Project and Metamorphosis: Gilberto Velho’s Contributions to Career Studies

This study aims to present and discuss Gilberto Velho’s concepts, as well as the way his concepts enable deeper theoretical approaches and new perspectives for career studies, aiming at an interdisciplinary view to understand of individual and collective careers. To do so, we review Gilberto Velho’s notions of projects, fields of possibilities, negotiations of reality and metamorphosis as well as career concepts, focusing especially on Everett Hughes’ interactionism. In this sense, we analyze Velho’s and Hughes’ concepts through a dual theoretical discussion of career studies to demonstrate: how the field of possibilities relates to the objective and subjective aspects of a career; how the negotiation of reality and metamorphosis allow us to analyze conflicts and dilemmas that emerge from the individual who moves through different worlds; how the project concept can be linked to the reciprocity between individuals, groups and institutions; and how memory can be used as temporal dynamic concept for the understanding of career. From these conjugations of concepts we propose a new notion of career. Finally, we present a research agenda to broaden, deepen and refine the concepts proposed in this article.