Special Issue: A Southern African Dialogue on the Professions and Professional Work

Abstract

This special issue showcases some of the papers presented at the 2017 Colloquium titled "A Southern African Dialogue on the Professions and Professional Work" held at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. While the special issue contributes to the conversation on professions and professionalism within southern Africa (see also Bonnin & Ruggunan, 2013; Bonnin & Ruggunan, 2016; Erasmus & Breier, 2009; Young & Muller, 2014), it also opens up a conversation between southern Africa and the economic/political North. Writing in 1972 Johnson (p. 281) noted that "the sociology of professions, as a specialist field, today stands almost alone in ignoring the third world". Forty-seven years later, it feels as if not much has changed. Annisette (2007, p.245) points to the repeated calls for "greater spatial and temporal diversity in historical research in accounting", while her focus here was on accounting, this call resonates with most research fields in the professions. However, we would argue that not only is there a need for "spatial and temporal diversity" but also a need to recognise that the professions in both the global south and the economic north are shaped firstly by colonialism and imperialism, and later, through globalisation and neo-imperialism. Just as Johnson (1982, cited in Annisette, 2000) argued that professionalisation in Britain and its former colonies are linked through the project of imperialism, so the globalisation of professions through the global reach of professional service firms (Faulconbridge & Muzio, 2007), transnational companies and multilateral organisations continues this mutual shaping albeit in a different form (Hopper et al., 2017; Lassou, Hopper, Tsamenyi, & Murinde, 2019). Recognising that the professional project "is grounded in history and unfolds through continuous negotiations set in a broader political and economic order … which over time mobilises different claims, methods, and systems …" (Faulconbridge & Muzio, 2007, p. 10), the articles in this special issue are situated within the specific historical, political and economic context of southern Africa. As they demonstrate colonialism, apartheid, and post-apartheid as well as globalisation and neo-imperialism are all political and economic contexts that are deeply significant when analysing the professions and professionalisation in southern Africa. Southern Africa was first colonised in 1652 when the Dutch occupied land at the Cape of Good Hope. In the decades and centuries that followed, the colonising powers in this region included the Dutch, the French (very briefly) and the British (with Portugal colonising areas slightly north of southern Africa on the west and east coast of the continent). However, by the nineteenth century, Britain was the major colonial power in much of southern Africa. The professions that developed in the region bore the hallmarks of similar professions back in the colonial motherland. The recognition of qualifications; the way in which particular professions developed and organised; and very cen...