Subjectification of Highly Qualified Professionals in the Cuban Realm of Work: Analyzing a Two-Sided Process

Abstract

In this article, I elaborate on discourses and discursively mediated subject positions regarding the working self in Cuba. My main objective is to analyze whether and how highly qualified professionals in Cuba position themselves relating to these discourses and subject positions. Building on the hitherto little-known conceptual framework of interpretive subjectification analysis, I perform the empirical analysis in two parts: First, I identify subject positions directed at Cuban workers in contemporary discourses on the Cuban realm of work. Second, based on qualitative interviews with highly qualified professionals in Havana, I reconstruct individual self-positioning modes. I demonstrate how the interviewees described and explained their professional biographies by relating to discourses and subject positions. By indicating similarities and differences with the existing literature on the working self in Western, post-Fordist, and neoliberal contexts, I intend to enhance the understanding of subjectification processes in a new context. Simultaneously, I evaluate whether the approach of interpretive subjectification analysis, which was developed in a Western, market-capitalist context, is equally fruitful for understanding subjectification processes in Cuba. In doing so, I contribute to the advancement of this approach.

Keywords

• subjectification
• problem-centered interviews
• interpretive subjectification analysis
• discourse
• subject positions
• self-positioning