to that set forth in
Deuteronomy xvi. 18‒20, xvii. 8, “and might have been derived from
that source.” On this theory, xvii. 7‒9 and xix. 4‒11 would in all
likelihood be derived by the Chronicler from some “source” or rather
perhaps from two “sources” giving slightly different accounts of
Jehoshaphat’s procedure; and this is the view of some
commentators (so Kittel and Benzinger). But close examination of
the language of both passages reveals strong characteristics of the
Chronicler’s style and spirit; and it seems safer to conclude that,
while there may possibly have been some tradition connecting
Jehoshaphat with such reforms, this account in Chronicles is
essentially due to the Chronicler and reflects the situation of his own
times.

9. the book of the law of the Lord] The Chronicler of course

meant by this the Pentateuch as we have it. If, however, these
verses are drawn from an old source (see the previous note) then
the reference in the original may have been to one of the earlier
codes embedded in the present Pentateuch.

10‒13 (no parallel in 1 Kings).

The Greatness of Jehoshaphat.

¹⁰And the fear of the Lord ¹ fell upon all the

kingdoms of the lands that were round about
Judah, so that they made no war against
Jehoshaphat.
¹ Or, a terror from the Lord.

10. the fear of the Lord] Compare xx. 29; Genesis xxxxv. 5.

¹¹And some of the Philistines brought

Jehoshaphat presents, and silver for tribute;
the Arabians also brought him flocks, seven
thousand and seven hundred rams, and seven
thousand and seven hundred he-goats.
11. some of the Philistines] See the following note, and also xxvi.
6 (note).

the Arabians] compare xxi. 16. The term is here used to signify
the desert tribes, in particular those on the south and south-west of
Judah. It would be specially impressive to the contemporaries of the
Chronicler, because by that period an Arabian people, the
Nabateans, had established a powerful state to the south of Judah.
On the other hand the Philistines would of course be familiar from
the references to them in Samuel and Kings. The tradition that
tribute was received from them and from some desert tribes may
possibly be correct, especially if Zerah’s army was Arabian (xiv. 8,
note) and if Asa’s victory over him is historical.

flocks] compare 2 Kings iii. 4.

¹²And Jehoshaphat waxed great exceedingly;

and he built in Judah castles and cities of
store. ¹³And he had many works in the cities of
Judah; and men of war, mighty men of valour,
in Jerusalem.
12. castles] Hebrew bīrāniyyōth; compare xxvii. 4 (same word);
and xxvi. 10 (“towers”). Such small castles or towers lie scattered
along the pilgrim-road from Damascus to Mecca at the present day
to make the way safe. See Introduction § 7, p. xlviii.

cities of store] compare xi. 11, 12.

14‒19 (no parallel in 1 Kings).

The Number of Jehoshaphat’s Army.

In these verses Jehoshaphat is credited with an army of

1,160,000 men; and the passage may be noted as the most extreme
instance of the midrashic exaggeration of numbers which is a well-
marked feature of the Chronicler’s writing. If the possible proportions
between the total numbers of a population and the men capable of
military service at a given time be considered, it is easy to realise
how monstrous an exaggeration are the figures here stated. They
serve two purposes: (1) compared with the somewhat smaller
numbers assigned to Abijah (xiii. 3) and to Asa (xiv. 8), they indicate
that Jehoshaphat’s reign was even more prosperous; and
(2) generally, they suggested to the men of the Chronicler’s own
generation that in the eyes of all right-thinking men Jerusalem of old
in its prosperous hours was not one whit less important and glorious
than any huge and much-vaunted city of their own days.

For further examples of midrashic exaggeration, besides the

passages named above, compare xi. 1; 1 Chronicles xii. 23, 24; and
(as regards sums of money) 1 Chronicles xxii. 14; 2 Chronicles ix.
13.

¹⁴And this was the numbering of them

according to their fathers’ houses: of Judah,
the captains of thousands; Adnah the captain,
and with him mighty men of valour three
hundred thousand: ¹⁵and next to him
Jehohanan the captain, and with him two
hundred and fourscore thousand:
15. next to him] Literally at his hand; the same phrase is used in
Nehemiah iii. 2, 4, 5, etc.

Jehohanan] Sometimes spelt Johanan.

¹⁶and next to him Amasiah the son of Zichri,

who willingly offered himself unto the Lord;
and with him two hundred thousand mighty
men of valour:
16. who willingly offered himself] Compare Judges v. 9.

¹⁷and of Benjamin; Eliada a mighty man of

valour, and with him two hundred thousand