This paper describes how medical students in an innovative educational setting adopt a cloak of competence as a critical part of the professionalizi~tion process. Faced with inordinate and variable expectations to develop and display competence, students professionalize by distancing themselves from those they interact with and by adopting and manipulating the symbols of their new status. Students were observed to engage in impression management to convince others and themselves that they are competent and confident to facethe immense responsibilities of their privileged role. The data were collected by means of participant observation and interviews.'We wish to express our gratitude to Howard for their helpful suggestions. We are grateful to the Canada Council and McMaster University for their generous support of the research.

This paper applies dramaturgical analysis to the study of professional socialization in an innovative medical school. Using concepts from the theater, professionalization is seen as critically involving performances before legitimating audiences. The data were collected by means of participant observation and interviews of a cohort of students as they proceeded through the professionalizing career. Good acting demands that you are convincing in your part. The audience must be willing to take part in a ritual, in which you represent, say, Hamlet. You must be able to sustain this representation convincingly: that is to say, you must consistently satisfy the audience's imagination and never outrage its acceptance of the fact that yours is a convincing, or consistently credible, Hamlet,…or whatever character you are impersonating (Guthrie, 1971:11).

A description of the social context and citizen response to three weather modification projects provides an introduction to the discussion of a variety of social and economic issues related to planned weather modification. Various interest groups have markedly different perspectives on weather modification. Most persons subject to the consequences of weather modification have no opportunity to participate in the associated decision process even though they believe they have a right to do so. Factors possibly associated with conflict over weather modification are considered. 1 Presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science session on "Changing the Weather,"

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