Professionalism as Enterprise: Service Class Politics and the Redefinition of Professionalism

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.

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