Removing the Blinkers? A Critique of Recent Contributions to the Sociology of Professions

Abstract

The rapidly growing numbers and influence of both professional organisations and professional personnel in the industrialised world in general and Western capitalist societies in particular has been noted and documented more times than the author would care to recount. * Yet, although such claims have come to assume the status of mere sociological platitudes, it remains that they continue to raise crucial questions about the nature and role of professions in modern society. These questions have been tackled from a shifting and diverse range of theoretical frameworks over the past few decades within the sociology of professions. The'main purpose of the paper, though, is to examine critically the most recent Anglo-American contributions to the debate-focusing especially on those deriving from neo-Weberian and Marxist writers whose perspectives have come to dominate the field. In short, it will be argued that, while such contributors have advanced the broader study of the professions in significant respects, they have so far failed to transcend the most central limitations of the traditional taxonomic orthodoxy which they have, for the most part, supplanted. The paper concludes with some suggestions as to how more fruitful work might be produced in this important area of sociological research. Of necessity, however, the discussion begins with a brief consideration of the main features of the taxonomic apptOAcYi, the primary criticisms to which it has been subjected and the initial development of a more sceptical orientation to the analysis of professions in sociology through the unlikely vehicle of symbolic interaaionism. This is fairly well trodden ground but it is only against this background that the recent neo-Weberian and Marxist contributions can be fully evaluated.© RKP 1983 0038-0261/83/3101-0001 $1.50 Mike SaksFriednvui, Kuznets, Kessell and Lees, '^ all of whom highlighted the dangers of professional monopolies. This plainly raises the quesdon of the origin of the recent development of the more cridcal, alternadve perspectives which have come to predominate in the sociology of professions. Ironically, most of the contemporary neo-Weberian and Marxist literature on the nature and role of the professions seems to have taken its lead in the 1950s and early 1960s from symbolic interacdonism-a school of thought normally associated with micro-sociological endeavours and frequently castigated for concentradng on issues of a socialpsychological kind in face of the broad spectrum of problems arising from changes in the occupadonal structure at this time.'' But although there may have been an excessively narrow focus on such matters as professional role conflia and socialisadon in this period, Everett Hughes and Howard Becker were nonetheless instrumental in providing the conceptual tools for evaluadng many of the glib trait and functionalist assumptions about the professions-even if these were ultimately found wanting. Hughes, with his interest in the social drama of work, refused to accept at face value the image ...

Defining a Profession: The Role of Knowledge and Expertise

“…The limits of neo-Weberianism in defining professions are underlined by, amongst other things, its lack of empirical rigour in practice, which has on occasion involved substituting one ill-founded conventional wisdom for another (Saks 1983); its sometimes excessive and unjustifiably critical stance on professional groups, including its own assumptions about the negative role of professional self-interests and the lack of public benefit of professionally driven outcomes (Saks 1998); and its frequent failure to link analyses to the wider occupational division of labour in examining professionalising and/or marginal occupational groups (Saks 2003c).…”

The Personal is Professional: Professionalism and the Birth to Threes Practitioner

“…This context has allowed a concept of professionalism to emerge that values some practitioners' areas of expertise more than others'. This discourse has its roots in a concept of professionalism which values knowledge over skills (Saks, 1983), so knowledge about children's learning is seen as superior to the ability to help a child with their toileting (for example). A notion of professionalism that divides knowledge and skills in this way has its roots in a Cartesian mind/body dualist philosophy that privileges the thinking mind, which offers freedom and control through rationality and knowledge, over the physical constraints of the body and the unpredictability of emotion (Damasio, 1994).…”

Pursuing Professional Interests at the Local Policy Level: A Comparative Case Study

“…However, these ideal types are abstract and static constructs which make them unsuitable for an explorative analysis of the local closure strategies undertaken by welfare professionals (Henriksson et. al., 2006;Saks, 1983). Inspired by Bøgh Andersen (2005), we define local closure strategies as administrative and practising 1 professionals' actions directed at the local political level with the purpose of protecting or expanding the local jurisdiction (Abbott, 1988) of the profession.…”