No abstract

This paper suggests that the struggle to redefine professionalism, which is currently being waged in a host of institutions from the National Health Service to accountancy practices, is actually a struggle to legitimise different types of cultural capital and that, as such, it will potentially split the service class. This cleavage reflects the decreasing levels of trust placed in social service professionalism and its adherents by powerful actors such as the state and capital. In the light of this, certain groups within elite occupations have sought to redefine professionalism and to prioritise commercial issues in a bid to gain the trust of these actors and to exploit opportunities which the attack on the social service ethos has presented to them. This cleavage extends across the public sector-private sector divide and it is also taking place within previously relatively homogeneous professions. If this cleavage persists, it may fragment the identity of the service class and lead elements of it to change their political identification. As such, it would challenge the thesis which is most closely identified with Goldthorpe, that the service class is homogeneous and conservative.

No abstract

This article argues that corporate social responsibility (CSR) does not represent a challenge to business. On the contrary, it suggests that CSR represents a further embedding of capitalist social relations and a deeper opening up of social life to the dictates of the marketplace. Furthermore, it protests that CSR is not a driving force of change but rather an outcome of changes brought on by other forces. Most particularly, it is the result of a shift from a fordist to a post-fordist regime of accumulation at the heart of which is both an expansion and a deepening of wage relations. This article somewhat conveniently traces the (re)emergence of CSR as an issue beyond the academy from the 1990s whilst acknowledging the academic work on CSR carried out earlier (Carroll, 1979 or Owen, 2003 on the democratic push in CSR during the 1970s).