Theorising Professions: A Sociological Introduction 3030279340, 9783030279349, 9783030279356

Table of contents :
Preface......Page 6
Acknowledgements......Page 9
Contents......Page 11
List of Figures......Page 13
List of Tables......Page 14
Introduction......Page 15
Situating Contemporary Interest in Professions......Page 16
Circuits of Sociological Inquiry Into Professions......Page 19
An Antipodean Standpoint......Page 22
Many Perspectives Studying Professions......Page 24
Epistemological Essentialism and Professions......Page 28
Functionalist Theories of Professions......Page 30
Synthesising Argument of the Book......Page 36
Rationale for Studying Professions......Page 41
Structure of the Book......Page 43
References......Page 46
Definitions and Professional Reality......Page 52
Distinctions in Defining Professions......Page 58
Profession or Professions (Plural)?......Page 60
Profession or Professionalism?......Page 62
Creating or Maintaining a Profession?......Page 64
Professional (N.) or Professional (Adj.)?......Page 65
Sociologically Rich Concepts......Page 67
Professions and Canonical Forms......Page 68
Paradigmatic Shift......Page 70
‘Death of Professions’ Literature......Page 72
Reframing Definitional Debates About Professions......Page 73
One Phenomenon or Many?......Page 74
Conclusion......Page 77
References......Page 79
Building Blocks of Analysis......Page 85
Situating Professions in Modernity......Page 86
Typologies and Professions......Page 88
Contesting Other Candidate Organisational Forms......Page 92
Defining Professions ‘Over Against’......Page 93
Testing Historical Claims of Contrast to Professions......Page 98
Professions v Bureaucracy......Page 99
Professions v Unions......Page 102
Professions v Business......Page 105
Professions v Science......Page 108
Professions v Democracy......Page 110
Conclusion......Page 112
References......Page 115
The Idea of Discourse......Page 123
Bridging Typology to Discourse......Page 126
Rationalisation and Professionalisation......Page 127
Professions as Projects......Page 130
Zusammenbauen—Building Together......Page 135
Discursive Temptations Writing About Professions......Page 137
Abstract Ideas v Events......Page 138
Autochthonous v Contextual......Page 141
Linear v Contingent......Page 143
Social History v Structural Change......Page 147
Competing Societal Discourses......Page 150
Conclusion......Page 152
References......Page 155
Discourse to Periodisation......Page 163
Conceptualising History......Page 164
Sociology in History of Professions......Page 165
Periodisation as Chunking......Page 169
Half-Century Chunks of Modern Professions......Page 171
First Half of the Nineteenth Century......Page 172
Second Half of the Nineteenth Century......Page 176
First Half of the Twentieth Century......Page 180
Second Half of the Twentieth Century......Page 185
Conclusion: Half-Centuries to Today......Page 190
References......Page 192
Threads of Concern......Page 199
Challenge, Uncertainty, Transition......Page 202
Post-professional Literatures......Page 206
Theme 1: Stage in Occupational Development......Page 208
Theme 2: New Professional Identities......Page 210
Theme 3: Vision of New Kind of Society......Page 215
Theme 4: New Middle-Class......Page 216
Theme 5: Deprofessionalisation......Page 218
Theme 6: Contemporary Work Problems......Page 221
Conclusion—Reprising the Changing Confusion......Page 224
References......Page 228
Professions and Normativity......Page 235
Problematising Public Good......Page 239
Counter-Strategies to Professional Goodness and Legitimacy Discourses......Page 243
Bell-Curve Thinking......Page 246
Professogenesis......Page 252
Lexogenesis......Page 257
Conclusion......Page 262
References......Page 264
Interrogating Professional Bundling......Page 270
Unbundling Professional Expertise......Page 272
Managing Professional Work......Page 274
Technological Unbundling......Page 278
Global Unbundling......Page 284
Producing and Consuming Expertise......Page 289
Producing Professionals......Page 292
Producing Expertise......Page 295
Conclusion......Page 297
References......Page 299
Seeking Synthesis......Page 303
Theorising Professions......Page 305
Typological Thinking About Professions Today......Page 311
Functionalism’s Persistence......Page 316
Ambiguity of Goodness......Page 319
Politics of Expertise......Page 324
Conclusion......Page 332
References......Page 336
References......Page 342
Index......Page 379

Citation preview

Theorising Professions A Sociological Introduction Edgar A Burns

Theorising Professions

Edgar A Burns

Theorising Professions A Sociological Introduction

Edgar A Burns Waikato University Napier, New Zealand

ISBN 978-3-030-27934-9 ISBN 978-3-030-27935-6  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27935-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: © Alex Linch This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To YJ For her constancy in example and practice of the very best ideals of being professional

Preface

This book addresses sociologists, policymakers, professional leaders and educators who shape, advise, teach and develop professions. These practitioners constantly review professional groups negotiating the many cross-pressures faced today, or prepare new generations of professionals. Yet something happens when professionals are called on to theorise professions and professional work, especially their own. Most professionals fall back on some version of inadequate functionalist theory to justify existing and proposed professional configurations. This approach fails to address current realities such as licensed control over work, justifiable rewards, defence of poor practice, future coping with digital and global changes. Better intellectual and empirical descriptions of how professions have come to do what they do today are worth pursuing if professions are going to adapt and survive. I argue in these pages for more knowledgeable and less assertive justifications by professional leaders. These in the longer run provide stronger legitimation for experts’ work. Despite many impressive professionals doing good work, a different approach would generate less antipathy about group occupational agendas, bad conduct by professionals and self-interested behaviours. Adequately theorising professions today must vii

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include critique of what continues to be wrong, explaining poor and undesirable professional performance and its protection. At the same time, I affirm my great respect and sympathy for enormous demands and expectations placed on contemporary professionals. Inadequate theories of professions subscribing to functionalist frameworks, I suggest, undermine accurate managing, planning or forecasting for each profession. This book suggests better ways forward to background professional action and focus in grappling with changes already underway. Sociology of professions specialists have studied these issues from multiple angles and perspectives. These scholars argue many of the individual points raised in this book, that professions and professionalism constitute one of the defining features of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries western modern era. Professions combine in various ways science, technology, expert knowledge, formal systems, care, acting for the benefit of society—all central matters in developing a modern functioning society. The book suggests ways of synthesising these insights. Outside this group, for perhaps most scholars, professions and professionalism do not figure so significantly in their theoretical work trying to understand contemporary society. In any event, researchers often do not use sociology of professions perspectives to frame their work. From about the 1970s, the many theoretical inadequacies of functionalist sociology of professions led most sociologists to disavow the field as an intellectual dead end. Rejection of that sterile academic reproduction of professionals’ own occupational opinions was a necessary shift. This means, however, that today’s vast amount of research by professions and about professions and professional groups, by sociologists and others, has had to work hard at seeking a better conceptual umbrella under which to develop and articulate explanations of professional work, even as contemporary shifts in professional activity are taking place around the world. This attempt to theorise professions in a new century stands outside the interests and commitments of any specific professional group. In a gradual chapter-by-chapter sequence, it aims to simplify messy and sometimes misguided questions and concerns about what defines a profession and what constitutes expertise. It names traps into which conceptual and historical accounts of professions often fall. It names as

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unacceptable the simplistic certainties that often pass as explaining professions. In this sense, the book complicates and deepens understanding of professions and professionalism. The human and economic significance of professions is ever increasing. New forms of professions are being created in different national contexts; global professional linkages continue to alter. For these reasons, I argue it is hugely important to understand such social change today—for professionals themselves, for policymakers, for consumer citizens and for academic sociologists. Professions studies would benefit, first, if more sociologists and sociologically minded researchers applied their expertise to this key social phenomenon of modernity, bringing concepts from other areas of social theory and also raising new questions about professions as such. Second, professional leaders might find useful ways to rethink the groups they spearhead, neither treating their professions as unique and automatically good in how they deliver their services; at the same time, however, avoiding the too-common cynicism of disengaged, worldweary technical experts which erodes their contribution to society. How contemporary occupational positions have come about and are currently maintained is of central importance to professional practitioners and sociological researchers alike, today and in shaping the future. An overall post-professional framing of professions and professionalism underlies this book. I have chosen to cover a reasonable range of material in a manner that can be readily assimilated by those not familiar with detailed arguments in the field. Communicating key ideas and guidance to a broad audience rather than detailed proof is the goal. Selective examples and writers are used to apply significant points from Johnson, Larson, Freidson and others following them. Wiser scholars will indeed be able to point out supporting references and empirical examples or explain variations or counter-instances. A longer text would still probably not confirm claims to the satisfaction of academic researchers or professionals feeling challenged. The aim has been seeking synthesis of sociological analyses from the abundance of serious writing about professions and professionalism already available. Napier, New Zealand

Edgar A Burns

Acknowledgements

I hold the tenet that there is nothing so practical as a good theory. Innumerable conversations with professionals in many fields, many of them wonderful exemplars of their different professional domains in qualities of skill, care, ethicality, innovation and adaptation, have provided the basis of real-world insights into professional work. I am grateful for their investment and contributions of intelligence, skill, patience and deep humanity. Many thanks to my Friday group: Bronwyn’s suggestion I check who else was using the word post-professional, after I had independently worked my way towards the idea; Peter’s diffident offering of the concept of lexogenesis to describe harms induced by legal process; other discussions of real professional situations and dilemmas; how the simplicity of conventional views is only ever half the story—new information and views always help; the insights from observing gendered and racialised projects, complex and contested organisational processes; and many more ideas broadly and comfortably explored together. The attempt to provide a synthesis means omissions and generalisations abound. Good references omitted, caveats not entered against too broad assertions—these are merely the more obvious limitations. xi

xii      Acknowledgements

It must be recognised that there are many insightful articles, book chapters and books continuing to be published today; I am constantly impressed by these contributions to the field. I am indebted to many friends and colleagues who live and act wonderfully generous professional lives of great skill and integrity. Having learned so much from them and drawing on their examples I would like to write a subsequent volume providing an account of professional values and conduct that honours their contributions to a better kind of society. There is a need for a new generation to see how the pursuit of professionalism, notwithstanding the trenchant critique offered in this text, can be fulfilling.

Contents

1 Why Theorise Professions? 1 2 Beyond Defining Professions 39 3 Professions and Modern Organisational Forms 73 4 Professionalisation Discourses 111 5 Periodising Professions History 151 6 The Post-professional Transition 187 7 Public Good and Professogenesis 223 8 Unbundling Professional Expertise 259

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9 Professions Unbound 293 References 333 Index 371

List of Figures

Fig. 7.1 Bell-curve of professional competence 235 Fig. 9.1 Post-professional transition rebundling of professional services 319

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List of Tables

Table 1.1 Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 3.4 Table 4.1 Table 6.1 Table 9.1

Approaching contemporary professions research 12 Definitional clarification of professions terms 47 Reframing definitional debates about professions 61 Johnson’s extended typology of professions 78 Wilensky’s stages of professionalisation 80 Situating professions with institutional forms of western modernity 82 Professions as organisational opposites to other institutional forms 86 Discursive tensions in professionalisation accounts 115 Selected post-professional literature themes 190 New typology of professional work 302

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1 Why Theorise Professions?

Introduction There is tremendous energy in current research and theorising about professions, professional work and professionalism. This opening chapter sets the context for the discussion about researching expertise and professions today: What are professions and why theorise them? Professions describe themselves via trait models that assume an essentialist view rarely made explicit or even understood. Challenging and reframing this view allows dynamic thinking and policymaking to more accurately understand and respond to contemporary changes in richer nations, developing nations and those at the geopolitical global edges. As Anderson (1972, p. 306) observes, ‘We expect to encounter fascinating, and, I believe, very fundamental questions at each stage in fitting together less complicated pieces into the more complicated system and understanding the new types of behavior which can result’. In laying the groundwork for the book, this introductory chapter performs a series of tasks. First, the sociology of expertise and professions studies is outlined as emerging from contemporary interest in professions for personal, historical and social reasons. Second, the chapter introduces readers to circuits of sociological study and inquiry in the sociology of professions field, and © The Author(s) 2019 E. A. Burns, Theorising Professions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27935-6_1

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how professions occupy and sometimes dominate fields of expertise. Field is used as a rich concept more in the way Bourdieu (1991, 1993) uses it, rather than simply sectoral analysis. Third, an antipodean standpoint is articulated, in which the author owns the position of being simultaneously first world, and not first world, claiming a privileged but distanced perspective on western-dominated discourse, especially Anglo-American cultural beliefs about professions. This segues easily, fourth, to identifying and listing an array of theoretical approaches currently being pursued, not to adopt them, but to show the energy invested in professions research today. The fifth and sixth tasks in this opening chapter reprise are to briefly name the philosophic concept of essentialism and then the concept of functionalism, while pointing to the twinned influence of these ideas. This helps inform readers unfamiliar with thinking about professions’ assumed naturalness and how these ideas constrain understanding of professional expertise. Such assumptions hold research about professions back from accurate inquiry, and professions themselves from relevant policy participation, thereby contributing to present-day problems of adaptation and survival. Seventh, the chapter introduces the overall argument of the book, in which concepts of bundling and unbundling draw on Weber’s rationalisation logics, developed in later chapters. Eighth, the practical rationale for theorising professions in terms of cost, influence and importance in contemporary society is set out. Finally, brief notes sketch the main points of the chapters to follow.

Situating Contemporary Interest in Professions The richer parts of the world have come to regard professions as indispensable to civic and general well-being and essential to how modern societies operate. Two huge changes in society today mark the urgent need to rethink the role and function of professions. The first change is the rapidly globalising and connecting world society. An underlying premise of this book is that what is commonly called professionalisation is a more specific phenomenon better called western professionalisation of the nineteenth

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and twentieth centuries. More material that can be used here shows the emerging variety and priorities around professional work outside western societies, and particularly outside Anglo-American practices. Professions are part of the complex and profound changes of the past two centuries that have ushered in dramatic changes in science, technology and the social organisation of modern western society. This is commonly called, at least in so-called western societies, modernity or the modern era, but more precise language is necessary in recognising that this narrative, though dominant, is only about western modernisation and may in the future seem merely the early phase of a fuller modernisation. The second change, happening even faster than shifting global networks, is the digital technology revolution increasingly affecting every part of life and professional activity, not only in the direct use of digital and mobile tools. How knowledge is generated, accessed, distributed, resisted, authorised, applied and miss-applied, more and more in real time—for both individuals and at population levels—will change decision-making dramatically in the coming decades with all sorts of unexpected consequences, some positive, some negative. Thus, the common-enough aspiration of parents in the last century for their children to achieve desired social status and income as perhaps doctors or lawyers starts to look very different today. Even back then, the era of high-elite professional aspirations and mobility was in conversation with previous eras in which different professions had occupied elevated prestige but had levels of technical efficacy lower than more mundane professional groups do today. The proliferation of many kinds of professions across the century, looking back from our present vantage point, was not a static thing despite debates and contests about who or what were the real professions? Even Wilensky’s (1964) mid-twentieth-century typology recognised emergent and marginal categories of what could be included in the loaded term, ‘true professions’ (Kimball 1995). That is, the very category ‘profession’ was not as clear-cut as broad public assertions suggested or are still suggesting today. The misinterpretation and time-limitedness of posing the question in this way are fortunately more easily unpicked and examined with hindsight afforded by the present century. The search for appropriate twenty-first-century ways to theorise professions and professionalism finds a variety of candidates. Not many of these

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theories, however, construct comprehensive arguments that can be tested by comparative or historical means. Such accounts need to explain, first, late western modern social and occupational complexity and stratification, and second, the current evolution of professions into something beyond ‘more of the same’ narratives—a notion that dominated up to Wilensky’s time. Concepts like globalisation are very broad and often used loosely in reference to politics and corporations. What does globalisation mean at the level of specific institutional structures and professions’ practices? What pressures for change, consequences of more cross-national interaction, local protection or comparative advantages and global value chains are in play today? To what degree can professions and professional groups (Evetts 2004) be considered as of a kind with other institutional formations in contemporary society, or how and why are they different? We need to get beyond how this western phenomenon worked in the past, how it currently operates, or see how it works outside Anglo-western economies, to gain a more genuinely engaged global comprehension of professions. Attention to global implications of change in professional work is situated somewhere like talk about globalisation itself was two or three decades ago: a first round of articulation and engagement with the ideas identifying economic advantages, impacts and opportunities touted as inherently a good thing. With hindsight, this appears as the perspective of early modernising economic powerhouses of Western Europe and the United States (Euro-America). At that time globalisation meant more of what the western economies were doing, rolling this out to other parts of the world. In reality, these changes were by no means as simple as that, the relationship of globalisation being in significant ways asymmetrical in terms of advantage, wealth creation and relative social and economic benefit for the richer countries (Dietrich and Roberts 1997; Carillo and Zazzaro 2001). Transnationalism as a mode of analysing professions sits within this nascent reorientation. In terms of innovation and new ways of creating and providing technical and professional services, globalisation initially benefited developed economies more. Several well-known scandals demonstrate this ambiguity: worker suicides in factories producing Apple smartphones or substandard wages of staff making Nike shoes in Asia—the convenience of shifting workforces to low-paid settings. Child surrogacy or outsourcing of other

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desired services provide other examples of how globalising advantage works differently for producers and consumers of these services. In these cases, the professional expertise of engineers, designers and similar remained in the rich countries. However, this is an ongoing and changing story, being disclosed progressively in instalments (Hannah 2014). It links professional content and management of expert and technical skills in new and sometimes surprising ways as the world’s economic order changes (Baldwin 2016). At other times, professional knowledge undergoes what analysts call disintermediation. In such cases, there is no longer need for the professional to stand between the service and the consumer. Consider how many less bank tellers there are today and how they are deployed differently than even two decades ago. Or technologically speaking, a convenient gadget or mobile app provides the relevant knowledge—a kit at home, a wearable technology, tester, measurer, template or similar solution—say, rural tele-medicine—provisioned by professionals and connected through the cloud. On the other hand, it may be that many services could as well be outsourced to other professionals, or even non-professionals, just as food preparation may be to supermarkets. Thus, both disintermediation and remediation processes occur and cross-cut in contemporary repositioning of what professionals do and how their roles increasingly shift and are fractionated. Some of these changes are foreseen but many are unintended, unexpected and contested.

Circuits of Sociological Inquiry Into Professions Sociological analysis is a necessary but under-utilised component in the process of thinking about professions and professionalism today. It is valuable in working at the microlevel in individual studies and occupational groups from high to low status. It is also able to reassemble bits of the puzzle in the bigger socioeconomic conversations of structural change at global and national society levels. My intention in pointing to this breadth of inquiry into professional work is because of the importance, interest and concern about the roles and functions of professions. For

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governments to govern and corporations to function, professions are central actors. The theoretical capacity for analysis offered by sociology has practical and constructive applications through critiquing poor practices, dated cost structures, timeliness as well as supporting potential improvements and solutions. Deeper layers of abundant sociological research and inquiry into expertise, professions and professionalism have not received the wider scholarly recognition deserved. This book shows that adequate explanations cannot be achieved without re-theorising how professions are positioned within the trajectory of western modernity as a whole. Contemporary resources studying professional work constitute a very active intellectual and research field across many academic disciplines. The problem of lack of theoretical synthesis about professions in modern societies sits in stark contrast to the input of time, money and effort investigating professional work. A regular cycle of annual, two- and fouryearly global social science conferences gathered under a variety of social science discipline groupings generates and expresses significant focus on professions and professionalism and new forms of expertise. This research includes but extends beyond high-profile claims of medical or legal practitioners’ self-describing their national and global corporate-associational entities under rubrics about the nature and state of their professional work (Sainsaulieu 1997; Svensson 2003). Sociological conference papers are usefully provisional, tentative, identifying discrepancies from received wisdom, results from new research, or canvassing new ways the data might be framed or interpreted. In addition to this focus, much cutting-edge work is done by eminent academic and research groupings in applied professional fields. Three global intellectual circuits noted in this paragraph offer conferences and research networks providing seminars and paper streams in regular meetings solely focused on professions and professionalism. Like the Gulf Stream ocean current, these circulating movements of ideas demonstrate dynamic interest in professions as an evolving modern phenomenon. The International Sociological Association (ISA) meets fouryearly, recently in Durban 2006, Göteborg 2010, Yokohama 2014 and Toronto 2018; and in Melbourne in 2022. It has a dedicated Research Committee RC52 to report research and theoretical work in the sociology of professional groups, meeting between congresses. Even more than

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solely this research group, related streams developed over many years focus attention on specific areas of professional work and quality. For example, Research Cluster 15—sociology of health, or Research Cluster 12—investigating law and legal systems through a sociological lens, among other groups. Other fields and research clusters within the ISA continually raise topical and significant issues concerning professions and professionalism as well. There are additional two-yearly interim meetings, European professional studies meetings plus ad hoc seminars and conferences on research being conducted by members and associates. As well as publishing in a wide range of international academic journals, sociologists associated with ISA have recently begun two new publications to cater for the burgeoning field. Professions and Professionalism is edited by Jens-Christian Smeby based at the Centre for the Study of Professions, Oslo. Professions and Organization is edited by David Brock and team, published through Oxford University. Collections of current work like Dent et al. (2016) or Liljegren and Saks (2016) assemble the scholarly breadth of such interchange. The Society for the Advancement of Socioeconomics (SASE) is another large collaborative research grouping, working at the intersection of sociology, economics and politics, meeting annually, most recently in London 2015, Berkeley 2016, Lyon 2017, Kyoto 2018 and New York 2019, Amsterdam 2020. Stream D is a dedicated forum for investigating and airing theoretical and empirical insights into the socioeconomic roles and changes in professional work, not separate from other facets of contemporary society, but as part of the ongoing growth in professional services and inter-connections between professions and other institutional forms. It, too, combines local studies, historical and comparative research with assessment of political changes in occupational status and roles. A third cross-national grouping focused on professions is yet another window into the research effort being expended into the functioning and changes occurring within and in relation to professions today. This is the series of meetings of the Critical Management Studies (CMS) association, among other CMS groups around the world, most recently Naples 2011, Manchester 2013, Leicester 2015, Liverpool 2017 and Milton Keynes in 2019. Here, too, a regular stream of research papers and discussions is produced from research studying professions and professionalism from

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all angles that academic inquiry today brings to bear. Some participants have been studying professions as far back as Eliot Freidson and Terence Johnson writing in the 1970s, while others bring a variety of new insights, research findings and theoretical elements to understanding contemporary professions from every conceivable perspective or intersection within sociology. Professional work interrelates with government, corporations, health, welfare, education, legal and business systems. There are other international groupings in management and in most professional fields themselves where papers and articles analyse and discuss issues of expertise, institutional complexity, professions and professionalism. Even further, there is much more work being brought together in regional, journal and online collaborations beyond large international gatherings. Issues of government, governance, education, welfare, health, food security, housing policies, increasingly climate—among many others—intimately involve and have consequences for the organisation and delivery of professional work and services. The sociology of health and sociology of law are merely the most well known of subdisciplinary sociological specialities that reflect the intense focus and interest of policymakers and social scientists in how professions contribute to society today. Such interest reflects the fact that professions affect us all, all of the time.

An Antipodean Standpoint I write from outside the geopolitical powers of Europe and the United States. The antipodean perspectives work of my colleagues Beilharz and Hogan (2012) and Beilharz (1997) appeals as better representing the broad approach to global theorising that I seek to apply to professions and professionalism. It is a feature of these scholars that their work maintains theoretical particularity and that it also recognises the precession of theory, place, region and country in assessing major social phenomena. This might be viewed as an etic rather than emic position. More sadly, perhaps cynically, this perspective can be simply disregarded. I do not espouse a southern theory (Connell 2007) although it offers many insights, because it reflects more than I wish the universalistic claims within

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which professions are entangled, missing local and national shifts that I am also examining. It is true professions are key producers of present-day knowledge, but many assumptions about western global hegemony apply to professions and professionalism too. Treating the non-western world as of one kind articulates the marginal status of societies outside the west, but it does not chart innovations and different pathways in transnational, national and regional change. It is my antipodean sense that constantly alerts me to contradictions between what is familiar about professions that is too generalised for evaluating incipient global changes for professions. The term antipodean encompasses primarily Australia and New Zealand. These are first-world societies in many ways but do not have the political or economic power seen in Europe and North America and which were globally dominant in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Australia and New Zealand thus occupy a privileged margin; they are white settler societies with high standards of western-style living and accepted into advanced societies’ conversation. Yet they are peripheral, too, often ignored or occupying a subaltern position. It is a very different subordination, however, to developing nations and non-western countries. Thus, any simple dichotomy of national or personal experience is not appropriately or uncritically generalised to other parts of the globe. For instance, the particularity of Southern European countries, such as Portugal, Spain, Greece and Italy, leveraged by the economic breakdown and the subsequent structural adjustment programs and austerity politics, has set particular trends in terms of professions and professionalism. Also, South American countries like Brazil, Argentina and Chile present different pathways of economic, political and cultural change. This global canvas also frames African and Asian worlds and serves as background to analysing professions as they change because the geopolitical environment is changing. The antipodean standpoint thus offers scholars of professions and expertise a distinctive insider yet outsider standpoint, a view from both ways. An antipodean view does several things in this context in regard to theorising professions. I am of the first-world; these professional and institutional systems and cultural discourses are my everyday world, in polities derived from settler-colonial history. Antipodeans have a wide perspective;

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not for antipodeans that ability to remain nationally self-centred or selfabsorbed, instead necessarily going outwards, often beyond the Englishspeaking world. Antipodean scholars are acutely conscious observers of how the larger geopolitical world works. This gives a certain self-awareness, confidence and agency although for some things our culture feels derivative, fed from dominant western tropes. Antipodeans are both privileged and peripheral, living in association with First Nations peoples; the othering they know loosens our modernist dogmatism if our peripheral position does not, though sometimes against our will. Yet the depth of culture, difference and close humanity of Mäori and Aboriginal cultures pushes white settler ancestors’ global migratory movements towards the sensibility globality implies, beyond trade, media and commerce (Murray 2008). For antipodeans, the institutions and rational–legal frameworks of modern western government and civil society seem normal theorising from the geopolitical centres, but not quite. Apart from being examples of professions and similar institutional forms rolled out there beyond the centres, antipodean participation sometimes serves as a ‘not Europe’ from the US perspective or a ‘not America’ for Europeans. This is a recognition of us as antipodeans even if geopolitical and national logics will then come into play. Let me close this statement of standpoint with two observations. The first is to acknowledge Johnson’s (1973) sophisticated connecting up of imperialism and the professions. Whether economic imperialism of older or newer style, Johnson’s link here is impressive in sensing the future of professions from his analysis of the past and helps explain how his work has stood the test of time. This brings me to my second point, that not too long into the future, unless western professions change their attitudes, they will find socioeconomic and cultural international groupings realigning in how the sanctioning and approving of professional qualifications are made and recognised. The current protocols have long been a meta-professional process within the aegis of imperial and western powers. As much if not more than digital technology, this will bring about a new day.

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Many Perspectives Studying Professions Researchers and commentators have brought many different theoretical perspectives to their work, both inside and outside the important networks of scholars identified above, investigating every profession imaginable. The purpose of Table 1.1 is to provide a conspectus in one place of approaches to studying professions and expertise. It is not the purpose of this book to elaborate on these theories and perspectives beyond indicating the wide range of professional and scholarly attention to the phenomenon of contemporary professions and professionalism. Some scholars deliberately use multiple disciplinary perspectives, as noted in the table, but others simply do so without justifying this when the data or policy arguments they are mounting seem to require this mixture or synthesis. In later chapters, theoretical insights are drawn from these different approaches in a similar way to these scholars aiming to build robust models and frameworks. Empirical studies and theoretical approaches form the dynamism in the field of professions studies, proposing, documenting and testing different concepts in different professional and national settings, engaging major and minor professions and questions about each of their fields. When scholars do not feel they fit into one or other category in Table 1.1, they develop ways of combining these with yet other theoretical perspectives. Intersectional approaches, for example Black Studies and Feminism, are making significant contributions to complex interdisciplinary analysis (Collins 2015; Crozier and Friedberg 1980). The work of Bourdieu (2000, 2007), for example, draws on anthropological, structuralist and phenomenological insights and is being increasingly used in referencing concepts such as field, habitus and symbolic power. Examples of this include Spence et al. (2016) and Kahn (2018) and a wide range of other scholars. What is called transnational professionalism offers new possibilities for a renewed overall understanding in professions studies. It remains to be seen how Faulconbridge and Muzio’s (2012) insights are developed from the present foci. The so-called power approach of the 1970s–1980s morphed into something more general—what I call in the present text, the postprofessional period. If transnational professionalism framing continues to

Analysis of bifurcating consequences of professional structures and discourse of professionalism Critique of modern professional narratives. Production and circulation of knowledge Experts pass from progress providing ‘goods’, to producers of ‘bads’; probabilistic v personal risk

Gender analysis

Plural paradigms

Risk analysis

Post-structural, postmodern

Feminism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, risk, critical theory… Combine elements

Descriptive; especially structural elements, and system properties Critique of anti-competitive behaviour, supply and cost

Economics

Strengths

Neo-institutional

Approaching contemporary professions research

Approach

Table 1.1

Ball (1994), Fletcher (2001), and Costello (2005)

Beck (1992), Lupton (1992), and Lidskog and Sundqvist (2012)

Foucault (1973), Fournier (1999), and Rose (2006)

Witz (1992), Davies (1996, 2007), and Blättel-Mink and Kuhlmann (2003)

Lees (1966) and Carillo and Zazzaro (2001)

DiMaggio and Walters (1991) and Empson (2006)

Example Limited focus on conflict, non-system, discourse, gender, legitimacy Discursive elements in society and professions; cost and normativity Clear insights have analogies to other structural patterns but need adapting or combining with gender Critique of modern formations. Relativism compared to standpoint perspectives Periodising modernity; exteriorisation of risk; rational–legal profession–organisation framework, managerialist use Eclecticism has downside—use normativity or building positions; ‘compositeness’

Features

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Interactionist

Discipline specific

Phenomenology

Transnational professionalism

Functionalist, neo-functional

Marxist, neo-Marxist

Weberian, neo-Weberian

Strengths

Micro- and everyday construction and interpretation of professional-client contacts Professional practice, market-regulation, closure processes, new public management Structural power, capitalist profit, new managerialism Functions, systems focus; market-political integration Awareness of global change coming, big-firm focus, governance, scale and field Qualitative, personal and humanistic Care, ethics, principled action. Law, journalism, education, medicine, social work, etc.

Approach

Atkinson (2017) and Van Manen (2019) Cunningham (2008), Collyer (2015), and Hugman (1991)

Faulconbridge and Muzio (2012) and Spence et al. (2016)

Illich (1975) and Navarro (2004) Pavalko (1988), Sciulli (2008), and Sweet (2012)

Abel (1989), Dent and Barry (2004), and Saks (2005)

Dew and Jutel (2014) and Nugus et al. (2010, 2014)

Example

Problematising structural and political constraints Mix sociological and profession-oriented analyses; sociolegal essentialism

Euro-American-centric perspectives, technology, big-firm focus

Neoliberal focus; technological shift Positivism; global-cultural change, inequality

Global repositioning of professions outside geopolitical centres

Interpretation of observations, individual–organisational patterns

Features

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expand as is seen in the activity in journals such as Professions and Organizations, it may potentially provide a scholarly umbrella. To encompass global and technological changes happening to and around professions today, it would need to broaden its perspective further than the useful start on de-westernising professions studies. Identifying professions in western society as not universally one thing assists readers in subsequent chapters to see the importance of arguments for a more substantively global sociological framing of professions—as the western template of professions is unbundled and increasingly reformed in new ways (Boussard 2018). Documenting western corporates or corporate professions in new national or international environments is only transnational in a preliminary sense to what will become a broader structural reorientation of global professional power over time. An ongoing output of discipline-specific edited volumes and academic journal articles discusses issues within particular professional domains in terms of professions and professionalism (Abel 1989). Some of these are more sociological than others (Carvalho et al. 2018), yielding valuable insights of contemporary reassessment of professional work, using to greater or lesser extent the critiques of functionalist beliefs about professions. Even when some scholarly output remains significantly functionalist, these texts express the hope and energy of creating high-quality workforces in today’s institutionally complex and politically charged valuation of professionals and professional work. Among sociologists, too, there is an interest in the experiences of professionals, as well as focus on clients, client communities and demographic cohorts. Sometimes phenomenological inquiry echoes what historical perspectives achieved in the 1970s at the beginning of the post-professional era. Though not formally focusing on the macroscale of professions, disciplined qualitative investigation has the capacity to reveal internal meanings and purpose that critically structure professional performance. Much of this breadth of academic research brings concerns to the fore around social equity, inclusion and well-being in examining, documenting and generating policy proposals.

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Epistemological Essentialism and Professions This section briefly introduces readers to the abstract philosophic concept of essentialism that is standard thinking among professions, but which sociology of expertise challenges. As we shall see throughout the book, essentialism and its less philosophic twin, the concept of functionalism, are often viewed as simply and naturally how things are. The problems to which these beliefs and assumptions give rise, however, show it is necessary to go wider than simply analysing how professions function today, if new possibilities and practices are to emerge as reliable knowledge and managed information. Trowler (2009) adroitly joins his empirical research about legal training with reflection on the wider questions of how to think about expert knowledge and disciplines. In epistemological terms, professions have cognitive and social dimensions, and Trowler sets out layers of how both aspects of knowledge are constructed. But he then interrupts himself, and us the readers, by saying: ‘Or not’ (p. 183). From this self-imposed challenge, he works his way to ask, ‘Why does it matter?’ (p. 186) if disciplinary knowledge is like this. The argument that Trowler returns to is that an essentialising cast of mind reads the functions of a profession (or any other entity) as naturally, even inevitably, the way things are and in everyday terms assumes this is the way things should be. The philosophical idea of professional expertise as a form of epistemological essentialism is thus joined with the apparently practical obviousness of how professions and professionals function. Essentialism is dangerous for professions’ thinking about the grounds of their existence and limits their adaptation as society changes. Philosophy has more to say about essentialism than sociology, but essentialism appears not only within sociology but is often seen in psychological and human development views. Sociologists observe that people often believe social categories are natural and largely if not entirely fixed: tree, book, tiger, person. Sociologists sometimes describe culture is a kind of second nature because of this perception, but always with the proviso that humans create culture—it is not hard-wired, not indelibly fixed. For instance, sociologists challenge common cultural gender and race roles that are asserted as biological categories people believe are fixed and having a particular essence. Such stereotypic

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views are essentialist. Gelman (2003, p. 7) observes that essentialism means ‘some unobservable property (be it part, substance, or ineffable quality) – the essence – that causes things to be the way they are’. Gelman usefully describes ‘an “essence” as an underlying reality or true nature, shared by members of a category, that one cannot observe directly but that gives an object its identity and is responsible for other similarities that category members share’ (p. 8). Essentialist beliefs about professions are similarly persistent and resistant to evidence. Learning more about how such ideas work in everyday professional contexts is the task ahead. Socially and culturally constructed features of society are constantly essentialised. Thinking that social practices and institutions ‘just are’, or that things are ‘naturally that way’, is what brings the broad sweep of sociological theorising into the conversation. Professions, professionals, clients, the media, political figures, often reflect essentialised views of professions and professionalism. These mostly centre on ideas of expertise and goodness but may vary somewhat from these ideas as well. Fuller and more finessed understanding of essentialism for readers interested in tracing different kinds of essentialist thinking needs to be pursued from many other sources than here (Hunter 2006, p. 80). In studying professions, essentialism means more than mere preciousness about specialised occupations called professions as a category, because this worsens into causal beliefs that assume—and are often used to convince others—that this is sufficient explanation for how professions are configured today (Mahalingam 2007). However, since this is not an adequate explanation, other empirical factors need invoking. As Sayer (1997, p. 453) states, ‘we still need to distinguish classes of objects and identify causal powers which enable and constrain what those objects can do’. The future place of professions depends on doing so.

Functionalist Theories of Professions It is possible to read texts on the sociology of professions without coming across the term essentialism, but it is common to see critique of the concept of functionalism. In contrast to professionals’ own writing, where function is often naturalised relative to the particular speciality or expertise

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involved, sociological analysis needs to constantly problematise assertions and arguments about how professions function. The tendency to essentialise functionalism is still the predominant usage by professionals in relation to professional work and insinuates itself into everyday language and thinking. Functionalism is the default perspective that dominates most professionals’ views. Professionals in turn dominate or significantly influence many policy and sectoral decisions and developments. Debates about the rights and wrongs of functional beliefs and expectations are thus implicit in most discussions of professions, whether law, medicine, engineering or other fields. This book acts as a critique of functionalism, but this critique is not the core argument of the book since other scholars have mounted that critique in many ways previously. Because, however, functionalist thinking misrecognises how professional claims have to be related to large-scale socioeconomic and cultural processes, flaws in functionalist assumptions recur in the discussions in the chapters ahead. To talk about professional functions is not in itself functionalist. In this book and for other scholars, describing some function or role of one profession, or how all or some part of a profession functions does not make a writer a functionalist. It is not the case that justification of a role or responsibility means this is functionalism. Functionalism is poor explanation, leaping from describing function to beliefs about importance, income and benefit. Hence, the need to introduce the terms essentialism and functionalism here, so readers can begin to distinguish assumptions made about the connections, or not, between expertise, earning power, social prestige and control over work. What is known as functionalist theory has also occupied a place as one of several main approaches in sociological analysis of society’s social processes, civil institutions and workplaces. The perspective is associated with Emile Durkheim, the first-ever professor of sociology. But he must be credited with offering a much more complex and far-reaching mode of analysis compared to what professional people or undergraduate students often reduce functionalist thinking to today. A first-year sociology student learning about functionalism once told me they liked functionalist theory best of all the sociological perspectives because it showed how you could ‘get up the system’. Not for this student the problem of understanding inequalities in how society was structured. The student’s focus was

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on learning to utilise and game the system for personal career advantage. Durkheim’s work, though open to critique, operated in much more complex and interactive ways in the cultural and socioeconomic changes he described happening in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Durkheim took as a starting point for analysis the description of how a given social entity functioned: What function or functions did it perform? He was open to tacit functions, and the biggest possible societal contexts, as well as the more local and obvious purposes of what an occupation, profession or social entity did. What does medicine do? Functionalism addresses illness, disease and injury. How does it do that? There are hospitals, general practitioners and similar; what else? Well, there are ambulances, drug companies, legislation, vaccination, safety rules, profit margins, regulation…. The Durkheimian analysis offers increasing elaboration of manifold functions that any complex system has, filling in ever more detail how all functions operate and connect. What does health do in wider societal systems, or different cultural landscapes? Such a process of explanation can be applied to any profession or occupational group (Haskell 1984; Lefebvre and White 2010). A full, detailed and careful description by a knowledgeable person outlining implied or latent functions as well as the obvious or manifest ways professional workers deliver services is regarded as an informative and accurate explanation of a profession (or any phenomenon). In commonsense terms, most people in the everyday world would regard a good quality, factual and honest account of functions and functioning like this as being what is needed to know about a profession. Such understanding enables interaction with professional individuals or the system of which professionals are part. Sociologists today, however, note the conflation of description with explanation in this scenario. They, too, rely on description and at some pragmatic levels treat it as explaining how things work. But there are deeper levels of explanation that commonsense descriptions of function miss because of the short-range view or long-range assumptions implicit in a given situation. These affect the capacity to really know what is happening and why; and may obscure what could, should happen, or how might things be done differently? More particular to the present discussion is the work of Talcott Parsons. First, because of his application and interpretation of Durkheim’s ideas

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into the US mid-century context; second, because of his work developing a more explicit model of functional analysis; and third, because of his interest in the professions, incorporating them in several articles and books, most famously, in his essay on The Sick Role (1951a). Parsons’ writing was based on the period of post-World War II US confidence and economic well-being. It is sometimes called consensus theory, though at other times its fusion with structural analysis overlaps in the hybrid label structuralfunctionalism. As with Durkheim, the sketch of Parsons’ ideas is restricted here. Parsons’ version of functionalism has fallen out of favour on various grounds: the espousal of grand theory that supposedly explains modern society functioning as a coherent totality; or its premise that society’s parts sensibly interrelate and in functioning together (rather than conflicting or generating inequality), thereby produce society; or the belief that the subsystems or parts of anything—society or, say, profession—interact to produce the net effect of delivering health or law or education. Like Durkheim, however, Parsons’ (1951b) model of social systems is much richer and more complex than references to it commonly suggest. For the sociology of professions, his sick role concept is a clear illustration of this complexity in his thought, showing significant utility, even if we understand it is not as widely generalisable as he supposed. The inference is Parson’s functionalist theory was limited in its capacity to elucidate relationships of physicians and other stakeholders in the health system of his society and time period. The continued currency of functional perspectives in academic study of professions necessitates identifying and speaking against these limitations. Long before and into the 1950s, elaboration of functionalist models focused on enumerating lists of professional traits as demonstrating the functions of professions—even though these were largely referenced from professions’ views about themselves. This orientation segued into the rash of professionalisation theories in the 1960s (Lynn 1965; Barber 1965; Goode 1966) which was arguably the highpoint decade of the domination by functional approaches to studying professions (Moore 1970). Functionalist or trait models of professions, as they were often called, commonly provided a list of attributes deemed to be characteristic of professions: altruism, expertise, community service, care, long training, client orientation, ethicality, for example. Outside the US emphasis, European sociological study was more attentive to structural questions such as social

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class, the education system and the relationship of professions to the state (Carr-Saunders and Wilson 1964 [1933]; Torstendahl 1990). The process of professionalising—hence professionalisation as a process—motivated US scholars in the 1950s and 1960s. The increasingly obvious deficiencies in trait theories led to proposals adding a time or processual dimension to their analyses. Occupations that conformed to the trait lists were said to be professions and those with fewer or less ‘welldeveloped’ attributes were seen as non-professions, or ‘lesser’ professions. Implicit in the model in its variant forms was a teleology of professionalisation presumed to ‘arrive’ at some unspecified endpoint. This professionalisation model increasingly received criticism around mid-century for being, ironically enough, non-historical. From today’s vantage, it can also be critiqued for simplistically accepting professions’ own view of their functional importance, ‘goodness’ and social and economic value. This may perhaps be understandable in professions themselves, but when adopted by sociologists of professions as an academic model, rather than being problematised, it counted as a critical failure in theorising. Professionalisation was indeed a fundamental concept but this was a false dawn. In terms of the professionalisation process, two significant contributions from that period, Wilensky (1964) and Vollmer and Mills (1966), demonstrated the problems in efforts to overcome the limitations of simply compiling lists of occupations ‘in’ and ‘out’ of the professional category. The decision seemed to depend on the judgement of the analyst or the particular features of which occupation was being studied. These efforts can now be read as intimations, though still failing, of a much better kind of subsequent historical emphasis in recording and evaluating professional development. This was characterised for a time as the conflict or power approach in the 1970s–1980s. Vollmer and Mills’ text Professionalisation was intended to overcome the static quality of trait theory by adding a time dimension—how did occupations change through time, rather than just asking what characteristics they possessed ? Did they become more or less professional? Wilensky

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focused on identifying specific key events or stages through which an occupation passes en route to becoming a profession. He then rated a group of American professions according to their conformance with this sequence. While Wilensky’s analysis was more historically specific than Vollmer and Mills, these efforts still presumed modern metanarratives of linear scientific development, essentialising professions and technological progress, without really challenging the logic of then current trait explanatory theories. The unreflective nature of much of the writing of that period precipitated a strong challenge at the start of the next decade. This was led by groundbreaking theoretical contributions by Freidson (1970a, b) and Johnson (1972), as well as critique from other perspectives such as feminism, post-structuralism and post-colonial theory. For a time, this new scholarship of professions was dubbed the power approach, or sometimes the conflict approach, labels which said more about the absence of such narratives in functionalist writing, than rebutting these new critiques. Occupational rivalry and control of occupational territory seemed as important as claims of service and doing good (Abbott 1988). Writers such as Rossides (1997) continue to use the terminology of ‘functional’ and ‘conflict’ in reference to that paradigm shift, even though his analysis moved on and integrated sociology of professions theorising beyond simple oppositionality of power versus functionalist approaches, closer to the power-knowledge arguments of Foucault (1980). The 1970s challenge by the conflict or power approach properly placed primary emphasis on the inadequacy of professional traits as causal descriptors of professions. It also showed evidence of much less desirable consequences of professional action as the opposite of such claimed virtues as altruism and ethicality: limiting competition, overpricing, rent-seeking or occupational self-interest rather than cost-effectiveness and efficiency. The power approach returned the sociology of professions field to much greater attention to the historical development of professions, recognising contingent elements rather than professions being supposedly driven by the trait model. It also tentatively opened inquiry into comparative variations in professional development. This version of locating professions

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in their sectoral and societal contexts no longer made automatic assumptions of unproblematic beneficence, altruism and other desirable traits. Depending on the evidence, sometimes quite the opposite. Moving forward from that period, Evetts (1999, p. 120) offers that functionalism ‘is now regarded as an unhelpful diversion or even a ‘red herring’ in the development of the research field’. Recent perspectives recognise more graduated views of the complexities of professionalism and professionalisation. On the one hand, these perspectives situate professions in the larger narratives of modernity: How professions and professionalism are gendered projects, how they privilege class and race, how professions reflect central concerns about status, income and expertise within modern society? Further, in relation to non-western societies, how are professions shaped by global financial pressures? None of these aspects of professional performance and functioning are adequately addressed in functionalist sociology of professions or professions studies in other disciplines. Further recent work has investigated emotion work, the organisational contexts of professional work today and other socioeconomic and cultural changes such as commodification and deprofessionalisation discourses (Hochschild 1983; Hunter 2001; Bone 2002). These elaborate how professions function or operate, providing valuable extensions of the analysis of expertise and professions today. At the same time, if read through the lens of functionalism, new insights often pass unproblematically and remain profession-centric rather than reframing professional work within the bigger picture. The insidious power of functionalist though is that any new contribution risks being subsumed by it in self-justification. Taken collectively, however, new research results and analyses, along with the problematising of contemporary functions and functioning of professions, become important ingredients in a post-professional approach to theorising professions.

Synthesising Argument of the Book This book surveys the field of professions and suggests a synthesis of many important empirical and conceptual contributions made over some decades. It rebuts the seductiveness of functional thinking and names that professions themselves are still in thrall to functional analysis. Even when

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forward-looking work has been done by professions, the limits of emphasising their own functions, good for day-to-day analysis, fail them at the big-picture level. The synthesis argument is that external sociological framing is necessary, to accurately ‘see’ the empirical changes that are happening and what they signify. Many key sociological concepts that are helpful in explaining these changes have been available for a considerable time and appear within the perspectives listed in Table 1.1. The theoretical argument of the book draws from this scholarship in generating a synthesis around the unbundling of core goodness and expertise claims happening to professions. Robustly identifying key current changes taking place in professional work can synthesise this evidence with concepts in planning for the future. How will professions function in the future? Why are there so many problems with professional performance and delivery today? Identifying change mechanisms that are operative today means digging beyond simple and worthy answers. The discussion of functionalism is merely the substrate of the book’s thesis, but necessary because functionalism is so misleading and obfuscating. The description in the previous section helps direct attention towards practical and structural shifts happening today. The discursive power of cultural narratives of goodness and expertise will be gradually unpacked as the chapters progress. In later chapters, the argument crystallises discursive-structural analysis of professional projects in how they are currently being unbundled in three fundamental ways. This is no antiquarian exercise. What happens to professions in the next decades is by no means certain for professions. There are choices to be made and choices to be avoided by professions, governments and other participants. The emergent argument of this book for contemporary sociology of professions and professionalism starts from a straightforward rejection of functionalism. It affirms that at the centre of an adequate sociological analysis of professions is the epistemological proposition that there is no inherent essence of professions, no Platonic ideal behind individual instances of profession that can be drilled down to and discovered, no absolute, pure, ‘real’, unique example of a true profession. Within the apparently practical focus of professions’ functionalism, namely the supposedly obvious question of how their work functions, an internal belief system is to be found. Insiders to professions think this belief system and its assumptions follow

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naturally from their professional functions. For outsiders, however, this may equally be understood as self-serving assertion of service expertise, of privilege—of course they would say that!—and as such it explains very little. What are professions then? Professions are simply a historically contingent, useful, invention. They comprise one possible occupational arrangement in the modern division of labour. They are institutions and structures that were invented in western modernity and then repeatedly reinvented. Professions evidence continuing adaptation and regulatory oversight. Because this perspective goes against prevailing commonsense views, a lot of ground clearing is necessary in this book. The chapters pursue this combined deconstructive and reconstructive task while maintaining an underlying affirmative analysis of the useful and desirable participation and contribution that professions and professionalism make to society, given needed changes. The absence of a basic essence is not after all an issue peculiar to studying professions; it is a problem in many fields of inquiry. In the twentieth century, many issues were framed in academic and professional disciplines as either/or and understood in linear terms, but such a viewpoint now appears outdated and naive. In many fields, a reframing process has been taking place. In this process of reframing, often identity politics—race, class, gender, sexuality—have contributed importantly to this de-essentialising, so too have cultural interactions and insights beyond the western academy, showing new ways of thinking and categorising, among other empirical insights about professions (Davies 2007; Kuhlmann 2013). Most professions continue to believe, however, that they have an intrinsic and unique centre, sociologically if not philosophically. Talking about the law, for instance, Terdiman’s (Bourdieu 1987, p. 816) summary shows Bourdieu flatly contradicting Luhmann (1991). The ‘juridical field’ as a: universe cannot be neglected if we wish to understand the social significance of the law, for it is within this universe that juridical authority is produced and exercised. The social practices of the law are in fact the product of the functioning of a ‘field’ whose specific logic is determined by two factors: on the one hand, by the specific power relations which give it its structure and which order the competitive struggles (or, more precisely, the conflicts

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over competence) that occur within it, and on the other hand, by the internal logic of juridical functioning which constantly constrains the range of possible actions and, thereby, limits the realm of specifically juridical solutions.

This idea of a legal field will be returned to in Chapter 7 when a new concept of lexogenesis is introduced that utilises this non-essentialist work of Bourdieu. Another example is seen in mid-twentieth-century western educational theorists and psychologists debating whether learning was more nature or more nurture. Today, the debate is reframed as obviously learning is both, and the real questions lie in how these elements interact under different conditions. Or consider twentieth-century certainties about homosexuality (Turner 2000; Altman 2013) or other forms of sexuality that relied on untested notions of an essential and distinguishable ‘true’ form of sexuality. Even more readily traced is twentieth-century hankering to find the essence of things was the search for IQ intelligence. No identifiable ‘thing’ has been found, however, that can be isolated as pure IQ. Binet and later Flynn (Trahan et al. 2014) and others’ work shows IQ is not some hardwired quality of mind. The project to isolate IQ was misguided, driven by modernist narratives of positive reality and essence. Gelman’s (2003) work cited earlier illuminates ‘everyday essentialist thought’ from examples in child development. Such areas of inquiry are today viewed very differently. Reframing these old assumptions about social phenomena becomes instead central, basic questions about how and through what mechanisms the phenomenon of interest works. One could look for other examples in current academic reframing of social and biological influences on human behaviour such as the switching on/off and expression of genetic differences in epigenetics (Weinhold 2006). Narratives of reframing inquiry into other analogous areas would take the present focus away from professions, so I will leave this discussion here. The relevant point in the present outline is that analogous modernist logics to this wide range of examples also deeply affected the analysis of professions and professionalism.

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The western essentialist assumptions of twentieth-century thinking in each of these examples were mistaken but also underlay functionalist thinking about professions. The fact that professionals are central players in modern social, political and economic landscapes is a major compounding factor in slippage towards attributing essentialised importance to professions generally. But this is no excuse for today remaining fixated on twentieth-century explanations of professions, or for excluding professions from deeper theoretical framing as academically boring or intellectually unproblematic. These views about professional traits hold back sociological analysis of professions, a parallel problem to the reframing efforts in various fields like those cited above. Challenging these beliefs is thus central to the purpose of the book to enable a reframing process in relation to how study of professions and professionalism is tackled. While there is no essential core that really and truly, in essence, constitutes what professions and professionalism are, this does not gainsay, however, that such views are indeed widely and commonly held, even passionately believed by a range of cohorts for very different but interlocking reasons. Four obvious constituencies for such culturally ingrained beliefs are: first, professions themselves accounting for their social positioning; second, politicians and policymakers also co-opting the views of this articulate professional class of voters and opinion leaders; third, the lay public which holds a conflicted mixture of ‘doctor knows best’ yet also a sense of being excluded from many decisions in many spheres; fourth, media stereotypic positioning of professionals which mixes adulation, fascination and demand in frequently unsatisfactory ways, but which also at times breaks open covert, bad professional situations needing public examination. Such cultural views are widely held and variously expressed, presuming that professions are ultimately special, different, even a little magical. This book examines the underpinnings of such beliefs, working through a series of debates and discussions to identify the bundled goodness and expertise claims made by professions and professionalism. There are indeed countering narratives to the claims for unique privilege that better account for professions. The difficulty, however, in offering a synthesised reframing is seen in the tendency to hold compartmentalised views. The same person holds a big-picture view of professions as unique, perhaps believing the

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new and multiplying professions today are not ‘real’ professions. But then this person turns in another conversation to view professional expertise as commodified, deskilled, disrespected, including nuances of professional interaction and hierarchies of expertise.

Rationale for Studying Professions The aim of this introduction has been to open space to talk about professions without making assumptions commonly made in discussions about professions and professional work. It is a difficult commitment to explain the variety of theoretical ways sociological analysis of professions and professionalism can proceed. Table 1.1 offered one summary of perspectives that have been deployed in studying professions, some more critical of functionalism than others. Even broader critiques of the inadequacies of functionalism in accounting for professional work and society are no more than indicated. Instead, affirmatively developing a synthesis using concepts of bundling, unbundling and rebundling reinterprets functionalist presuppositions in relation to professions. It is all very well to set out on the task of theorising professions in contemporary society. Any description, even if articulated clearly and persuasively, can always be interrogated by the question, ‘So what?’, echoing the earlier question: ‘Why does it matter?’ This is a fair challenge. The short answer to the ‘So what?’ question is this: professions and the attitudes of professionalism have never been as important as now. The bullet points below give some rationale for arguments implicit in successive chapters. • First, enormous and burgeoning costs: direct spending on professional services globally can be measured in trillions, not billions, of dollars annually (Brooke and Catalano 2009; Susskind and Susskind 2015, p. 10). Small efficiency gains are worth billions nationally and globally. Inappropriate costs or profits cost equally vast sums to the detriment of society. • Second, sociopolitical consequences: the implications of professionally informed choices have immeasurable geopolitical consequences of great magnitude and importance for humanity. Who benefits most from

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delivering professional services? Advice arriving at such decisions and implementation of them always involves professions. • Third, production of professions: current rapid numerical increase in professions and professionals means the pivotal role of professions is greater than ever before. Whose interests are most served—the producers or consumers of professional expertise? In what ways? As will be seen, technological unbundling of expertise questions naturalised production accounts. • Fourth, organisational challenges: health, law, welfare, education are obvious fields, but new challenges from climate and economic changes will involve professions and expert knowledge in ways never before tested. • Fifth, theoretically: the paradoxical combination of goodness and expertise, as we shall see, does not provide a satisfactory explanation of profession and professionalism. However, the claim itself is central. Today, the claim is being challenged by greater prioritising of the category of expertise rather than professions as proprietors of goodness. But both are under siege. The response can still be made: all those considerations are reasonable, but how is theorising going to help? The reply comes in one of two registers: fairness or efficiency, depending on preference and political orientation. Sometimes political ideologies prefer fairness over efficiency and sometimes the other way around. Today I would argue that each is the sine qua non of the other; a full answer needs to address both. Professionals, executives, administrators and policymakers are tasked with better management of the vast expenditures in modern societies on health, justice systems, education, welfare, military and finance sectors. Not just these vast expenditures, however, but also the changing nature of society, the political order and expectations by consumers and what digital technologies can do. It is leaders’ job to ask who will benefit? And in what ways, and to what extent, and with what other consequences?—the producers or consumers of these new opportunities and possibilities? As physics Nobel laureate Nils Bohr once wryly observed, the future is especially hard to predict.

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The purpose of sociological theorising is to contribute to empirical and conceptual research and reframing how we perceive what is happening in society. If professions are to continue to have their central place in developed societies, this means understanding and changing in response to the unbundling of professional goodness and the related unbundling of professional expertise that is happening today. In the present focus, this means helping identify professional gains and minimising negative professional impacts and adverse effects for individuals, society or certain consumer–client cohorts. Who adjudges such value and quality is itself a contested and shifting question. For both practitioner and researcher, it is possible to be both admiring of skill, effort, expertise and ethicality yet also identify institutionalised patterns and individual instances of seriously poor, shoddy, incompetent or self-serving behaviour in professional functioning. It is not just the conduct itself but the governance systems that allow, and may protect, the existence of such conduct. Seeing both and doing something about both is the challenge. It is the present-day empirical transition of professions and professional work that demands attention, not the academic 1970s transition from trait hegemony to uncertainty. The purpose of synthesising professional research and analysis by social scientists, government planners, policymakers and professions themselves is to address the ambiguous and complex cultural and economic changes impacting professions and their value and positioning in society. Reintegrating ideas developed across the post-professional transitional period shows that many of the arguments of Johnson, Freidson and Larson are being newly confirmed as professional work changes in the present century.

Structure of the Book Chapters to follow explore problems in theorising professions deriving from common ambivalences and why these are so ingrained that they persist in ways often counterproductive to society in the present century. Each chapter applies a different methodology to well-known information about professions and professionalism. In each chapter, the purpose is deconstructive and reconstructive of supposed theoretical truths and

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deeply embedded conventional interpretations of ‘the facts’ about professions. The distinct methodological treatment found in each chapter is intended to challenge these familiar answers and objections by repeatedly reframing inquiry via the fresh kinds of sociological analysis applied. By turn, the methods that the substantive chapters apply are: definitional, structural, discursive, periodising, conceptual, unbundling goodness and then unbundling expertise, each exploring new possibilities and driving home the necessity to re-theorise professions. Chapter 2 looks beyond formal processes of defining professions and how these reflect the definitional problématique of contradictory ideas about ‘true’ professions in contrast to the complex realities of the contemporary world of professions. It actively resists the push for early and clear definitional closure as traps in commonsense answers, considering instead definitional limitations. Chapter 3 then moves the focus from definitional logics to sketch professions within a typology of modern organisational forms. Studying professions comparatively with other organisational forms serves as a kind of empirical testbed. This helps de-essentialise thinking to consider more broadly various improvements and changes in professions today that reveal characteristics of professions in the past. Chapter 4 introduces a series of concepts involving discourses of professionalisation that offer better ways to talk about professions. The bundling of goodness claims and expertise claims is seen as distinctive of modern western professions. A series of discursive temptations that arise in historical interpretations of professionalisation build this argument. Learning limitations of standard views makes new choices more easily conceivable as they are considered in later chapters. Chapter 5 for those uncertain of the formative power of discourse in the previous chapter applies fifty-year arbitrary chunks across two centuries of western professional development to disrupt linear professional histories. Again, the contingent nature of professional development to the present day, when viewed like this, undermines presentism and invites active planning for changing professional futures.

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Chapter 6 pulls the discussion back closer to the present by sampling how scholars have used the term post-professional. This reflects the struggle to explain changes to professions and professionalism as they have proliferated in recent decades showing adverse effects not solely good ones and new kinds of expertise. This opens to view possible value in applying Chapter 4’s bundling concept to investigate these core attributes of professions. Chapter 7 considers in detail the twinned topics of public good and the concept of professogenesis, using the lens of the normative unbundling of professional goodness. This bundling idea as the unique feature of modern professions is now applied to the normative foundation of professional goodness as public good and its opposite, that is, professogenic professional behaviour leading to adverse consequences for clients and society. Within these two categories of positive and negative effects of professions’ work, the chapter problematises any simple belief in goodness claims. Chapter 8 in similar manner to the previous chapter considers the unbundling of professional expertise. This chapter has two parts. The first reviews three current drivers of unbundling expertise—organisational incumbency, emerging digital expertise and effects rising from globalised use of professional expertise. The second half discusses unbundling effects from the contemporary production of professionals. This draws Johnson’s classic typology of forms of expert delivery into the discussion. Chapter 9 offers points of integration for theorising previous chapters’ unbundling arguments around professional goodness and professional expertise. Each unbundling argument is anchored in the production— consumption relation. A contemporary typology is constructed drawing on Johnson and others to show economic and cultural-symbolic resources defining relationships between producers and users of expertise. This provides a better explanation for understanding impacts on professions in the coming decades.

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References Abbott, A. D. (1988). The system of professions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Abel, R. L. (1989). American lawyers. New York: Oxford University Press. Altman, D. (2013). The end of the homosexual? Brisbane: University of Queensland Press. Anderson, P. (1972). More is different. Science, 177 (4047), 393–396. Atkinson, W. (2017). Beyond Bourdieu. New York: Wiley. Baldwin, R. (2016). The great convergence: Information technology and the new globalization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ball, S. J. (1994). Education reform: A critical and post-structural approach. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Barber, B. (1965). Some problems in the sociology of professions. In K. S. Lynn (Ed.), Daedalus: The professions in America (pp. 15–34). Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin. Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage. Beilharz, P. (1997). Imagining the antipodes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Beilharz, P., & Hogan, T. (2012). Sociology: Antipodean perspectives (2nd ed.). South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press. Blättel-Mink, B., & Kuhlmann, E. (2003). Health professions, gender and society: Introduction and outlook. International Journal of Sociology & Social Policy, 23(4–5), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1108/01443330310790480. Bone, D. (2002). Dilemmas of emotion work in nursing under marketdriven health care. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 15 (2), 140–150. Bourdieu, P. (1987). The force of law: Towards a sociology of the juridical field. Hastings Law Journal, 38(5), 814–853. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1993). The field of cultural production. New York: Columbia University Press. Bourdieu, P. (2000). Pascalian meditations. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. (2007). A sketch for self-socioanalysis. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Boussard, V. (2018). Professional closure regimes in the global age: The boundary work of professional services specializing in mergers and acquisitions. Journal of Professions and Organization, 5 (3), 279–296.

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Dietrich, M., & Roberts, J. (1997). Beyond the economics of professionalism. In J. Broadbent, M. Dietrich, & J. Roberts (Eds.), The end of the professions? The restructuring of professional work (pp. 14–33). London: Routledge. DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1991). The new institutionalism in organizational analysis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Empson, L. (2006). Profession. Oxford, UK. http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/ccc/ Profession.htm. Evetts, J. (1999). Professiosalisation and professionalism: Issues for interprofessional care. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 13(2), 119–128. Evetts, J. (2004). Professionalism science, and expert roles. In K. A. Ericsson, R. R. Hoffman, A. Kozbeit, & A. M. Williams (Eds.), Cambridge handbook on professional expertise (pp. 127–149). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Faulconbridge, J., & Muzio, M. (2012). Professions in a globalizing world: Towards a transnational sociology of the professions. International Sociology, 27 (1), 136–152. Fletcher, J. (2001). Disappearing acts: Gender power, and relational practice at work. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Foucault, M. (1973). Birth of the clinic. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books. Fournier, V. (1999). The appeal to ‘professionalism’ as a disciplinary mechanism. The Sociological Review, 47 (2), 280–307. Freidson, E. (1970a). Professional dominance. New York: Atherton. Freidson, E. (1970b). Profession of medicine. New York: Dodd, Mead. Gelman, S. A. (2003).The essential child: Origins of essentialism in everyday thought. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Goode, W. J. (1966). Professions and ‘non-professions’. In H. M. Vollmer & D. L. Mills (Eds.), Professionalization (pp. 34–43). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Hannah, M. (2014). Humanising healthcare. Axminster, UK: Triarchy Press. Haskell, T. L. (1984). Professionalism versus capitalism: R H Tawney, Emile Durkheim, and C S Peirce on the disinterestedness of professional communities. In R. Haskell (Ed.), The authority of experts: Studies in history and theory (pp. 180–225). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hochschild, A. (1983). The managed heart. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hugman, R. (1991). Power in caring professions. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan. Hunter, B. (2001). Emotion work in midwifery: A review of current knowledge. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 34 (4), 436–445.

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Hunter, I. (2006). The history of theory. Critical Inquiry, 33(1), 78–112. Illich, I. (1975). Medical nemesis. London: Marion Boyars. Johnson, T. J. (1972). Professions and power. London: Macmillan. Republished Routledge, 2016. Johnson, T. J. (1973). Imperialism and the professions: Notes on the development of professional occupations in Britain’s colonies and the new states. In P. Halmos (Ed.), Professionalisation and social change (pp. 281–309). Keele, UK: Keele University Press. Kahn, P. (2018). Renewing the professions by attending to structural influences on reflexivity: A critical realist perspective. Journal of Professions & Organization, 5 (2), 139–154. Kimball, B. A. (1995). The ‘true professional ideal’ in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Kuhlmann, E. (2013). Sociology of professions: Towards international contextsensitive approaches. South African Review of Sociology, 44 (2), 7–17. Lees, D. S. (1966). The economic consequences of the professions (Research Monograph No. 2). London: Institute of Economic Affairs. Lefebvre, A., & White, M. (2010). Bergson on Durkheim: Society sui generis. Journal of Classical Sociology, 10 (4), 457–477. Lidskog, R., & Sundqvist, G. (2012). Sociology of risk. In S. Roeser, R. Hillerbrand, P. Sandin, & M. Peterson (Eds.), Handbook of risk theory (pp. 1001–1028). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Liljegren, A., & Saks, M. (Eds.). (2016). Professions and metaphors: Understanding professions in society. London: Routledge. Luhmann, N. (1991). Operational closure and structural coupling: The differentiation of the legal system. Cardozo Law Review, 13(5), 1419–1441. Lupton, D. (1992). Discourse analysis: A new methodology for understanding the ideologies of health and illness. Australian Journal of Public Health, 16 (2), 145–150. Lynn, K. S. (1965). The professions in America. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Mahalingam, R. (2007). Essentialism, power, and the representation of social categories: A folk sociology perspective. Human Development, 50 (6), 300–319. Moore, W. (1970). The professions: Roles and rules. New York: Russell & Sage. Murray, S. (2008). Images of dignity: Barry Barclay and fourth cinema. Wellington, New Zealand: Huia Press. Navarro, V. (2004). The political and social context of health. New York: Baywood.

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Nugus, P., Carroll, K., Hewett, D. G., et al. (2010). Integrated care in the emergency department: A complex adaptive systems perspective. Social Science & Medicine, 71, 1997. Nugus, P., Forero, R., McCarthy, S., et al. (2014). The emergency department “carousel”: An ethnographically-derived model of the dynamics of patient flow. International Emergency Nursing, 22(1), 3–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. socscimed.2009.11.001. Parsons, T. (1951a). Social structure and dynamic process: The case of modern medical practice. In T. Parsons (Ed.), The social system (pp. 428–479). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Parsons, T. (1951b). The social system. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Pavalko, R. M. (1988 [1971]). Sociology of occupations and professions. Itasca, IL: Peacock. Rose, N. (2006). Disorders without borders? The expanding scope of psychiatric practice. BioSocieties, 1(4), 465–484. Rossides, D. W. (1997). Professions and disciplines: Functional and conflict perspectives. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Sainsaulieu, R. (1997). Sociologie de l’entreprise: Organisation, culture et développement/Company sociology: Organization, culture and development. Paris: Presses of the National Foundation of Political Science. Saks, M. (2005). Professions and the public interest: Medical power, altruism and alternative medicine. London: Routledge. Sayer, A. (1997). Essentialism, social constructionism, and beyond. The Sociological Review, 45 (3), 453–487. Sciulli, D. (2008). Revisionism in sociology of professions today, conceptual approaches by Larson. Sociologica, 2(3), 1–55. https://doi.org/10.2383/ 28765. Spence, C., Carter, C., Belal, A., Husillos, J., Dambrin, C., & Archel, P. (2016). Tracking habitus across a transnational professional field. Work, Employment and Society, 30 (1), 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017015574824. Susskind, R., & Susskind, D. (2015). The future of professions: How technology will transform the work of human experts. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Svensson, L. G. (2003). Market, management and professionalism: Professional work and changing organisational contexts. In H. Mieg & M. Pfadenhauer (Eds.), Professionelles leistung—Professional performance. Konstanz, Germany: UVK. Sweet, A. (2012). Neofunctionalism and supranational governance (pp. 1–39). Law Faculty Scholarship Series, Paper 4628. New Haven, CT: Yale University. http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers.

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2 Beyond Defining Professions

Definitions and Professional Reality Any discussion of the nature and functions of professions seeks to work out how to precisely define professions and professionalism, but this soon brings several issues to the surface. Sociologists can best move beyond these endless debates, not by ignoring the complexities of such attempts and the countering arguments, but by entering and embracing them. Through investigating the definitional problématique itself, the seemingly insoluble task of deriving a more universally cogent definition of profession is, though not definitively solved, repositioned as one part of understanding what professions are and how they operate (Swedberg 2019). By surfacing assumptions of various definitions, better understanding and definitional expression can be achieved. As Dingwall (1977, p. 372) cautions, ‘Much of the confusion about the notion of ‘profession’ stems from attempts to legislate its meaning rather than to examine its use’. Somewhere in the 1970s, professions and professionalism disappeared from social theory academic courses, notwithstanding that scholars of the eminence of Foucault and Bourdieu made studies of professions

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and professional work central to their theorising of modern societies. Sociology of professions, hitherto an easy-to-appreciate field within sociology and the academy, largely vanished as a commonly taught subject. The same changes that led some theorists to describe social theory from that point onwards as broken terrain, challenged the presumptive clarity of structural-functional models of society. Theorising that supported similar thinking and assumptions about professions and professional performance was dropped from academic discourse or at least began to be seriously contested. Another way of expressing this is to say that a particular constellation or bundling of metanarratives had largely restricted discussions of professions and work and modernity to a singular functionalist way of framing analysis of work, middle-class employment and documenting white-collar workers and professions. This constellation had also produced a particular sociology of professions genre, at the time believed by many to be a factually accurate description of professions and professionalisation. This is now seen as an overgeneralising narrative, significantly presuming US confidence at that mid-twentieth-century period, mistakenly believing itself as having actively accomplished modernity (Dingwall 1983; Macdonald 1995; Gordon 2016). Such theorising of professions’ importance is itself the expression of a fascinating local/national and time-specific model of professions and professional identity rather than a sociologically adequate account. A plausible account must start with tensions inherent in professional roles. These include tensions between universal descriptions and the applicability of such grand conceptions of professions that present a series of work and economic traits as features of professional performance. These also include less obvious characteristics like sociocultural specifics of value, recompense, freedom to select work, freedom to define professional problems, relations with government, identity and self-governance in civil society. As modern societies professionalised, rapid and continuing changes allowed these tensions to be covered over, functionalist interpretations remaining underneath. However, this scaffolding of functionalist professional theory showed itself to be inadequate and eventually fell away from reputable scholarship.

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Sociology of work continued as an important field, but sociology of professions in its old form often retreated to personal–professional development courses inside applied professional training. Sometimes it found reference within studies in the sociology of work, professional traits largely continuing to be held as self-evident. This residual blending of aspirational and ethical notions may or may not be explicitly framed in functionalist language. It is, however, simultaneously deployed in two ways. First, as a sufficiently factual and objective description of the social setting and context of the profession/s within which the rules of professionalism are being discussed. Second, it is articulated as a normative stance for the professions concerned. In the case of caring professions, such bicameral definitions were and are passionately held as the essential core of what is believed to be their special contribution to society. It needs to be remarked, to avoid any sense of smugness with greater hindsight, that the relationship between legitimate universality in scientific conceptions and the application of technology for particular uses within specific priorities of time, place, community and polity remains a contemporary dilemma in the present century too. The brilliance of science’s cumulative methods in creating knowledge is mixed with inequality in terms of gendered, cultural and class-based priorities, advantages and recognition. A continuing output of research and historical revisions attest to this (Kuhn 1970; Turner 1987; Aronowitz 1988; Harding 1991, 1998; Nader and Smith 1996; Mclaughlin and Webster 1998; Fletcher 2001). If anything, this is heightened by the very different cultures, histories and politics of the national communities in which more widespread patterns of modernisation are occurring. This is not a matter of any simple extension of western ideas, ideals and institutional forms. The apparent demise of conventional functionalist sociological theorising of professions coincided with accelerating growth in the number and variety of professions. Something about the shocking inadequacy of social theorising about professions and professionalism became evident at that point. Dingwall (1983, p. 331) pungently observed that even if profession is a rich concept, the idea of professions is ‘notorious for the diversity of its definitions and usage by sociologists’. Indeed, the rapid expansion of tertiary education as the prime producer of professionals in the half-century period to today has created its own pressure to re-examine and re-theorise

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professions. With many more professionals now present in society, quite clearly not everybody, nor every group, can be prestigious in the same manner as elite early professions. At the middle of last century, many challenges to dominant western linear modernisation narratives were emerging. For most sociologists, it became no longer academically respectable to talk about theory and professions in the same breath. The awkward post-professional transition was noticeable for academic sociologists’ reluctance—fortunately with important exceptions—to re-enter the field of theorising professions. This transitional process has involved a broad empirical exploration, as much by those outside sociology as inside, tentatively identifying shifts or breaks from what was considered the norm for professions at an earlier time. Sociologists and others have often conducted detailed investigation into one profession or into a specific issue within a professional domain. Unsurprisingly the quality of this range of contributions has varied widely, but the sense of ongoing need to research professional work has been constant and increasing—signalling continual activity and societal importance of professions and professional work. Theory might have been inadequate, but research into professions and professionalism was and is important. The naturalisation of professions viewed as good and desirable components of modern life is part of the essentialist position for professional groups, but oddly enough often unproblematised by social theorists themselves. These assumptions had previously led a generation and more of sociologists to do little more than read off self-definitions of worth from prominent professions’ rhetoric of service, and altruism believed to exist within the amalgam of expertise such professional work displayed. This conjuncture of convenience (Goode 1957, 1960) and cultural belief, however, was disrupted for academics studying professions by Freidson’s (1970) and Johnson’s (1972) challenges that ushered in the post-professional era described in Chapter 6. Maintaining the distinction between professions changing or not changing their beliefs, and academic shifts in theorising those professions, continues to be important. Subsequent to the efforts of these key scholars, investigation into professions today using a cultural lens of ‘reading’ written, spoken and even visual productions has developed into a serious scholarly modus operandi in the humanities and social sciences (Pescosolido and Olafsdottir 2010).

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Such analysis usually aims to deconstruct and contest hegemonic and official claims and interpretations, noting contradictions in these. As academic critique, it stands in marked contrast to simply reproducing professional leaders’ utterances in which reflexivity is mostly absent. Stevens’ (2001) presidential essay is a significant example of a medical leader attempting to catch up with this different perception of professional claims and doing her best to engage this literature. However, mounting a late claim for a return to, or at least some continuance of, medicine’s traditional occupational role and status remains firmly functionalist and time-bound. In following the argument of this book, understanding such logics of professions and professionalism is necessary to properly comprehend what is going on in the world today in deploying specialist skills as well as in the exercise of political influence. Pressing national and global issues occurring as the present century unfolds almost always involve professionals and professional expertise. With few exceptions, these problems bring renewed focus to the role of professional experts. At the same time, the legitimacy of professional knowledge, personal interests and motivations and organisational blocs asserting claims are central to any analysis of what is happening. How do professionals define issues confronting society and individual professions? A clear definition of profession would surely enable discussion of professions’ roles to be progressed. This is, however, easier said than done. An opening definition is only provisional and important exceptions can be cited for any proposed summary of what defines a profession. Immediately, even greater complexities defining who or what is professional, what is knowledge and how it is contained emerge. In complex circumstances today, contested views often put one expert or set of experts against others. Universities, the main producers of contemporary professional cadres, embody this tension of how to produce knowledge and then apply knowledge. What is known, and who arbitrates knowledge, distinguishing facts and truth from the unacceptable? What counts as misinformation, ‘fake/alternative facts’, or as fraudulent? Who identifies poor quality? For more than two centuries in the modern era, the boundaries of professional knowledge have been continually challenged from inside and outside (Kronus 1976). Equally, the social organisation of how professional

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services are delivered has continually varied in new and sometimes surprising ways under cross-pressures from political, technological and economic forces. After the demise of functionalist explanations of professions, a gap has grown between sociological theorising of professions and the relatively unchanged definitions professionals have of themselves. Sociologists continue to articulate in new ways professions as one modern social phenomenon within modernity through to the early part of the twenty-first century. In studying what has been happening to professions and professionalism, important sociological theoretical work has encountered the bulwarks of professional self-certainty and slow-changing governmental shifts to newer understanding of the parameters of professional work such as the need for continuing education or sector scale. Perceived failure to clearly define professions has often frustrated scholars, but this feeling indicates a difficulty at a larger level of analysis. Inquiry into professional functionality in the late-modern western division of labour and society has tended towards investigation of particular domains or processes like medicalisation (Conrad 1992) or juridification (Teubner 1987; Derrida 1990) or studying the operation of specific profession-sectoral fields. Several caveats are needed to maintain this argument about the insufficiency of theorising professions, since a significant thread of academic sociologists has indeed continued to study and define the performance and role of professions, for example Saks (2005), Rossides (1997), Dingwall (1999), and Evetts (2014). Further, this analytic argument about inadequate theorising can be provoking in a quite different way: professionals do not always appreciate commentary coming from outside their field that interprets their actions even positively or at times in other than positive ways. Often professionals believe outsiders will not have anything relevant to say about their internal expert world. For sociologists that continue to investigate professions, however, and others outside the vocational commitments of a specific profession, individual professional groups’ justification of their positions is deeply interesting but not necessarily the same thing as being accepted as adequate causal explanation of the profession’s present position. Why and how a professional group exists, how it currently functions, or how it is likely to change over time, are things that cannot be decided internally by fiat or simply by conscious intention, but

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require more complex and sophisticated explanations. Greater modesty in what definitions can do is thus a first step to better theory about profession and professionalisation. Physicist Nils Bohr’s statement resonates with this need to address pre-emptive definitional closure: ‘Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question’ (Wall 1991, p. 147).

Distinctions in Defining Professions The everyday familiarity and obviousness of what a profession is should surely make defining one fairly straightforward. It might be proposed that a profession is an elite occupation doing a specialised task or set of tasks; that a profession is the application of a body of knowledge by a group to a field or set of problems; or that a profession is institutionalised expert knowledge used within a given field of activity. All these and other similar, sensible, definitions are true in their own way, but they are also incomplete. Each begs questions that require a wide sociological framework to overcome being little more than justifications of the way things are for a particular group or social class at a given point in history. Perhaps surprisingly to outsiders, the discipline of sociology lacks any simple agreement on what constitutes a profession (Abbott 1998; Freidson 1994). These definitional proposals above all make sense of specific circumstances even when not being used conservatively to legitimate an existing professional group. But they are sociologically limited. If the intention in such definitions is to justify the social power and expectations of a professional group and the constellation of consumers and policymakers around them, so be it. A sociologist can also understand that. This does not, however, assist in explaining how and why that particular profession has come about and has the social, legal and economic space, rewards and position it currently holds. Further, it does not explain whether such a combination is a desirable state of affairs—or for whom it is or is not a desirable state of affairs—since different stakeholders will differ in their views. It also does not explain whether the profession should continue in the form that it has at present. None of these issues are written in stone, and they have been challenged and will continue to be challenged or adapted and influenced

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by government, competitors or corporations, as technological, education, economic and other societal changes continue to take place. At the same time, it is important to be clear that asking these questions of professions, and questioning claims of professionalism, is emphatically not an attack on professions. Sociologists not infrequently find that the mere raising of these questions is construed as an attack, when questions are not necessarily intended as such at all. In both civil society and the realms of governmental processes, professions play a vital and desirable role. Just as the role of government, critics notwithstanding, is a necessary countervailing influence to the power of giant corporations, or anarchy, so too professions and principles of professionalism are needed to provide an alternate voice and practice to policy choices, corporate, market and bureaucratic imperatives (Freidson 1994). It was Freidson (1970) who noted that there is sociology for professions in which profession-defined questions are addressed together with sociologists and other social scientists, and there is also sociology of professions in which the profession itself and its practices are the object of inquiry and explanation. Complications start to arise when it becomes apparent that the underlying logics of professionalism, while having their own characteristic manifestations, are not mutually exclusive from other forms of institutional arrangement in society. The question is often posed like this: Why is it so hard to get at least the professions part of the puzzle defined and clear, before having to engage with the inter-connections professions have with these other social organisational forms such as government departments, corporations, community entities, clients and so on? Provisional or working definitions canvassed at the start of this section are only acceptable in a preliminary way, but the intercalated nature of professions with other institutional forms in the development of modernity must be addressed in a more adequate answer. Professions and professionalism constitute much richer and more complex phenomena than being supposedly naturally occurring entities. Repurposing talk about traits central to the functionalist view of professions shows analogous or parallel social and cultural logics in other modern organisational forms. The run of analysis just mentioned will be advanced more fully in Chapter 3 and subsequent chapters. The desire for a clear, positive

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approach to definitional questions about professions and professionalism is resisted in this chapter before receiving substantive engagement and response in later chapters. While positivism and functionalism as methodological approaches have a place in social research, their home is in the physical sciences where the objects of research do not respond because investigation is occurring. In contrast, in the social world, human behaviour, meanings and motivations are the subject of attention, and unsurprisingly ‘the data speaks back’—respondents, subjects, groups, governments—change their views and behaviour sometimes because they are being observed. Positivist analyses have to learn to recognise nonpositivist and post-positivist realities before it is possible to create satisfactory accounts of professions and professionalism. This is difficult when occupational settings are frequently defensive because of regulatory, boundary or encroachment concerns in the sectors or fields they inhabit (Abbott 1988; Evetts 1992, 1999; Rose 1990; Fournier 1999, 2000; Grey 2004). The next task in this chapter is thus preliminary and not directly confronting positivist or functional interpretations of professions and professionalism. Instead, from within common professional discourse and everyday talk, it is possible to discern deeper themes that require addressing, regardless of what formal definitions or definitional approaches are adopted. These can be understood by those uninitiated into the more arcane debates sociologists have about professions. At the same time, these themes raise basic questions about professions which both simple and complex descriptions need to address. Introducing four definitional clarifications here invites caution about the push to achieve quick certainty in defining a profession (Table 2.1). On the surface, these are apparently simple verbal distinctions, but they usefully serve the purpose of raising more profound and complicated issues involved in defining professions. Table 2.1 1 2 3 4

Definitional clarification of professions terms Profession Profession Profession Profession (n.)

v v v v

Professions (plural) Professionalism Maintaining a profession Professional (adj.)

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Profession or Professions (Plural)? Discussions of what counts as a profession inevitably come across the issue whether one profession is being defined or whether some definition of professions more generally is in fact being drawn. Even when one profession is clearly the focus, assertions about how and what makes it a profession draw on wider conceptions of professions as a category. Is it scientific— but what about law? Is it caring—but what about engineering? Is it expert knowledge—but what about social work? Is it independent practice—but what about engineers, surveyors or coroners? Each of these and other characteristics of professions do not appear in every profession. Dare we ask, ‘Why not?’ since society ‘knows’ they are all professions, or should different questions be asked? Either way, definitional certainty eases away from being readily grasped. Grappling with the problem of one profession or professions as a category provides a valuable constraint on commonsense definitions. Deeper continued investigation of this antinomy builds towards a wider sociological framing of professions and professionalism. Not all professions are equal; what mechanisms create a ranking of professions? What social forces brought this or that profession into existence? Apothecaries, surgeons and physicians are all antecedent occupational groups to western modern medicine. An explanation of that transition must also account for the conjunction of empirical science with traditional medical learning and care. Further analysis of the health division of labour also shows that the issue is not simply a question of one profession or many clouding a definition of profession. For instance, a field of multiple professions also raises the question of how one profession is also a profession but is different from the other professions. More broadly, what processes and influences within modernity brought about parallel shifts in a variety of occupational activities that today are commonly recognised as professions? The relationship between modernisation and professionalisation is an interesting and complex one. Some steps in these interactive processes took place in early modernity and some much more recently, and some are even currently taking place. Chapter 3 explores a variety of issues that arise in pursuing this line of inquiry further. In practical terms, then, even if definitional attention is turned towards

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one specific profession, the uniqueness or distinctiveness of traits and comparative features that a given profession shares with others is a matter always in play and provisional, not final, whether this is acknowledged or not.

Profession or Professionalism? Beyond the distinction between individual professions and traits of a more general class of professions lie further barriers to easy definitional resolution. The difference between a profession considered as an occupational entity and professionalism as a set of beliefs and protocols is something that often complicates things. On a first understanding, there appears to be a natural correspondence between the two: professionalism is the attitude, approach and practices that go with a profession as a group; or the characteristic/s of a professional person, if considering an individual. Professionalism reflects membership in a profession. To become a member of a profession is to act professionally. To adopt the values of professionalism is to be shaped, constrained and guided by the requirements of the profession. If only it were that simple, but it is not. In many cases, to belong to a profession is a legal status, not about what one thinks or how one acts except in certain official, formalised, minimally conforming or competent ways. Even if the primary criterion for a profession is a qualification in a given field, for instance, a social work degree rather than group or occupational admittance such as admission to the bar for lawyers, a qualification says that a potential incumbent has the requisite minimum technical or examination-passing skills. Can they also be characterised as showing professionalism? In some senses, yes, and in others, no. Just how to adjudicate caring orientation or capacity rather than cognitive expertise or how to assess internalised values of skill or altruism is a conundrum for trainers and educators. That is, it is not a lack of understanding how to confirm or not whether a description of professionalism is appropriate. It is not even a matter of formal rules and informal attitudes or conduct. Rather, it is the difficulty of articulating the malleability of the underlying rules for applying that understanding.

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Professions have both ‘good apples’ and ‘bad apples’ as members, and commonly they are indistinguishable, though different subcultures within and across professions exist. The 2015 Australian report surfacing the scandal of a ‘normal’ culture of institutionalised bullying among surgeons of their peers (Scott and Matthews 2015) illustrates how definitions of professionalism can be used to cover up as much as they are used to describe occupational and positional power. All too commonly, it is possible to be a bully and a surgeon. This is organisational culture and cannot be dismissed as a matter of individual ‘bad apples’. From the consumer point of view, too, participation in such discourses of professionalism supports such professionals’ behaviour. Another interesting thing can be learned from recognising the distinction between profession and professionalism, in effect addressing W. B. Yates’ question, ‘How can we tell the dancer from the dance?’ (Poem: Among the Children, 1928, final line). Professionalism is not merely the epiphenomenon of the profession. Or to use a modern analogue, professionalism is not simply the software that goes with the hardware of an actual profession. It has become apparent that these two things over the passage of modern time, while correlated in many ways, nevertheless can and do, disarticulate from one another and continue to develop separately and in different directions (Larson 1990, 2008, 2017; Torstendahl and Burrage 1990; Schudson 1990; Siegrist 1990; Fournier 1999). This is an enormously important topic that deserves greater elaboration in how it works and the consequences of such separation—often profession and professionalism appear to be a kind of ‘planetary double’ when one is used to justify the other. Ideally, or aspirationally, the dialectic of values and commitments is worthy of specialised attention. Chapters 7 and 8 throw more light on this subject, but it can be noted here that daily professional practice and professional rhetoric can be at odds with and even inimical to the collective purpose of the profession and be either conservative or potentially more injurious. That is a point for justified critique. Equally, however, sociologists recognise that fruitful and ethical professional actions may derive from the practical application of the difference between professions’ structurally beneficial and relevant discourses that professionalism brings to professional work.

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Finally, to avoid a big topic becoming even bigger, it is possible to distinguish various kinds of professionalism and professionalisms (plural). A series of examples must suffice: elite professional place or role easily becomes a law unto itself, professional dominance (Freidson 1970); this is very different from middle-class allied health professionals’ self-inscribed professional conventionality; later professionalisation of nursing, veterinarians or computing represents other professionalisms; compliant office workers provide evidence and experience of professionalism as a mechanism of control (Fournier 1999). Various forms of defensive professionalism, some justified, but others not, exist too. The list goes on.

Creating or Maintaining a Profession? The elements proposed for defining a profession sit very differently when a nascent profession emerges compared to invoking those same or similar traits when a profession is well established in a mature occupational form. Even if identical characteristics are specified, the different context for a late-modern new profession or late-modern professionalising group gives such traits different salience and different potency in bringing about social change, resisting social change, creating adaptive innovation or justifying creation of a separate group. Recent examples such as recreational therapy or landscape architects stand in contrast to long-developed professions such as medicine or law. The often-mentioned notion of professional authority sat very differently in the gentlemanly (sic) class in Georgian England, before shifting to the markedly different medical authority of the age of heroic doctoring in the early twentieth century. This authority in turn shifted to sit very differently for professional young women optometrists or first-generation migrant medical practitioners at the start of the twenty-first century. Like the preceding distinctions, this is not especially difficult to understand but it is very commonly ignored. Failing to appreciate its relevance leaves an abstractly universalist conception of profession, as though it is a simple physical object, and then using this to measure, justify or defend individual professional groups, their practices or expectations. Often such focus on a single group like this makes invidious comparisons with other

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professions, being more about status and normative claims, rather than actually considering the profession or what it should be doing (Larson 1977). Normative ranking orders of social status appear to be part of human society, varying between cultures and throughout history. In western societies, alleged differences between professions have often been used to resist investigation and delay professions adapting to better use of new technologies, methods, shifts in scientific knowledge or inclusiveness. An in-joke among sociologists is that what profession a person studied can be guessed by the traits they claim are definitionally important. Abbott (1988) provides a jurisdictional or field theory identifying interaction and contestation between occupational professions. Perhaps the most explicit and easily recognisable consequence of the presence of existing professions when other groups are being formed or actively professionalising can be seen in what can be called the profession template effect. More recently professionalised occupations such as veterinarians, or professions that have in later western modernity undergone a period of significant professionalisation, do so within—or in relation to—the imagined profession template provided by earlier professions’ success, especially those such as medicine and law (Dent 2002; Jones 2003; Healy and Meagher 2004; Adams 2007). Chiropractic provides another example of this template effect (Villanueva-Russell 2008). Less high-profile professional groups, even more than others, self-consciously set out to implement the apparatus of what counts as a profession. Although Wilensky’s (1964) article can be criticised on several grounds such as its cultural specificity, the logic of professionalisation steps and sequence he outlines reflects a kind of Anglo-western professional playbook or template that newer and aspiring occupations and professions commonly pursue.

Professional (N.) or Professional (Adj.)? Another less commonly remarked slippage occurs in debates about what defines a profession: the use of the word professional as a noun rather than an adjective. Rather than professional being a descriptor of profession, this term has come to stand, at the same time, alongside profession, as a term in its own right. Individualising the idea of profession to a

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person—whether a single person or professionals in the plural—has several consequences. Some of these consequences are about the profession as an agential entity, its members probing, protecting, innovating and interacting with the socioeconomic and sociopolitical context. On this understanding, individual practitioners can more easily simply assume that what they do is professional or done ethically instead of asking more empirically based questions of themselves and their work. The larger occupational entity of which they are part, and to which they have necessarily subscribed, may thus be bracketed and cease to have the same constraining effect of behaviour in the self-focus of career and work. There are broad consequences as the politics of such individualised professional interest mixes with legal and formal stewardship of expert knowledge. There is another set of effects from individualising the concept of profession to the specific individual professional person as the primary unit of analysis, rather than the social-corporate entity. This falsely frames professionals as the primary players at the discursive level in social and cultural mores (whether heroic, celebrity or demonised). It may also excuse or redirect focus of professional work and quality. Once again this universalises the phenomenon of professionalism: in much the same way that science for Durkheim or Marx was a good thing, each arguing their substantive concerns within scientific frames. So today, claiming a professional approach or attitude is commonly essentialised as desirable and good and in many circumstances is asserted as necessary in its present form for the delivery of required outcomes and rewards in the relevant work sector. Three of the authors in Wilkinson et al. (2016) volume refer to this adjectival shift from profession to professional. Like the disjunctive shifts between profession and professionalism, the linguistic shift between adjectival professional and the same word as a noun—a name—allows polysemic difference to emerge that has been powerfully performative over time within modern culture. Under the pressures of continuously changing modern society a couple of centuries after professional groups began to emerge in recognisably modern form, the term professional can hold multiple meanings. On one hand, the traditional images continue of heroic, inspirational, dedicated, hard-working, professionals exist in mediatised and glamorised forms in films and television. On the other hand, a new downward directed gaze uses professional

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as a discourse of control in corporate and governmental regimes (Grey 1994; Fournier 1999). This is a fundamental discursive definitional shift. Between these two poles of idealised and managerialised professional activity, a variety of new banal applications play. At one end, admiration and respect. Nearer the other pole is self-invested forms of worth and narcissistic personal value. Both of these operate in the production and distribution of professional activity (Burns 2007), and both, to adapt Weber’s phrase, arguably create an iron cage of professionalism. These four points above identify how attempts to bottle definitions of professions and professionalism can escape the lid being placed on them because the referent is something different, something larger and more complex—profession or professional, profession or professionalism and so on. With the lid firmly on, only part of the definition might be contained, the remainder having got away, eluding capture. Language is a pliable yet sophisticated combination of rules and protocols applied to the vagaries of specific interactions and contexts. Similarly, the complexity of defining professions needs to address the formalities of the phenomenon, while at the same time recognising specific moments/events and accounts of individual professions and their settings which are the cultural front-end signifiers of change and adaptation over time.

Sociologically Rich Concepts Profession and professionalism sit among other rich sociological concepts. In every case, such concepts are an amalgam of interconnected, complex ideas with multiple referents in the everyday world. These ideas are always highly contested both among academic scholars, invested parties and in popular usage. Such ideas are often co-opted into politically charged usage and may become litmus tests of policy or ideological positions. On the one hand, they resist theorising because they are pluripotent, but on the other hand, the proximity of symbolic meaning to power invites, even requires, stakeholder contestation in attempting to control the meaning. Such concepts by their adaptability find many niches in everyday application, each a little different from the last, but which in turn raise objections or defences

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from other interested parties who choose, or wish, to use keywords such as profession in different ways to achieve different outcomes. Along with professions, other examples of rich concepts in sociology include social class, community, place, power and identity.These concepts, like profession, have characteristics in common with those described in the previous paragraph. The relevance to theorising professions here is that recognising profession as a sociologically rich concept invites learning from the experience of analysts of other rich concepts. It both allows and requires attention in terms of complexity and sociopolitical negotiation and context and all the literature surrounding these (Mitleton-Kelly 2003), rather than precipitating formal definitions. It resists claims of priority, or grounds of urgency, for a more circumscribed or self-sufficient definitional focus. Rich concepts, much more than everyday terms, have a polysemic quality in the multiple meanings with which each is inscribed. The meanings that rich concepts like profession embody morph over time and recombine or diverge in different sociocultural contexts and bundles and usually hold paradoxical if not contradictory elements acquired from historic bundling of ideas or values.

Professions and Canonical Forms In the physical sciences and computing fields—thus even in positivist domains of inquiry—complex accounts of reality are sometimes stated in parts or in alternate forms. The reality investigated is resistant to simple explanations; more variables are involved; more interactions and adaptations of the components are present. Perhaps there is a simple underlying reality that can be conceptually formulated, but the field is not at that stage yet. Professions can be usefully thought of as equivalent, for this present conversation, within larger geographic, economic and social systems. Are they about knowledge, or occupation or technique? Chemistry often offers two ways of describing molecules; physicists describe light sometimes as a particle and sometimes as a wave. Definitional precision, in general, comes up against representational adequacy when there is more than one way needed to represent complex, rich, phenomena. Definitional

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imperatives can wait if this is the case in disciplines like the physical sciences. There, even positivist perspectives do not immediately appear to be undermined in the description of what is being studied by continuing open-ended definition, even before questions about quantum reality enter the analysis. This is advisory for those with a strong desire for definitional clarity around professions. These issues are more problematic in social analysis, where the focus of inquiry is the product of human creation and socially constructed actions. This is not to say this is in any way less real, and certainly not to say it is any less important. Merely that social reality is constituted by humans and is out there as part of society in a different way than an apple or a bar of metal is ‘out there’. There are major epistemological questions behind these similarities and differences. It is not possible to fully separate the variables in human action; such inconvenience is further made difficult by not being able to run and re-run experiments like physical science. The componentry of creating larger but more provisional definitions of professions, on this kind of understanding, may draw on the cluster of traits that functionalist sociology of professions made central. But not necessarily; nor necessarily using such traits in the same way; nor necessarily limiting inclusion to such traits, but potentially including other characteristics as more canonical of professions and professionalism (Larson 1977). A long definitional tradition from Flexner (1915; Duffy 2011) through Goode (1960) onwards wrestled with differing levels of appreciation of the larger societal frameworks within which professions operated, either reducing the key features till they could locate and name what they believed were common foundational traits, or risking the ire of other professions and theorists who perceived a differing (even if often overlapping) base set of characteristics as essential. In other instances, sociologists produced a canonical representation that privileged one profession over another. Quantum-like, however, rather than simpler positivist science, the observation of professions appeared to have an impact on the phenomenon itself. It appears to be an unintended sleight of hand that lets the service metric be appropriated by surveyors or financiers, or scientific rigour be imputed to the professionalism of, say, occupational therapists or lawyers. It is a long bow to draw—without saying it cannot be drawn—to argue that community benefit is served by the huge professional legal teams of

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Apple, Facebook, Samsung, Google and Microsoft Corporations, given corporations’ use of law can be described as aggressive competition by other means.

Paradigmatic Shift A different literature points to another deep issue. Maybe the definitional problem was a sign that the prior sociological conception of professions, as well as corresponding everyday views of professions, did not—or did not any longer—properly explain all that seemed to be going on in the world of professions and professionalism. It can be added parenthetically here that there is a later question to this one that goes on to ask if it ever did? This approach critiques not just professionals’ own views but sociology of professions scholarship. Ideas and questions about professions at the edge of an existing paradigm were not being absorbed and included. Are not professions sometimes acting in their own interests as much as in their clients’ interests? Why should status be of concern to professionals claiming altruism and community service as their dominant characteristics? Why should professional services cost so much if they are about serving as much or more than about high levels of earning or self-advancement? Professional leaders who applied the existing functional model of professions often struggled to absorb—a difficulty that continues—these labour market realities and technological routinisations of previously hard-won skillsets and domain expertise. This is because functional sociology of professions is an unsatisfactory model to analyse these wider marketplace issues and questions. Partisan contesting for supremacy, or at least a place in the division of labour of middle-class professional life and lifestyle, made a certain kind of sense, but it remained sociologically inadequate as a causal and historical account of current practices and divisions of intellectual or white-collar labour. Thus, conventional definitions failed and continue to fail at capturing the central meanings of professions. The contest over meanings was not about the undoubted reality or importance of the phenomenon observed,

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but over capturing that meaning in the formal terms of defining the phenomenon and thereby advancing or maintaining relative position. Competing self-interest (clocking up time or serving clients’ needs), mechanisms of gender exclusion between radiography and radiology (Witz 1992; Davies 1996, 2007), is one profession ‘better’ compared to another (accounting or lawyer), or privileging the role (doctor, judge) or ancientness (clergy, military), or modernness (financial advisor, journalist) of another profession—all these and other distinctions were too easily seen as getting in the way of more appropriately comprehensive summations and definitions. Kuhn (1970) observed that any large framework or worldview continues as the dominant way of viewing things even when an increasing number of new pieces of information are not explained adequately by this main model. The shocking thing for science scholars on first hearing Kuhn’s argument was that this principle could be evidenced empirically in science and scientific understandings as much as in non-science worldviews (Hunter 2006, p. 100). Science with its strong, modernist claims to knowledge and truth had for the most part forgotten that knowledge is held by people and groups. It does not exist on its own in some metaphysical library or cosmic-virtual database. The human carriers of that knowledge make sense of the many parts of this knowledge as some kind of whole—a paradigm—that interprets the world or the part of the world to which the knowledge and actors’ interests pertain. Their class, race, gender, nationality, sexuality, among other things position and configure their science, technology or professional knowledge. A similar thing happens in professions’ self-referential certitude. This is the case even when new pieces of information no longer fit the existing framework very well, but are not yet organised, empowered, coherent enough or articulated sufficiently for an alternative form of explaining these elements to emerge to make sense of them. Scientists, like professionals, like other social groupings, resist changing their big picture, preferring to bracket off, or hold dissonant facts in a liminal position, resisting until it becomes overwhelmingly necessary to reframe the field. This is not a matter of bad science, but the necessary precaution of needing gains from new paradigms to outweigh the loss of explanatory power of previous ones. Further, this is not a simple story of ‘truth will arise and prevail’

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but an account which can also encompass much nastier forms of contestation for domination and control over an area of expertise, discipline or profession—think of the decision process around Galileo’s concept of a heliocentric solar system or the subtler example of ignoring Polanyi’s (1958) early-career discovery of weak forces in crystals.

‘Death of Professions’ Literature From the decade of the 1960s, perspectival issues about the nature of professions and professions—in Kuhn’s (1970) sense of paradigmatic or epistemic conceptions—saw ever-greater preoccupation with defining professions and professionalism, redoubling definitional efforts to meet louder voices of criticism. As Young and Muller (2014, p. 3) note, ‘the demarcation criteria [trait lists] that… emerged to distinguish professions from other occupations – deployment of expert knowledge, technical autonomy, a normative orientation, and social and material rewards (Gorman and Sandefur 2011), are not clear theorising how they distinguish professions and other expert occupations’. Instead of embracing the new paradigm, culturally naturalised views about the autochthonous, stand-alone, basis of professions meant a kind of definitional circumnavigation and conceptual retreat took place. In the 1970–1980s, there was a rather sad literature within social sciences that spoke of the death of professions, meaning either the demise of ‘true’ professions or of sociological analysis of professions and professionalism—at least this was what some academic commentators believed. What had actually taken place was the undermining of the then-dominant Anglophone or US model of professions (Khoury 1980; Macdonald et al. 1988). Over time, it could be seen that this ideological and idealised version of professions simply failed as a definition and explanation of professions or professionalism. More accurately, it might be said that it was the academic disciplines, including sociology, that had codified and elaborated dominant professions’ affirmations about what was a profession and conveniently passed them off as explanations of professions, a kind of moral licensing (Merritt

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et al. 2010). This did double duty as narratives legitimising various advantages that successful professional projects—to use Larson’s (1977) term— conferred on achievement of professional status. In fairness, however, it has to be said that social analysts also offered much sturdier accounts. For example, Broadbent et al. (1997) provide a more recent and nuanced version in The End of the Professions? How, they ask, are professions being repositioned? Had professions research simply gone underground? (Gorman and Sandefur 2011). Several threads in the sociological analysis of professions can be understood more sensibly in the light of this more objective shift from adulatory or career-success commentary on professions and professionalisation. Professions themselves and in particular the 1960s peak professional experience of institutionalised medicine (Becker et al. 1961) in western culture began to be seen as something other than unambiguously good. With the admiration, other ideas emerged like professions being ‘onto a good thing’, cartel-like or monopolistic and giving professional members’ concerns more priority than clients. The language of deprofessionalisation or commodification of professional skills, seen in Braverman’s (1974) deskilling thesis for non-professional occupations, was pressed into service describing professional change. Deprofessionalisation ideas formed part of this sense of reduced honour and potential prestige diminution or loss of relevance (Toren 1972, 1975) for professional elites if not always for small-town professionals. Concerns about bureaucratisation similarly projected concerns about the eclipse of professional values, continuing to be articulated by Freidson (1983, 1986, 1994, 2001), not always helpfully. Despite his influential earlier contributions, these subsequent analyses of professions took what can now be termed the unsatisfactory ‘third way’ political logics (Mouzelis 2001). However, as objections to loss of professional autonomy and requirements to comply with new quality standards developed, a more grounded concept of professions and professionalism was clearly needed. A better framing is to be found in Johnson’s (1995) elaboration of professional positioning in terms of governmentality which theorised change under new structuring conditions, as the relevant condition, rather than prefiguring demise. This was much more consistent with the substantial literature emerging from a plenitude of research into professional work.

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Reframing Definitional Debates About Professions The discussion so far has resisted definitional closure by not attempting to directly address the question of what a profession is or define what constitutes a profession. The present strategy continues to take the reader past this positivist science insistence that one must get definitions clear at the start. In this section of the chapter, a series of points are elaborated, inviting readers to see the intricacies of handling definitional debates and issues concerning professions. A circuitous but systematic task is undertaken to achieve this. In one way, this is like a photographer seeking opportunities in the forest: going out hunting too directly shows simply the absence of the quarry; the obvious route will not yield the result desired. Circling the location allows gradually increasing precision in establishing its whereabouts, even while the quarry continues to move and is active in dealing with its own focal concerns. Several concepts assist in this reframing process (Table 2.2). Whereas the previous distinctions showed the malleability of the twin concepts of professions and professionalism under the pressures of ongoing modernisation, the five ideas explored in this section illuminate the multi-layered, multi-variable nature of professions. Concepts are important elements in discourse and the power of discourse will be discussed more fully in Chapter 4. The present chapter is not yet ready to broach that more abstract framing of concepts, but in challenging the urge to get things neatly defined, it applies definitional resistance to the assumptions made in conventional use of these ideas. This is necessary because otherwise the discussion is falsely skewed even before it gets underway. A ‘more of the same’ view of professions will not speak to present dilemmas and issues of performance. Even less will it prepare new thinking to face the future. Table 2.2 1 2 3 4 5

Reframing definitional debates about professions Sociologically rich concepts Professions and canonical forms Paradigmatic shift ‘Death of professions’ One phenomenon or many

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One Phenomenon or Many? What interrupts many conversations attempting to define professions is the counter-challenge to a proffered definition. Against a proposed definition a respondent claims that the definition draws a circle too tightly, such that it fails to encompass other professional groups or misses the complexity of professions. This is the dilemma identified earlier in the chapter. Sociological investigations have in the past and will continue in the future to research individual professions, particular situations in which professionals work or specific problems facing professions, client groups or policymakers. It is all too possible, however, to draw important ideas from off the shelf or from evidence specific to the context of that investigation. Yet such ideas may fall short in a larger theoretical framework suitable for judging professional and consumer/client claims or assessing the expectations of all stakeholders. Even further, there is a need to evaluate cost and efficiency claims which today are being repositioned in the light of scientific and technological developments such as digital expertise. To anticipate later discussion a little, professions are today commonly located within, or at least in relation to, large and complex organisations, some being government agencies, some being third-sector non-government enterprises or other commercial entities from small to extremely large corporations. A period of railing against this as contravention and contradiction of professional values and professionalism occurred under the trait approach as this neared its paradigmatic limits in the 1960s–1980s, as seen in literature on deprofessionalisation and the alleged demise of professions. However, this empirical trend of professionals employed by or in organisations has grown apace, and is continuing, from mid-twentieth century onwards (Hall 1968; Brint 1994). Theorising this conjunction has had to be reinvented as well. Chapter 8 suggests an explanation to resolve conventional framing of this problem. There is a kind of cleverness, an occupational aesthetic move, in the way that the multiple discursive narratives within which professions have enfolded themselves over the last one to two centuries, establishing for professions a prime place in the differentiation and specialisation of modern economies. This discursive interlinking suggests application of Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of assemblages (De Landa 2006). Professional traits

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rather than being simple, natural, factual descriptors of professions are better viewed as either necessary or optional components, not the phenomenon itself, as they are deployed affirmatively in creating professions. Professions are normatively defined as good, honoured for being science and evidence based, but also include occupations that are clearly not primarily science-based or service-oriented. At the same time, many professions function mainly in the service of corporations pursuing profit, and individual professionals’ qualifications and skills in such environs are mere engines of instrumental or career self-improvement, cultural capital and social and economic gain, minimally if at all oriented to serving clients. Traits and key functionalities, then, are affirmations from within, and these should be clearly distinguished from confirmations from without. These latter come from other professionals, or from organisations or governments needing these skill offerings in their professional service value propositions for electorate and citizenry, consumers, or for other affected stakeholders. Professional traits are all of these things and more, brought from diverse corners of the social map into a composite assembly. Instead of a moral discourse, inherently true from the inside out, ultimately it is much more sociologically respectful, to see traits as markers of the positioning either by action or response to occupational groups within the constraints of changing modernity across two centuries. This is no endof-era argument. This is equally read as an early phase of professions and professionalisation, moving beyond the post-professional transition to discover new things that professions are capable of, required and expected to be doing. Deleuze and Guattari (2007 [1987]; De Landa 2006), like Foucault (1972, 1980), were mounting one part of a conceptual apparatus, long before it was widely recognised as such. This contested the limiting certainties—not the freeing axioms—of scientific and technological progress and coeval rigidities and harshness towards minorities, sustainable economy and marginalising non-modern modes of thought. Critiques of Deleuze point out the problem of infinite regress of his assemblage process and the vagueness of his propositions for reframing modernity. Applying assemblages as midrange theorising to modern professions can be similarly challenged. But the double-counter argued in this book in Chapter 7 is that such critique misses the value of Deleuze’s dialectic standpoint against

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modern concreteness and certitude. His agenda is one of deconstruction, of unpicking the bounded and channelled certainties that are unsustainable in the long run. Even as professions within prevailing formations of western modernity came to be recognised as twentieth-century success stories, seeds of their own repositioning were discernible in the outworking of contradictory parts of modern, capitalist, organisational and class discursive assemblages. These include earning capacity and service, status and altruism, and ethicality through technical rationality. Over time, each of these began to manifest as paradoxes in professions. Later stages of western modernity reassert the importance of the social beyond any simple pre-eminence of technological expertise, meaning professional care is a changing discourse amid ongoing technological-professional imperatives. In today’s civilisational shifts coinciding with changing global energy-climate and human-environment interfaces, no single theory seems sufficient. The idea of assemblages helps sustain the signalling of inadequacies and need for change, beyond the prevailing orthodoxies of western modernity.

Conclusion The definitional analysis of this chapter has addressed dilemmas of justification and explanation facing each individual who comes to the task of summarising what professions are and do. This problem is seen most acutely when there appears to be a need for legitimating an individual’s own field or supporting a group’s inclusion in the desirable category of social phenomena called professions and undertaking professional work. Further, questions of defining professions take on a different complexion when debates centre on considering legislative demarcation and official recognition. This in turn raises more fascinating questions about the utility of control and regulatory protocols on quality and expectations of professional performance. Professional groups aspire to and pursue their occupational projects in such contexts: they are certainly motivated for the better delivery of the services they offer, but also receiving or conferring market advantage and quality assurance branding for themselves. In what ways is this more than just a matter of education, of degrees,

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of qualifications? Any analysis of the definitional problématique is also faced by sociologists aiming to assemble academically robust and objective explanatory models of professions in general. Theory is as much about simplifying, stepping carefully and avoidance, as it is about forming constructs. A series of moves have been taken in this chapter to refrain from yet again locking together elements of a definition of professions that perhaps unwittingly simply serves to limit understanding rather than to increase it. By resituating the apparent intransigence of the concepts of professions and professionalism, opportunity is created to see the bigger picture of which professions form a part. This is no light achievement for the sociological contribution made here. It is precisely the avoidance of tidy yet limited answers which positively but too narrowly assert what professions are that allows new pictures to be drawn. Professions are not institutions or agents sui generis but are co-participants and co-respondents to other components, sectors, agents, institutions and discourses within modern society. In contrast to the positivist and formalist inclination of experts in the modern era claiming and exerting control over the natural and social environments around them, it turns out that professions, along with many other important social phenomena, are importantly emergent in what they are and how they come into being. Professions are made up as they go along. The logic of such emergence is, however, often masked—not necessarily it might be added for inherently nefarious reasons—but in the ways that social order is re-read and reframed in almost all settings. Professions can be—and for the most part actively are—endowed with the patina of tradition and ancient authority. But in reality each new event, technology, scandal, crisis or government policy causes a responding invention either in reconfirmation, negotiation, or in adaption of the original professional project, at least in that local or national instantiation of it. The brilliance of professions in achieving and sustaining their success through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been, to no little extent, their capacity to adapt and naturalise the legitimacy of their position and role and embed it in political and popular culture even as society changes. The question is whether this will be enough to continue such levels of success into the future.

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Different readers will be familiar with one or more of the issues discussed here, many of which have been treated in much greater detail in the academic journal literature on professions and professionalism. Examples of reflection about the state of change in contemporary professions and professionalism can be seen in focus achieved in special issues in diverse sources such as Evetts (2006) or Butler et al. (2012) and Noordegraaf (2015). Conversations such as these and many other clusters in conferences mentioned in the previous chapter, and a wide range of journals, extend the informational base for a more global framing of how contemporary professions and professionalism are changing (Faulconbridge and Muzio 2012). It is necessary to get past the twin barriers of the ‘death of professions’ literature about failed theorising, as well as the definitional affirmations from near and far providing at best limited sociological framing for understanding professions and professionalism. The argument now moves from resisting closure on the abstract definitional question, ‘What is a profession?’ to asking how do professions fit with other kinds of organisational and institutional forms in the modern world? This poses a similar question about what a profession is but from another vantage point. Rather than an internalist, traits-based idea of professions created from listening primarily to professions themselves, this next step to theorising professions looks at external factors that help define what makes a profession.

References Abbott, A. D. (1988). The system of professions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Adams, T. L. (1998). Gender and women’s employment in the male-dominated profession of dentistry: 1867–1917. The Canadian Review of Sociology & Anthropology, 35 (1), 21–42. Adams, T. L. (2007). Interprofessional relations and the emergence of a new professions: Software engineering in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. The Sociological Quarterly, 48(3), 507–532. Aronowitz, S. (1988). Science as power. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Evetts, J. (2006). Directions. Current Sociology, 54 (1), 133–143. Evetts, J. (2014). Professionalism: Theoretical changes and challenges. Travail Emploi Formation, 11, 90–110. Faulconbridge, J., & Muzio, M. (2012). Professions in a globalizing world: Towards a transnational sociology of the professions. International Sociology, 27 (1), 136–152. Fletcher, J. (2001). Disappearing acts: Gender power, and relational practice at work. Cambridge: MIT Press. Flexner, A. (1915). Is social work a profession? School & Society, 1(26), 90–111. Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge. New York: Pantheon. Fournier, V. (1999). The appeal to ‘professionalism’ as a disciplinary mechanism. The Sociological Review, 47 (2), 280–307. Fournier, V. (2000). Boundary work and the (un)making of the professions. In N. Malin (Ed.), Professionalism, boundaries and the workplace (pp. 67–86). London: Routledge. Freidson, E. (1970). Professional dominance. New York: Atherton. Freidson, E. (1983). The theory of professions: State of the art. In R. Dingwall & P. Lewis (Eds.), The sociology of the professions (pp.19–37). London: Macmillan. Freidson, E. (1986). Professional powers: A study of the institutionalization of formal knowledge. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Freidson, E. (1994). Professionalism reborn: Theory, prophecy, and policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Freidson, E. (2001). Professionalism: The third logic. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Goode, W. J. (1957). Community within a community: The professions. American Sociological Review, 22(2), 194–200. Goode, W. J. (1960). Encroachment, charlatanism and the emerging professions: Psychology, sociology and medicine. American Journal of Sociology, 25 (6), 902–914. Gordon, R. J. (2016). The rise and fall of American growth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gorman, E. H., & Sandefur, R. L. (2011). ‘Golden age.’ Quiescence, and revival: How the sociology of professions became the study of knowledge-based work. Work & Occupations, 38(3), 275–302. Grey, C. (1994). Career as a project of the self and labour process discipline. Sociology, 28(2), 479–497. Grey, C. (2004). Management as a technical practice: Professionalization or responsibilization. In P. Jeffcut (Ed.), The foundations of management knowledge (pp. 44–65). London: Routledge.

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Hall, R. H. (1968). Professionalization and bureaucratization. American Sociological Review, 33(1), 92–104. Harding, S. (1991). Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women’s lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Harding, S. (1998). Is science multicultural? Postcolonialisms, feminisms, and epistemologies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Healy, K., & Meagher, G. (2004). The reprofessionalization of social work: Collaborative approaches for achieving professional recognition. British Journal of Social Work, 34 (2), 243–260. Hunter, I. (2006). The history of theory. Critical Inquiry, 33(1), 78–112. Johnson, T. J. (1972). Professions and power. London: Macmillan. Republished Routledge, 2016. Johnson, T. J. (1995). Governmentality and the institutionalization of expertise. In T. J. Johnson, G. Larkin, & M. Saks (Eds.), Health professions and the state in Europe (pp. 7–24). London: Routledge. Jones, S. D. (2003). Valuing animals. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Khoury, R. M. (1980). The sociology of the professions: Are we headed down a dead-end street? Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology, 8(1), 31–36. Kronus, C. L. (1976). The evolution of occupational power: An historical study of task boundaries between physicians and pharmacists. Sociology of Work & Occupations, 3(1), 3–37. Kuhn, T. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Larson, M. S. (1977). The rise of professionalism: A sociological analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press. Larson, M. S. (1990). On the matter of experts and professionals, or how impossible is it to leave nothing unsaid. In R. Torstendahl & M. C. Burrage (Eds.), The formation of professions (pp. 11–23). London: Sage. Larson, M. S. (2008). Response to David Sciulli’s ‘Revisionism in sociology of professions today: Conceptual approaches by Larson’. Sociologica, 2(3), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.2383/28766. Larson, M. S. (2017). Professions today: Self-criticism and reflections for the future. https://www.academia.edu/34978672/Professions_and_professionalism_ today_a_self-criticism_and_some_reflections_for_the_future. Macdonald, K. M. (1995). The sociology of the professions. London: Sage. Macdonald, K. M., Ritzer, G., & Hall, R. R. (1988). The sociology of the professions: Dead or alive? Work & Occupations, 15 (3), 251–273.

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Mclaughlin, J., & Webster, A. (1998). Rationalising knowledge: IT systems, professional identities and power. The Sociological Review, 46 (4), 781–802. Merritt, A. C., Effron, D. A., & Monin, B. (2010). Moral self-licensing: When being good frees us to be bad. Social and Personality Psychology, 4 (5), 344–357. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00263.x. Mitleton-Kelly, E. (2003). Ten principles of complexity and enabling infrastructures. In E. Mitleton-Kelly (Ed.), Complex systems and evolutionary perspectives of organisations: The application of complexity theory to organisations (pp. 1–31). Bradford, UK: Elsevier. Mouzelis, N. (2001). Reflexive modernization and the third way: The impasses of Giddens/social-democratic politics. The Sociological Review, 49 (3), 436–456. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954x.00340. Nader, R., & Smith, W. (1996). No contest: Corporate lawyers and the perversion of justice in America. New York: Random. Noordegraaf, M. (2015). Hybrid professionalism and beyond: (New) forms of public professionalism in changing organizational and societal contexts. Journal of Professions & Organization, 2(2), 187–206. Pescosolido, B., & Olafsdottir, S. (2010). The cultural turn in sociology: Can it help us resolve an age-old problem in understanding decision making for health care? Sociological Forum, 25 (4), 655–676. https://doi.org/10.1111/j. 1573-7861.2010.01206.x. Polanyi, M. (1958). Personal knowledge. New York: Harper. Rose, N. (1990). Review of ‘Technical workers in an advanced society: The work, career and politics of French engineers’ by Stephen Crawford. Sociology, 24 (4), 691. Rossides, D. W. (1997). Professions and disciplines: Functional and conflict perspectives. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Saks, M. (2005). Professions and the public interest: Medical power, altruism and alternative medicine. London: Routledge. Schudson, M. (1990). Origins of the ideal of objectivity in the professions. New York: Garland Press. Scott, S., & Matthews, A. (2015, September 10). Doctor who sparked report into surgeon bullying and harassment shocked by extent of findings. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-10/doctor-shocked-by-extent-ofbullying-report/6766332. Siegrist, H. (1990). Professionalisation as a process: Patterns, progression and discontinuity. In M. C. Burrage & R. Torstendahl (Eds.), Professions in theory and history: Rethinking the study of professions (pp. 177–202). London: Sage.

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Stevens, R. (2001). Public roles for the medical profession in the United States: Beyond theories of decline and fall. Milbank Quarterly, 79 (3), 327–353. Swedberg, R. (2019). On the use of definitions in sociology. European Journal of Social Theory. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431019831855. Teubner, G. (1987). Juridification: Concepts, aspects, limits, solutions. In G. Teubner (Ed.), Juridification of social spheres: A comparative analysis in the areas of labor, corporate, antitrust and social welfare law (pp. 34–38). Berlin: De Gruyter. Toren, N. (1972). Social work: The case of a semi-profession. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Toren, N. (1975). Deprofessionalization and its sources: A preliminary analysis. Sociology of Work and Occupations, 2(4), 323–337. Torstendahl, R., & Burrage, M. C. (Eds.). (1990). The formation of professions: Knowledge, state and strategy. London: Sage. Turner, B. (1987). Medical power and social knowledge. London: Tavistock. Villanueva-Russell, Y. (2008). An ideal-typical development of chiropractic, 1895–1961: Pursuing professional ends through entrepreneurial means. Social Theory & Health, 6 (3), 250–272. Wall, K. (1991). Chandra: A biography of S. Chandrasekhar. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wilensky, H. L. (1964). The professionalization of everyone? American Journal of Sociology, 70 (2), 137–158. Wilkinson, A., Hislop, D., & Coupland, C. (Eds.). (2016). Perspectives on contemporary professional work. Cheltenham, UK: Elgar. Witz, A. (1992). Professions and patriarchy. London: Routledge. Young, M., & Muller, J. (Eds.). (2014). Knowledge, expertise and the professions. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

3 Professions and Modern Organisational Forms

Building Blocks of Analysis A key lesson of Chapter 1 was that there are academically constructive ways to talk about professions, contributing new or alternative definitional elements and understandings, checking theoretical assumptions. To do this, adequate theorising of contemporary activity needs to avoid conceptual and empirical closure that simply accepts professions’ or media created definitions and idealisations. Chapter 2 added another incremental piece of the theoretical jigsaw puzzle by elaborating the rich definitional complexity of professions. It reviewed some candidate procedures used to define professions and professionalism and warned of distorting effects these can create. The underlying premise of this third chapter is that professions collectively constitute a particular mode of organisation and governance formed as part of the modern era (Perkin 1969, 1989; Hall and Gieben 1992; Corfield 1995). The issue of hinging analysis around a single profession, or professions in general, was raised as a definitional point in the previous chapter. It recurs here, but professions as a category are now seen at the societal or institutional scale from a vantage point external to professions. But as Steinmetz (2013, p. 4) remarks, ‘pace Pierre Bourdieu, the © The Author(s) 2019 E. A. Burns, Theorising Professions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27935-6_3

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professional field is not the only field with which and against which one has been formed’. In this chapter, to simplify the discussion and make the principal point of the chapter, professions are treated as an aggregate phenomenon. Substantively, this can be argued from the proposition that, ‘all professions, in analogous ways, are a solution to the same problem – that none of us has enough specialist knowledge to cope with our daily challenges’ (Susskind and Susskind 2015, p. 3), but here, the purpose is methodological simplification to make the chapter’s argument. Clearly, this reduction of professions to a category would yield many interesting patterns if it was reversed and professions could be seen in their variations, but that is a different task. Here, some overall sense of professions in modernity is of prior importance to help reframe professions away from angst over what or who is a profession and who is not included. The previous chapters argued that trait definitions and professions’ own definitions are used in primarily internalist ways, and for a long time, the functionalist narrative enabled such definitions to be seen as reasonable attempts to locate and account for professions within modern society. In reality, listing descriptive traits is not adequately robust enough as an explanation to stand against the seduction of professional projects focused on enhancing group status and earnings. There is no inherent self-reflexive component in such ideas to enable critique and challenge to current practice, behaviour, quality, treatment of clients or rent-seeking by limiting domains of expertise. That has to come from elsewhere. It can also be asked, why would professions, more than other groups in society, be self-reflexive? From the claims of doing good? Professions have high levels of education, make claims of service and public good and operate within desired public esteem and respectability. Little of these aspects count overtly in the calculus of the task focus of professions yet are fundamental to the twinned projects—economic and status/respect— of professionalism (Larson 1977). They have consequences as drivers of conduct for professional service delivery in all fields, especially as the naturalised western priorities and ranking of modern professionalism continue to shift globally.

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Situating Professions in Modernity The plan here is to set out a typological matrix to bring together similarities and comparisons of professions and other organisational formats as empirical categories or modes of production and delivery of an everincreasing range of services. This demonstrates professions constitute one institutional form generated in response to modernity. As such, they are sitting within a profusion of other evolutionary possibilities, noted at the end of the last chapter. These are assemblages (Deleuze and Guattari 2007 [1987]; De Landa 2006) of expertise, control, authority, altruism and other characteristics that can be productively compared between professions and professionalism and other institutional forms, as well as seeing professions now functioning within other modern organisational forms. In this chapter, the discussion examines a selection of six of these candidate forms of modernity—one of them being professions—considering each of them in relation to this contesting process. Five other forms of modern organisational mode that are, or have been, commonly asserted as opposite to professions are reviewed. This chapter’s argument is thus a pivot from the method of the previous one. Having there offered one line of argument towards deconstructing the essentialised notion of the modern profession, the present chapter starts with the everyday assumption that there is something called profession treated as an unproblematic category in the modern world. The argument in this chapter is mounted by accepting that starting point for the moment but seeing through its coherence. This is done by bringing forward contesting institutional processes. Professions are found to be just one strand of institutional possibility about how modern society could be organised. In doing this, the chapter demonstrates the false certainty of uniqueness claimed for professions. This is actually a debate about the contingent nature of modernisation. A range of influential factors can be identified: European empires and Anglo-American settler societies’ political trends and revolutions, disease epidemics, effects of when and where technological change occurred and who benefited, written and financial record-keeping, how economic events interacted with political upheavals (Krause 1996; Macdonald 1995;

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Weaver 2006) and the gradual development of modern educational systems. All these macro-historical components, and many others, contributed to patterns of professional evolution as well. The contestation illustrates the thesis that modernity is made up of a pastiche, an assemblage, of organisational forms in which social and economic power, Deleuze’s term puissance, resides. Professions exist within and part of—not outside or above—this endlessly hybridising modern world. The chapter applies a typological method to deconstruct common statements of what professions are, stepping through three parts. First, discussion of method-driven versus theory-driven typologies and typological thinking—the latter being preferred—leads into consideration of three significant typologies relevant to sociological understanding of professions. The second part of the chapter discusses the logic of constructing the present typology of modern organisation forms to illuminate and challenge functionalist arguments about the uniqueness of professions. Third, the last part of the chapter considers in turn each of the five supposed opposite modes of modern organisational forms to professions and shows such claims are specious. These five contrasts draw on literature within sociological and other fields to make each point.

Typologies and Professions The argument of this chapter is framed via setting out a typology of modern organisational forms. This locates professions in a way not usually considered. All typologies serve a mixture of theoretical and methodological tasks, something I have examined in exploring how scholars explicated the idea of professional career transition—deploying various typologies, some useful, some inadequate (Burns 2015b). Typologies in social science disciplines range from methodological typologies in tightly formatted two-by-two boxes or larger, these being common in experimental work in psychological research and related fields, but not the focus here because of what they assume. Such typologies are driven by experimental results, data necessarily being fitted into one or another cell. In this chapter, however, Beilharz’s (1997, p. 73) more open typology-as-theory perspective is used: ‘looser types of precedent, of déjà vu, of recycling, return, re–formation,

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transformation, of context rather than abstract logic’. Such typological thinking is not committed to cross-matching types on a two-by-two or similar dimensional matrix (Layder 1998) but is built up from several types that may be variable-rich rather than reduced to one variable only in each type. There are several well-known typologies in the field of professions studies, some explicit and some implicit, each of which lies adjacent rather than directly relevant to the typology constructed in this chapter. Together these theoretical efforts help situate the present discussion. Weber and Johnson developed typologies that have stood the test of time, but the third one considered here, Wilensky’s, is an example of a typology that fails empirically. Weber: Max Weber’s ideal-type methodology (Turner and Factor 1994; Radkau 2009; Rosenberg 2016) was intended to constrain individualistic explanations. This is sympathetic to the view here of inspecting professions as occupational groups arguing their claims of uniqueness or being special. Further, Weber also intended ideal-types to ride the edge of, yet be a tool to examine, reified explanations of history somehow causing things to happen rather than events or actions causing change. As an active methodological tool, Weber proposed the ideal-type as bridging theory and empirical examples and being useful to allow historical comparison. The point of such a method is to abstract from real phenomena aspects of interest or significance to enable description of similarities and differences. The tool is neither completely empirical nor too broadly theoretical but brings the two things together. There are complexities in Weber’s work that are outside the discussion here, such as distinguishing pure types from ideal-types. But it is worth noting several famous examples in his writing, notably types of authority—legal-rational, traditional, charismatic—and his analysis of modern bureaucracy. These studies provide important insights in modern theory of organisational and political forms, the latter for what he saw as holding implications for performing work in an environment of personal alienation. Weber’s identification of common features of modernisation, such as rationalisation and disenchantment, is very much part of this conversation, using the idea of typology here to compare and contrast modern empirical

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Johnson’s extended typology of professions Professional patronage Collegial professionalism Mediation of professions Professional heteronomy

Source Johnson (1972), Esland (1980), Burns (2009)

organisational types. Weber’s classic examination of bureaucracy in idealtype terms would need to be replaced by professions to similarly use his formulation. The typology constructed in this chapter, however, is for a different purpose, that of considering similarities and differences between professions and a range of significant other modern organisational formats. Johnson: A second typology, in the Beilharz style, is Johnson’s (1972) typology of professions (Table 3.1). Despite its pivotal role in the paradigm shift of the 1970s, it has been criticised for not generating research. In my view, any such alleged failure lies rather at the feet of significant functional perspectives still limiting the conceptual reach for possible applications. Scholars like Fielding and Portwood (1980) immediately began applying it to investigating professions. In my own work, I have found Johnson’s typology very emancipatory from functional interpretations and productive of a series of projects on the veterinary profession (Burns 1979, 1982, 2007, 2009, 2010a, b, 2011, 2015a), giving a lens to see and interpret events and patterns that otherwise seem mere interstitial buffering between occupational change events. Johnson posited that social class and occupational power, rather than claims to goodness or expertise by themselves (such things may be resources in the argument), were much more definitive of professional success and the kind and configuration of professions that formed in modern society. Johnson’s typology can be summarised as having four types—his original formulation identified the first three—that can be distinguished by the twin functions of how power is shared and who defines the relationship between the producer and consumer of professional services. First, professionalism as patronage occurs when the consumer defines the relationship. Architects designing for corporations fit this type. Second, collegial professions as a type fit the traditional sole heroic practitioner understanding of professions as independent, small businesses, but misses

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where these have morphed into other types. In this type, the producer, that is the profession, defines the relationship. Third, mediation is another type, and in this case, neither the producer nor consumer is the primary definer of how the relationship works, a function performed by a third party. The case of social work illustrates how government, for example, as an outside entity intervenes in the production and consumption of professional services. Fourth, an alternative relation may exist where neither producer nor user of professional services controls the relationship, but the two parties more evenly contest their interests and involvement, the case in some countries between farmers and veterinarians. Esland (1980) and myself (Burns 2009) separately articulated this fourth variant identified in Table 3.1, finding Johnson’s typological recognition of the structural relationship variations to be foundational for adequately theorising professions. The too-common inattention to the structuring effects of interaction with governments and other candidate organisational forms means the focus of the present chapter is a necessary analytical perspective that can be paired with the next chapter’s focus on the power of discourse, to avoid internalist and self-referential views. Thus, although Johnson’s typology is not the framing used in this chapter, his typological approach is central to this book’s overall argument because it includes both structural and discursive dimensions. Agentic capacity for professions or clients involves both, and these become relevant in new ways as professions globalise and give credence to different national and cross-national authorisation processes. The importance of Johnson’s work and how it can be extended to comprehend today’s changes come back into the discussion explicitly in Chapter 8 to interpret the unbundling processes in contemporary professional functioning. Wilensky: A third professions typology example is Wilensky’s ‘celebrated’ (Abbott 2001, p. 7) claim about the (desirable) historical steps by which an occupation becomes a profession. While not formally meant as a typology, it draws on the background notion of professionality in which occupational candidates for inclusion in the class of occupations called professions are evaluated by the steps specified (Table 3.2). The background idea that is not usually made fully explicit, though Wilensky does so, is the degree to which occupations do or do not conform to this normative ideal of becoming professions.

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Table 3.2 1 2 3 4

Wilensky’s stages of professionalisation

A substantial body of people begins doing full-time, some activity that needs doing A training school is established A professional association is formed The association engages in public agitation to win the support of the law for the protection of the group

Source Wilensky (1964)

As I have shown (Burns 2015a), this table does not work especially well outside its own US national context. Even there it is only approximate, but much more importantly, it misses the fundamental role of government departments and regulators as innovators and instigators of society-wide policies and plans applying expert knowledge to benefit the population. Typological thinking is present, at least implicitly, in many situations requiring clarification and seeking differentiated responses. In theorising professions, one example of this is the implicit typological arc from occupations to semi-professions to professions to elite professions (Etzioni 1969; Toren 1972). Another instance is seen in the subgenre theorising the notion of deprofessionalisation or commodification of professions. This works according to some ordinal typology of greater or less professionality, autonomy or other characteristic (Haug and Sussman 1971; Haug 1973; Braverman 1974; Toren 1975; Anleu 1992; Wolinsky 1993; Bottery and Wright 1996; Brooks 2011).

Contesting Other Candidate Organisational Forms The approach of investigating professions within a typology of modernity is respectful of these other attempts to identify patterns in the everyday and apparently natural flow of activities. Professions were one of several candidate organisational forms vying for places in the emerging modern era (Perkin 1981, 1989), including others such as syndicalism not discussed here. Though the main premodern organisational forms of religion, army or royal court still have significance, the strongest links of these

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older forms are the importance of national armed forces. In the richness of this social-cultural modernisation sequence and proliferation, none of these was able to secure a single exclusive dominance. Several, however, including professions, have actively contended for central positions in the modern bundled systems of achievement, rewards and status. In one way, this chapter asks what are the dominant social, economic and political organisational forms in the modern world? It may be useful to run ahead of the argument, so readers glimpse where the chapter is heading. Martin’s (1998a, b) argument that the two most successful middle-class projects of the twentieth century have been managerialism and professionalism points to outcomes from the contestation process that will be outlined below. This intimation allows the idea that contingent forces can have greater or less successful outcomes for different contestants, again contributing to this book’s overall position. That is, rather than essentialising professions, a social constructionist idea of their modern invention and continual modification provides a much more satisfactory explanation. On the empirical, historical and comparative evidence, this avoids the contradictions of mid-twentieth-century theoretical assumptions about professions. The externalist view in this chapter contrasts with the implicit internalist assumptions often emerging in definitional debates described in the previous chapter. As noted, those internalist notions, founded largely within professions and claims of professionalism, mostly consider traits like expertise, ethicality, autonomy, care, to be self-evident features of professions. Not only does this chapter’s external typological approach offer a complement to testing those internal ideas, but it takes seriously macroscale perspectives of modern society in which professions are but one element in an adaptive ecosystem of groups, organisations, social and economic structures and class positions. Changing any one of these, on this logic, is likely to have significant consequential effects on others. The growth of professions thus entails responses, reactions, challenges from other entities—institutions, interest groups, political parties or agents. Even non-institutional forms of client discourse or consumer mobilisation about professional services take on a different hue when viewed from this vantage point.

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Defining Professions ‘Over Against’ At various times, over the past two centuries jurisdictional disputes between individual professions, or disputes between professions and other occupational groups have raged fiercely. Abbott (1988) made this aspect of analysing professional work central to his framing of sociology of professions. In similar vein, Witz (1992; Davies 2007) identified universal gendering processes strongly contesting control over professional domains, applying insights from neo-Weberian closure theory. These structural narratives provide lucid accounts examining within-and-between mechanisms and relations of professions. Importantly, they represent an entirely different kind of analysis than the enumeration of traits which professions could achieve in their descriptions of an occupational domain. These narratives share with the present chapter’s approach an attention to external structural processes and in doing so elucidate new information explaining professions much more fully. I outline a typology of modern institutional forms as a method of inquiry into professions. While detailed historical accounts trace out relative strengths and national differences within these structural outlines, the commentary around Table 3.3 is not such an historical or national narTable 3.3

Situating professions with institutional forms of western modernity Profession

Profession

Bureaucracy

1

Trade Union

2

Business

3

Science

4

Democracy

5

Bureaucracy

Trade Union

Business

Science

Democracy

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rative. Instead, I have selected six organisational forms—profession, trade union, bureaucracy, business, democracy and science—as empirically recognisable modern forms. Each pivots on some mechanism or mechanisms of stakeholder, beneficiary, technological expertise or similar functions. In every instance, upon closer examination, the commonly asserted contrast or opposition of these other forms relative to professions and professionalism breaks down. Or it reveals elements of similarity despite asserted difference, rather than being simply polar contrasts between professions and these other modern institutional forms of organisation. The discussion of these commonly contrasted institutions reveals boundary porousness in these alleged dichotomies between professions and other modern institutional forms. This is consistent with the definitional incompleteness prefigured in Chapter 2’s discussion about definitions of profession. Using this typology to interrogate boundary issues is an important productive analytic approach, providing a test of several aspects of professional functioning. Using this testing of macro-cultural dichotomies, a renewed sociology of professions framework is likely to be more realistic than before (Murphy 1988; Breen 2005). Table 3.3 is thus a tool to think analytically about professions and professionalism, a societal framing, distancing the analysis from internalist explanations that list traits or characteristics of what professions are supposed or hoped to be. These supposed binary opposites are both literal jurisdictional contestations in some instances, and in others they are products of normative rhetoric through discursive framing, blaming and naming. This table portrays visually the possible range of one-to-one relationships between six organisational forms selected to illustrate the argument. There are metaanalytic issues in the apparent distinctiveness between them, because in the real world they exist in various combinations. Further, one-to-many relationships are also implicitly represented in such interaction: democratic processes may form part of union or corporate functioning, just as bureaucratic structures affect science, government and professions—in all the other forms—as well. Thus, it is important to remember this is simply an analytic tool that takes the everyday social-organisational phenomena with which most people are to some extent familiar and asks questions

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to deepen awareness of larger social forces embedded in contemporary cultural institutions that remain elusive to simple assessment. Different organisational forms could have been selected. The pragmatic criterion for choosing these is convenience as each has major publicpolitical roles as successful, recognisable, modern institutional forms. Each also shows dialectical change over time between these powerful institutionalised forms through modern competing processes such as routinisation of technology, tertiary training and functional specialisation. The key is that professions are not some essentially real thing to be discovered, but that they have been created, brought into being and developed within the modern division of labour. This typology invites systematic exploration of professions’ positioning relative to other modern institutions ‘occupying their space’ even before considering overt contestation. Historical and developmental dimensions implicit in this discussion are explored further in the next chapter naming some questionable historical moves deployed to either buttress inadequate views of profession and assessing such assertions about professions and professionalism. The platform for that exercise is built from first focusing on the proposition in this chapter that professions are one species of a number of modern institutional formations that share various characteristics but express them in different ways and combinations: rational-formal modes of reasoning and calculation, technological innovation, community benefit and others. Each, over time, has become increasingly settled or identifiable, but never finally settled, in relation to the ongoing changes in the delivery of the cultural and economic significance of professional work. The typology supports a sociological argument derived from an empirical methodology rather than simply abstract philosophical analysis of the idea of professionalism. The series of Table 3.3 cells numbered 1–5 is the focus of the discussion below. Taken together, these organisational modes can be understood as competing ‘takes’ on how modernity could evolve, each a partially expressed instance of alternative, multiple, pathways. Clearly representing the possibility of disaggregating profession and professionalisation, this methodology contributes to the overall purpose of unpicking the naturalised conception of professions. Acknowledging

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this, the table’s first greyed cell, ‘profession – profession’ shows this intrarelationship could be usefully further interpellated too, such as bureaucracy v politics (Overeem 2008). However, the primary purpose here is in setting out a context in simple terms for theorising professions outside the professions themselves. In the twenty-first century, well beyond mid-twentieth-century trait theories of professional change, the process of professionalisation continues to have central usage in analysis of professions. Professionalisation is best viewed not as an autonomous process but rather a concatenate or linked process occurring among, and in relation to, other processes of modernisation and rationalisation. The six major organisational forms identified in Table 3.3 articulate modern rationalisation in different institutionalised ways. These have at different times been seen as sharply oppositional to one another. They are here conceived as variant modes of formal modern rationality that are by no means discrete or immiscible. From a post-professional perspective, as an organising idea for the analysis of professional change and development, professionalisation is understood as a middle-order concept situated between contingent historical events in occupational change and abstract high-level metanarrative explanations such as Weber’s idea of rationalisation in modern society described earlier in this chapter. The purpose at this juncture is demonstrating that these contrasting institutional modalities are not so different and oppositional to one another in key underlying respects. The burden of proof needs to go no further here than illustrative instances that show this to be so. Full historical accounts by many authors detail how each profession appropriates, bundles together and repurposes technical and socioeconomic elements to maximise strengths and minimise limitations. Each profession does this in its own way, from specific events, using the suite of discursive, structural and economic resources available at any given point in time and through tradition. This argument can be made more visible by setting out the point of departure in the argument from the purported opposed principles in Table 3.3. This focuses on the comparison possibilities in the previous table. Table 3.4 presents these institutional forms, showing these entities in relation to the present focus on professionalisation as a phenomenon of

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Professions as organisational opposites to other institutional forms

Profession Profession Profession Profession Profession

V V V V V

Bureaucracy Unions Business Science Democracy

cultural interest, in contrasting institutional forms. The table thus makes apparent the supposed incompatibility, as well as claims of opposition, relative to professions and professionalism as follows. The next section elaborates these contrasts, but it would take fuller exposition of each of these contrasts in Table 3.4 to establish the breadth of data confirming the present contention that these dichotomies alleged as matters of fact are, to a substantial extent, ideological and historically dated wishes. Far from being logical opposites, or contradictions of one another, each of these pairs can be reconceived as, and indeed empirical instances lend support for, key points of their mutual interactivity, even compatibility, through complex linkages in various ways, despite the normative discourses of opposition. A series of short comments below illustrate each binary, suggesting that in the process of social and occupational change over time, each uses the other dialectically, and is used by incumbents of the other, to reposition itself in the ongoing contestation process of establishing dominance over work and status domains. The modest aim here is to explore the proposition—that it is not true that these forms are conceptually opposite, even though oppositional definitions and rhetoric suggest this to be the case. Briefly pointing towards theoretical or empirical data that undermines the supposed truth of such oppositions suggests instead that they are concatenations, each linked to the others, interleaved rather than mutually exclusive modern forms.

Testing Historical Claims of Contrast to Professions The one-to-one relationship between professions and five contrasting organisational forms presented in Table 3.4 is now discussed in turn. As Steinmetz (2013, p. 9) notes, ‘Field autonomy is, of course, always

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relative autonomy – relative to external forces, institutions, and movements’. The claimed contrasts, even oppositionality, between these forms and professions looks different after examination.

Professions v Bureaucracy Sociological theorising held for a long period that expert professional control was the sine qua non of professionalism and hence incompatible with organisations and bureaucratic control (Hall 1965, 1968; Etzioni 1969; Daniels 1969; Sorensen and Sorensen 1974). Speaking of the AngloAmerican situation, Larson (1977, p. xvii) observed that ‘Profession is presented, for instance, as the antithesis of bureaucracy and the bureaucratic mode of work organisation’ (see also pp. 178–207). Functionalist sociology read its theory from a common culturally understood model of the independent practising professional that even in the 1960s was rapidly reducing as a proportion of this workforce. Notwithstanding this, Freidson misrecognises this empirical shift around him, even as late as (1994, p. 63) claiming a profession, ‘is entirely different from the administrative principle’. Johnson’s (1972) resolution of the problem was to identify control as the pivotal element in his typology of professional activity, incorporating ideas of governmentality (1995). The opposing of expertise to bureaucratic authority went beyond questions of autonomy, to involve organisational authority and control. The ongoing dilemma, it has been said, is how professionals can work in large organisations? Their professionalism requires them to work to their own set of ethical and normative standards applying their expertise, but the organisation requires them to work to bureaucratic orders and rules of hierarchy and seniority. Toren (1972) and Scott (1965) each speculated on this dilemma using another Weberian concept, heteronomy, to accommodate how organisations impinge on professional autonomy in the prioritising of problems and the process of decision-making. Posing this question, even with the usefulness of the concept of heteronomy, eventually discovers, however, that the answers have today shifted elsewhere. The shift has moved from questioning whether it is possible to mix the two or whether

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the two forms can work together, to a different set of questions. The empirical circumstances have shifted from entertaining the possibility of hybrid knowledge/authority to accepting the reality that the majority of professionals are today employed in large bureaucratic organisations at all levels and not infrequently head them. Managerial-organisational debates about profession–organisation interaction have been moved to centre stage and then beyond, rather than staying with professional-organisation debates, even though these continue as well. Kearney and Sinha (1988) provide one example of the many available reflections theorising how professions and organisations can function together. Fitzpatrick (1992, pp. 201ff.) quite explicitly connects his study of the mythological foundations of modern law to bureaucratic colonialism influencing the development of western legal theory: ‘If the orthodoxy of legal positivism and law’s autonomy are to be sustained… the official emerges whole and impregnable, to posit that which all others must obey’. Davies (1996, pp. 66, 89) says, ‘At first sight bureaucracy and profession seem diametrically opposed’. But she elaborates that it is more complex and ‘cannot be captured by any simple algorithm’. DiMaggio (1991, p. 283) writing of rapid institutionalisation and professionalisation in the art museum field in 1920–1930s United States said ‘Yet the same professionals who organised at the field level to effect institutional change were neither alienated nor oppositional in their organisational roles’. Takahashi and Nakamura (2005, p. 210) read professionalisation along with formalisation and centralisation as dimensions of bureaucratisation, subsuming it rather than opposing it. Ritzer (1975, p. 627) draws on Weber to pointedly affirm that ‘professionalisation, like bureaucratisation, is an aspect of the rationalisation of society. Unlike some contemporary sociologists, Weber saw that professionalisation and bureaucratisation are not antithetical’, despite conventional views. Affirming the empirical reality that contemporary professionals function within bureaucratic contexts most of the time for the majority of professions (e.g. Krause 1996, p. 46) does not negate processes of negotiation and contestation between professionals and management. Rubin’s (2004) doctor respondents document the pressures between managerial priorities and professional concerns. Notwithstanding some media representations, the idea of the solo self-employed general practitioner, lawyer

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or other similar professional person has long since ceased to be the norm in most fields. The global conference groupings theorising professions spoken of in Chapter 1 constantly receive papers exploring and articulating this contemporary phenomenon. So, on simple empirical inspection it can be seen that the supposed opposition between the principle of professionalism and the principle of bureaucracy does not bear up. Larson (1977, p. 179) comments: All professions are, today, bureaucratised to a greater or lesser extent. Organisational professions should not be, therefore, as sharply distinct from older and more independent professions, but a clearer manifestation of tendencies contained within them… Organisational professions proper are generated by the heteronymous bureaucracies, and primarily by the expansion of the bureaucratic apparatus of the state.

Bureaucratic process and professionalisation can be deconstructed as a ‘constellation of variables’. Each simply confirms Stinchcombe’s (1959) view that bureaucracy and professionalism are two subtypes of a larger category—that of rational administration. For many professionals, the concept of career is inseparable from organisational context. Today, though control of work continues to be contested, as Larson observes (1977, p. 184), bureaucratisation can actually ‘stimulate claims of expertise’ even as it can also ‘subtract from the discretionary power inherent in bureaucratic hierarchy’. The sense of loss or failure in the shrinking of the particular type Johnson called collegial professionalism can be seen in Murphy’s (1990, p. 71) phrase, ‘the fall of the professional’. In the end, it is necessary to go back to the beginning in the field-setting work of Parsons. Evetts (1999, p. 123) says Parsons ‘demonstrated how the authority of professions and of bureaucratic organisation both rested on the same principles (e.g. the functional specificity, restriction of the power domain, application of universalistic and impersonal standards)’. It is not that the supposed oppositionality of profession and bureaucracy was something made up. There were genuine contentions, especially urgent in the US context, rendering clinical/expert decision-making different from administrative and organisational decision-making. Noordegraaf

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(2015, p. 206) summarises the shift, ‘Organising becomes a normal part of professional work – instead of a hybrid, ‘uneasy’ combination of professional and managerial principles’. Today, in each major field, the claimed opposition might not sit in the same ways it did last century, but current issues around authority and resourcing priorities give the interaction a contemporary importance.

Professions v Unions Unionism has long been held to be antithetical to professionalism (Haug and Sussman 1971), yet today not only the semi-professions, but also archetypal professions such as hospital medicine physicians in many countries are highly unionised (Waldman 1986; Thomson 1990). Indeed, discreet commentators have over a very long period spoken of the British Medical Association as ‘the physician’s trade union’. Rabban’s (1991, p. 110) study of over 100 bargaining agreements reflects a different understanding of the social reality, ‘mixed evidence challenges claims that unionisation necessarily involves the rejection of professionalism’; they ‘are not inherently incompatible’. It is an old notion that they are, but social and class capital better explains preferred and available strategies for action (Bourdieu 1991; Scott and Walker 2015). Trade unions are quite commonly portrayed as militant, self-interested, collectivistic and according to right-of-centre politics, viewed as counter productive to progress. The contrasting conventional idealisation of professions that they are altruistic, have a service ethic and offer disinterested application of specialised knowledge to a lay clientele is similarly, however, challengeable. Again, in this dichotomy such framing of the contrasting organisational principles of professionalism is simplistic and significantly self-serving and to that extent miss-states the empirical reality (Berlant 1975). While there are examples of negative unions and positive professions, there is no inherent or necessary logic that says this is true of all situations (Thompson 1990). It is equally possible to find productive union entities, despite negative media coverage for the protective and defensive stance unions undertake. There are situations in which the reaction

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of professional associations to such issues as employment, salary disputes, fee-for-or regulatory change can be read as resistant, narrow-minded, conservative and self-serving contestatory processes, even if sometimes less overt in how this is achieved. Haug and Sussman (1971, p. 527) considered unionisation v professionalisation differences: Instead of engaging in a power contest between the haves and have nots, the [professional] association undertakes to protect and expand the knowledge base, enforce standards of learning, entry, and performance, and engage in similar activities designed to enhance the position of the practitioner while simultaneously purporting to protect the welfare of the public in the person of the client.

Adding to sociologically adequate explanations of such constructed oppositionality is recognition of traditional social class and status origins of these groups: union organisation typically deriving from factory and working-class locations, having fewer social, discursive or economic resources with which to improve their circumstances. As Larson (1977, p. 156) remarks, ‘The tactics of organisation adopted by would–be professionals are in many respects similar to those of the craft union. The overall strategy, however, reveals the professionals’ distinctive approach to social stratification’. Professional groups, also anxious to advance their collective occupational interests, in contrast to union organisations, connect to educational, political and higher ranked social hierarchies in society as justificatory strategies. Professions can do this having gained some acceptance of their public good value (discussed in Chapter 7). Further, assertions of expertise, especially scientific, resonate with elites in predominant modern political narratives. Halliday (1983, p. 328) comments: It is largely status, nevertheless, which explains why some occupations will resist unionising rather than professionalising activities, even though the latter are less efficacious in advancing the material conditions of life than the former. Ironically, the ideology of professions distracts professionals from those very means of collective action which would be most effective.

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Various forms of direct action have over time become more evident in all fields of professional negotiations. Such change over time leaves open the debate whether professionalising activities were ever anything other than collective assertions, differentiated only in their ability to draw on greater social class resources. Thus, even this cultural evolution undermines the argument of inherent oppositionality between profession and union as modern institutional forms. The treatment by academic scholars of the semi-professions as somehow anomalous is significantly obviated on the present view of professionalisation. Semi-professions can be seen as concatenated forms of professional and bureaucratic modes (Bolton and Muzio 2008). As Larson (1977, p. 185) comments, ‘It can be hypothesised that the structural predisposition toward collective bargaining power will be greater wherever an aspiring profession is subordinate to a hierarchy of authority’. White-collar unions are less obviously different in social rank than professions, in comparison with worker unions. Durkheim’s idea of professions as ‘moral communities’ can thus be seen to apply defensively as well as proactively—it can be as much about self-interest as public good. The very substantial literature on deprofessionalisation, deskilling and proletarianisation (Crompton and Jones 1984; Murphy 1990; Darrah 1994) that reflects contested professional positioning also makes sense from this perspective. Haug and Sussman (1971, p. 527) extend their previous comments, considering unionisation v professionalisation differences, noting ‘Indeed professional claims concerning the primacy of the public good over the practitioner’s own private benefit might be viewed as the critical difference between the professionalising and unionising modes of mobility, were it not for the evidence that the claims are watered down to rhetoric’. Semi-professions, unions and gender provide a rich intersectionality that further undermines any simple opposition between kinds of professional mobilisation. Thus, once again in this dichotomy the oppositional logic said to inhere between professions and unions finds concatenations across class, gender and media lines that undermine or, in Derrida’s (1977) terms, deconstruct—that is, both destroying and reconstructing—the supposed opposing nature of the claimed binary formation. Professions derive credibility

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from desirable status position, their posited public good, by appeal to universalistic values of science and denial of social class. Both groups, however, articulate the interests of their members in relation to competing groups, the pricing of their services or at least the markets for their expertise and the broader resourcing discourses and division of labour within modernisation. The overall impact of this analysis discredits claims for special privilege or remuneration because of alleged uniqueness of professions. They are simply one institutional format among others.

Professions v Business The third contrast sets out, on the one hand, the professional principle of knowledge for the good of the other. This has also been expressed over a long period of time as the application of knowledge for the service of the client (Kohn 1922; Goode 1957, 1969; Rueschemeyer 1994). On the other hand, the traditional formulation of professions expressed opposition to the idea that a service is provided, or the relevant knowledge is utilised, for frankly commercial purposes of making money and creating/extracting wealth from the customer–client (Haskell 1984). These principles were not uncommonly expressed as being inherently contradictory to one another. To be a professional in earlier modernity was understood as a claim to not be profit-driven, but rather ethically motivated and principle-driven. A professional person earned a set fee that avoided the business of business. In some professions, for many decades advertising beyond a minimalist iconic brass nameplate was prohibited. In some jurisdictions, there are limits on, for example, non-pharmacists owning pharmacies; yet examples like the British Boots chain of pharmacies demonstrate business, and even corporate intentions have found ways to coexist, interact and leverage professions’ knowledge. Commercial profit-making business was similarly viewed as more mundane than today’s glorification of entrepreneurship. Even so business was not about being a trusted advisor for people but about sales and marketing, contracts, production and above all enterprise profits. Perkin (1996) distinguished a split within professionalism, between public service professionals and entrepreneurial professionals in the course of the twentieth

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century. This chronicled the shift from any presumed earlier oppositionality of these two modes to their convergence at certain times, places and instances. Legal and medical professional interests, for example, can be either profit-focused or have practice, service or research foci as well, or instead of, the former. Today, consultants, dentists and ophthalmologists are the epitome of for-profit businesses. The widespread use of marketing and management terminology today makes it difficult for many people to appreciate just how contrasting these occupational modes have been understood in generations past, in assertion if not always in practice. In the continuing differentiation and specialisation processes that characterise modern rationalisation, the numerical proliferation of commercial professions, such as law, accountancy, information technology, among many others, has shifted the common perception of what a professional is and does. Not just at the level of new hybrid concepts like ‘professional managers’, but further empirical evidence is that entrepreneurial organisations depend on accountants, managers, research scientists, specialists and other professional cadres such as in-house lawyers and other professional experts. Analyses such as Payer (2002) show that interaction in a division of labour rather than exclusivity of business (drug companies, insurers) and profession (doctors, specialists, nurses) has become central. The media regularly reports commercial and banking examples of this interplay. What Fournier (1999, p. 288) calls advanced liberalism ‘involves a change in the rules by which the professions can establish their legitimacy’. Halliday (1983, p. 328) comments on Larson’s arguments about class status for the more recent bureaucratic professions, denying they are parasitic on capitalism: Consequently, professions bear, in monopoly capitalist societies, the outmoded values of liberal capitalist formations: individualism, expertise and status seeking. ‘Adapted, reduced, transposed, and changing in content, they become central elements of the dominant ideology’ [Larson 1977, p. 243]. The professions, spawned by competitive capitalism, come to sustain its monopoly successor, the most visible carriers of an illusion on which mature capitalism must depend.

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What Halliday (1983, p. 38) terms the ‘structural centrality’ of professions exists in ‘most spheres of public policy, including health, education, welfare, defence and law among others’. In this regard, professions parallel business activities found in each sector of society (see Krause 1996, p. 48 concerning medicine in the United States). As Sullivan (1995, p. 52) observes, ‘Success in a professional field is often now a story quite similar to success in a business organisation’. Individual professions, pharmacy as an example in some jurisdictions, have even had separate ‘business’ and ‘ethical’ associations operating in parallel, reflecting this tension. Krause (1996, p. 33) speaks of the US situation, but with analogies in other western societies, ‘The regulatory agencies, especially the Federal Trade Commission, have redefined professional work and professions as equally susceptible to regulation as all other forms of commerce, rescinding a long–held exemption’. Even in the most profession-centric service situations, business concerns of cost, efficiency, staff turnover, liability and procedural fairness—all the mechanisms of small or larger businesses—are always pertinent. Partly anticipating later post-professional discussion in Chapter 6, any number of commercial and corporate instances today take the businessprofession contrast in a quite different direction; in one way or another, the two can be interleaved and interactively combined. Professional firms (Scott 1965; Svensson 1998; Brock et al. 2012; Noordegraaf 2004) in which the control of the service function is held by the technical professionals such as engineers, surveyors or consultants, is just one variant. The panoply of qualified professionals within corporations is another. The production and marketing of goods or services closely associated with professionals, such as pharmaceutical firms, are yet another. Giant accounting, auditing or lawyering corporations illustrate still a further example of the possible variant institutionalised forms. At this stage of the present discussion, it is the question of organisational format or variation and interaction rather than the desirability or otherwise of these forms that is being reviewed in this typology. The normative desirability and effects are of course hugely important, and the conversation returns to this in later chapters. Clearly, then, many ways of configuring professions and commercial concerns are evident. This can

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be said without dismissing the significant attempts to separate commercial and professional orientations thought from some viewpoints to be inimical to each other.

Professions v Science The pairing of profession v science has also at times been situated as oppositional (Merton 1973; Haskell 1977; Woolgar 1988; Harding 1991, 1998a, b). Professions claim the application of science and knowledge for client problem-solving. Scientific pursuit of ‘blue sky’ knowledge for the sake of knowledge was for long periods asserted as different from the application of it to everyday, commercial or personal situations. To the extent that these views have been adopted, they were contraries, not logical opposites (Hughes 1963; Weber 1958 [1919]; Mendelsohn 1964; Daniels 1967; Dickson 1984; Keller 1985; Walsh 1986; Golden 1991). In the series of disjunctions discussed in this section of the chapter, the professions-science binary has been the first to dissipate; it was never a fully formed knowledge divide, rather a trope of justification. However, a common framing of professions versus science was that science is about the creation of new knowledge and science-based professions concerned with the development of its application in technique and technology. Since science is not the basis of all professions, it allows the contrasting view, but this also limits the general truth claimed for this divide. Science still has tremendous legitimating power and cachet with new discoveries in every field continuing at rapid pace. Climate denialists’ attacks in recent decades, as well as previous attempts to undermine the science of public issues about smoking, acid rain and second-hand smoking, falsely claiming ‘bad science’, have left scientists more embattled (Oreskes and Conway 2010). Such counternarratives have not, however, slowed new scientific discoveries enhancing professional expertise. Both professions and science fields potentially benefit from a different metanarrative of the late-modern epoch in today’s digital revolution affecting ever more parts of life and work. The social shaping of this boundary can be seen in gendered power differentials and broader disadvantage traced clearly in Oudshoorn’s (1994) account of scientific research into oestrogen.

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Scientists like Karl Popper (2002) or Michael Polanyi (1958, 1969) promulgated the scientific model of truth as a societal, even moral position, able to contribute to free and democratic society. This was a beautiful but naïve vision of science that seems distant to contemporary institutional and commercialisation practices surrounding science and the economic linkages. Reversing the normative logic of this argument, Bertrand Russell’s humanism would create a ‘good’ science. After large-scale conflicts in the twentieth century, the axiomatic need for such ideals most certainly is not to be denied: the empirical test of science’s goodness, however, shows that something else is needed. Beck’s (1992) assertion of risks produced by science reiterates the point. The mere presence of even a small number of professionals who choose to apply their knowledge primarily for their own personal, political or commercial purposes is sufficient to invalidate the broad claim that professions are simply the practical embodiment and application of new scientific rationality and truth. It appears to be an anomaly that law and clergy were two of the benchmark professions in modern professionalisation yet have no particular relation to the application of science to everyday affairs. On the present, theorising this is one significant datum to be built into a larger and more culturally informed overall model of professions. The point can be made that conscious linkage to the discursive dynamism of science for these professions, too, is evidenced in terms such as ‘legal science’, ‘political science’ and ‘theological science’ in books, training and public discourse (also in parallel with Frederick Taylor’s ‘ scientific management’). In many ways, the professions ‘piggy–backed’ on the frisson that epistemological rules in modern science generated as the new way to create knowledge and find and arbitrate truth and fact. Challenging scientific defining capacity, professions at the same time co-opted the value of the idea of science (Woolgar 1988). The notion of professions has gone through several modifications as it has continually adjusted to fit in with the changes taking place in modern society. Larson (1977, p. 237) observes that scientists are often socialised into ‘corporate irresponsibility’, even while the image of the other-worldly, white-coated scientist in a laboratory continues to play.

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For the positivistic ideology on which most technical and scientific training tends to be based, science and ethics are rigidly separated domains with distinct methodologies and subject matter. As a result, the purposes of science are shaped by the dominant class, while ethics is understood as personal, vague and increasingly without foundation… In sum, the expert’s and the professional’s outlook on their work lives tend to be shaped by individualism and narrow work specialism… Flexibility, autonomy and circumscribed responsibility are precisely the qualities expected from expert labour.

Today, science is not seen as an organisational principle as such despite the optimism of rational solutions in the early scientific community. The positivism of early sociologists such as Comte and Spencer similarly considered themselves applying scientific principles to institution-building in modern secularising society. Science shared with organised professions the aura of progressive ‘good’ drawn from the normative-religious social order. This has increasingly in recent decades come to be publicly questioned and doubted as Chapter 7 shows, or even simply treated as less important. In the generalised usage of professional terminology today, scientists as content producers are considered professionals along with academics and some other groups (Evetts 2006a, b) that have always been embedded in organisational work environments.

Professions v Democracy Unlike some of the other binaries that are assumed to be natural and inevitably opposite—or which were once deemed to be so—professions and democracy do not have the public valence of the kind of opposition being discussed here to one another. Yet in a shallower but broader discourse, professions are taken as being one of the natural instruments of modern society and in the Euro-American or OECD countries seem to naturally fit into the similar belief of science and democracy each increasingly benefiting the population—hence in some sense generically democratic. Closer inspection could call on a variety of threads of democratic ideas and professional traits to show the organisational, authority bases of

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these formats are quite different. Consider the options: either on grounds of expertise (‘doctor knows best’ or some other expert knows best), on grounds of care, ethicality and client service (fiduciary interest and commitment means the professional does a better job), or invoking the principle of autonomy (professional experts must be free to exercise their best technical judgement on the issue and the best solution), or citizenconsumer assertion of rights or prerogative—it’s their body, money, need or choice. Current anti-vaccination debates illustrate this tension (Tafuri et al. 2014; Hobson-West 2017) in today’s digital world. For all these professional characteristics—expertise, goodness, autonomy—or any other combination of professional traits that could be invoked, a balanced participatory decision-making process is excluded or rigorously downgraded and minimised. The whole point of an engineer’s decision about load-bearing in buildings or bridges is that it is not a democratic exercise. It is not what people want, or a patron thinks should be the case, but what the facts say is possible or needed to be safe, that carries the day. The whole point of a veterinarian’s view is the bundled expertise as a professional that knows the best or least worst options that are available in a given animal situation; similarly for doctors, lawyers and other professionals. Of course, we all know of elite individuals and entities who demand certain fixes from the professionals they consult. This is what Johnson (1972) called patronage professionalism rather than collegial professionalism, even if masked as the latter. Such wealthy and high-status individuals calling the shots do not discountenance this model of profession-politics/power engagement. Dzur (2008) explores ways professions can contribute to better quality public debates in democratic society, looking particularly at issues of bioethics and restorative justice in public journalism. This admirable goal carries United States’ assumptions that this is possible in a way that discounts the embedded cultural and professional and political interests seen to frequently undermine healthcare delivery, achieve deracialised policing or produce more equitable educational opportunities. The idealisation misses the disjunct between many tremendous efforts to achieve positive well-being outcomes and walls of circumvention. This creates popular cynicism and for ordinary classes causes cynicism rather than democratic optimism. In some ways, this critique of professions functioning for

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democracy resonates with Wolin’s (2010) argument that ongoing political change has been overtaking conventional democratic process in the political banalities of neoliberal governance in which corporates and wealth exercise ever-increasing influence (Flew 2014). How applicable are democratic values in shifting such actions to better serve consumer, citizen and client need, generating better outcomes, especially for marginalised groups? Blomgren and Waks (2015) recognise contemporary complexity. For them, the revitalisation of a democratic impulse for citizen autonomy, participation and influence is only one of four competing logics active today. Empirically, it exists alongside managerialism focused on ‘organisational routines’, markets that are shaped corporately and professionalism as expertise and advice to be received. Democratic power or any sovereign exercise of power is important for what it permits, but in complex societies, interstitial disciplinary power is commonly how it works (Foucault 1988, 2008; Rose and Miller 2010). Societal rankings of excellent medical care relative to US care—for example in Cuban, French or Canadian systems of health delivery—while controversial, signal the importance of professions in practice rather than aspirations of what democratic values can do. Thus, in this democracyprofessions binary, it is again apparent that oppositionality between professions and democracy may in some instances be the case, but it can also be argued that Dzur’s conception of the best interests of the two processes is better entertained in other ways. Because intermediate situations embodying each are possible, this too complicates any simplistic internalist account of the nature of professions.

Conclusion This chapter considered a selection of empirical examples of western cultural conceptions of professional, commonsense, civil society and political discourses about major organisational forms that have developed in the modern era. Each of these expresses in some way the multiple logics of modern rationalisation that Weber articulated. We can thus see at this end of the chapter that there were always likely to be important links between

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them despite assertions of difference and oppositionality.The analysis illustrated how even legislated professions—let alone less clear-cut instances of occupational groups—are perceived as somehow essentially different to other forms of modern legal-rational organisational forms. This division, however, does not hold when framed in a typology comparing professions with other major forms of modern social institution. For simplicity and brevity in this discussion, the idea of professions was kept as a general category, but the examples showed that in a more detailed typology, this could be re-inspected and applied to the positioning of individual professions, most especially for elite professions. Opening to view how western modernity could have run differently in its developmental pathway also acts as a precursor to a more general conception of how multiple modernities might be discerned even though the present chapter has not problematised this. This context is always important. Wagner’s (2012, p. x) comment is true of professions even as his analysis forms part of the epistemic transition he describes from western-dominated versions of modernity. Sociologists and philosophers have long maintained that there is – indeed there can be – only a single model of modernity. However, modern institutions and practices have been transformed over time, and furthermore there is now a plurality of forms of modern socio–political organisation.

This shift is indeed what the debates and contentions in this chapter have sketched in relation to the ongoing development of professions and professionalism. Such recent scholarship is approaching this from outside theorising professions, and this chapter in turn responds to that new theorising. It utilises challenges from new public management, neoliberal organisational studies, critical management studies, health and safety risk management and other disciplines which have identified the shift of professions today (Flew 2014). That is, being involved in, or in relation to, complex organisations in every sector of modern society (Halford and Leonard 1999). Such thinking is useful in being attentive to non-western professional futures which will undoubtedly develop in new and sometimes surprising ways. The contingencies of those processes, different in different countries, are partly built on the contestations described in this

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chapter and partly on parallel institutional contestations that are particular to those differing non-western nations’ cultures and structures. The hypothesis of this chapter obviously could be further buttressed by more empirical evidence being assembled. The aim, however, was simply to find instances that collectively and cumulatively rebut inadequate claims of uniqueness and specialness for professions. This enables not a definition but a clearer capacity for distinguishing the idea of profession in modernity. Professional logics are ‘hidden in the open’, seen in similarities between formal organisations, bureaucracies, capitalism and professions. Yet the claim is still made that professions are supposedly unique and different somehow. This claim shows existing formulations of professions serving as today’s template for professional innovation even while not explaining the cultural and structural processes by which they have arrived at today’s forms. The chapter showed porous institutional boundaries across the typology presented, notwithstanding legislated definitions and occupational closure in many cases. It bears repeating that a softer set of claims about the value of professions and professionalism is more sustainable for the coming decades. This chapter adopted a specific analytic approach setting out a typology to improve conceptual clarity around professions as a class of occupations and organisational modes. This has been done in the face of a common attitude that says it knows professions developed from antiquity. This argument from tradition, however, sets up a series of assumptions and false beliefs that fail to address present and future realities of what professions can, might and should be trying to achieve. The next chapter applies yet another methodological approach, examining professionalisation discourses; it explores how these discourses combine, recombine and change over time. It asks how best they might be reinterpreted to better theorise professions. Studying professional discourses helps open unexplained or underexamined issues within naturalised accounts and traditional conventions making claims about the origin stories and development pathways of professions and professionalisation.

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4 Professionalisation Discourses

The Idea of Discourse Sociologists perennially grapple with the relationship of social structures and meanings in culture. The last chapter’s typology examined five structural alternatives to professions (Table 3.2). In this chapter, discourse is considered and this shifts attention from structures to the non-material, invisible and relational parts of society. Since Foucault’s post-structural analyses (1982, 1994), sociology much more fully makes use of discourse in richer and more complex theoretical explanations. Profession-related anecdotes conveniently give an initial feel for the concept of discourse: staffroom humour about students invokes teacher discourse; medical talk of ‘non-compliant’ patients makes sense within doctors’ occupational discourse; accountants who discuss making the figures ‘look good’ draw on accountancy discourse. Discourses are naturalised in their environment, becoming commonsense to participants in the conversation, but acting as demarcation relative to those outside, especially if they are the subject of conversation, or share alternative forms of social and economic power. Discourse exerts power, creating effects that are equivalent to material causes like money, physical location and technology. What ‘everybody © The Author(s) 2019 E. A. Burns, Theorising Professions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27935-6_4

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knows’ is hegemonic discourse—broad, everyday assumptions that invisibly shape arguments. Discourse and literal or material forces both structure and are structured by each other (Bourdieu 1990). Discursive resources may be symbolic, strategic, conceptual, material, emotional or communicative. They may contradict one another, may comprise bigger metanarratives or be more ephemeral. Discourse produces material conditions; modern discourses produce modern human subjects and subjectivities as professionals or patient/client/consumer/manager and other roles. As political movements, organisations and individuals know (or discover), discourse often contests material realities, especially if focused and built together as described below—capable of even subverting or demanding new structures be created. It is too easy to psychologise discourse, losing historical memory even in interesting analyses. Foucault (1981, p. 53) reclaims the bigger picture: In every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off its powers and dangers, to gain mastery over chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable materiality.

In the present neoliberal era, sought-after efficiency, cost drivers, topdown control, blaming and outsourcing responsibility, are asserted more by governments and corporations than such organisations acknowledge. Discourses naming and addressing social equity are for the most part minimised, formalised and marginalised. Gendered discourse is typically more powerful than official rules of equality in excluding or marginalising in boardrooms, surgeons’ offices, executive suites, teaching environments courtrooms or computing labs (Payne and Doyal 2012). The consequences of these neutralising pressures continue to challenge, hybridise and rework professionalism. It is uncontroversial to observe that the discourses of early modernity generated demand from above or below, and in responding to these demands, led to the invention of professions, effectively an early example of government outsourcing (expanded in Chapter 5). This happened in terms of governmental need, materials, technologies, institutions, opportunities and symbolic resources of that period. Just as there were many competing organisational forms as we saw in Chapter 3, so too many competing

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discourses were variously magnified, bundled, braided together and concretised, while others did not gain traction in shaping professional work. It is a measure of the discursive richness of the professionalism concept that it encompasses so many different occupational groups. Thus, multiple professionalisation processes began like evolutionary tree branches, some fading, some changed, some growing and highly successful. As outlined in the opening chapter sociological research into professions and professionalisation receives substantial attention from diverse theoretical perspectives (Table 1.1). Professionals, too, utilise the professionalisation concept themselves within their own occupational interest groupings as a convenient chronological framework. Professionalisation narrates pressures and changes in terms of historical development, the process of becoming a profession. It is also useful for future-oriented analyses contemplating occupational changes—what might be possible—identifying desirable or undesirable developments needing policy or regulatory response or resistance. Complex cultural shaping of professions has created commonalities with other structural forms. These intersections in turn have hybridised, mobilising into new and different discourses in modern society over time. These may move from oppositionality to greater congruence, but also introduce greenfield combinations unknown previously. Professionalisation has considerable organising capacity in researching and studying professions. It is one of a number of broad societal processes focusing academic debates. Are these helpful explanations or to be challenged for reducing modernity to mere abstract processes like secularisation, industrialisation, democratisation or capitalist accumulation? Functionalist attempts at using professionalisation (Vollmer and Mills 1966) failed to let go of then-current ideological apparatus. Professionalisation still risks natural history interpretations of why and how things function as they currently do if used without sufficient caution. The synthesising capacity of professionalisation discourse goes beyond treating professionalisation as simply a factual process. The glimpse provided in this chapter is folded into the synthesis extending Johnson’s work in Chapters 8 and 9 below. Professionalisation discourse has the potential to address processes of change and adaptation and has supported a wide swathe of research. This creates awareness of specific historical information where diversity,

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alternatives and complexity of the evidence are not overdetermined or ignored by a linear narrative of success.

Bridging Typology to Discourse The effort to achieve some analytic clarity, or at least create thinking space so far in Chapters 1–3, can be counted as a step forward but is still not a place to rest even after establishing reasons for avoiding definitional closure or claims of institutional uniqueness. The present chapter continues building sociological understanding of professions, in two parts. The first part of the chapter works through a series of concepts for analysing professionalisation discourses. The second part of the chapter applies this professionalisation framework to get beyond common functionalist temptations. Professionalisation and professionalisation discourse constitute one of the two most commonly used explanatory devices in theoretically contextualising research into professions (the other is professionalism’s normative claims considered in Chapter 7). Dent’s (2002) study of German and Italian nurses’ ‘professionalisation projects’ is an example deploying professionalisation, while Pickard’s (2009) research considers professionalisation and specialisation within the medical profession. Continuing reflection on similarities and differences between, say, United States and UK, and between English-speaking countries and continental European professionalisation and ‘modes of professionalism’ can be seen in Evetts (1999a, p. 121; Svensson and Evetts 2010) and elsewhere such as Krause (1996). ‘In general, then’, argues Evetts, ‘the process of work/occupation/professions development are sectorally, historically and culturally diverse and variable’ (p. 122). Evetts’ (1999b, p. 120) reminder is important: [T]here are important difference between Anglo–American and continental perceptions of profession. In Europe, professions do not present such a dramatically different occupational form. For the most part in Europe it is the close association of some (privileged) occupations with states and state bureaucracies and administrations which mark them as different and given them additional powers as well as special authority.

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Positivist use of professionalisation as a corrective or resistance to functional claims is thus ambivalent. It may well disrupt conventional beliefs and assumptions. But it can also succumb to the naturalised version of historical change, discussed in the second half of the chapter, and thereby fail to provide new thinking. This chapter deploys several ideas to maintain the value of a professionalisation perspective. Centrally, it adds the idea of discourse to professionalisation. With professional project, discursive bundling, concatenation and zusammenbauen, the chapter shows the complexity and richness in thinking about professions today in a different way from conventional mantras that do little more than justify present-day arrangements. This chapter once again applies a different method to examine the certainties of profession and professionalism. The present discussion of professionalisation and professional discourse expands to consider major meta-discourses of rationalisation and professionalisation seen in the development of western modernity and professions. The concept of professional projects receives special mention, and the idea of zusammenbauen then deepens the analysis of professional discourses. In the second part of the chapter, this idea of zusammenbauen—building together discourses and their attendant tensions and paradoxes—is used to explore four discursive temptations seen in written accounts of professions and professionalism (Table 4.1).

Rationalisation and Professionalisation Weber saw plural forms of rationalisation as constituting a metanarrative across modernity. Given the institutional commonalities seen in the previous chapter, articulating professionalisation with rationalisation adds explanatory possibilities for theorising professions. His idea of modernity as characterised by a process of the unfolding of broad formal and calculative rationalities applies equally powerfully to professions and the other organisational forms seen in the last chapter. Weber described rationalising processes as the decisive contrast to premodernity. His particularisation of this concept is most notably seen in his studies of bureaucracy. Weber’s continuing contribution to sociology of professions has been often taken

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as providing theoretical underpinning in terms of monopolisation (Berlant 1975, p. 437; Larson 1977, pp. 208–244, 319) or in terms of occupational closure mechanisms (Murphy 1988; Witz 1992, pp. 43–53). Such theorising avoids assumptions of functional analysis by using power, cultural processes, civilisational timespans, ideology and knowledge-creation, and other conceptual tools to better explain professions. For example, Krause (1996, p. 3) proposes a guild model of professional power with these features: ‘power and control over the association, the workplace, the market, and the relation to the state. The dimensions are interrelated, and the degree of power and control can vary widely’. In his historical research of four professions across five societies in the twentieth century, Krause’s work shows points of connection to the conflict/power paradigm in his theoretical framing of his data. Another useful example is Macdonald’s (1995, pp. 20–29) consideration of both monopoly and social closure perspectives before merging these to his central commitment to the concept of professional project. Working from such professionalisation discourses can bypass the primary functionalist belief in the ‘natural’ outworking of progress—a corollary of essentialised conceptions of professions as an inevitable linear developmental trend. Yet even the application of Weber’s idea of rationalisation tends to be under-appreciated and under-utilised in its application to professions. Why? In the first place, sometimes the idea of rationalisation is subsumed as commentary in relation to secularisation, the ‘disenchantment’ of faith in a believable, ordered world. Secondly, rationalisation is seen in unnecessarily abstract terms, rather than more full-bodied shifts in societal and cultural institutions and understanding of humanity and self within society. Larson (1977, p. xx) puts it simply: ‘I see professionalization as the process by which producers of special services sought to constitute and control a market for their expertise’. Macdonald critiques Halliday’s (1987, p. xiv) use of the Weberian idea of rationalisation for purposes beyond simply deploying legal monopolisation for which Halliday claimed, ‘at the very least… the organised bar had committed its resources quite emphatically to the value of a limited rationalisation’. For Macdonald (1995, p. 21), this view is itself

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limited because the logical conclusion of such a process would lead to a purely administrative system which would not conform to the principles of liberal democracy. This is not to deny over the past century that collegial legal associations have been pursuing a legal project, but rather that the success of their activities have allowed them in recent decades ‘to move beyond a preoccupation with monopoly, occupational closure, and the defence of work domains to courses of action more concerned with the function of the state itself ’.

That is, Halliday’s argument is circular, begging the very questions that Weberian theory raises about where in the market-state matrix professionalisation projects sit. This is especially significant in the unique mix of the legal sector with its multiple roles and organic participation in the very structures defining and constituting western modern rational–legal nation-states. Macdonald goes on to suggest that the internal inspection— while always valuable—had led Halliday to ‘take the professions at their own valuation’ with conclusions too broad, even acknowledging detailed empirical study of one American legal profession group. Thus, the phoenix of functionalism keeps rising in the post-professional transition. Weber’s (1978) idea of rationalisation is seen in the ideal-typical framing in the typology of rationalities he identified, from traditional and affective forms of rationality, to ‘zweckrational’ calculative decision-making modes. This framing moves his work beyond economic description to incorporate complex sociocultural systems (Kalberg 1980). Weber describes ‘zweckrational’ decision-making as quintessentially modern rationality, but as modernity evolves, value-based decisions and actions change, shifting from previous value commitments. The argument here is that in places such as professions, science, civil society, family, leisure, environment and various calculative forms of ‘rational’ or formally constituted interests intrude, if not come to dominate. At the very least, these reposition the ‘wertrational’ value propositions within these cultural or institutional fields. Each institutional form, including professions in modern rational–legal society, embodies some version of disembedding calculative logic. But it is not the case that wertrationality disappears; later chapters engage the dialectic between these evaluative perspectives. Beyond this book’s discussion, new

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forms of non-western professionalism will undoubtedly combine them in new ways again. What has to be surprising, given Weber’s analysis, is that disputes about claimed professional traits of service, altruism and similar have not been more vehemently challenged more often in more fields. Such are the directing and suppressing powers of discourse. Indeed, Adam (2009) does point to such interconnections between multiple forms of rationalised institutional forms in modern society, all involving professions, reinforcing the conjoined notion of ‘rational goodness’. Weber further characterises the modern world in all its major spheres – science, economics, education, medicine, law, politics and even religion – as being suffused by the principles of rationality. … Weber understands rationalisation as a central and generalised feature of industrialisation, bureaucratisation, specialisation, secularisation and capitalist development. Rationalisation means, Weber (1958 [1919], p. 139) explains, ‘that principally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather, that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation’.

Weber’s idea as used here helps frame attention to professionalisation, conceptually recognising it as a modern form of rationalisation, potentially with a darker side and not simply as uplifting progress. Various examples of the problematic nature of such change in expertise can be seen in Beck’s idea of risk and in the deconstructive writings of Foucault (1973) on professionalisation. The argument being made in this chapter is not to assert the future of this central modern process of professionalisation (Adam 2009; Susskind and Susskind 2015), but to look to the past as a basis of understanding potential change. With this information, outlining professionalisation’s possible relationships to other institutionalised and competing forms expressing modern sociocultural change becomes more plausible.

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Professions as Projects Any use of professionalisation discourse must address professions as occupational group projects. Professionalisation can be restated as a long-term occupational project significantly resourced by discourses professions generate or by deploying discourses within which professions reside. Larson (1977) and Witz (1992) used the concept of professional project to powerful effect in their analyses, usefully indicating long-run implications (Bourgeault 2015). Previous chapters mentioned professional projects, and this important idea now emerges centrally to assist historical overview of modern professional development. As Larson demonstrated, professional projects mobilise ideas, social class, cultural and national narratives and oppositions, in addition to material and financial resources. A social movement is a project: disease eradication, poverty reduction, animal wellbeing, political emancipation. Each of these active concerns can be comprehended as projects that combine economic, rhetorical, scientific and other values to achieve a particular purpose. The concept of project in social science research allows scholars to name pressures and processes that are not formally defined by listing institutions, personnel or official histories but which are powerful in influencing the course of events. It is often the case that scholars, like people more generally, re-read and re-examine history when a major paradigm shift has taken place, or under pressure of imminent change when conventional narratives are no longer convincing. The term project has both everyday meanings and theoretical valence in social science disciplines, appearing in phrases such as ‘the Enlightenment project’ out of which western modernity and especially formal rationality grew (Fisher 1994; Capaldi 1998; Gitlin 2015). Mason (2016, p. 263), for example, uses ‘project zero’ to describe a post-capitalist socioeconomic transition forced by environmental and economic disadvantage. Larson’s (1977) description of each profession as engaged in a double project, a market project and a status project, is the core application of the term project to professions studies. It is an illuminating example of renewed insights emerging from reinvestigating assumptions about professions through undertaking detailed historical research. Witz’s (1992) careful historical research identifying systemic gender closure projects applied

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Larson’s ideas to western medicine’s development. Macdonald (1995) followed in placing the idea of professional project centrally in his work, seeing its capacity to synthesise sociology of professions theorising. A different but equally important application of the idea of project identifies the gender project excluding women’s participation in professional work. The many examples include Fletcher’s gendered engineering case study (2001); Adams’ (1998) analysis of male domination in dentistry; Epstein (1998) and Brazelton (1998) in accounting; Dent’s (2002) comparison of Italian and German nursing; Kuhlman’s (2003) study of the German dental profession; in fact, generally (Davies 2007). Current debates about gender bias in boardrooms, computing and film industries can be referred to as unreflective masculinist projects (Ballard et al. 2006; Wade 2015; Joecks et al. 2013; Dang and Vo 2014). Freidson’s (2001) over-optimistic ideal-type formulation for professionalism in the future is for Macdonald better understood within the concept of professional project. Freidson’s movement away from Abbott’s (1988) and Larson’s approaches is perhaps consistent with critiques of his autonomy concept that he had brilliantly deployed at an earlier time in 1970. These critiques argued that Freidson made one trait central, making assumptions of historical context and national place. Others such as Halliday (1987) saw the idea of professional project as oppositional to functionalism’s positive view of professions. From a post-professional perspective, however, functionalist theories replaced by power approaches were not so much opposites as culturally unfolding accounts and interpretations of professionalisation. Halliday’s argument thus misses the key point of the project concept, treating professionalism and traits like altruism, or public service as discrete variables, rather than seeing them discursively interleaved with issues of gender, class and culture in the now more familiar post-structural or cultural sociological manner. The concept of professional project provided a much-needed broader base for the idea of professionalisation and counters drift towards narrow linearity or simple progressivist narratives. Projects proceed concatenately, meaning chain-like, linked and linking. Tracing the contingent steps in such processes forms part of the task of analysing professions as projects and avoiding assumptions of a clean linear history. Concatenation was initially observed structurally in the typology

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chapter, and it is now seen here joining discourses and projects as a counter to simplistic professionalisation narratives that treat chronology as natural history. The term’s computing and mathematical uses indicate linking or being linked, articulated but not merged. Applied to professionalisation, the underlying sociological principle is that sociocultural change is always historically and culturally stepped. It links from one stage, practice or set of discourses in time to another, and is linked in various ways between institutional participants, varying nationally and by availability of discursive capital and material resources. Change does not arrive ex nihilo, uncaused or unrelated to previous formations in society. As Marx observed, the new is born from the old (Foucault 1980, p. 28); it might be called path-dependent. Integrating concatenation with project implies dialectical and dialogic effects. It minimises reading historic change simplistically by bringing abstract processes and group claims and purpose to context and opportunity. Projects reflect particular conjunctions of social power, resources and discourses. The terminology of project does several things. It brings to the surface across widely different forms of social theorising an alternate lexicon tracing power, intention and strategy. ‘Project’ includes less explicit metanarratives than solely formalised or officially instituted programmes. The use of project for analysing professions successively by writers such as Larson, Witz and Macdonald is particularly valuable in giving coherence to historically diverse material. Professionalisation is thus reconceived within the notion of professional project as a substantially intentional and effortful occupational activity, not an historically autonomous or reified process (Evetts 1992). Such a double political project, then, develops over time and in relation to other forces contesting for dominance or rewards in social organisation of newly modernising societies, and continuing to do so in later modernity. Using the idea of concatenate change deepens and integrates analysis of professionalisation and professional project. This enables the invisibility of how discourses interact to be better grasped. Over time, professional projects undergo concatenate social change in relation to things to which they are linked; they evolve and morph. That is, professions, viewed collectively, constitute one type of institutionalised arrangement among several

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competing forms giving expression to new forces emerging within modernity. Each articulated some version of the overarching narrative of modern rationalisation. These institutional forms have chain-like, or concatenate, linkages between them, such that they do not act autonomously but intertwine in complex discursive ways including, but going beyond, politics or economy. The present idea of convergence, however, is not (Thomson, in Hall et al. 1993, p. 53) ‘the sociological convergence theories of modernity and modernisation maintaining that all societies were evolving in the same direction’. It is culturally specific to the outworking of the initial western logics of formal-rational practice identified by Weber in science and capitalism. In contemporary professionalisation, studying continuously changing matrices of beliefs, values, practices and relations is every bit as important as the structural trends, such as those touched on in Chapter 3, that have shaped professional development and professional actions and reactions over decades and even longer. Deconstructive approaches to the certainties of modernity have pointed out the power that can be generated in either coupling opposites or, in contrast, creating binaries that privilege one party in relation to the other (Foucault 1973). DiMaggio (1991) shows that using the idea of an imitative professional project template can illuminate activities of earlier groups’ attempts to professionalise. Freidson’s (2001) later unsatisfactory ‘third–way’ approach to professions as intermediate models of expert knowledge and organisation can now be viewed in the light of the last chapter as partly a debate about how various concatenate organisational principles interacted over time. Much better to return, as can be seen in Chapter 8, to the clarity of Terence Johnson. Historical analysis of professional projects has been a valuable contribution in recent decades to theorising professional change arising from the reorientation achieved by Freidson and Johnson. Projects of social change over time are concatenated in two ways, one internal and the other external. Professional projects utilise experiences, resources and opportunities within their occupational milieu, in some cases changing in ways not previously envisaged. Further, large institutional logics of professionalisation, bureaucratisation and similar are also understood as linked to one another,

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again making use of resistance, boundaries, resources or specific local situation and events, to seek advantages furthering the project of contained expertise.

Zusammenbauen—Building Together The genius of modern professions has been the discursive building together, on apparently little more than abstract knowledge, of the double project of status and rewards. This happy conjunction could not have been achieved without the built together, zusammenbauen, of goodness and expertise. In the project of western professionalisation writ large, as well as in individual professional projects occupational groups have pursued, a specific characteristic of each and every one has been the conjunction or bundling together of assertions of goodness and expertise. In individual terms, this is represented by statements like: ‘I am expert, I know relevant complex information. I am also a morally good person with values of ethicality, clients’ best interests. I can be trusted’. Professional societies and associations express similar ideas and ideals, these groups codifying and elaborating formal principles appropriate for particular professional and public roles and functions around such propositions. For a long part of the modern era, this ‘expert–good’ professional bundling was expressed in opposition to other structural organisational patterns that could potentially undermine the justification for this combination, as was discussed earlier in Chapter 3. The building together, assembling, or zusammenbauen of the two claims—expertise and personal/group morality—is what constitutes the defining characteristic of western modern professions and professionalism. Not traits by themselves; not self-evident goodness; not service or altruism; not expertise modelled on the amazing potential of scientific discovery; not the consistency of legal process regardless of class or status. These elements were somehow combined, built together, incorporating the moral capital imputed to law, clergy, caring and similar groups. They were built into ethical, progressive, service and care sensibilities and perceptions in the conceptual construction of modern professionalism. This is not a statement simply about whether professions were moral and ethical,

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but discursively this goodness was claimed as conjoined with expertise. Implicit middle or upper social class proprieties commonly served as a container for this coupling of traditional ethicality and new epistemological opportunities. This concomitance of expertise and goodness is the most striking feature of professions. How much was this zusammenbauen, coupling together, of expertise-and-virtue-benefit worth in financial and status rewards? The power of professional discourse has seen centuries-long maintenance of this deep expert–goodness pairing that professions are distinctive and special. Zusammenbauen might be translated ‘assembling’ but this is not Deleuzian assemblage as provisional ways of thinking (Deleuze and Guattari 2007 [1987]), but closer to the Foucauldian ‘ensembles of discourse’ (Foucault 1991, p. 55). It is a particular historical fusion of two potent discourses of justification that are built together. It has affinities to Bhabha’s (1995) account of the power of hybridity as the endless combination–recombination of different cultural threads. Zusammenbauen looks inside dominant professional groups to investigate this bundling of disparate narratives. What holds goodness and expertise together? It is not logic, as in the classic ‘is’ ‘ought’ dilemma, so it must be other modern sociocultural forces. Any such conjunction takes effort, energy and resources to maintain because the very conjunction creates internal ambivalence. The discursive resource of strong claims of virtue combined with brittleness to any perceived threat or competition can be understood as the core proposition professions were making as early-modern monopolies. The Jacksonian period attacks on professions in the United States—with variations elsewhere—clearly demonstrated the problematic and contested nature of establishing this idea of control in modernising society. Professions’ own talk of a social contract frequently ignores this contestation or assumes it was naturally won by the right people, themselves. The governance questions that early-modern western governments faced in allocating control over segments of socioeconomic activity were aimed at achieving reliable and trustworthy conduct in the apportioned domains, of the requisite groups. In the subsequent success of professions in the twentieth century, the maintenance of privilege seemed to need new assertions

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of these built-together features. This was done under the guise of functionalist assumptions of a self-perpetuating system (Jamous and Peloille 1970). This discursive power is impressively effective in rejecting, reaffirming, repositioning, professions’ roles and present success. But there are challenges to that tight linkage today by further and continuing elaboration of processes of rationalisation and modernisation that impact this bundling of goodness and expertise. This shift may emanate from consumers, media, political parties or vested corporate commercial interests. Risk may come from unprofessional behaviour, individual or group, or externally to the profession. In more general terms, assertions of generic expertise no longer appear to need the guarantees closely linked to beneficence that were formerly inscribed in law and professional codes of practice. Professional leaders themselves often find it hard to articulate professions’ special contribution, or the group’s sense of threat when this powerful coupling of traits is challenged in everyday or political circumstances. Yet, moving forward from today, what changes in this coupling are possible, or may be un/desirable, and how these take place, will be significant in further evolution of professions and professional work. For professions themselves, in contrast to analysts of professions, the difficulty lies in how best to respond. Should adjustments be made gradually or made to only some aspects of practice? When–where–how is resistance, incorporation or concession the appropriate response? Whatever is decided, or simply becomes what in practice is done, has recursive consequences for the core coupling. It may prove difficult to have a ‘half bundle’ as an adequate basis for formal claims of monopoly and professional prerogatives, as psychology finds (Burns 2016). As will be seen in Chapters 7 and 8, rationalisation and sociocultural adjustments continue, recreating the spaces professions occupy and what value they offer.

Discursive Temptations Writing About Professions The chapter now applies these insights about discursive professionalisation and the twin professionalisation project of status and rewards. In doing so

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Table 4.1

Discursive tensions in professionalisation accounts

Abstract ideas

v

Events

Autochthonous Linear Social history

v v v

Contextual Contingent Structural change

it identifies the building together processes around disparate, even paradoxical, professional narratives. Key instances of these professionalisation discourses such as those summarised in Table 4.1 are seen repeatedly in the tensions in the literature on professions, and for which no one solution is automatically known in advance. Each tension creates a temptation to slip back to reliance on unsatisfactory functionalist assumptions, instead of meeting the future. All practitioners, historians and sociologists face these temptations describing professions. Again the combined ideas of naturalised progress with perceptions of beneficent professions and professional work create a greater susceptibility to rearticulate assumptions rather than distancing such assumptions as objects of investigation in their own right. The problems inherent in any one temptation are connected to the others. Terminology varies between scholars and is best subordinated to substantive issues raised in doing professionalisation history well to achieve greater insight.

Abstract Ideas v Events Inattention to the force of abstract ideas besets professionalisation narratives (Gunnarsson et al. 1997). This may dismiss significant abstract ideas from a time and place or alternatively present events as self-evident. Further, forgetting that for both individual biography and larger social and occupational histories, events are only relevant, only noticed and selected, in relation to an overall implied if not explicit narrative (Ricoeur 1981, 1990) which assumes the very thing said to be empirically confirmed. The methodological ‘doubt’ of science, for example, is only explicable in relation to previous assertions of certitude by religious institutions about such

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things as the movement of the sun. The controversy around evolution and emergence of new species, similarly, is science having to respond to prevailing beliefs. Such issues segue into asking for evidence and events in many professions. In law, citizen rights about non-incrimination, fair defence and fair treatment are distanciated responses to misuse of medieval state power relative to individuals. Today, however, such rights are co-opted by corporations often mightier than the state yet served by lawyers claiming the same professional values as protectors of downtrodden and ordinary individuals. Abstract ideas, when not surfaced and dealt with or at least positioned, contribute to mythologies being created that may be passed off intentionally or unwittingly as fact. Simply ‘setting down the facts’ or ‘telling the story’ cannot be done: a fact is only ever a fact in a context. Abstract ideas common in positivist and functionalist thinking creep into professional histories, such as essentialism sketched in Chapter 1. These can be seen in trait theorising’s claim there are some quintessential features of a profession that give it a unique function in society and which distinguish it from all other occupations and groups. But histories of professions raise this to another level. Such reasoning may serve multiple justifications— professional existence, legal monopoly over an area of expertise, levels of remuneration professions receive, being either entrepreneurial or resisting innovation. Without dismissing these ideas as false, they are social claims not inherently derivable from either skill or moral virtue. Downie’s (1990, p. 147) statement, ‘I shall try to identify the essential nature of professions’, is typical of this desire to clearly delineate the scope of inquiry into professions and professionalism, which nevertheless falls to this temptation. Another idea is the concept of foundationalism, which overlaps essentialism. It suggests getting to basic assumptions about professions, presuming that these are ‘givens’ needing no further justification and that the key task is to either inductively or deductively connect reasons for privileging professional expertise and occupational groups for their work. More recent education scholars are less sanguine (Cunningham 2008; Young and Muller 2014), even though still committed to ethical service and values of care. This is a more constructive and nuanced approach. The most persistent example of foundationalism in the theorising professions is law practitioners’ and many legal scholars’ certainty that there is a necessary

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legal basis for society, even in less complex human communities, that they link to justification of law as a modern discipline-cum-profession. Sociolegal studies as an interdisciplinary field between law and social science disciplines continue to be bedevilled by this preciousness, often sincerely and dearly held (Fitzpatrick and Hunt 1987; Fitzpatrick 1992; Tamanaha 2001). An event can be used to legitimise abstract claims, or it can disrupt received wisdom. Classic forms of preference for abstract ideas over empirical data are seen in narratives describing originary moments or events (Cipolla 1973). Asserting a starting or originating event or time resolves the epistemological regress all historical accounts have, obviating further developmental justification. To outsiders, such starting elements may be called foundation myths or stories. This kind of thinking is common among writers on their own professions and can sometimes be seen in sociological writing. A recent example of the latter is Sciulli’s (2007, 2009) repeated insistence he had identified where modern professions really began in his account of seventeenth-century French painting and sculpting. This is widely disagreed with by other researchers (Adams 2011). Sciulli misreads modernisation and professionalisation, pugnaciously dismissing most professions research since Parsons as revisionist and wrong (Larson 2008). It is not that seeking origins is inappropriate, but rather the case that using an ideological commitment like this misrecognises and misapplies the evidence (Torstendahl 2005). Abstract discourses of professionalism, with the problematics these entail, have been elevated to primary focus in texts such as Kimball’s (1995) The True Professional Ideal in America. Kimball sees this idealism as stemming from the colonial period not nineteenth-century urbanism. Given the very different professional groupings in metropolitan centres, it seems that both must have been involved in the professionalising discourses that came to dominate US professional narratives by mid-twentieth century. What this text does illustrate well is the deep and complex connections between this emerging professional ideal and the many other educational, economic, sociocultural and political shifts in American and indeed western society. Brint (1994) points to the impact of the continuing process of labour force changes, that is, we are now ‘in an age of experts’. This further reshapes the series of shifts from early discourses about ‘trustee

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professionals’ to professionals as mere experts, working for big corporations (Brint 2015) utilising but not fully indwelling a narrative of ‘expert professionalism’. This is considered more substantively in Chapter 8. The above examples show that like other national contexts, the national US context shapes beliefs and discourse rather than there existing some immutable scientific truth about professions unfolding in a phylogenetic manner (Steinmetz 2013; Gordon 2016). Whether earlier nineteenthcentury influences, rather than later American professional developmental cross-pressures are more determinative, can continue to be researched. Other writers invoke the relevance of the abstract ideal of professionalism, often as a critical tool to identify its reifying power in giving ambiguous historical evidence coherence that professional groups can re-embark upon or extend (Woolgar 1988; Schudson 1990; Rothblatt 1995; Hampton 1999). Professionalism and lawyer ethics has been a significant subgenre for as long as legal professions have existed (Kohn 1922; Kronman 1995; Suchman 1995), invoking notions of crisis or decline in ethical standards of the profession. The accuracy of such depictions has to be read for its American context (Ehrenberg 2013) through tropes of crisis and redemption that frame public debate about state and civil society. Ehrenberg also outlines the cultural discursive values and language of ‘opportunity’ versus ‘solidarity’ United States–Europe difference, too, which can be seen influencing accounts of profession development.

Autochthonous v Contextual A second temptation in focusing on specific historical entities like professions is treating them as autochthonous, meaning operating locally (but including the nation), independently and natively to the world inhabited, but such accounts miss the relevance of specific time and place contexts. Autochthony is commonly used of indigenous populations in the presence of incoming migrant populations. Professions, in the parlance of functional writing and definitions, have traditionally been construed as self-governing communities. Goode (1957, 1960) is the classic functionalist example in sociological literature. But a range of other viewpoints more recently also engage this implied idea, for example, Perrucci and Gerstl

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(1969), Bricker and Previts (1990), Bazerman and Paradis (1991), Parker (1999), Barton and Tusting (2005), Green (2005), and Fawcett and Hanlon (2009). For professions’ historical narratives, this mistake functions at any of several levels. First mistake: the idea that one can refer to such historically famous individuals as Hippocrates or Cicero and make inferences about medicine and law today. The contents of both healing and jurisprudential principles have, of course, analogues and compendia of relevant information from other times and places. However, it is a basic non-sequitur to draw a line from singular individuals or proto-unsystematised expertise of those eras, even great and brilliant individual innovators in their fields, to deduce western modern occupational, professional and organisational arrangements. Content and domain are not the same as mode of professional organisation. One does not dictate the other, even though there are linkages. Second mistake: the ethnocentrism of mid-century American trait sociology of professions is what empires and major powers do—they read events and developments self-referentially (Steinmetz 2013). United States’ beliefs in the self-running autochthony of its civil institutions such as businesses, universities and professions are well known. The naturalised modern presence of twentieth-century professions is contradicted by the fierce contesting of occupational domains of mid-nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries professional work and services within the nexus of business-profession-settler politics, across the century and a half period from before President Jackson through to contemporary implementing, then undermining, of ObamaCare (Jones et al. 2014). Such national discourse influenced sociological theorising of professional organisations and allowed a modernist-universalist conception of professional truth to consolidate. This is not, however, the general pattern across nations, nor is it the case when the matter is inspected in the United States itself (Abbott and Smith 1983, 1984). It simply brackets off from adequate consideration and academic reflection the role of state and federal legislative, regulatory and monitoring apparatuses in the United States and misrecognition of the sources of educational and knowledge/technology innovations. This self-referentiality was unhelpful for theorising professions since it denied critical insight into how professions came into being,

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actually function, and have been modified over time. Furthermore, Burrage and Torstendahl (1990) and Torstendahl and Burrage (1990) have documented empirical variations in the key role of the state. Professional analysis is not aided by assumptions that deflect attention from the wide range of European and other important variants of state–profession interaction. Though theorising professions have changed, non-sociological assumptions presuming US professional autochthony persist. Third mistake: to the extent that any professional group, or professions as a category, is treated as simply here and necessary, the larger sociological questions are not raised. Such an approach is less problematic for lower level cadres and for any professional practitioners focusing on understanding and improving daily work routines. But it fails to offer the larger picture of how things have come to exist as they are currently. Is the present configuration of this particular professional service best? Best for whom? Who pays? Who pays most? Who should pay most? Who benefits most? What implicit costs are there in this situation? How best to improve, remake a professional group or deliver a professional function? Willis’ (2006, p. 27) five questions of any social phenomenon, if pursued, can result in decision-makers arriving at very different answers from those which now operate. Willis’ last probe is, ‘How might things be otherwise?’. Writers assuming autochthony but not fully attending to context fail to see, record or assess the significance of continual changes to professional groups throughout the last two centuries, decade by decade; change which has not stopped at any point. The autochthony of one generation and decade and place is not static, changing in subsequent periods and jurisdictions. Revision, development, change internally and externally, technological change, political changes, shifting public expectations, shifting consumer expectations are almost always underway or not far beyond the horizon of the present. Applying Wagner (2010, p. 53) to the analysis of professions, it is easy to ‘overestimate historical continuities’ and provide some culturalist explanation of ‘civilisational difference’ by restricting focus to the present or events of the time. Even a simple test of this via an Internet search of medical doctors in literature shows very different medical professions and practices by time and place.

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Linear v Contingent A third discursive temptation writing about professions and professionalisation is the failure to substantively engage with contingent events, preferring or believing instead that professionalisation is a linear, upward and natural historical process. This problem is not a matter of appropriately avoiding a ‘great man’ history approach, its own failing, but recognising that individuals, government, decision bodies and civil society discourse are all located in specific times and places. Where, for example, would US history be without the distinctive voice and contribution of Jefferson’s contributions in law, architecture and policy, or his influence on surveying that is fundamental to that profession (Linklater 2002)? Across the Atlantic, several governments decided to set up veterinary schools in late eighteenthcentury Europe, responding to repeated epizootic pandemics like Rinderpest in cattle, initiating the modern veterinary profession (Bierer 1955; Brown and Gilfoyle 2010). Abbott (2001, p. 1) summarises in this way: ‘Maybe the little contingencies matter’. A dominant metanarrative in the modern era has been linear progress from more basic premodern methods and practices (Hall and Gieben 1992). Many aspects of life have come under the scrutiny of science and more open democratic forms of government. Academics in more recent decades have increasingly challenged the hard version of this narrative, problematising core elements of linearity: natural, scientific, inevitable, technological and good. Scholars such as Beck (1992) see this as more than simply the western modern creation of ‘goods’ but western modern creation of ‘bads’. Overcoming key health, legal and other problems can thus also be seen on one reading as not linear progress but compensating for problems of modernising society (Polanyi 1957). While there is merit in recognising patterns of modern progress in fields such as disease and policing controls within concentrated urban populations or unhealthy living conditions, this exemplifies overcoming deficiencies of modernisation as much as or more than (depending on stance adopted) sanguine idealisation of progress. It is important that this critique is not interpreted as academic opposition to progress but instead involves discerning implications in the idea of linearity. Most people would prefer the material advantages of living in

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the OECD countries rather than reverting to poorer or premodern living conditions (then, too, most people unreflectively prefer the era they know without any more profound reason than familiarity). Present-day scientific knowledge and digital technologies increasingly show limits, however, of western linear approaches to consumption, production, ecological exploitation, health delivery and more. Instead, these can have adverse consequences for each level and sector of society: from iatrogenic harm in medical intervention, to climate change, to anthropogenic emissions and environmental degradation. The confident linear consuming, extractive, narrative of modernity so far, and enormous world population growth, form the dark side of the dominant linear progress account of modernity and of professions. One of the central problems of linear thinking—granted it is a foundational idea across most of modern thought—is how it sets up binaries. The description of desirable pathways in western modernisation, such as how professionalisation is believed to have occurred, means other options have been framed dialectically as choices to be opposed, resisted, rejected and not listened to. If successful, this becomes a monolithic view, partial at least, if not self-serving. Thus, linearity works only for some, for the dominant groups’ debates in framing society’s needs and next steps but works adversely for others, marginalising them in multiple ways. Functionalist sociology has offered no insight or critical evaluation of this basic issue. Recall that Chapter 3’s typology showed other parties have alternate views and interests! A large amount of empirical work has been done in the half-century since the functionalist paradigm dominated professions scholarship. This more contemporary professions research and analysis has amply demonstrated the racialised, gendered and classed nature of professionalisation. In parallel, activist colleagues and affected groups have challenged the fairness—from left-of-centre analysis—and economic efficiency—from rightof-centre analysis—of this narrow linear professional model. In 2015, only the 63rd black woman physicist in all of US history graduated Ph.D. (Pitney 2015); questions can be asked either in terms of fairness and systemic university marginalisation, or they can be posed as an enormous wasted resource of intelligent, science-inclined, black women for the good of society (Shettley 2016). The full concept of career has been realistic primarily

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for middle-class metropolitan white males and then only for some. For all others, linearity undermines the fit of the concept of career to individual’s actual lives (Burns 2015b). Implicit if not explicit in linear narratives is the idea of benefit. In the modern format of professions, this has become coupled with assumptions of contributing to or even leading progress. Benefit, however, is contingent on many things, and cannot be imputed to action or situations merely by assertion or assumption. Even evidence of benefit needs to be balanced against counter-evidence and evidence of greater benefit elsewhere or from other causes. Even for positively intentioned individuals and professions, history time and again shows deleterious effects as well as beneficial ones occur from the same sources, and a given path of action and intervention needs changing. Professionalism has co-opted the distinctively modern idea of progress to professions in good and not so good ways. This embodies the normative western modern linearity of goodness. Any suggestion of a universal story since ‘we know what a profession is’ finds contradiction intrudes as it deals with contingent change over time; such change is not necessarily linear. Here are some examples of contingent shifts: using science changed professions’ reliance on consulting texts from antiquity; university qualifications replaced articles or apprenticetype learning; permission for advertising has substantially reversed constraints on commercialising professional services; more women than men train in most professions today; ongoing professional training has become an expected requirement in many professions. Further, each change plays out differently from one country to the next. As well as comments made throughout this discussion so far, the complex ideas of professional goodness and benefit are discussed further in Chapter 7. Social progress, like scientific progress, has a contemporary positivity that belies possible negative consequences that writers such as Foucault (1977, 1979, 1980) and Ellul (1964) have written about. It overcooks the egg to say that progress, science or professional expertise is simply positive and cumulative—and equally invidious to forget or omit the negative parts of the story. There are indeed many good things about professions, but many contrary aspects too. Bulliet (2016 in New Scientist

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20 January, n.p.) draws a bigger picture than professions—‘Even a technology as ubiquitous as the wheel turns out to be a scrappy hostage to historical contingency’.

Social History v Structural Change A fourth temptation in professional historical discourse is between preferring and reporting social history over against preferring and focusing on structural events and steps. This might be called the emergent versus formalist problem. It takes the functionalist problématique of American sociology much further. This is the case on both counts of developing causal professions theory and also for the lack of capacity to describe the historical emergence of professions. Government responses called forth the available, partly formed, local and national occupational and expert foci that in due course became the prototypic professions. Further, government has been continually and iteratively involved in the arrangement, permissions and regulatory successes and failures of professional work throughout modernity to today. Prototypic implies antecedents to a profession: What precursors, from what origins? Even this statement is only partly true. There is no one-to-one relation: ‘primitive–this’ occupation becomes ‘modern–sophisticated–that’ profession. Apothecaries, farriers, florists and landscapers do not figure as elite corporate professions today; that they have segued into other groupings is not sufficient evidence that they were embryonic professions then. Do agriculturists comprise a profession? Social and political processes made them or some other combination of practitioner skills and knowledge into contemporary professions. Is computer coding a profession? There is simply no ‘natural’ sequence of the kind that Wilensky (1964) and others tried to discover. In one comparative project, I applied Wilensky’s own structural framework to veterinary professionalisation data, empirically subverting this argument using his own methodology (Burns 2015a).

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At the early stages of modernity, lobbying eventually gained support for stand-alone professional organisations. From such initial formations, gentry and others collaborated in creating new occupational groups (Millerson 1964). Early nineteenth-century royal charters and urban professional elite groups drew patronage for national or community needs—in different fields, often in relation to government concerns and support in spheres such as commerce, agriculture, canals, journeys of discovery, steam and rail. Once again it overdetermines those groups’ or government’s intent at the time to see professional work as society-wide universal occupational practice. At each stage of professions emerging in the modern era, the social history is as significant as structural, legislated professions. Some of the turbulence of this process is expanded in the next chapter. Internalist historical explanations are active here too. That is, the explanation of who ‘we are’ as professions has its primary belief in arguments that say ‘we’ are the technically expert ones, the ethically careful ones, the trained ones, etc. All these claims fit the traits rubric of functionalist era sociological theory. All these claims require reassessment by professionals at every stage of any professional history. The social milieux and public discourses in and surrounding these claims form the social history of professions. Does the structural positioning monopolising an area of expertise emerge from current scientific knowledge or its empirical description and application? Or does it come from the demands of an urbanising society, imperial developments, reconfiguring gentry social class, science-religion tensions or the practices of military powers? Clearly all sets of factors are involved. There is thus a counter-argument that is implicit in the affirmation of these traits as inherently characteristic of professions. It is this: altruism, ethics, technical skills, taking responsibility… all these traits are not about ‘us–the–profession’. They arise from connection and commitment to the social order, to the community and the surrounding society. They are thus verifiable, observed or not as the case may be, in the performance of professional roles. They are claimed, overclaimed or counter-instanced by conduct and practice and measurement. How accountability and surveillance have grown in recent decades is a story of its own that is both a social and structural history (O’Neill 2002). The question whether and

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how the relation to government is a good thing, or problematic, is analytically separate from the empirical description of the history of western professions. Indeed, this is the value proposition about professions that governments, civil local authorities and community leaders including church leaders, and (arguably more ambivalently) the general population accepted/acceded to/complied with. Professions’ advantage was gained by occupational closure as a reward or trade-off in some cases to achieve services to populations in a given field. A kind of early-modern privatising, before government-funded professional education. It must be borne in mind that in Larson’s (1977) terms this was partly a benefit to society but simultaneously a status project for the occupational groups concerned. These are not of course discrete and separate actors—government and elites are for the most part interactive. Thus, the compact is the view seen from that conjoint perspective, not some objectively simple sociopolitical truth. The social compact with government is better seen as several distinct justifications, some from fiduciary care, as in clerics for spiritual well-being, or lawyers as officers of the court, or an argument from technical knowledge as in the case of engineers and surveyors, or social remediation in the case of social work. Victorian church beadles managing poorhouses are not considered a profession today. Late in the nineteenth century, the argument that countries needed more educated persons who could read and write became naturalised in western society. Structural history (professions’ presidents and dates, associations’ qualification framework and protective legislation histories) is commonly produced by sociocultural discourse and emerges from social history. However, the complexities and contradictions of discourse are often missing in historical accounts that write-out gender, ethnicity, class, technology, imperial power or other marginalising sociocultural discourses that are formative of structure (Sølvberg and Jarness 2019). Sociological-historical research examines the trap of presuming structural narration is sufficient explanation of professional emergence and continuance. Witz’s (1992) account of the formal establishment of the British medical profession in 1858 (structural history) is subverted by her unpicking the vicious patriarchal project by which women were excluded from

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membership (social history) at that juncture. Johnson (1978) and Macdonald (1984, 1995) chart sharp contestations among multiple accounting societies within a social history of government backing away from legislation without greater common agreement among practitioners, and ongoing questions of financial propriety and mechanisms for oversight of low standards. Social history and structural effects intertwine, but the growing effects of organisational formalism today simply replicate the structural and positional accounts of the kind produced at professional anniversaries and conferences. The more elite the professional body the more the tendency for the passions and motives in social history to be glossed. This section emphasised effects flowing from assumptions about history and professionalisation. Often these revolve around tensions between contrasting or even contradictory assumptions and discourses that have been effectively built together. Any history of professional development needs to address these tensions, since they imply the definitional problématique that is too easily swept under the carpet at national conventions, presidential speeches and in professional journals. Reiteration of Witz’s (1992) term ‘unpicking’ is a useful meme in achieving the task required. From these epistemological questions affecting writing about professions, this chapter now briefly sketches the competitive nature of professions within societal discourses. The underlying argument contends for a bigger view of professionalisation.

Competing Societal Discourses Various historical strategies seen in the last chapter’s typology can be viewed even more clearly as bundled discourses in the present chapter. These competing, naturalised ideas have centred around who can be a protected profession. What rights and changed responsibilities should they have, to what quality standards of work are they expected to adhere and so on? Understanding why alternative modern structural forms, like syndicalism, Chartism, guilds, cooperatives or variant political forms of democracy ultimately did not become mainstream at scale is not easy. Questions are infrequently asked when these forms are stumbled upon during investigations of professional discourses.

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Focusing on discursive professionalisation strategies pursued with greater or less success or seeing part of a profession benefiting while others become commodified salary workers (Muzio and Ackroyd 2005) elaborates the ‘how’ of occupational change. Such strategies, along with other modern ‘–isation’ processes constitute the active creation and reconstitution, maintenance and defence of these long-term negotiation processes of rationalisation in modern society. Such a perspective does not deny the useful work that can be done subsequently in periodising and organising ‘runs’ of concatenate change within modern rationalisation overall. Neither does it pre-empt consideration of how mixtures of economic, technological, political and other social pressures further the unfolding of these rationalising imperatives in these professional projects. What it seeks to do is loosen over-concretised functional models of social change. An argument can thus be made that science, as one example, is not simply a series of institutional arrangements, but an agent of rationalisation in relation to, and contesting with, these other formalised modes of rationality for funding, resources and creating an institutional base. Scientific progress and rationalisation constitute metanarratives, at the largest scale of cultural discourse. Then again, starting at a different juncture of modern narratives, Johnsons’ work (1972, 1973, 1977, 1980, 1982, 1993, 1995) adroitly combines attention to economic and structural positioning of professions. His typology, seen in Table 3.1, creates rigour around the combinations of discourses in each of the types he identifies. Esland (1980, p. 223) observes, ‘It is important for understanding the nature of professional work that it should be seen in terms of the wider logics and relations of production in society’. For Johnson, these necessarily include the economic structures of capitalism and the regulatory shape of modern nation-states over time. Consumerism is one significant instance of a cluster of late-modern discourses that at many points relate to the production, circulation and consumption of professional services. The following examples could be multiplied: appearance medicine, reconstructive surgery, minimising incision lines; anniversary cards from accountants; companion animal veterinary care; teenage dental braces as middle-class teenage rite of passage; spectacle frames as fashion accessory from optometrists; and ‘cooler’ school

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or more prestigious university to attend. In each case, a traditional professional function is imbued with obviously elective client preferences and significance beyond scientific or technological decisions about need (Tousijn 2006) or care. Consumer discourses, not inherently about traditional normative professionalism, directly influence and shape professional opportunities, roles, values and success. Assessment of what such shifts mean, and who most benefits, is importantly also part of sociological research interest and examination: the baby-boomer dermatologist inveighing against being asked to lighten age markings invokes his generation’s medical values; the manager in a commercial bank acting as whistleblower; the auditor resisting management’s instruction to bury the figures; the surveyor refusing to declare a school site chemical-free weighs his or her continuing employment; enormously expensive canine or zoo park veterinary surgery—each scenario calls upon different criteria of justification (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006). Both overt and unacknowledged contestation between discourses, and the associated institutional forms, lead to definitions framed in everyday cultural understanding as exclusive, contradictory, wrong, inevitable, useful or desirable extensions of professional work. Other examples like individualism and ecological sensibility are continuing to develop as contemporary discourses affect expectations of professions. Brezina (1996) used the counterfactual idea of one project professionalisation—what if everyone became doctors, applying an individualised notion of ideal professional career—to show society simply would not work. He found this challenged students’ naturalised ideas of career and what was a ‘good’ profession to enter. Brezina’s example utilised professionalisation logic to expose professions’ contradictory parts: medicine or any profession’s continuing expansion conforming to simple linear progress must inevitably fail. In an ever-expanding cycle of growth, society could not function if one sector absorbs too much of available resources.

Conclusion This chapter investigated the idea of professionalisation discourses on the back of the familiar term professionalisation. To enrich the usefulness

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of scholarly work already deploying the explanatory capacity of professionalisation, the importance of discourse as strategy was added. When discussed within Weber’s overall identification of rationalisation as the master-narrative of modernisation, professions can be seen to have worked very hard and successfully at their combined project of occupational status and economic enhancement. Brief comments on these main parts of this discussion bring the chapter to a close. There are several areas for sociological application of the idea of discourse in and around professions that can usefully continue to challenge unreflective assertions of the rightness or goodness of professional position and function. At the other end of the scale, discourse today also grapples sociologically with endless consumer and managerial demands for transparency on the one hand and identifying mechanisms that promote and resource ethical and positive professional engagement on the other. The shift from trait to conflict theory opened new ways to theorise such professional discourse changing over time. Writers like Larson and Witz assessed how professionalising groups’ projects mixed economic, gender or class status advancement discourses. New academic interpretations of professionalism and occupational control have been further modified with the passage of time. These better enable examination and debate about present changes in relation to professions and professional activities, noting particularly the weight of corporate power. Poggi’s (1965, p. 284) observation is as true of professional discourse as it is of other parts of society: ‘A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing’. The concept of professionalisation as concatenate with other major social discourses constitutive of western modernity draws analysis away from assumptions implicit in trait theory, better assisting users of such tools to explain the specifics of any one process. In this chapter, the concern has been professionalisation and its relation to other structural, political and legislative events, not simply in relation to other professions. It has built on Freidson’s (1970) idea of professional dominance in the hierarchical ordering of occupational groups in the health field and hierarchisation in gendered or racialised ways in creating modern fields or sectors, not as mere accidents of history. Expressed in division of labour terminology, this also builds on Abbott’s (1988) notion of ‘jurisdiction’ within a contested expert division of labour viewed as changing over the long run of time.

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Continuing present-day professionalisation discourses intersect with rapid globalising shifts in cost and delivery of professional work in emerging modern countries. The chapter discussed professional project as an established concept that identifies professions’ focus, intention and change through time. This contestation of ideas and the rival aspirations of different stakeholders take place discursively through ideas, attitudes taken, convincing or opposing others. The conceptual tool of zusammenbauen recognised that discourses are inevitably multiple and are always in the process of hybridising, remixing and bundling–unbundling. Abstract questions about what makes discourses join or unbundle and reform in new combinations were addressed in the case of professions, that is through professionalisation. These will be returned to in the final chapter. Professionals have been successful contestants in the game of modernity (Martin 1998a, 1998b). What compels interest in sociological terms is how such definitions have been accepted, initiated and acted upon by politicians, occupational groups, media and members of society as well. It is this complex normative justification of various forms of professional association and legalised monopoly in provision of certain services that require robust analysis. Embedded sociopolitical beliefs often lag behind other aspects of social change.The concept of concatenate linkages between these rationalising discourses informing and changing professions in modernity is one helpful element structuring that understanding. Professions, as the chapter has explored, exist among competing societal discourses. They collectively constitute one of the major modern institutional and occupational forms, professionalisation occurring from early in the emergence of the modern social order. Today professions are largely accepted as conventional, normal, even natural and necessary parts of societal functioning. Structurally, in Chapter 3, professions were described as constituting one of a series of concatenate modern institutionalised organisational forms. Then in the present chapter discourses of responsibility, duty and worth were framed under a professionalisation discourse rubric. The latter part of the discussion, in questioning developments to the present day, shows these discursive elements around professions are more important over time than formal structures.

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Although it is easy to take professions and professionalism as simply ‘given’, this chapter reassesses their discursive and structural positioning as they continue to shift and be reconfigured today. Professionalisation is more than merely simple linear progression. I argue that assumptions and expectations made about professions have shifted faster and more significantly in recent decades in relation to broad cultural change. These broader cultural discourses influence what is promoted or discounted in continuing professionalisation. Contemporary discourses of either kind nevertheless interact with and affect professions advantageously or negatively. Chapter 5 now turns to sketch professional history, not in terms of definitions, not typologically, nor in terms of professionalisation discourses. The temptations described in the present chapter to revert to historical accounts follow naturalised and functionalist narratives for one or more professions. Against such commonsense accounts, I use half-century time periods to disrupt such narrative assumptions that overpower the contingent facts of professional development, and thereby further extend the invitation to approach professions in new and different ways.

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Hall, S., & Gieben, B. (Eds.). (1992). Formations of modernity. Cambridge, UK: Open University Press. Hall, S., Held, D., & McGrew, T. (Eds.). (1993). Modernity and its futures: Understanding modern societies. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press and Open University. Halliday, T. C. (1987). Beyond monopoly: Lawyers, state crises, and professional empowerment. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hampton, M. (1999). Journalists and the ‘professional ideal’ in Britain: The Institute of Journalists, 1884–1907. Historical Research, 72(178), 183–201. Jamous, H., & Peloille, B. (1970). Professions or self-perpetuating system? changes in the French university hospital system. In J. A. Jackson (Ed.), Professions and professionalisation (pp. 111–152). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Joecks, J., Pull, K., & Vetter, K. (2013). Gender diversity in the boardroom and firm performance: What exactly constitutes a ‘critical mass?’ Journal of Business Ethics, 118(1), 61–72. Johnson, T. J. (1972). Professions and power. London: Macmillan. Republished Routledge, 2016. Johnson, T. J. (1973). Imperialism and the professions: Notes on the development of professional occupations in Britain’s colonies and the new states. In P. Halmos (Ed.), Professionalisation and social change (pp. 281–309). Keele, UK: Keele University Press. Johnson, T. J. (1977). What is to be known? The structural determination of social class. Economy & Society, 6 (2), 194–233. Johnson, T. J. (1978). The development of accountancy links in the Commonwealth: Readings in accountancy and business research, 1970–77. London: Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Johnson, T. J. (1980). Work and power. In G. Esland & G. Salaman (Eds.), The politics of work and occupations (pp. 335–371). Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press. Johnson, T. J. (1982). The state and the professions: Peculiarities of the British. In A. Giddens & G. Mackenzie (Eds.), Social class and the division of labour (pp. 186–208). Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge Press. Johnson, T. J. (1993). Expertise and the state. In T. J. Johnson & M. Gain (Eds.), Foucault’s new domains (pp. 139–152). London: Routledge. Johnson, T. J. (1995). Governmentality and the institutionalization of expertise. In T. J. Johnson, G. Larkin, & M. Saks (Eds.), Health professions and the state in Europe (pp. 7–24). London: Routledge. Jones, D. K., Bradley, W. V., & Oberlander, J. (2014). Pascal’s wager: Health insurance exchanges, Obamacare, and the Republican dilemma. Journal of Health

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Politics, Policy & Law, 39 (1), 97–137. https://doi.org/10.1215/036168782395190. Kalberg, S. (1980). Max Weber’s types of rationality: Cornerstones for the analysis of rationalization processes in history. American Journal of Sociology, 85 (5), 1145–1179. Kimball, B. A. (1995). The ‘true professional ideal’ in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Kohn, R. D. (1922). The significance of the professional ideal: Professional ethics and the public interest. Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Science, 101(1), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1177/000271622210100102. Krause, E. A. (1996). Death of the guilds: Professions, states, and the advancement of capitalism, 1930 to the present. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Kronman, A. T. (1995). The lost lawyer: Falling ideals of the legal profession. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Kuhlmann, E. (2003). Gender differences, gender hierarchies and professions: An embedded approach to the German dental profession. The International Journal of Sociology & Social Policy, 23(4–5), 80–96. Larson, M. S. (1977). The rise of professionalism: A sociological analysis. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Larson, M. S. (2008). Response to David Sciulli’s ‘Revisionism in sociology of professions today: Conceptual approaches by Larson’. Sociologica, 2(3), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.2383/28766. Linklater, A. (2002). Measuring America. London: HarperCollins. Macdonald, K. M. (1984). Professional formation: The case of Scottish accountants. British Journal of Sociology, 35 (2), 174–189. Macdonald, K. M. (1995). The sociology of the professions. London: Sage. Martin, B. (1998a). Knowledge, identity and the middle-class: From collective to individualised class formation? The Sociological Review, 46 (4), 653–686. Martin, B. (1998b). Transforming the contemporary ‘new middle class’: From professionals and managers to ‘bricoleurs’? (pp. 1–28). http://hi.rutgers.edu/ szelenyi60/martin.html. Mason, P. (2016). Postcapitalism. London: Penguin. Millerson, G. (1964). Dilemmas of professionalism. New Society, 4, 15–18. Murphy, R. (1988). Social closure: The theory of monopolisation and exclusion. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Muzio, D., & Ackroyd, S. (2005). On the consequences of defensive professionalism: Recent changes in the legal labour process. Journal of Law & Society, 32(4), 615–642.

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Steinmetz, G. (2013). Major contributions to sociological theory and research on empire 1830s–present. In G. Steinmetz (Ed.), Sociology and empire: The imperial entanglements of a discipline (pp. 1–50). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Suchman, M. (1995). Review of ‘The lost lawyer: Failing ideals of the legal profession’ by Anthony T. Kronman. Contemporary Sociology, 24 (2), 243. Susskind, R., & Susskind, D. (2015, October). The future of professions. YouTube Google Talk. London. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulXwTpW2oFI. Svensson, L. G., & Evetts, J. (Eds.). (2010). Sociology of professions. Sweden: Daidalos. Tamanaha, B. (2001). Socio-legal positivism and a general jurisprudence. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 21(1), 1–32. Torstendahl, R. (2005). The need for a definition of ‘profession’. Current Sociology, 53(6), 947–951. Torstendahl, R., & Burrage, M. C. (Eds.). (1990). The formation of professions: Knowledge, state and strategy. London: Sage. Tousijn, W. (2006). Beyond decline: Consumerism, managerialism and the need for a new medical professionalism. Health Sociology Review, 15 (5), 469–480. Vollmer, H. M., & Mills, D. L. (Eds.). (1966). Professionalization. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Wade, L. (2015). Chart of the week: What happened to women in computer science? The Society Pages. http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/01/10/ chart-of-the-week-what-happened-to-women-in-computer-science/. Wagner, P. (2010). Multiple trajectories of modernity: Why social theory needs historical sociology. Thesis Eleven, 100, 53–60. Weber, M. (1958 [1919]). Bureaucracy. In H. Gerth, & C. W. Mills (Eds.), From Max Weber (pp. 196–244). New York: Oxford University Press. Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wilensky, H. L. (1964). The professionalization of everyone? American Journal of Sociology, 70 (2), 137–158. Willis, E. (2006). The sociological quest (4th ed.). Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Witz, A. (1992). Professions and patriarchy. London: Routledge. Woolgar, S. (1988). Science: The very idea. Chichester, UK: Ellis Horwood. Young, M., & Muller, J. (Eds.). (2014). Knowledge, expertise and the professions. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

5 Periodising Professions History

Discourse to Periodisation This chapter in yet another way aims to render problematic common assumptions and cultural positions about professions. The method of doing so that is used here selectively groups historical material to overcome limited historical narratives. As well as resisting these common but inadequate versions of historical professional development, this method shows how these accounts could be differently thought about. In doing so, this helps recall subjugated and contingent professional history. By implication, it also addresses tensions discussed in the latter part of the previous chapter—what could be done differently today? The present chapter systematically applies an historical methodology of periodisation. I have appropriated the learning theory concept of chunking used to describe grouping of items to aid memory and used it here to interrupt various linear narrative tensions outlined in the last chapter. The chapter begins with two introductory conversations, the first one considering historical accounts and the next one consciously bringing sociological elements to the history of professions. Then the chunking method in periodising history used in this chapter is sketched. The remainder of the chapter presents half-century chunks of time to describe the last © The Author(s) 2019 E. A. Burns, Theorising Professions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27935-6_5

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200 years of professions history. The point of arbitrary chunks is to redirect the overemphasis in conventional material about such events as legislated professional closure, the establishment of an association or the setting up of a teaching institution. This can successfully decentre professioncentric accounts by asking what else was occurring, what broad swathes of modernisation or discursive changes were taking place? And why? Understanding past changes better prepares us for the changes ahead. Outlining a schematic historical overview of professions in the modern era in terms of key developments brings to the surface patterns of social structural and discursive forms that have shaped western professional development. This chapter is not history but a precursor to reading and writing more empirically nuanced professional histories and accounts. Much fuller and more detailed accounts of professionalisation of different professions, for most professions, can be found in interesting historical accounts, some sociological like Larson (1977), Torstendahl and Burrage (1990) and Burrage and Torstendahl (1990), Saks (2005) or Krause (1996) and others by historians and those closer to professions themselves.

Conceptualising History Professional historical accounts may be about a field of expertise— medicine, law, finance, architecture, or other areas—or they may be theories of professions and professionalism that are edifices built on one profession or one period and as a consequence necessarily obscure or minimise other key elements or events forming the chronological process. There are layers to be peeled back to uncover the historical traces of individual professions and professionals in society today. Hence, C. Wright Mills’ (1959) precept that a careful re-reading of an account at a later time contributes theoretical insight into any analysis. Here, the focus is on the historical arrival of professions into their present configuration in relation to the rest of society, but not automatically, naturally or inevitably. Writing historical accounts of professions requires more than an internal knowledge, impressive and hard-won though that historical knowledge may be—perhaps even personally lived and experienced. A rounded picture needs both internal and external insights. Sociologists and anthropologists use the terms emic and etic, inside and outside, to articulate the

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importance not only of the content about how any phenomenon is comprehended from various inside positions, but additionally also by applying exterior viewpoints with more distanced perspectives. The tensions questioned in the previous chapter aimed to contextualise commonsense ideas about much history as ‘just the facts’ versus history as ‘all in your head’. Although both have cogency, external framing of professionalisation narratives outside contemporary sociological treatments is less common, so once again this chapter picks up a different methodology in order to theorise professions better.

Sociology in History of Professions Sociologists necessarily address historical data in describing society and its institutions such as professions. Early writings by Flexner (1910, 1915) or Carr-Saunders and Wilson (1964 [1933]) about modern professions show this need to explain them by retracing and organising how these authors saw historical events up to the times in which they wrote. In this sense, history is as much about the present as the past. Later professionalisation in the 1960s and 1970s, as the functionalist ascendancy of professions theorising was breaking, saw many new historical accounts of professions emerging, rewriting mainstream understandings. Such renewed attention to and reinterpretation of history is often a sign of a paradigm shift. It may signal a dominant narrative is increasingly at odds with the facts or signal reassessment of the fairness of the situation. Either of these things may spur the re-reading and retelling. Thus, even functionalist accounts at mid-century began to emphasise the historical flow of professional development using the concept of professionalisation (Vollmer and Mills 1966), or Wilensky’s (1964) claims about alleged necessary steps in professionalisation as chronological sequences, or Goode’s (1969) interest in questioning the limits to professionalisation. These naturalised history accounts require some rough chunking treatment to reassemble the bits of history in more meaningful units from today’s point of view. In the new post-functionalist paradigm, the value of revisionist historical exegesis was immediately evident in texts such as Berlant (1975) or Freidson (1970b) about medicine or Larson’s (1977) general and detailed analysis of professions history from her earlier interest

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in architecture. Re-reading and reinterpreting historical accounts revealed dramatically different information. Wagner’s (2010, p. 53) sensible proposition that ‘social theory needs historical sociology’ is fortunately a long way past disciplinary divisions around the 1960s–1970s collapse of the trait functionalist sociology of professions paradigm. Historians were generally irritated by overweening theorising promulgated within mid-century American sociology, particularly under the auspices of structural-functional kinds of analysis. Such ideas were more a projection of the United States’ own geopolitical positioning and its own internal structures, than actually fitting the historical facts (Go 2013a, b; Steinmetz 2013). Professional historians could see that often these models—and professions and professionalism was a particularly egregious example—were not properly accounting for the historical evidence. The academic ‘history wars’ of that period showed the delinquency of considerable amounts of sociological theory, acknowledging as well that some historians showed insufficient critical engagement with patterns and iterations within their data and how the patterns in historical data might be better understood. A more productive turn of events was the move to active immersion by social theorists and sociological researchers in the historical data (Mcdonald 1996; Wagner 2001; Barnard 2004; Howlett and Rayner 2006; Steinmetz 2010, 2011; Go 2003, 2009). This moved earlier accounts from too easily absorbing contemporary beliefs about professions and professionalism—now read as quaint or ideological from today’s perspective. The solution was quite simply better empirically grounded explanations in historically based research, while retaining sociology’s disciplinary interrogative and interpretive task. It is important to make the simple observation that modern professions emerged from premodern European society. These special occupational groups were built on traditional functions and practitioner or client alliances pre-existing in fields such as healing, education, clergy, law, engineering, food supply and finance in Europe and the United States. These professions bear links and traces of the historically prior medieval European society, but in their modern forms, they have become quite different from those ancient skills and values in most respects. Professions stand at the crossroads of the practical implementation—nowadays often at very large scale indeed—of modern organisations and systems in each major

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field or sector of economically advanced societies. They commonly apply science, technologies or other techniques that require abstract knowledge and understanding of general principles. It is necessary in offering a selective account of sociology of professions and professionalism to apologise in advance for treating history in such a cavalier manner: as though history can be constrained into half-century chunks. Events of course do not conveniently stop and start on the halfcentury and century rollover either. The necessary strategic defence to the arbitrariness of this procedure is several-fold. An obvious point is that many volumes have been written about each profession. Further, other books like Carr-Saunders and Wilson (1964 [1933]) or Krause (1996) have been occupied with either comparative or historical analyses of two or more professions. So, questions of space or detail are not trivial when the purpose is not to repeat more detailed scholarship. Any historical analysis involves selection, abstraction and periodisation for both condensing a mass of material and also orienting material in relation to the purpose a scholar finds interesting or that needs explaining to a given readership. Simply because a purpose is not articulated or conscious or draws on commonsense that may be obvious to both writer and current readers, this does not lessen the effect that facts are relative to perspectives. Most historical accounts try and offer relevant year start or end points with ‘circa’ for less precise pivots and specific dates for more precise pivot points. The chunking here does not even presume working titles, inviting readers to review the data, answering for themselves what events, processes, individuals and discourses are important and the need for arguing why this is so. In a similar way that digital technology is often felt to be cutting edge in social and economic change today with numerous creative possibilities for the betterment of society, new passions for scientific knowledge and techniques were aroused in the late eighteenth and nearly nineteenth centuries in Europe. Over two centuries, these innovations have ramified into a complex division of professional labour (Reader 1966; Abbott 1988). As was discussed in Chapter 3, professions as a class or category embody as institutional forms one set of responses to the modernisation formal-rational logics that secularisation, economic calculation and scientific explanations set in motion. The history of this western modernising

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transformation across two centuries to contemporary society, in which educated professionals and their associations are now taken for granted as providing necessary skills, is nothing short of amazing. A handful of individuals in various domains of knowledge and practice morphed— selectively, since not all were similarly transformed—into large modern corporate professions. There have always been complex political and decisional processes in creating, configuring and reconfiguring professions. It is important to have a comfortable clarity about the possibilities here, because the start of the present century sits on the cusp of a huge change in professional capacities in many areas—technology, miniaturisation, algorithms, robotics, blockchain, genomics, transport and more. The interpellation of legal systems and accreditation systems and the outsourcing of professional-level work—no longer restricted to factory or commodity level production— is happening apace. Hence, possibilities and learning from the historical record are needed. As part of learning these lessons, more familiarity with the evidence produced collectively over a couple of centuries inventing professions almost from nowhere provides a set of case studies of alternatives, varieties, strategies and modifications. Furthermore, let’s be clear that these workplace creations and innovations are multiple and varied: there are many professions today, well beyond the few elite professions that formed the template or model upon which the present movement to professionalisation occurred (Wilensky 1964; Perkin 1981, 1989). Contemporary education systems interact with the production of professions. When the Indian government says it has too many uneconomic or substandard medical schools and pulls the licences on nearly a third of its present intake institutions (Mishra 2012), the fury that families and would-be doctors feel, while perhaps understandable is not the determining view of what cooler heads are grappling with in thinking through the nation’s best interests as a whole. The point here then is not to be historically complete through this method but rather to develop ways of talking about professional events and discourses that are present and important in the evolution of western professions in the nineteenth- to twentieth-century modern era as it historically happened. These include turning points and data often not appearing in formal descriptions and profiles supposedly explaining professions.

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Current and future professional developments are not simply based on the template of previous professionalisation projects, though these can be influential. They take place within worlds of professional work and expert divisions of labour already produced and now extant from that template and other concatenate impacts. Effects of this difference may include resistance to, acceleration of, or variation because of now-existing professional powers, relationships and changed geopolitical labour market expectations.

Periodisation as Chunking This chapter considers historical half-century periods in applying the idea of chunking to professions. It avoids getting into detail that could average out key historical disjunctures and conjunctions, making them less apparent. It is worth reviewing what has happened with professional expertise and occupations, in various modern instances, and point towards creative innovations for professions as these institutionalised forms adapt in the future. Chunking has a respectable psychology lineage identifying people’s capacity to remember being enhanced by grouping items into several blocks or chunks. Too many items chunked, and previous difficulties retaining information return. For historical or biographical information, that failure to recall and distinguish is a return to conventional or hegemonic views, or expressed slightly differently, it is a return to stereotypes. Learning theory (Cowan 2001, 2010) says the capacity to remember increases when information is grouped into ‘3–5 chunks’ is a separate point from how much detail is in each chunk. Cowan traces chunking research back to Miller’s (1956) paper in which the term is used 26 times. Cowan notes chunks have capacity limits, something sociologists can use methodologically in addressing arguments around political policy and historical change. Chunking benefits periodisation in two ways: the first being individual items of information can be better stored, organised and interpreted when fitted into several chunks as they are acquired, and the second application is how chunking assists new learning. In the present sociological use, it has the valuable effect of disrupting conventionally organised professions histories.

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Applying chunking to historical periodisation shifts the focus from learning theory. Here, periods of time are chunks of history. Cowan’s ‘magical number 4’ for grouping enables ordering and sequencing, balancing conventional efficiency in recall and ordering against efforts made gathering information. In this chapter, four chronologically approximate, but arbitrary, half-century time periods are selected. This conveniently covers two centuries of modernisation and professionalisation, imposing not simply the same length period on each, but the same start and finish intervals at half-century and century rollover. Half-centuries do not serve well for small events or processes but when used for national, empire and civilisational levels, periods create interesting effects writing history. Weber’s mastery of historical sociology found the balance between the long-run and specific moments (Radkau 2009). Green (1995, p. 99) argues that ‘Periodisation is rooted in historical theory. It reflects our priorities, our values, and our understanding of the forces of continuity and change. …Political issues arise in periodisation’. Attention to assumptions in conventional narratives occurs at the edge of a paradigm like professionalism, and sometimes before but often after change has started. Selecting these four periods disrupts the usual reading of the evidence. If history is often read as a linear process, and mostly the collection of ‘naturally’ occurring data about lives, groups and socioeconomic processes, there may not seem much need for attention to perspective. Functionalist narratives pushed far into such views, earning the label ahistorical . Scholars easily see dangers in the limits of such reasoning, but conventional histories still derive time-specific interpretations from conventional assumptions and beliefs (Go 2013a, b). As Green (1995, p. 99) put it, ‘Periodisation is both the product and begetter of history’. Thus, the present alternative of arbitrary periodisation offered in this chapter intentionally re-politicises the narrative, loosening standard storylines and illuminating discontinuities (Siegrist 1990). The chunking historical perspective repositions claims and delegitimises old certainties, providing a fresh telling of how the present came about. Perhaps the origin story has faded, meaning it no longer creates an authoritative or compelling account of how things started or should be. A new chunked account, more especially if it is external, is likely to be more transparently developmental and contingent in its description. It challenges by

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retelling what, how and why things happened, or what interactions took place or how certain things could have happened differently in the professions’ past, within the limits of available data. So too, Baldwin’s (2016) chunked account of how digital technology forces re-examination in global terms of the production, supply and ‘servicification’ of goods and expertise. Economic and political pressures on professions and other forms of production continually reshape professional work globally. This chapter now turns to sketch a historical perspective of assorted pressures and opportunities in these four half-century segments or chunks across two centuries of modern professional development. It briefly outlines some of the debates and developments in this creative response to the demands of modernising western society. This invites ongoing analysis of changes in professional work through that time, today and into the future. This simplified half-century by half-century historical sketch of professions lifts into prominence some of the social and economic factors that have influenced professions’ development. By bringing these explanatory possibilities to consciousness, instead of presuming once again a stadial kind of natural and inevitable modernisation sequence, chunking serves current analysis. What kind of professions and professional workers and forms of expertise are recognised as useful to society today? How did they come into being? How can they be modified to develop professional occupations or better allocate expert knowledge? (James 2015). Bourdieu’s (1986; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992) concepts of recognition and misrecognition are valuable in expanding professional historical analysis beyond occupational capital to discern ways in which governance, governmental recognition and governmentality operate at multiple levels (Johnson 1995).

Half-Century Chunks of Modern Professions Chunking professionalisation narratives into artificial half-century blocks does several things. First, new turning points, stops and starts, require attempts at justification on the part of a new narration, but they also interrupt readers’ convenient generalisations about olden days or early times. Second, fresh writing changes the necessity to know the correct

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pivots in professional accounts and obliges well-known accounts to reassert themselves if they can. Third, half-centuries are inconveniently small— not easily covered by a century’s worth or comments in a paragraph or two. They are also inconveniently large. They take some amount of words to bridge and link between the non-happenings, changes, as well as the nameable events.

First Half of the Nineteenth Century Government and public initiatives are greatly underplayed in professional historical worldviews dominated by Anglo-American narratives; historical accounts laud professions themselves—often focusing on genuinely heroic or outstanding individuals—as solving contemporary issues at different periods. Consider veterinarians, for example. Government efforts in the late eighteenth century to early nineteenth century establishing a string of European veterinary schools occurred at the same time as societies for the advancement of knowledge in diverse fields of human endeavour emerged (Foucault 1973, 1977; Burns 2009). Disease epidemics across Europe required national attention and cooperation; one local influence was the Odiham Agricultural Society established in 1770s Britain. Promoting farm and animal innovative practices and agricultural improvement, this organisation played a role in the development of modern veterinary medicine (Pugh 1962). Individual veterinary practitioners began shifting from relying on classic literature to new investigation methods and absorbing the findings of science. Implementing those ideas seemed better within a new social organisational form for applying this knowledge to everyday situations under government patronage. Historical myopia bracketing governments’ enabling influence as a key factor in all professions’ development is especially prevalent in the United States with traditions of individualism and rejection of big government (Corfield 1995). This can be seen in the case of veterinary work and veterinary training (Smithcors 1958; Jones 2003; Brown and Gilfoyle 2010; Vallis 2011; Burns 2015). In Dingwall and Fenn’s (1987) terms, it is necessary to talk about the supply side of professionalisation—recognising relative autonomous government action, rather than the typical focus

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more exclusively on the demand side in professions’ conventional narratives. As a contemporary corollary of such a shift, it might be observed this softens some of the calumny heaped on professions’ monopoly or miscreant members’ conduct when government involvement is factored in. The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed an amazing occupational orogeny, a term used by geologists to describe a phase of new mountain-building processes and apt for the purpose here given the importance and expansion of professions and professionalism around the world. It captures the social upheaval of professions at this time of more general economic and social change towards a modern workforce division of labour configuration, at least a first wave of modern corporate professional bodies (Carr-Saunders and Wilson 1964 [1933]). However, early-modern professions were very different in terms of governance and identity than what is commonly conceived as professions or professionals today. Government patronage and social class were fundamental components in establishing these first versions of contemporary professions. Millerson (1964a, b) describes the half-century process of setting up a series of Royal Colleges in England under a system of professions under protective patronage and formalisation of expertise of occupational groups, shifting from guilds who controlled ancient skills, learning and texts, to new kinds of occupational groups who were, in principle at least, starting to engage the new ideas of science and empirical investigation (Krause 1996). These groups represented the elite of society and were often dismissive of more rural/regional and lower social strata of society. The amalgamation of medical groups is one prominent example—apothecaries, surgeons and physicians were combined and became the start of the modern medical profession. Dozens of Royal Societies were formed in the first half of the nineteenth century. According to Reader (1966, pp. 16–34 passim): the first … was the Royal College of Surgeons chartered in 1800. … The Apothecaries got their act with its formidable disciplinary powers in 1815. In 1818 the Institute of Civil Engineers was set up; in 1828 it was chartered. … The Institute of British Architecture, founded in 1835 was chartered

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in 1837, and entered on a long period of quarrelling with the other architectural foundations, which delayed the granting of statutory privileges in 1931. … The Law Society founded in 1825 was chartered in 1831, but the charter was surrendered for a new one later on… In 1844 the Pharmaceutical Society was chartered, and in 1844 also the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons was chartered.

Although not an exhaustive list as Millerson (1964b) acknowledges, this was some sort of social movement, a wave of professional organisation, establishing professions in a distinctly modern way, yet largely patron based in bridging from premodern local patronage models. This same defining feature for understanding professional development in this period was specified up by Johnson (1972) in his typology of professional forms. As earlier noted in Chapter 4, venerable claims of professions’ and social contract might be better re-assessed as an early example of government outsourcing. The presence of this plethora of professions all under the generic banner of state-sponsored groups complicates any simple assertion or description of professions as autonomous. The earlier Chapter 4 discussion considered how Johnson’s types distinguish motivation and control in investigating the different types of profession. Though they are not asserted as timespecific, it is an interesting chunking test to see points of correspondence in that typology relative to developments at each stage in these half-centuries. In this period, other early independent groups, like the Odiham group mentioned above, variously focused on the application of science, national progress, social status or ameliorating social issues. At the same time, the early outflow of professional men (sic) to colonies increased opportunities and demand, not so much for abstract learning but for the practical application of science, design and other skills in building new societies and modern economic bases from scratch. The early US modern experiences in this period are both closest to the European past, but also the first of the new and organisationally different settler societies emerging in the nineteenth century. In Europe, professions were more distinctly seen as part of the apparatus of government. But a more adversarial characteristic inflected how American professions functioned, this claim of professional self-governance continuing right through

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to the present day. In law, for example, American practice segued from the British common law tradition but contrasted to continental inquisitorial or code-based systems. A key aspect informing this discussion about how professions developed in this half-century of the modern era—as both created and creative agents—is the cultural response in the period of Jacksonian America, 1830s–1850s (Wilentz 2005). The early assertion of professional skills and charging for the claimed value addition these skills or materials provided ran into different cultural discourses. This is the period both de Tocqueville (2017 [1835]) and Martineau (2016 [1837]) travelled from Europe, observing enormous population growth and geographic extension of the new US society. Questions of how control was to be exercised, federal or state, wresting land from indigenous owners, utilising slave labour, all fed strongly into debates about opportunity and practice of trades, farming, business and professions. Who was to determine control of these in an environment where personal energy was closer to a free-for-all, professional roles included? (Linklater 2002). The boundaries between these activities were highly fluid and any claims for a special ‘space’—Linklater’s focus is the surveying profession—remained highly contested in the temper of the period. Issues of monopoly of government by social class elites and monopoly of professional service delivery worked in tandem with an American antieducation milieu. When combined with doubts about the efficacy of new scientific ideas and discoveries, this delayed prioritising scientific standards rather than premodern beliefs and practices. Dialectically, this in turn sharpened professions’ language about what they deemed quackery and accusations of health nostrums versus scientific solutions. There were justified and unjustified claims on both sides of this divide. Thencontemporary professional sensitivities to demarcation, contested commercial and other professional territorial claims over goods or services of ambiguous or suspect worth can be significantly dated to this period. In some states, legislation previously setting up exclusive rights to practise was rolled back in the Jacksonian period in the United States (late 1820s–early 1850s) as being anti-competitive and acting as constraints on trade. White settlers’ rush for land was impatient with any restraint, any

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restriction on new opportunities, and lawyers, bankers and land agent professionals were particularly hated. New claims of education, and scientific knowledge as sources of professional claims, were viewed antagonistically as monopolistic in President Jackson’s era. Business, farming and private individuals often regarded these claims and positioning as against free markets and an unnecessary restriction on trade. This first reassembled historical half-century chunk of professional history helps redirect reflection about professions. Today, instead of professionals feeling antipathetic to the idea of professional project because it makes explicit their occupational aims, including self-interest, a different approach still using the idea of professional project was and is possible. This first half of the nineteenth century, in bringing together people of social rank with intelligent individuals from more ordinary levels of society, was a very positive project. Advantageous and negative meanings can, of course, interleave. For example, the Edinburgh veterinary school (1823) in contrast to the London school (1791)—the first two such educational establishments in the UK—respected insight and intelligence, applying new scientific knowledge. Meeting an important need for animal health in early modernising society contributed to a highly desirable sense of project being embarked upon, a beneficial project worth striving to achieve. That the London veterinary school drifted to more venially serving its founder’s ego and social class aspirations—restricting treatment to horses—is no reason to back away from the value of the idea of professional project and its explanatory power in the process of contingent professionalisation.

Second Half of the Nineteenth Century This period passes from a primary emphasis on elite professional entrepreneurship leveraging the sponsorship of royal and aristocratic patronage, or urban elites relying on patrons for exclusion of ‘unsuitable’ or undesirable members at mid-nineteenth century. It transitions to models of professionalism that were expanding recognition of intelligence and technical skills as qualifying for a field of practice rather than simply social standing. A fusion of bright younger sons (sic) of well-to-do members of society often sought out the slightly cutting-edge experience of

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professional and/or scientific work, not just in narrowly defined professions, but in many fields, such as geographical exploration and scientific inquiry, as the Euro-American colonial era moved towards its imperial zenith. Social class standing was nevertheless a core component in the traits ascribed to professionals or deemed necessary. In social and cultural capital terms, it was the key source of professional authority in delivering doctorly, lawyerly or clerical advice and gaining client compliance. In studying this period, Millerson (1964b) identified four kinds of new professional association in his analysis of intra-professional groups, within a wider emergence of alternative corporate structures—often competing with one another in the same or adjacent occupational clusters. For the present discussion, this is significant in yet again pointing to the contingent nature of modern professional evolution. Supposing these then-new governance patronage structures or early regulatory environments provided by the state in managing professions are bracketed. These variations in what segments of professions strove to achieve, or saw as their mission, give the lie to autochthonous professionalism, or professions as natural, self-generating phenomena, in and of themselves. The profusion of such organisational experimentation and effort shows in this further layer of ambivalence in the differences between considering professions collectively or analysing individual professional projects. Here analysing groups within professional domains, the professionalisation discourses described in the last chapter can be seen at work. The adaptability and divergence evident in this period, in the professional corporate sense of market and status projects, undermine any simple definition of a coherent, recognisable set of occupational institutions called professions. Yet in this period, middle-class and male-gendered (Witz 1992) projects did in time emerge and were increasingly crystallised for elite groups. As such groups were created, group events and individual actions challenged or defended alternative positions, indicating internal contests, rivalries with other professions and negotiations with cultural and political orders. This meant these groups morphed through alliances, regulations, geographic opportunities and economic drivers. In turn, these changes subsequently impacted development of organisational structures and powers of professions in the twentieth century. In this still minimally

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urbanised period, the salience of urban–rural divides in professional functions and positioning in earning, moral worth, expectations of progress and application of science is important in shaping professions. The four analytic distinctions Millerson (1964b) observed within the non-government corporate structure of these occupations show the contested and multifarious nature of professions and professionalism, even as professional groups developed and differentiated over this period: the ‘qualifying association’, the ‘occupational association’, the ‘prestige association’ and the ‘study association’. The later nineteenth century saw the shift from a pattern of patronage to emergence of this range of different kinds of groups, but not a simple, natural, convergent evolution. Kimball (1995) has a lot to say about the drivers of settler society in shaping American professions and professionalism. How different groups and subgroups held power and influence, and how they maintained this influence, depended on many contextual matters such as the nature of their work, their metropolitan, small town, regional or colonial location, and the political or class importance of the professional group. More sociological work has been done in the recent post-professional transitional era recognising where these nineteenth-century changes fit in terms of Johnson’s (1972) typology, not just the specifics of class, race, gender and education. For instance, women were excluded from the new 1858 British medical profession (Witz 1992). Significantly, the scientific research evidence of Florence Nightingale speaking into the ear of government—not her lamp-carrying care—was instrumental after the Crimean War in establishing nursing as a modern profession, albeit on gendered terms (Davies 1980‚ 2007; McDonald 2001). Each factor interacts with previously negotiated positions and expectations with other professions and social agencies. These professional activities and changes were also concatenate, to reintroduce this term from the last chapter, with other social and cultural changes occurring in this period. First, the second half of the nineteenth century saw the proliferation of voluntary groups and associations of all sorts as more mobile and urban populations interacted outside traditional villages, cities and regions. Professional groupings too seemed reasonable within this developing cultural logic. Second, basic levels of education in

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this period were legislated and became normalised and regarded as necessary to the functioning of modern society. Governments steadily became more involved in regulating and promoting education and supporting distinctions based on qualifications, with numerous laws passed in this period. School and community boards and committees were frequently run by three typical professionals of the time because of their literacy and writing ability: doctor, clergy and teacher. Today, lawyer might replace clergy in these roles in the cultural shift into another century, or perhaps other professionals, in such civil society roles. Third, specifically professional training and educational institutions proliferated in the second half of the nineteenth century. Many failed, others struggled with the quality of curriculum; some trainers were privately funded at the same time as governments began establishing primary education legislation for schooling. The overall performance of professional training was highly variable. Collectively, the effort was enormous but a long way from what contemporary eyes would recognise as degree or professional qualifications implying minimum level of competence in a field. Fourth, governments started directly establishing their own bureaus or departments dealing with functions and issues affecting society. The United States Department of Education for example began in 1867. The importance of livestock saw the creation of the United States Bureau of Animal Industry in the 1880s from earlier initiatives. The British Board of Agriculture was created around the same time. Even within this activity of creative and developmental energy, the dystopian elements that Jacksonian America had seen in professional closure continued to mean professional projects were highly contested. Professions’ own measure of success lay in increasingly monopolising specific domains of expertise under the legitimations of scientific expertise, altruism and public good. Significant cultural innovations included invention of modern gender demarcations excluding women and more non-elite men entering professions. The continuing contestation and ensuing complexities of such normative hierarchies, though hard to summarise, can be seen in Bernard Shaw’s 1906 famous epithet that professions of the period were conspiracies against the laity (Shaw 1911), echoing Adam

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Smith’s (2018 [1778], p. 145) words one hundred years earlier about people in the same trade acting as a ‘conspiracy against the public, or some contrivance to raise prices’. An example of the contentious interaction of this period can be seen in the persecution of women midwives by the rapid ascendancy of the male medical profession, even though midwives’ success rates were higher through this period than the men’s intrusion into midwifery. On today’s outcome metrics, men would not have been allowed to colonise this field of women’s professional activity. Yet this is simply not conceivable in most professional historical narratives. Much more recent experiments with midwifery as a stand-alone profession in some jurisdictions illustrate again the argument that there is no natural history of professional development (Papps and Olssen 1997; Reiger 2008). Midwifery and obstetrics could have been developed on a template of separate but equal, or as professions drawing on health science in similar ways that medicine, veterinary work and dentistry have differentiated (Otto 2017). How professional services are arranged can be changed, but this usually comes from links to current practices and gives way to better organised parties enlisting societal metanarratives. The gendering in these new professional functions as ‘imperial conquest’ of medicine at this time feeds off the discourses of the era (Pratt 1992). The last decades of the nineteenth century were the high point of European and white settler colonising ambition, and the same period professions came to occupy much more substantial contributory roles in modern society.

First Half of the Twentieth Century At the start of this period, ninety per cent of the world’s land was controlled by Anglo-European empires (Nichols 2010, p. 13). The fragmented story of professional cadres serving and administrating empire, growth of qualifications and education, networks of acceptance, sense of world mission, righteous domination and educational specialisation in professional clusters—and the problematics of that involvement—is one of the largest omissions in any conventional overall account. The image of the committed, selfless doctor working tirelessly for the good of patients and

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community crystallises in this period along with other professional roles early at an early stage, constituting a heroic and gendered template that established a pattern for the following decades (Green 2005). This echoes the geopolitics of the era in a broad occupational imperialism further into the century. This half-century is characterised by using this template which ideologically bracketed more than the imperial context, but increasingly bracketed the regulatory environment in which professions were created and existed. Asserting individualistic and corporate ideals about professional work and professional worth became idiosyncratic of professional development in the US setting (Larson 1990; Burns 2015). The strong connection in many cases can be illustrated in public health work, for example in Olmstead and Rhode’s (2004a, b) vivid descriptions of eradicating tuberculosis from several mid-west US regions through individual veterinarians working with government agencies, against unscrupulous veterinarians and traders, and enlisting municipal authorities to regulate supply of quality milk to towns. A complex picture of a multi-layered contested professionalism emerges taking much time and sustained effort to effect change. But it provides a much more empirically complete picture (Olmstead and Rhodes 2015) relevant to other professions as well. Such accounts render inadequate those profession-centric views that fail to reconstruct governmental and public official involvement and intra-professional fights into an account of professional actions and processes. This morally valorised professional status extended the culture of individualism seen in the previously noted nineteenth-century ambivalences about education and corporate monopoly. Though less true of European or other national contexts, this template became the aspirational model for many western countries. Professionals employed in the public sector, mostly government service, and growing social class possibilities of professional incomes were less visible parts but at least as important in this transformation of professional work in the new century, shaping modern society’s functioning. Insofar as modern professions, in the United States or elsewhere, fail to interrogate or tacitly deny professions’ role in relation to community and regulatory processes, to that extent they misrepresent professional roles and importance and create unnecessary problems in further developing and refining professional expertise.

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This half-century moves from small but growing government departments. More iconically, it moves from the image of heroic or pioneering professionals to the charismatically successful gendered modern career: from the little black bag of medicines and home visits to mediatised images in the new era of television by mid-century. Flexner (1910) undertook a survey of medical schools and recommended that government close some and restrict others—not unlike realignment processes being undertaken around Australian, Indian and Chinese higher educational institutions today. Such deep government involvement with the skilled labour supply contradicts assertions of self-running independence of western-style university institutions, leaving them open to charges of self-interest or, more neutrally, sub-optimising national needs for other considerations. The half-century, looking back, can be seen to have extended the concepts of professions and professionalism. The practitioners of a limited portfolio of a dozen or so elite occupational groups, as listed in Wilensky’s (1964) table, epitomised success. Outside Europe professions discourse was minimally linked to professional government cadres and did not clearly acknowledge the strategic social-class dimensions within which professions operated and professionalism was articulated. By the end of this half-century, however, many other occupational groups and were experimenting with this occupational template, aspiring to be recognised as professions, looking at the success of the elite groups, especially medicine. Some of these also appear in Wilensky’s table. Trait models and the sequence of professionalisation studies reflected this concern to achieve professional status.This US preoccupation with inter-generational upward mobility was reified in the post-World War II period and was accompanied by the proliferation of secondary school education. It articulated the ‘American dream’ in occupational success, only to segue even further in decades to come in the next half-century chunk. Distinctions between professional and amateur/ unprofessional/ nonprofessional and full-time/part-time at this time overflowed beyond conventional employment into other parts of civic society, notably sports and leisure activities. An example of this macro-discursive framing carrying its own paradoxes is the punitive vehemence of insisting on amateur rules in athletics and the new Olympics competitions versus professional sports

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in the early part of this period (Jenkins 2016). This was followed by contentious splits in many sports along similar lines, but subsequently, many well-established professional sports emerged by mid-century. This trend continued beyond this period as the culturally framed oppositionality of these categories changed, neatly illustrating the discursive argument of the previous chapter in this half-century chunk of time. At the end of this half-century, Becker and colleagues (1961) were researching and writing Boys in White, an account of how professionalisation had created a successful career trajectory at scale by which young men became medical doctors. In a tale of art imitating reality—or was that vice versa—at the same time the scripts for a new television series Dr Kildare fed into this new celebrity status of medicine. It is always an interesting discussion topic: Which profession is the most prototypical of professions? In many ways, medicine is the super-profession: progress, science, technique, associated with caring role and individualised effort, dominant. Sadly, the fundamental early work of engineering and social policy foundations of food, water, hygiene and disease reduction had been bracketed out and supplanted by this newer mid-century professional imaginary, even with public health as a specialisation. In this period, as modern organisational forms further changed, various paradoxes alerted scholars to professions having provisional rather than essential features. Three examples of this include, first, in the just-noted contrast between amateur and professions at the start of this half-century. However, the linguistic arc was turning by which professional became the normatively ‘better’ category. In most fields, it became a negative label to say someone was ‘merely an amateur’ or was not a full-time professional, simply part-time. Barton’s (2003) discussion of the amateur-professional distinction among scientists in the previous century showed a previous iteration of this lexical drift in that occupational cohort before it had emerged more generally in the twentieth century. Second, even in these elite professions, members could be seen increasingly as members of a corporate organisation, or working for an organisation, or on behalf of such an organisation, as the basis of their working lives. This remained the case, even though the affirmations of profession themselves and functionalist scholars spoke in matching individualistic terms and the language of disembodied science and abstract knowledge. Using

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the term ‘professional’ has similar effects pushing to the background the organisational entity behind the individual. An academic literature grew up of scholars sure they were identifying an insoluble formal paradox of loyalty to profession versus duty to organisation (Langerock 1915), but the flow of history by the end of this period made this questioning tangential to professional growth and change in the service sector. Third, the overlap between large organisations and associated career stages and sequence—popularised as starting on the shop floor and ending as CEO—stood at odds with the concept of profession, in which in this period a person became a doctor, lawyer or whatever, and in career terms that was largely that. Again, a US framing of career success in notions of the American dream made this more pronounced than elsewhere (Derber et al. 1990; Moen and Roehling 2005). But was it really the case that professions were a different kind of occupation? The paradox generated several ‘solutions’—higher status, high salaries to the point of this being deleterious to the costs of each sector or field, or moving into management, consultancy or involvement in companies utilising professional knowledge. The consolidation of professional careers, particularly medicine, as an idealised career trajectory for young men, conferring status, applying science and technology in new and interesting ways and assigned immense prestige on a much wider scale, takes place in this period. It is interesting to note that today developing countries’ parental aspirations for middle-class children are often expressed in encouragement to be a doctor or lawyer, like westerners in the first half of the twentieth century. However, in that half-century chunk of time law had not become the glamour profession like medicine. Families often wanted the mixture of rewards/status in the elite professions, even though the possibilities were changing across these decades. Freidson’s work quite reasonably centres on the idea of control over work as a central proposition. This is not the freedom of the lighthouse keeper but the control over lesser cadres in ancillary occupations and health process such as nursing and a wider allied health field beginning to emerge. The title of Freidson’s defining text, Medical Dominance, captures this. This book caught the spirit of the era, especially for North American medicine. At the same time, it responded to American cultural dislike of

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naming structurally inscribed social class and political parameters—for both professionals themselves and their client stakeholders. It reflected this uncomfortableness in owning up to the strategically important role of government regulation and funding in medicine and other professions in supporting new career mobility opportunities this time period offered. An example from this half-century period of chronicling and attempting to theorise professions can be seen in Carr-Saunders and Wilson’s (1964 [1933]) The Professions issued in 1933. This valuable structural explanation nevertheless assumed unitary, linear, naturalised modernisation pathways for professions. These assumptions became more constraining in mid-century structural-functional accounts of professions that ignored the macroeconomic and macrosocial contexts that created them and within which professions served (Marshall 1939; Goode 1957). Even private funding of training skills and growth of corporate and white-collar workforces still begged the question of fit with the overall good of society, obtaining occupational protection, statutory recognition and registration, and the claimed need for professional services in different sectors, even before rapid development of technological and delivery-provision developments then occurring (Penicillin, e.g., discovered in 1928, began to be used during World War II (Bud 2007)). Other national stories of professional developments were very different from this dominant Anglo-western narrative, for example Germany (Spree 1980), Mexico (Lorey 1992), Egypt (Eggar 1986) or Italy (Malatesta 2002). But these alternatives were largely ignored in the larger dominant narratives, just as colonial developments were not ‘seen’ in the previous half-century as part of the explanation of professions, or simply viewed as little more than obvious enough extensions of the western metropole (Johnson 1973; Robertson 1992). Countries’ concerns about the roles of lawyers, issues of professional education and development in health and education infrastructures represented quite different socioeconomic patterns of establishing and managing professions. Parsons’ (1951) discussion of the sick role at this time can be understood in terms of the time and place it was written, and also in relation to his functionalist theorising, he proposed for analysing society generally (May 2007; Varul 2010).

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Second Half of the Twentieth Century I call this final half-century period in this present sketch the period of postprofessionalism (Burns 2007). It is not until two decades into this halfcentury that the functionalist juggernaut of professional studies is pushed back in the academy by Freidson and Johnson. The term post-professional in this most recent half-century chunk of time thus refers in the first place to academic theorising professions and professionalism, not the world of day-to-day professional activity. A second descriptive value, however, in the label can nevertheless be seen in documenting how professions’ positioning, numbers and relations to other parts of society changed in this period and continues to change, in areas like hugely expanded professional education and development of new occupational cadres, and the altered regulatory environment. In this period, widespread secondary education in industrial countries was elaborated into the rapid growth of tertiary professional training, first in community colleges, teaching and nursing colleges, but over the course of this half-century increasingly standardising in universities. In the elite circuits of universities (Ivy League, Oxbridge) and other distinguished networks, the simple category of profession carried more freight than merely an occupational category. This in turn connected with Reagan-era supply-side economics and the British neoliberal naturalising of upward mobility as automatically desirable and a ‘good thing’, without considering less advantageous aspects of such movement (Friedman 2015). The growth of corporations and the emergence of globalisation affects professions in many ways that have never before been encountered (Brock et al. 2014): global geographic mobility (Harrington 2015), corporate control (O’Neill 2002), the new claims of managerial professionalism (Dent 1993) and deprofessionalisation (Haug 1975). Sociological commentators have struggled to find a relevant term (Macdonald 1995) for this most recent phase of professional history. Advanced economies’ workforces have seen occupational change and massive growth of professional white-collar work in this period. But work that is called professional can mean many different things in contrast to what was denoted previously (Grey 1994; Fournier 1999, 2000). The variety of new occupations and the number of individuals classified by government censuses as

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professionals or technical and professional, or managerial and professional, exploded in these decades. Occupational specialisation and differentiation have changed in these two centuries from a few dozen at the start of the modern era to the British Census now classifying over thirty thousand jobs, increasingly categorising white-collar professional jobs. Perkin (1996) applies his distinctive historical framework to interpret the mid-century period, straddling these two half-centuries, as a breakage of the generic assumptions observable within phrases such as ‘the professional classes’ supposing professions were largely undifferentiated, or at least a relatively coherent cohort. Perkin proposed government service classes established or expanded in this period as different from smallbusiness professional career pathways using similar professional skills and training in the civil service sector. These cadres were middle and middleupper groups in society but not focused on creating private income and high status. Perkin asks via considering global examples whether professional corruption is more damaging than monopoly. More blue-sky and contentious is Perkin’s (1996) thesis that the rise of professions represents the third great human societal evolutionary step after humanity’s shift from hunter-gathering to farming and the industrial revolution from premodernity to modernity. Even before any assessment of his formulation is made, it is clear he discerns substantial changes continuing to take place over a long period since early-modern times (Perkin 1969, 1989). There is another fascinating story in the discursive shifts in application of ‘professional’ to diverse people and settings though these recent decades; some might suggest a discursive commodification, since ipso facto this many jobs cannot all be elite. Foucault’s deployment of discourse, growing as it did from his earlier structuralist background, is significant in articulating this split in structural-functional assumptions—and having ongoing application outside post-structuralism with which he is more usually associated. His 1973 account of medicine’s modernisation trajectory problematised the then-obtrusive naturalisation of its dominant professional-client model in a quite different way than Freidson (1970a) had achieved, by re-narrating the socio-politics of professional development. His work contributed a European voice to the theoretical demolition Freidson’s and Johnson’s arguments made, focusing as they did directly on theories about dominant professional elites. Bourdieu’s writing on the

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academy continues the re-narrativising needed (1988) about professional dominance and symbolic violence (Bourdieu 1989, 1991). In this half-century, Illich (1975, 1977) as a political theologian wrote excoriating analyses of mid-century-US professions—medicine, education and others—charging them with servicing self-interest rather than meeting the needs of trusting clientele groups. Such re-moralising problematised the normative assumptions of professional goodness. This bundle included self-affirmations of altruism, community service and other-directedness being claimed as core traits, and Illich’s work extended then-current academic critique of functionalist sociology. At the other end of this period, Harford (2007, p. 24) repeats Adam Smith’s and Bernard Shaw’s concerns of previous eras, cited earlier, about the conspiratorial effects of professional monopoly, speaking as an economist. Other questions of efficiency, conservatism and patterns of exclusion formed part of this broad economic critique. The putative truth of professions’ simple desirability and usefulness at mid-century was thus thoroughly argued and deconstructed during the second half of the twentieth century. At first, the challenge was very critical of such self-serving rhetoric but has since reappraised professional functioning and beneficence in new and interesting ways, some more sympathetic to professions than others. For sociologists theorising during the twentieth century’s second half-century, some chunking occurs at the sharp demarcation from the previous period of time by the writings of Freidson (1970a, b) and Johnson (1972). Freidson demonstrated that the one-size-fits-all template of professions was not possible, despite Goode’s (1969) and others’ opinions. Furthermore, it was not empirically accurate in describing how these historical developments had occurred. This is not a matter of professions being unable to say and do what they wish to do. It is that government requirements for technical and expert services do not need to facilitate and ‘allow’ professions the advantages previously thought convenient. Whether for pragmatic outsourcing reasons, or from pressure on governments, what happened a century or more ago is no longer decisive today. The elite professions, especially law and health, continuously lobby hard for their interests and sometimes those of their sectors. The public in broad terms—not from academic theorising, but through the process of cultural and media change—can see the costs

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of professional services and the personal status and earnings to professions themselves. To many ordinary people, this material success now appeared mismatched to claims of service ethic and at odds with the narrative of disinterested service and altruism that professions officially espouse. Professionals work in distinct sectors or fields, often acting in key roles and positions in hierarchical divisions of professional expertise, authority and labour (Bourdieu 1990; Van Kreiken 2003; Steinmetz 2011). Claims of needed autonomy often hide attention from actual levels of performance of practitioners and obscure the twinned projects of special recognition and economic success. Johnson’s analysis, grounded in historical and comparative investigations, brought into focus the much greater diversity and choices taken in modern developmental routes of professions. Johnson’s analytic typology in this period rejected and bypassed the constraining ideology of United States’ and other Anglo-countries’ autonomous idealisation of professions’ collegial form of professionalism, identifying this format in his typological mix as only one among other forms, seen earlier in Chapter 3, Table 3.1: patronage, mediated professionalism and heteronomy. In western societies, this post-professional era was first concerned with the distribution and redistribution of power between professionals and clients. Steadily, it widened to incorporate issues of professional performance and quality measures. Health, law, education and welfare were not endlessly capable of absorbing cost, and pressure began to rise about justifying costs and high charges. Quality and effectiveness parameters have shifted. Through to the present, costs of western professions have continued to be contentious between public, clients, government, interest groups and professions. The quality of Cuban medical profession in this half-century is an intriguing counter example to western industrialised, institutionalised, pharmaceuticalised, privatised and very costly medicine. Such counterfactual arguments and historical instances are always good to reason with about the adequacy of the underlying narrative of professional history. On-the-ground changes in professional work in these recent decades have received enormous attention by professional leaders and governments concerning cost, quality and supply, and the struggle to achieve effective reorganised institutional forms. Academic research investigating past and prospective developments affecting professions has explored these

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changes and raised significant questions how these new configurations of professional work and policy, auditing, funding and service delivery imperatives can best work.

Conclusion: Half-Centuries to Today Half-century chunks of western professionalisation over the last two centuries contribute big-picture comprehensibility. It is a strategic methodology, at least a paradox: of the different chapters’ methodologies thus far, this one intentionally remains the most open to what readers might see emerging from it. This offer of comprehensibility does not always fit particular events or dates in conventional ways. What labels of key events or processes should be assigned to each? Could the period pivots be shifted? This inconvenience applies Foucault’s (2000) ethic of discomfort to gain the benefit of obliging attention to what is going on in each period. Otherwise, as Johnson (1972, p. 38) observed, professionalisation becomes a ‘strait–jacket imposing a view of occupational development which is uniform between cultures and unilineal in character’. The chunking approach used here has similar effects to using contrasting theoretical approaches identified in Table 1.1 by offering material to challenge narrativised and naturalised accounts of professions. By comparing and contrasting these versions of events, the discomfort of unfamiliar versions of significance helps disrupt and gain insight. Deconstructing can be a gain from narrow certainty, even though reaching out from within one approach can be difficult. Susskind and Susskind (2015, p. 197) offer an example of such rethinking in their account of ‘the evolution of professional work’ from craft to standardisation to systematisation, up to the present, leading them to think about professional future options opening up, but likely increasingly commoditised. The professions commoditisation thesis intersects and extends Weber’s cultural logic of rationalisation applied in the present Chapter 4. Whatever the time period, theoretical gain comes from attention both structurally and discursively. Structurally, in terms of legislation, establishing government departments and agencies, review committees, professional bodies, training institutions, scientific discoveries and developing

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client cohorts for different needs. Discursively, framing perceived needs, new needs, opportunities for innovation and applications of new science or new legal and political processes. Each half-century period highlighted important discourses, choices and constellations of negotiated positions and modes of governance resulting from stakeholders—professions’ and others’—interaction over techniques, technologies and other sociocultural resources available to them, plus the reactions of other significant groups. As a methodological strategy, historical chunking creates a candidate assemblage, Deleuze-like, of events, structures, discourses, dates, relations, socioeconomic and cultural resources—all the mechanisms of change over time. It avoids insisting on a particular interpretation and creates opportunities for rebundling, reordering or reprioritising these elements and suggests new relations between them. This is Foucault’s (1972) archaeological sense, digging the archive of historical information itself. Why has it been told to us this way? Have we enough distance to glimpse at least part of what it was saying at the time that is no longer, or less, inscribed in our present? Unless something of Foucault’s ruptural gain is arrived at, the attempt in each previous chapter—definitional reframing, typological repositioning, tools for reading professionalisation discourses—falls again into the naïve realism of presentism: western-centric and profession-centric stories of delimited truth which makes most sense to white, upper-middle-class, males, of a previous generation. Several themes seen in this chapter’s historical rear-view perspective, albeit in rough emergent form, especially the most recent half-century, are actively at play today. These include regulation, cost, quality, science, technology, big data, governance, risk, social care, efficiency, innovation, policy—the intersections depending on the profession—and more. How these features of professional performance interact in the more globalised and digital era that is emerging remains to be seen. There will be important opportunities and dilemmas not previously faced.The historical discussion has brought into focus the particular logic of professionalism, the paradox of professionalism. To address this, the next chapter picks up the concept of post-professionalism as various scholars have deployed it, working from scholars’ use of this concept to assist in better theorising professions today.

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References Abbott, A. D. (1988). The system of professions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Baldwin, R. (2016). The great convergence: Information technology and the new globalization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Barnard, A. (2004). History and theory in anthropology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Barton, R. (2003). ‘Men of science’: Language, identity and professionalization in the mid-Victorian scientific community. History of Science, 41(1), 73–119. Becker, H. S., Greer, B., Hughes, E., & Strauss, A. (1961). Boys in white: Student culture in medical school (3rd print, 1984 ed.). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Berlant, J. L. (1975). Profession and monopoly: A study of medicine in the United States and Great Britain. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education. New York: Greenwood. https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ fr/bourdieu-forms-capital.htm. Bourdieu, P. (1988). Homo academicus. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1989). Social space and symbolic power. Sociological Theory, 7 (1), 14–25. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Brock, D. M., Leblebici, H., & Muzio, D. (2014). Understanding professionals and their workplaces: The mission of the Journal of Professions and Organization. Journal of Professions & Organization, 1(1), 1–15. Brown, K., & Gilfoyle, D. (Eds.). (2010). Healing the herds: Disease, livestock economies, and the globalization of veterinary medicine. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Bud, R. (2007). Penicillin: Triumph and tragedy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Burns, E. A. (2007). Positioning a post-professional approach to studying professions. New Zealand Sociology, 22(1), 69–98. Burns, E. A. (2009). ‘Urged for more than fifty years’: Veterinary education in New Zealand, c1900–1964. History of Education Review, 38(1), 63–77.

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Burns, E. A. (2015). Reading theory or reading historical evidence: The case of Anglo-settler veterinary professionalization. InterDisciplines: Journal of History & Sociology, 6 (1), 121–149. Burrage, M. C., & Torstendahl, R. (Eds.). (1990). Professions in theory and history. London: Sage. Carr-Saunders, A. M., & Wilson, P. A. (1964 [1933]). The professions. London: Frank Cass. Corfield, P. J. (1995). Power and the professions in early industrial Britain. London: Routledge. Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity. Behavior Brain Science, 24 (1), 87–114. Cowan, N. (2010). The magical mystery four: How is working memory capacity limited, and why? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19 (1), 51–57. Davies, C. (1980). Rewriting nursing history. London: Croom Helm. Davies, C. (2007). Rewriting nursing history—Again? Nursing History Review, 15, 11–28. Dent, M. (1993). Professionalism, educated labour and the state: Hospital medicine and the new managerialism. Sociological Review, 41(2), 244–273. Derber, C., Schwartz, W. A., & Magrass, Y. R. (1990). Power in the highest degree: Professionals and the rise of a new mandarin order. New York: Oxford University Press. de Tocqueville, A. (2017 [1835]). Democracy in America. London: Forgotten Books. Dingwall, R. W. J., & Fenn, P. (1987). ‘A respectable profession?’ Sociological and economic perspectives on the regulation of professional services. International Journal of Law & Economics, 7 (1), 51–64. Eggar, V. (1986). Fabian in Egypt: Salamah Musa and the rise of the professional classes, 1909–1939. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Flexner, A. (1910). The Flexner report: Medical education in the United States and Canada (Bulletin No. 4). New York: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. http://archive.carnegiefoundation.org/pdfs/ elibrary/Carnegie_Flexner_Report.pdf. Flexner, A. (1915). Is social work a profession? School & Society, 1(26), 90–111. Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1973). Birth of the clinic. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (2000 [1994]). For an ethic of discomfort. In J. D. Fabion (Ed.), Essential works of Foucault, 1954–1984 (pp. 443–448). New York: Free Press.

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Fournier, V. (1999). The appeal to ‘professionalism’ as a disciplinary mechanism. The Sociological Review, 47 (2), 280–307. Fournier, V. (2000). Boundary work and the (un)making of the professions. In N. Malin (Ed.), Professionalism, boundaries and the workplace (pp. 67–86). London: Routledge. Freidson, E. (1970a). Professional dominance. New York: Atherton. Freidson, E. (1970b). Profession of medicine. New York: Dodd, Mead. Friedman, S. (2015). The limits of capital gains: Using Bourdieu to understand social mobility into elite occupations. In J. Thatcher, N. Ingram, C. Burke, & J. Abrahams (Eds.), Bourdieu: The next generation (pp. 107–123). London: Routledge. Go, J. (2003). Waves of American empire, 1787–2003: US empire and imperialistic activity from the shores of Tripoli to Iraq. International Sociology, 22(1), 5–40. Go, J. (2009). The ‘new’ sociology of empire and colonialism. Sociology Compass, 3(5), 775–788. Go, J. (2013a). For a postcolonial sociology. Theory & Society, 42(1), 25–55. Go, J. (2013b). Sociology’s imperial unconscious: The emergence of American sociology in the context of empire. In G. Steinmetz (Ed.), Sociology and empire (pp. 82–105). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Goode, W. J. (1957). Community within a community: The professions. American Sociological Review, 22(2), 194–200. Goode, W. J. (1969). The theoretical limits of professionalization. In A. Etzioni (Ed.), The semi professions and their organization: Teachers, nurses, and social workers (pp. 266–313). New York: Free Press. Green, J. (2005). Professions and community. New Zealand Sociology, 20, 122–141. Green, W. A. (1995). Periodizing world history. History & Theory, 34 (2), 99–111. Grey, C. (1994). Career as a project of the self and labour process discipline. Sociology, 28(2), 479–497. Harford, T. (2007). The undercover economist. New York: Random. Harrington, B. (2015). Going global: Professionals and the micro-foundations of institutional change. Journal of Professions & Organization, 2(2), 103–121. Haug, M. R. (1975). The deprofessionalization of everyone? Sociological Forces, 8(3), 197–213. Howlett, M., & Rayner, J. (2006). Understanding the historical turn in the policy sciences: A critique of stochastic, narrative, path dependency and processsequencing models of policy-making over time. Policy Sciences, 39 (1), 1–18. Illich, I. (1975). Medical nemesis. London: Marion Boyars.

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Illich, I. (1977). Disabling professions. In I. Illich, et al. (Eds.), Disabling professions (pp. 11–40). New York: Marion Boyars. James, D. (2015). How Bourdieu bites back: Recognising misrecognition in education and educational research. Cambridge Journal of Education, 45 (1), 97–112. Jenkins, L. A. (2016). ‘For love or for money’: A history of amateurism in the Olympic Games. Fightland Blog. http://fightland.vice.com/blog/ for–love–or–for–money–a–history–of–amateurism–in–the–olympic–games. Johnson, T. J. (1972). Professions and power. London: Macmillan. Republished Routledge, 2016. Johnson, T. J. (1973). Imperialism and the professions: Notes on the development of professional occupations in Britain’s colonies and the new states. In P. Halmos (Ed.), Professionalisation and social change (pp. 281–309). Keele, UK: Keele University Press. Johnson, T. J. (1995). Governmentality and the institutionalization of expertise. In T. J. Johnson, G. Larkin, & M. Saks (Eds.), Health professions and the state in Europe (pp. 7–24). London: Routledge. Jones, S. D. (2003). Valuing animals. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Kimball, B. A. (1995). The ‘true professional ideal’ in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Krause, E. A. (1996). Death of the guilds: Professions, states, and the advancement of capitalism, 1930 to the present. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Langerock, H. (1915). Professionalism: A study in professional deformation. American Journal of Sociology, 21(1), 30–44. Larson, M. S. (1977). The rise of professionalism: A sociological analysis. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Larson, M. S. (1990). On the matter of experts and professionals, or how impossible is it to leave nothing unsaid. In R. Torstendahl & M. C. Burrage (Eds.), The formation of professions (pp. 11–23). London: Sage. Linklater, A. (2002). Measuring America. London: HarperCollins. Lorey, D. E. (1992). The rise of the professions in twentieth-century Mexico: university graduates and occupational changes since 1929. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Latin American Publications Center. Macdonald, K. M. (1995). The sociology of the professions. London: Sage. Malatesta, M. (Ed.). (2002). Society and the professions in Italy, 1860–1914. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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Marshall, T. (1939). The recent history of professionalisation in relation to social structure and social policy. Canadian Journal of Economics & Political Sciences, 5, 325–340. Martineau, H. (2016 [1837]). Society in America (Vol. 1). London: Forgotten Books. May, C. (2007). The clinical encounter and the problem of context. Sociology, 41(1), 29–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038507072282. Mcdonald, T. J. (Ed.). (1996). The historic turn in the human sciences. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. McDonald, L. (2001). Florence Nightingale and the early origins of evidencebased nursing. Evidence Based Nursing, 4 (3), 68–69. Miller, G. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63(2), 81–97. Millerson, G. (1964a). Dilemmas of professionalism. New Society, 4, 15–18. Millerson, G. (1964b). The qualifying associations: A study in professionalisation. London: Routledge. Republished 2003. Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. Mishra, A. (2012). China has become the preferred destination for medical education. University World News. http://Www.Universityworldnews.Com/Article. Php?Story=20120904100946519. Moen, P., & Roehling, P. (2005). The career mystique: Cracks in the American dream. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Nichols, R. (2010). Postcolonial studies and the discourse of Foucault: Survey of a field of problematization. Foucault Studies, 9, 111–144. O’Neill, O. (2002). A question of trust. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Olmstead, A., & Rhode, P. (2004a). An impossible undertaking: The eradication of bovine tuberculosis in the United States. The Journal of Economic History, 64 (3), 734–772. Olmstead, A., & Rhode, P. (2004b). The ‘Tuberculous cattle trust’: Disease contagion in an era of regulatory uncertainty. The Journal of Economic History, 64 (4), 929–963. Olmstead, A., & Rhode, P. (2015). Arresting contagion: Science, policy, and conflicts over animal disease control. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Otto, M. (2017). Teeth: The story of beauty, inequality, and the struggle for oral health in America. New York: New Press.

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Papps, E., & Olssen, M. (1997). Doctoring childbirth and regulating midwifery in New Zealand: A Foucauldian perspective. Palmerston North, New Zealand: Dunmore. Parsons, T. (1951). Social structure and dynamic process: The case of modern medical practice. In T. Parsons (Ed.), The social system (pp. 428–479). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Perkin, H. (1969). The origins of modern English society, 1771–1880. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Perkin, H. (1981). Professionalism and property: English society since 1880. Reading, UK: University of Reading. Perkin, H. (1989). The rise of professional society. London: Routledge. Perkin, H. (1996). The third revolution: Professional elites in the modern world. London: Routledge. Pratt, M. (1992). Imperial eyes. London: Routledge. Pugh, L. (1962). From farriery to veterinary medicine, 1785–1795. Cambridge, UK: Heffer & Sons. Radkau, J. (2009). Max Weber: A biography. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Reader, W. J. (1966). Professional men: The rise of the professional classes in nineteenth-century England. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Reiger, K. (2008). Domination or mutual recognition? Professional subjectivity in midwifery and obstetrics. Social Theory & Health, 6 (2), 132–147. Robertson, R. (1992). Globalisation: Social theory and social culture. London: Sage. Saks, M. (2005). Professions and the public interest: Medical power, altruism and alternative medicine. London: Routledge. Shaw, G. B. (1911). The doctor’s dilemma. New York: Brentano. https:// openlibrary.org/publishers/Brentano’s. Siegrist, H. (1990). Professionalisation as a process: Patterns, progression and discontinuity. In M. C. Burrage & R. Torstendahl (Eds.), Professions in theory and history: Rethinking the study of professions (pp. 177–202). London: Sage. Smith, A. (2018 [1778]). Wealth of nations (Vol. 8). http://www.adamsmith.org/ quotes. Smithcors, J. F. (1958). Veterinary public health matters in colonial America. Journal of American Veterinary Medical Association, 132(5), 194–201. Spree, R. (1980). The impact of the professionalisation of physicians on social change in Germany during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 15, 24–39. Steinmetz, G. (2010). Ideas in exile: Refugees from Nazi Germany and the failure to transplant historical sociology into the United States. International Journal

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6 The Post-professional Transition

Threads of Concern The continuous empirical changes in professions and society described in the last chapter need more than rearranging and shaking out of false certainty. A contribution the present chapter makes is looking across the last fifty years of the previous discussion, naming it the post-professional era of academic inquiry into professions and professionalism. This period dates from the 1970s to early this century. The method used in this chapter is sampling scholarship from this period that uses the concept of postprofessional. Post-professionalism bridges from the demise of functionalist or structural-functionalist theory dominance at mid-twentieth century to the present global and technological changes. The post-professional era has thus been the transition to something gradually discerned beyond applying much better analyses identifying key factors in how professions work and are controlled in new ways leading into the present century. Preliminary reference to possible lines of theorising professions and professionalism was made in the first chapter. Within the profusion of writing about professions in recent decades, one small thread adopted the language of post-professional analysis. The approach in this chapter is to start from the idea of ‘post’ that is often © The Author(s) 2019 E. A. Burns, Theorising Professions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27935-6_6

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prefixed to mainstream societal narratives as they unbundle and reform in new ways such as post-colonial and postmodern. Then, with this general framing of the idea of post-professional set out, the chapter considers six main themes to which the concept of post-professional has been applied to articulate concerns about what is happening to professions and professionalism. There are two foci, one theoretical or academic and one empirical describing what appears to be happening in society. The first is the theoretical disengagement from functional explanations of professions by sociologists; the second foci identifies the post-professional transition of recent decades, an empirical change in society rather than academia, that is further unpacked in the following two chapters. Post-professional writing has grappled with and tried to integrate conceptual reframing with empirical changes to make sense of the period beyond hegemonic mid-century trait theory of professions. Pushing past the functionalist paradigm, an emperor with no scholarly clothes and no longer the received and accepted orthodoxy, has meant finding theoretical alternatives beyond continuing functionalist imperatives in professions and professionalism. In shifting global and cultural contexts, many elements of such change have not been easy to describe. This is a problem for theorising professions and also part of a much wider scholarship issue. How best to account for the widening disconnect between western modern theories of progress and consumption with well-being, development, environment and fairness across societies globally? The term post-professional invites comparisons with other ‘posts’ used in today’s multi-paradigm social science terrain. Theorists have in multiple fields formulated a ‘post’ position to express a changed understanding from a previously hegemonic mode of thinking, adopting a distancing though not necessarily oppositional stance to predominant views or modes of analysis. In the analysis of professions, the analogous terminology, that is, post-professional and post-professionalism, has been much less frequently used. Appiah (1991, p. 336) asks, ‘Is the post– in post–modernism the post– in post–colonialism?’ Without exploring such questioning too far here, among writers invoking the concept of post-professionalism, some focus particularly on the professional issue with which they are primarily concerned, while others name it in connection with one or more other ‘posts’ indicating their conscious engagement with a broader framing.

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Illich (1977, p. 38) is usually credited with the first substantive use of post-professionalism. Kritzer (1999, p. 715) found only Illich and another previous use of the concept than his own efforts, commenting: Although I hesitate to add another ‘post–xxx’ to a lexicon overflowing with ‘posts’ (postmodernism, poststructuralism, post–materialism, post–industrialism, post–Soviet, post– this and post that), a concept that begins to capture the full dimensions of these developments is post–professionalism.

The idea of post-professional in analysing professions and professionalism has been used in the academic literature, but not so much by sociologists. Several literatures emerged in response to cracks in the previous functionalist hegemony of sociology of professions scholarship that replicated professions’ own beliefs and concerns. These addressed the complex process of rethinking explanations about professionals and professionalism. The terms post-professional and post-professionalism are used interchangeably rather than being used to make distinctions in the following discussion. It is scholars’ different applications of the terms that provide instructive contrasts in how they attempt to understand what is happening to professions. Scholars in particular professions have been greatly invested in thinking about professions and professionalism, in the process employing multiple theoretical frameworks and not infrequently articulating ‘post’ perspectives (e.g. Mohanty 1991; Ball 1994). These draw leverage from the combination of perspectives like Lather (2004) or even critiquing the use of ‘post’ in relation to other ‘posts’ such as postmodernity. It is the common pressures on professional groups and theoretical reflection trying to articulate contemporary social change that has generated this post-professional reframing of professions and professionalism more than sociologists using this term. The post-professional literature outlined in this chapter shows diversity in applying of the idea of post-professionalism. Innovative professionsbased scholars making use of post-professionalism, such as Illich (1977), Hargreaves (Goodson and Hargreaves 1996; Hargreaves 2000), and Kritzer (1999), have been followed by others in the same or adjacent fields struggling to interpret professional change. Table 6.1 summarises selected

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Table 6.1

Selected post-professional literature themes

1 2 3 4

Stage in occupational path New professional identities Vision of a new society New middle-class

5 6

Deprofessionalisation Contemporary work problems

Hargreaves (1996, 2000) Stronach et al. (2000) Illich (1977) and House (2003) Derber et al. (1990) and Martin (1998a, b) Ball (2004, 2005) Kritzer (1999)

concerns and themes writers have identified, some positive, some negative, across a range of fields over these several decades. The confusion of competing uses of the term post-professional confirms the tentative, provisional reach of theorising ‘what comes after’ the modernist confidence and rise to power of western elite professions in the first half of the twentieth century. The idea of post-professionalism, as in all socio-theoretic use of ‘post’ terminology, signifies a break from a prevailing hegemony into new unclear terrain. It also identifies continuing referencing if not engagement with the previously dominant structural and discursive formations and ideologies about modern professions and their projects.

Challenge, Uncertainty, Transition What has constrained using the idea of a post-professional transition compared to posts in other fields of academic research? Perhaps the ‘death of professions’ writing contributed, but the major influence must be the continuing functionalist assertion of members of this central institution of middle-class modernity. The push and pull of succeeding theoretical frames have encountered wide resistance and hostility whenever distanced academic critique became explicit in naming the disproportionate advantage achieved by mid-century professionals relative to their client groups. This is another way of naming and speaking about the success of professions. Like other ‘posts’, it is the parallel universes of academic theorising on the one hand and the empirical change or resistance of the dominant group being critiqued that collide.

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Looking back across the last half-century period of professional development, new professions and changes in professions and new fact patterns have been identified. The contingent and provisional nature of social change after the dominant period of trait theorising has been disrupted makes the transition unclear. To say post-professionalism has been ambiguous in times of change is not an excuse but simply acknowledges that such change does not come pre-labelled. In what directions will developments take place, what are the path dependencies, and which aspects of professions and professionalism will recede or be modified? This chapter elucidates multiple attempts to use the potential of the term post-professional, looking across the literature to consider varieties of meaning-making taking place in recent decades. Many of these are important steps even when they are anchored to the concerns of specific professions or fields. Thus, two things are clear in this post-professional period since Johnson (1972) and Freidson (1970a, b) burst the functionalist Anglo-American sociology of professions paradigm from their respective sides of the Atlantic. In what I have termed the real world of professions there has been enormous production of professionals, the significance of which for unbundling processes is discussed in Chapters 8 and 9. This expansion of professional personnel is the necessary prior step to production of professional services. The number and variety of professionals themselves have grown rapidly and continuously (Berg and Govel 1973; Collins 1979; Tight 2009). Matching this empirical change has been proliferation of research about professions, professional groups and issues concerning the delivery and consumption of professional services. This is evidenced in Census labour force statistics and in the wealth of refereed journal articles in many fields that report detailed and complex studies of professions and professional work. Ironically, these newly produced cohorts of white-collar service delivery professionals seriously believe the functionalist expertise and goodness explanatory narratives at the very time better sociological descriptions of professions are being articulated. Abel (1979, p. 82), in responding to Larson’s synthesis of the field, starts with problems researching lawyers in the sociology of professions field: ‘virtually all of this writing is theoretically inadequate in at least three respects’:

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First, it begins with a functionalist model of the legal professions that is little more than a professional ideology cloaked in value neutral garb. Second, it stresses the unique characteristics of the lawyer, disregarding the extent to which the problems of the profession are common to all professions. Finally, it is ahistorical and parochially non–comparative.

Indeed, these arguments apply generally for all established professions. But a notable absence is observable given the abundance of research of recent decades described above, in both everyday worlds of action and the academic world of reflection and analysis of professional work. The gap is this: sociology of professions has struggled to elaborate theoretical frameworks to synthesise this vast and diverse empirical work or point to its deficiencies. This is not to say that fundamentally important and insightful work has not been achieved across the post-professional period. For example, Abbott’s (1988) jurisdictional work, Halliday’s (1987) reminder about institutionalised altruism, Torstendahl and Burrage’s (1990) and Burrage and Torstendahl’s (1990) collected insights from a wider European perspective, Witz’s (1992) or Kuhlman’s (2003) feminist delineation of professional projects, Macdonald’s (1995) and Krause’ strong comparative work (1996) are all major contributions. These are offered in varying registers, as well as key insights from organisational analysis and professions (Svensson 2003a, b; Evetts 2014) and other fields. This disjunction between theorising and everyday professional activities seems at odds with how these things might be expected to correlate, but for sociologists, it is understandable. Nostalgia for an older kind of inquiry preferring the ‘tidiness’ of functionalist sociology of professions has been largely banished to academic sociology’s past. The Anglo-American mores that shaped this field were productions of their own time and place. It is no job of present-day social analysis to resuscitate such ideas, nor even sympathise with the sociology-of-professions-is-dead angst that pervaded the field for some time (Khoury 1980; Macdonald et al. 1988). Since the 1970s, professions studies have been challenged by increasing pressure to be more global referencing and new questions of identity politics, starting with class, gender and ethnicity, and now digital technologies and specific global interactions.

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These social theoretical shifts and debates are today familiar in arguments interpreting geopolitical and technological change. First, the broken terrain of recent social analysis usually means that professions and professional issues are simply theorised as and when they come up in situ in other fields. Second, the Anglo-models (especially UK and United States) of professions fit imperfectly when reproduced in other national settings because professions and professionalism are not modern universals, but culturally shaped products. Third, empirical inscription of professions and professionals in society generally (their expectations, technologies, motivations, responsibilities, performance) can be readily argued as being very different today than even half a century ago. Fourth, academic colonisation by professionals’ self-descriptions within functionalist definitions had little rigour to resist countering evidence of self-advantage and status coexisting with hard work, service, skill and function. All these things add explanatory power for interpreting present-day developments when professions reflect internally on the changes happening in and to their professions. Our need to understand the importance of professions and changing definitions of the term professional is seen in the continuing expansion of professional groups and professionals and differentiated roles they occupy in every sector of government, civic or commercial fields. This importance of professions and professionalism is greater than when Freidson and Johnson addressed the issues half a century ago. The arguments of Chapters 7 and 8 that follow concern contemporary unbundling of the claimed core features of professions, but these are not readily understood from conventional viewpoints. An underlying argument in the present chapter is therefore that in combination, these contemporary pressures for change are seen emerging in the discussions of scholars using the language of post-professional. Inquiry into professions two decades into a new century shows several themes in theorising professions consequent on the disruption of Freidson and Johnson. The present chapter picks up the concerns of this postprofessional period and asks: What does it mean to explain something in terms of the idea of post-professional? This is the idea of change-but-not change in the embedded practices and relations of existing professional work. Reviewing academic work using the concept of post-professional in

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the present chapter identifies ways the concept has contributed to efforts linking professional and other societal narratives in recent decades in different fields. Post-professionalism responds to the central but changing roles of professions, economically and socially, from urban governance to marine ecology and global heating. This can be seen in everything from health, welfare and education systems, through to the functions of engineering, commercial, financial and legal services. Professions themselves as well as policymakers and educators can utilise better theories to understand and manage their futures and ours. Notwithstanding the public presence of professions and their continuing outward success, there are large-scale unbundling processes underway for professions that will be examined more specifically in the following chapters. Before that, the takeaway observation from the present discussion of the post-professional transition is that the tumult and variety of postprofessional theorising surrounding contemporary professions and professionalism are telling us something.

Post-professional Literatures The themes explored in the rest of this chapter challenge any simply ‘addon’ approach to themes already identified because all of these themes are entangled: they overlap and cross-refer constantly to one another. The value to sociological thinking of the idea of post-professional is variable as will be seen below, so description and critique combine in summarising each theme. Often the term is used by professionals reflecting on their changing position in society and as such quite often mixes insight with concern, resistance or justification. The post-professional perspective refers to ways of theorising and thinking about professions after the hegemonic failure of academic functionalist sociology of professions based on trait explanations. It combined new elements in theorising professions, some of this happening soon after the Freidson–Johnson challenge of linear modern progress in the 1970s which showed the importance and application of concepts of professional power and conflict. Other elements have emerged more strongly over time. Examples of these include new understandings of profession–organisation interaction or the critically gendered nature

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of professions wasting enormous amounts of women’s talents to society’s detriment. Setting out some basic dimensions of the post-professionalism literature in this chapter shows the complications non-sociological scholars have had setting aside the seductive narratives of their middle-class ‘uneasy imaginations’ (Baldwin 2014). My previous inquiry into how the idea of post-professionalism might be deployed sociologically can be seen in Burns (2007). Since writing that piece, I have shifted from thinking of post-professionalism prospectively as a useful term to acknowledge efforts to synthesise professions theorising. Instead, it seems more accurate to me now to use the past tense, retrospectively looking back at recent decades. Still with a synthetic sociological intent then, post-professionalism captures the ambiguity, irresolution, pushbacks, as the field shifts to new understandings from the work that researchers of professions have made over several decades. Partly this includes new conceptual tools discussed in previous chapters, like professional project, professional discourse and gendered professionalisation. It also includes the active contesting by scholars and professional groups alike in articulating a better account of professions in light of ongoing changes to professional work. This chapter considers only some of the empirical changes and arguments about what these changes mean proposed by professions. Uses of the term post-professional referring to the end of sporting professional careers, for example, are not discussed here (Seelig 1986; Oney 1984; Veelken 1988; Schauble 1996; Anderson 1972). Another use, that of postprofessional training, can be seen on university and college websites promoting qualifications beyond first degrees. Although obviously not sociological theorising, this can be read as reflecting the growth in producing a post-professional world within which people now work and function. This expansion and commodification of tertiary education in producing, reproducing and extending professional and quasi-professional workforces and credentials is part of the emergence of meritocratic or at least ‘educratic’ social stratificatory systems in modern nation state economies (Martin 1998a, b). The structural significance of this production of professionals is returned to in Chapter 9.

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The following review in this chapter restricts the discussion to conscious uses of the word post-professional itself across many disciplines as scholars have grappled to understand contemporary professions. The aim is to provide some comment on the adequacy or not of these examples of theorising the place of professions. These themes, by their variety and miss-fit with one another, from both insiders and outsiders to the professions concerned, illustrate the very ambiguity any ‘post’ transition has in attempting to express sociocultural change. The sociological issues involved, however, are of course much wider than the term post-professional and wider than professions, recurring in other areas of social inquiry. There are many links between post-professionalism and the world of social theory and changing modernity taking these ideas further. Several uses of the term post-professional reflect major shifts in recent and contemporary society. Table 6.1 is not an exhaustive summary but demonstrates the consequential reach of changes in professions in the subheadings listed, repeatedly calling for new integrated thinking about the functions and dysfunctions of professions today. This academic writing is only a small thread in a broad flow of other creative and innovative theorising about professions that does not use this term. The earlier Table 1.1 indicated other approaches in researching professional experience and change, and this wider flow has been evident in each of the chapters. All chapters in their own ways examine changes in the everyday world of professions and society as a whole.

Theme 1: Stage in Occupational Development Writers in education and accounting/auditing/finance fields have applied the concept of post-professional as a chronological later stage to interpret concerns occurring in these fields. Hargreaves (1996, pp. 152–153) writing about professional identity, teacher professionalism and educational change spells out a simple chronology of ‘four broad phases in the changing nature of teachers’ professionalism and professional learning’: first, a pre-professional age; second, the autonomous professional; third, the era of the collegial professional; and fourth, post-professionalism or a postmodern stage. Hargreaves sees similarities across Anglophone cultures,

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proposing that, ‘The fourth age, which we are now entering, is marked by a struggle between forces and groups intent on deprofessionalising the work of teaching, and other forces and groups who are seeking to redefine teacher professionalism and professional learning in more positive and principled postmodern ways that are flexible, wide–ranging and inclusive in nature’. A widespread, postmodern professionalism that is open, inclusive and democratic will come about only through a conscious social movement (Touraine 1995) of committed people – teachers and others – who work together for its realisation. The forces ranging against this possibility are considerable. They are forces that portend a post–professional age where teacher professionalism will become diminished or abandoned. This can occur and is already occurring in many places by returning teachers to the hands–on, intuitive, learn–as–you–go approach of the pre–professional age, or by subjecting them to the detailed measurement and control of narrowly conceived competence frameworks; or both.

Hargreaves (1996, p. 167) like Kritzer (1999) identified two drivers of these changes towards postmodernity: first, ‘new patterns of international economic organisation where corporate and commercial power is extensively globalised; national economies… are less autonomous; nations and their policies are market-oriented’. Second, the electronic and digital revolution in communications, leading to ‘instantaneous, globalised availability of information and entertainment’. Ravn (1999, p. 16) applies Hargreaves’ ideas to issues related to teacher professionalism within this four-stage chronology as an urgent part of educational reforms, seeing ‘the changing relationship with parents is one of the greatest challenges to teacher professionalism in the postmodern age’. Mac an Ghaill et al. (2004, pp. 190–191) also apply Hargreaves’ conception in their report into classroom interaction and masculinities. Carnegie and Edwards (2001, pp. 3–4) theorise the role of occupational groups, especially accountancy, noting, ‘The last thirty years have witnessed the emergence of a critical perspective on the role of professions within society’. They review historical change in the accounting professions chronologically as well: ‘Contributors of critical works on professionalisation in accounting have located the domain of “professional

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accounting” in the post–professional formation period, with the operationalisation of social closure certainly most apparent in the period when an element of exclusion is formally sanctioned’. Lounsbury and Leblebici (2004) and O’Regan (2001) also apply the chronological stages meaning of post-professionalism to the professionalisation project of money managers. Like other ‘posts’, however, an understanding of order or sequence contains only one part of the theoretical valence of post-professionalism and a curious contradiction plagues such concretised usage. References are indeed made to problems in present-day society—managerialist control of teacher practice, or curtailment of professional projects of accounting, money manager, or other occupational forms of autonomy in setting the terms of service delivery. The reality referred to, however, is very different in intersecting with other changing institutional arrangements, as described below. This model of post-professional is not primarily engaging with social theory but adding one more stage to a relatively unproblematised trait model of society. In the changed contemporary circumstances, this reaffirmation of an occupational position expected or desired fails to explain anything. The argument comes from within the functional occupational model these groups inhabit, and only partially references the social and organisational changes of late western modernity. The contesting, even commodifying of professional practice, is indeed a live issue, a problem. The stance taken in this book is that the intermixing of organisational and professional forms in new ways, despite objections, is a key feature of the post-professional transition. Objecting to various configurations being created or discerning weaknesses and faults is a necessary task. At the same time, one can be sympathetic to the difficulties in a given professional or organisational environment. This first theme is theoretically and empirically insufficient in the face of the realities of organisational pressures and accountability demands.

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Theme 2: New Professional Identities A second use made of post-professional wrestles with the core sense of worth and contribution in the bundled claims of goodness and expertise that have been the hallmark of professions’ rise and success. Some scholars in this literature attempt to reclaim the core virtues and values of public professionalism either venially or in more profound ways, commonly deriving from their own positive investment in their occupational space. But rethinking professions and professionalism in this present social order can itself be conceived in several ways. An early instance of using the notion of post-professionalism is Steckel (1981, pp. 372–373) drawing on Illich, linking market logics and professional work. He considered ‘whether ordained ministers constitute a profession’, in relation to advanced theological degrees and increasing professional-managerial language applied to clergy roles. Spirituality is beyond professionalism, being about the personal depth of clergy. Steckel’s use of the concept contrasts to Ball’s useful meaning of ‘depthlessness’ and superficiality in teaching: In the Disabling Professions, Illich argues that the dominant professions in developed societies determine what people need and then control the distribution of these apparently needed goods and services, thus rendering people incapable of articulating or meeting their own needs. But a post–professional ethos is emerging, Illich believes, in which people will form grass–roots political movements to renounce ‘professional peddlers of health, education, welfare, and peace of mind’.

Identity theory around professions thus moves in several directions. While Steckel is sharply critical of self-advantage rather than client benefit, Haapakorpi (2012, p. 25) outlines supposed differences from traditional ‘hierarchical structures and strict division of labour’ in a case study of ‘professional competence in a new media company, in which work organisation was claimed to be flexible and division of professional labour was assumed to be substituted by teams consisting of expert employees from different disciplines and professional identities were claimed to take the place of company or team’. The phenomenon was called ‘post–professional organisation of work’ (Casey 1995). It can be noticed that the mixing of

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organisational and professional functioning becomes more pronounced the further professions and professionals are investigated. Haapakorpi found a postmodern version of new professional identities unconvincing. Features of team organisation included professional groupings within the company, maintaining teams temporarily and combining different professionals for a given job. Individuals needed to ‘fit in with the band’, and these practices aimed to stop specialisation—expertise which could then be lost from the company. But professional competencies are not the property of the company, so managing this is inherently complex. Governance issues involved buy-in from these professionals to the organisation’s ethos and supposed self-responsibility. Professional identity was thus both reinforced and weakened from this organisational management perspective (Grey 1994). Post-professional is employed arguing themes of defensiveness and deprofessionalisation while proposing new public identities. Stevens (2001) offers a championing review of US medicine from within, desiring a rewrite of the ‘rise and fall’ narrative she believes has dominated public critique in recent decades. She feels idealism can be combined with the market but laments the fragmented nature of the medical sector. She speaks of the need for moral leadership and ‘social trust’ in proposing a new public service role for the medical profession, seeking to re-establish legitimacy to speak. She cites a colleague suggesting that it would be useful conceptually to explore the role of competing social institutions in dealing with issues that might otherwise be delegated to the profession. But stopping here in the analysis might buy into a downhill, post-professional dominance conceptual model of the medical profession. For Stevens, from within the profession, a once-authoritative profession has lost much of its traditional cultural authority, but the clock cannot be turned back. Post-professionalism in Stevens’ framing is a curious amalgam of Freidson’s (1970a) thesis about challenges to autonomous action, the challenge to professional hubris via Illich and other writers, a deprofessionalisation trope, along with contemporary issues of quality, inter-professional complexity and government funding. This is not post-professional analysis, but defensive engagement with problems of professional situatedness in a post-professional era. More empathetically,

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this might be described as a useful assemblage of issues looking for a theoretical key to explain the situation; unfortunately, even that is not the same as resolving things to the satisfaction of existing interested parties. Like other sectors, such as previously noted of the educational world, such responses from impacted groups nevertheless alert sociological analysis to significant societal shifts taking place. Another approach can be seen in Stronach et al. (2000) discussing, ‘reframing/unframing’ professional identity under several headings: tackling the unitary notion of professional, boundaries to discursive fields or even contested battlefields, professionalism as a symbolic hybrid between past and present, and further, ‘what it is possible to say and not possible to say about contemporary professionalism’. Their account (Stronach et al. 2000, pp. 6–8), does not set out to offer a new, stand–alone, self–sufficient and ‘superior’ account of professionalism or post–professional work, as we may eventually have to call it… we want to ‘unframe’ methodological conventions, and their conventional application to data; unsettle theoretical conventions … In this way, we aim to create different possibilities for ‘professionalism’, and especially ones that resist the increasingly universalist, essentialist, reductionist accounts that seem to appeal to governments, media and their agents.

These authors (Stronach et al. 2000, p. 18) ‘seek, therefore, to develop an “uncertain” theory of professionalism’ as: first, ‘narrative adequacy’, the possibility of a ‘good story’ as opposed to frustration from broken or fragmented accounts; second, ‘that professional performance should be interpreted within a broad moral landscape, and not be reduced to a single standard of commensurability’; three, aiming for ‘professional diversity rather than the current drive to identify national competencies and ensure conformity’; and four, ‘development of professional norms of trust. Such trust implies risks; and risks are part of the indetermination of the role, as well as an ethical necessity… recently forgotten’.

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Engagement with this uncertainty of contemporary professionalism starts to offer ways forward for theorising professions’ changing and contingent circumstances, as was explored in the previous chapter. Sociologist Martin (1998a, p. 2) is not anxious in the way several postprofessional authors referred to in this chapter anxiously regarded their sectoral or occupational positions. For him, post-professionalism is a tool to describe ‘wider contemporary shifts in identity formation processes’, as new middle-class groups of professionals and managers are evolving: the ‘something interesting’ happening at the centre of the middle-class is the emergence of a new and important labour market model. This post–professional and post–managerial model… is largely motivated by new images of identity, and entails a new understanding of what should count as knowledge relevant in middle–class labour markets and how those labour markets should function.

For some years, identity has been a very widely used term in social theory, opening new avenues to understand late western modernity’s changing and contradictory roles and functions, arguably contributing to theorising in ways that permitted individualising narratives rather than solely structural ones to dominate. The richness of possibility here can be seen in Martin (1998a), Stronach et al. (2000), Grey (1994), and Fournier (1999, 2000) who in multiple and different ways offer substantive and nuanced post-professional perspectives. The difficulty in naming just what is changing and what still remains bundled with older practices is seen in the definitional problem of theorising professions such as ‘new professionalism’ (Hugman 1991), neo-institutionalism (Empson 2006), the ‘third logic’ of Freidson (1994, 2001), ‘the new professional’ (Duyvendak et al. 2007) or again ‘new professionalism’ (Holroyd 2000; Svensson 2006). Whether through the concept of professional identities, organisation–profession interaction or new-class formations, these analyses constructively connect to other academic work and concepts. This literature thus at the same time makes contributions that can be understood through the lens of post-professionalism. But the unreflective individualising tendency of much identity theoretical work also evokes the call for larger framing of the continuing problems of professional performance. This may be directly

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in relation to a particular profession, more broadly using sociologically theory, or in terms of the next theme, looking forward.

Theme 3: Vision of New Kind of Society Several scholars have presented a vision for a new kind of social order after the dominance and perceived failings of mid-twentieth-century professionals and claimed professionalism are ended. These larger postprofessional framings are both visionary but from a sociological viewpoint at times might be counted as overreach on the data. The examples in this section all imagine a better or fairer society, but the aspirational, even utopian, inflection of these narratives is outside usual sociological focus (though sociology does study utopias). Illich’s (1977, p. 38) vision of a benign post-professional society was the corollary of his trenchant critique of mid-century professions gaining inappropriate advantage at the expense of their clients. In the 1970s, this created a strong hostile reaction from professionals, especially the then-triumphalist medical profession (Stevens 2001). Partly in sympathy, Morrell (2004, pp. 19–20) sees this post-professional vision as ideological or ‘whimsical’ relative to modern professional skills. But to allow these tools to be ‘respectfully constrained’ by a morally secure group collapses Illich’s post–professionalism to a Durkheimian concept of civic morality, or professional ethics by another name. Even so, Illich’s arguments for reform are clear, and so is his departure from a functional analysis. This is worth emphasising, given that the ongoing character of the lay–professional relationship reinforces the dominance of professionals.

Today it might be possible to envisage different post-professional forms of society that are neither utopian nor what Beck (1992) critiques as simply more-of-the-same approach to expertise. Holroyd’s (2000, p. 41) ambivalence shows his concern with the proletarianising of teaching, yet also speaking of the ‘emergence of a professionalism which is outward looking and emancipatory’. This would require an ethical turn to a collegiality

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that forges supportive relationships against the grain of management prerogative and hierarchies. He outlines six orientations as a basis for contemporary professionalism. This is again a ‘from within’ explanation of post-professionalism, and simply addresses professional mentalitie or professional behaviour rather than changing arrangements of professionals in organisations, professional organisations or structures in society today. Speaking from disenchantment with psychotherapy, House (2003, p. 3), also returned to the societal big picture beyond profession-centrism: ‘I believe that as the age of modernity wanes and the flawed and distorting Enlightenment project becomes progressively exposed, we will inevitably begin to enter what I call a post–professional, even post–therapy era’. House’s subtitle, ‘Deconstructing and transcending profession–centred therapy’, shows its discipline-specific critique, and problems of professioncentricity. His sweep goes much further, however, than most sociologists and organisation analysts interested in professions or modernity are willing to go, forecasting an end to modernity and ushering in a new era of postmodernity. A more sociopolitical proposal appears in Reid’s (2001) description of a ‘post–professional politics projecting democratic public spheres’. Like Derber et al. (1990), this is a desire for a more democratised society beyond divisive professional education. In the present analysis, such big leaps from critiquing professions (or one profession) to a philosophical call for a better kind of society may indeed have inspirational value but offer limited possibilities for closer contemporary sociological analysis of professions. More empirical accounts of the repositioning of professions and professionalism can be seen below in the work of Susskind and Susskind (2015b) and later themes in the chapter applying the post-professional literature to late-modern changes and the role of professionals.

Theme 4: New Middle-Class Seeing professions’ development more concretely as the formation of a new kind of middle class rather than as merely a class fraction or an ambiguous mid-tier of society recognises socioeconomic elements of social theory and the twin projects of professions (Larson 1977). Some writers joined the

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new-class debates applying by the concept of post-professionalism. Derber et al. (1990) describe how twentieth-century professionals for a time came to own and control knowledge and information. Derber et al. question whether this monopoly on expert knowledge constitutes, in many cases, little more than subjectively and ‘morally coloured’ judgements, often serving the professional group rather than society at large. This privileged knowledge is both ‘needed’ and ‘feared’ by a public that has become expertdependent (Nichols 2017) but which also pushes back against experts. Credentials divide and rule, but cultural applicability must not be assumed to be the same everywhere (Pahl 1991). Derber et al. (1990, pp. 193–210) contrast the mandarin capitalism of today separating the ‘information–haves’ from the uncredentialled, proposing ‘a post–professional society that de-emphasises skill hierarchies and substantially democratises knowledge’. As Pahl (1991) describes, this is overly optimistic, but the analysis is more grounded in class and education parameters than the previous meaning in Theme 3 of post-professionalism as a vision of a new, somehow better, society. The divisions created by professionalism relate one view of new middle-class debates and concerns about elites, but still fail to elaborate the implications of organisational and other changes in a post-professional society. While Derber et al. link professional education and class options, Martin (1998a) offers a more substantive analysis of mechanisms linking professions, organisations and management that avoids reifying class. Martin’s (1998b, p. 5) account focuses on changes in contemporary middle classes, referencing Giddens’ (1991) idea of ‘expert systems’ and the ‘new organisational world’ emerging over the twentieth century and today, and how these created models of action. For Martin, in the twentieth century, the two most successful middle-class models have been ‘professionalism’ and ‘managerialism’, each using knowledge strategies relating to their middle-class position (1998b, p. 6). Distinctively post-professional interfacing of these two socioeconomic epistemologies has become conjoined in recent decades; no longer can they be regarded as necessarily inimical to one another, even though they often are or can be. Changes in these two models of higher education and lifelong careers create new ‘difficulties’ within which Martin sees, ‘the emergence of an attempt to

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create a middle–class market model’ emerging after professionalism and managerialism are well established (1998b, p. 9). In this it is essentially post–professional and, especially, post–managerial. Taking its post–professional features first, it certainly builds on the legitimacy of specialised, abstract, technically oriented knowledge which professionalism played a major role in establishing.

In Martin’s (1998a) use of post-professional, there is substantial engagement with other broader theorising of contemporary social and economic changes. Today’s divisions of labour in many sectors contribute to middleclass repositioning, after the establishment and later challenge to modern professional groups. One observation that might be made from Martin’s contribution is that strong academic critique of managerialism such by Ball (1994, 2004) needs also to answer the question of its own positioned interest as professionals. Any ex cathedra manner, or simple defensiveness, in critiquing contemporary organisational practices undermines its own capacity for effectively challenging the singular cost, efficiency and scale imperatives of capital, government and the vagaries of managerial prerogative. At the same time, as this middle-class elaboration is discerned by some scholars as the new central role of professionals, others chart the failure, unbundling, even collapse, of professions in a post-professional malaise. This is considered under the next heading of deprofessionalisation.

Theme 5: Deprofessionalisation Post-professionalism as a term to describe deprofessionalisation, deskilling or routinisation of expertise connects to a very large deprofessionalisation literature. This takes elements of contemporary changes to professions but views them in stark contrast to new-class debates. Yet both perspectives must be understood as part of the same contemporary phenomenon: white-collar professional work increasingly located in large-scale bureaucratic organisations, but more precarious in career permanency terms. The trait model concept of professional autonomy has to find points of integration with managerial and organisation drivers of action and practice

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in these settings. Post-professionalism exists in the tension where professional skills and knowledge are required, but autonomy is challenged, professional work commodified or discourses of compliance and control predominate (Fournier 1999, 2000). A sense of siege is common: ‘unrelenting assault’ (Randall and Kindiak 2008, p. 345) or the Stevens (2001) example cited of aspiring to somehow get ‘beyond narratives of decline and fall’. Applications of post-professionalism as ‘unmaking’ of professionalism have been strongly articulated in the field of education, although anxiety in other fields such as accounting (Carnegie and Edwards 2001) and law (Kritzer 1999) is also apparent. Hargreaves (1996, pp. 175, 169), in addition to his chronological stages model in Theme 1, also expresses ambivalence about new developments in education, ‘We are now on the edge of an age of postmodern professionalism’, including ‘a deepening context of deprofessionalisation, which these developments represent’. The ambiguity of this language, casting around for solutions, in a changing society, is part of the post-professional dilemma. Genuine sympathy for unsatisfactory white-collar work conditions is not the same thing as ignoring the needed distinction between modes of professional work. What were previously the conditions of practice are now shifting and creating the present sense of loss or deskilling. This needs the theoretical framing of production supply and demand such as Johnson’s (1972) typology provides to think though such dialectics. In the policy, managerial and commercial imperatives within which teaching finds itself today, Hargreaves’ ambivalence is still present (Ravn 1999, p. 16). Holroyd (2000, p. 21), too, is ambivalent in discussing how student assessment is changing, and how modularisation and other policy changes impact on the professionalism of academics, proletarianising them. Such discussions partly derive from specific historical decades addressing the changing education sector, appropriating the language of postmodern discourse. Participation in the idea of post-professionalism risks masking more substantive development of the concept by focusing on the downward, problematic experiences of given occupations and sectors (Stevens 2001). At the same time, the reaction to the pressure of contemporary change also indicates something much bigger about changing professional fields and organisational and audit regimes (Power 1997).

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The examples in this theme show, deprofessionalisation processes in teaching and the education sector have generated a large literature. Like other themes, this concern overlaps with the first stages theme, also from education, but are also reflected in the logics applied within other professions. Holroyd (2000, pp. 40–41) outlines a pessimistic view of academic professionalism, quoting Halsey’s (1992, p. 146) argument of academic professional decline from a 1945–1970 highpoint. Academics are now living in a post–professional age. Of course, there are alternative readings. It may be that academic professionalism has never genuinely existed; in this sense academics are still pre–professional. Or perhaps their professionalism had declined in relation to criteria which are no longer the appropriate ones, and against different criteria there is now an opportunity to claim a new professionalism.

This is before MOOCs (Liyanagunawardena et al. 2013) online classes, blended learning and other technological innovations of the last two decades. But this view is still limited, backward looking. Ashcroft et al. (1997) use Hargreaves to show similar patterns of discomfort and ambivalence, claiming post-professional developments in teacher education, including observations on the reflective practitioner model, university course validation, greater regulation and reduced teaching theory. Ball (2004, pp. 16–17) is even more forthright than other authors in challenging the merits of educational changes, critiquing policymanagerialism: Like the performative institution, the ‘post–professional’ is conceived as simply responsive to external requirements and specified targets, armed with formulaic methods – ‘what works’ – suited to every eventuality. Their ‘professionalism’ inheres in the willingness and ability to adapt to the necessities and vicissitudes of policy. This is a professional who is essentially inessential and insubstantial; who is disembedded and an ‘object of knowledge’.

The politicising managerialism of neoliberalism can be seen in Ball’s rejection of education as some kind of management by numbers (Seddon 2005), the UK having an acutely destructive form of targets and

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compliance (Bricheno and Thornton 2016). Other literatures than postprofessionalism start from political or organisational scholarship. Ball (2004, p. 23) concludes, ‘I am wary of the grand simplicities involved in arguing that we are seeing the emergence of a society entirely ordered by a single mode of exchange… a market society if you like’. Substantial literatures on deprofessionalisation, proletarianisation and deskilling, not just in the education field, exist beyond the applications of postprofessionalism by these writers, but resonate with this language. Deprofessionalisation narratives across many professions express concerns about standardising skills, performance targets and being commodified even in white-collar work. Depending on the context and the commentators, they accrue sympathy or suggestions of ‘toughening up’ and facing the cost constraints of very expensive labour workforces. Deprofessionalisation arguments at their most insightful go beyond self-pity and raise necessary and uncomfortable debates about societal shifts under neoliberal capitalism—the engagement of care and integrity in a scorching efficiency model even as the contention over cost of human and professional services necessarily continues. Today, these concerns are being constantly re-evaluated as post-professional debates have re-appropriated these concerns and dangers, not just the upside gains, in attempting to comprehend digital shifts in education and other fields.

Theme 6: Contemporary Work Problems Even naturalised actions of professions and responses to them in contemporary society problematise the expert role and benefit of professions. Several examples of this emphasis show academic use of the term post-professional in a more sociological light. Again, however, the tendency is often to focus on the profession itself, rather than probable causes of the societal changes, alternative provision and consumption of expertise or the longer-run consequences if non-profession arrangements become pronounced. It is significant that Illich, House and Stevens are in health/medical environments where there has been a huge amount of contestation and challenge in recent decades as patient/client care, quality and cost realities hit home.

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The changes outside of western societies are bundled in different ways. The confusion then is to take approaches like Abbott’s (1988) effort to make sense of this in terms of conventional jurisdictional battles referencing the previous era, into these new domains. New developments in new places need to be comprehended within the explosion of tertiary education generally, application of digital capabilities, the emergence of women professionals and professionalisation projects of new occupations and subgroups. Thus, the idea of professional jurisdiction, while of fundamental importance, is an insufficiently specific explanation in itself. In sociological post-professional terms, this is not a sharp break from the past, not even necessarily the puncturing of the hegemonic trait/functionalist professions model. The contradiction of functionalism is how it continues to assert, deny and contest the unframing initiated by Freidson and Johnson (May 2007) in the broader domains of professionalism and sometimes even the academy. In Ball’s (2005, pp. 21–22) earlier critique of the enforced plasticity of contemporary professionals, he relies in part on a view of the collapse of modernist values of professionalism and the commodification or marketising of tertiary education. But in part this argument relies on society’s hitherto embedded social relations in general, ‘for which traditional, antiquated professional institutions seem ill equipped’. There are parallels and contrasts between Ball’s UK education sector critique with Kritzer’s (1999, p. 713) US analysis below of ‘legal practice in a post–professional world’ in what is variously termed neoliberalism, the Washington Consensus, or hyper-capitalism. On the one hand, U.S. lawyers appear to be wielding ever increasing power as reflected in recent victories in litigation with cigarette manufacturers and in the now pending challenges to the firearms industry. At the same time, the profession finds its traditional prerogatives under increasing challenge with the push for multidisciplinary professional practices, direct encroachment by a variety of service providers (accountants, consultants, paralegals, etc.), and mounting political attacks on the profession for its apparent greed (e.g. huge fees from the tobacco litigation) and apparent arrogance.

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From this analysis, Kritzer (1999, p. 715) usefully, if aspirationally, applies the term post-professionalism as follows: ‘the changes wrought by post–professionalism will not mean the extinction of profession, but reasonably suggests rather a wholesale reshaping of this turn–of–the–millennium institution’. For Kritzer, post-professionalism combines three elements to avoid the optimism of ‘new professions’ or the negativity of deprofessionalisation: ‘changing patterns of political influence, rationalisation of knowledge, and the growth of technology as a tool of accessing this knowledge’ (pp. 720–721). From a different starting point, Morrell (2004, pp. 6, 9) also addresses the legacy of ‘naïve functionalism’, proposing three spheres of interaction between professions and their environs that need to be integrated: first, the way in which professional knowledge is constructed as an element of a discursive practice, second, the way in which professional roles are negotiated and constructed within and across organisational boundaries, and third, the role professions play in creating and maintaining systems of value and power. Even if some formulations of how professions and organisations, on the one hand, and professions and labour market on the other, interact might be argued, it is this kind of synthetic social analysis that is required for richer academic theorisation of professions to emerge. It is in Morrell’s descriptions of ‘something new’ happening to professions, rather than his dismissal of Illich’s use of post-professional, that Morrell’s and other scholars’ contribution lies. Building on Illich’s post-professional idea, other writers on the legal profession draw on Kritzer’s concept of post-professional. Trosow (2004–2005, p. 77), for example, considers the erosion of the legal profession’s jurisdictional boundaries, claiming that ‘professionalism should not be viewed as a simple binary proposition’. Rubin (2004–2005, p. 3) also footnotes Kritzer’s article in his discussion: ‘critical questions remain whether the market and managerial organisation is the appropriate system – let alone the only model – for the world of professions and professions’. However, this reverts to Anglo-American conceptions of profession, whereas Krause (1996) or Burrage and Torstendahl (1990) or Torstendahl (1990) clearly document the deep participation of professions, organisations and polity in most nations and periods.

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In a study of legal aid lawyers in England and Wales, Moorhead et al. (2003, pp. 770–771) also apply Kritzer’s idea that ‘a key post–professional concern is to identify and describe how professional dominance is being undermined or reshaped’. In referencing concerns with legal deprofessionalisation or proletarianisation, they observe, ‘All these approaches to describing professionalism have a common thread; the legal profession’s monopoly on expertise is now contested’. Kay (2004, p. 412) and Milles (2004) debate themes of legal autonomy and the ‘leaky boundaries’ of interdisciplinarity. Other lines of argument could be developed suggesting lawyering is now several different professions that should be formally separated. Halffman and Hoppe’s (2004, p. 8) typology of science/policy boundaries considers expert input in Dutch society and polity, following either (1) corporatist, (2) neoliberal, or (3) deliberative patterns. Independence of expertise is an important nationally constructed position, and policy proposals are frequently interrogated by experts and expert bureaus. In discussing deliberative organisation of public expertise ‘knowledge centres’, of which there were nationally about 115, largely public funded, these authors comment: What is new about the knowledge centres is not so much the claim of improved knowledge transfer, but their post–professional positioning, outside of those major strongholds of disciplines, universities, as well as established research institutes. This means knowledge centres can – in principle – operate across research fields and professional jurisdictions, integrating knowledge on an issue–basis in various forms of interdisciplinarity.

Again, post-professionalism is not the absence of professionalism and obviously not the cessation of professions. Nor does it in every instance have an antagonistic relationship to professions and professionalism (Cronin and Davenport 1988). The meaning of post-professional is thus multivalent, as the above uses demonstrate, and if integrated with broad social and organisational analysis, assists in reframing defensive occupational and sectoral anxieties to locate contemporary academic analysis of professional change in contingent empirical events tracing new processes as they unfold.

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Conclusion—Reprising the Changing Confusion As we have seen, processes of professionalisation received substantial attention in the last decades of the functionalist era. Chapter 4 showed this ‘bolted on’ approach did not solve the problem if it allowed the trait explanations to linger before the post-professional paradigm shift. This chapter showed how more recent post-professional decades have found new uses for the processual idea of professionalisation. This further theorising of professions and professionalism after the 1970s rupture in scholarship has come about in response to the continuing assertion of functionalist certainty (Sweet 2012), seen most strongly in the Theme 5 idea of deprofessionalisation. At the same time, continuing functionalist thinking does not see the need to change, mostly seeking to develop strategies to resist deprofessionalisation pressures. This is the classic post-professional transition where alternative accounts contest the meaning of hegemonic change: a sense of loss, passage, evocation of past, nostalgia, reconstructed memories, asking where to now? Randall and Kindiak (2008, p. 345) propose: An alternative explanation for perceived professional decline lies in the post–industrial nature of capitalism and the rise of powerful corporate elites. The proletarianisation thesis argues that capital is gaining control over professionals due in part to the increasing technological sophistication of the delivery of health care services, as well as in response to the rising costs of providing professional health care services… The rationalisation and restructuring of health services have taken place in a number of industrialised countries in an effort to control rising health care costs, which have in turn supported a trend toward privatisation. In the case of medicine, advances in technology have left physicians dependent on expensive equipment and infrastructure to such an extent that they have lost control over the context of their work, while presumably retaining some control over its content.

The issues raised here are at once more complex yet at the same time simplifies the analysis to key drivers by relating the specifics of professional work to macro-socioeconomic processes. These authors compare medicine

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as having a greater available repertoire of strategies as an established profession relative to allied health workers in this field. In the social work field, deliberations using words like ‘crisis’ evoke long-running concerns and uncertainty about semi-professionalism (Toren 1972) or even deprofessionalisation. Randall and Kindiak (2008, p. 352) conclude that social work as an example: provides an indication that the profession has reached maturity and is now experiencing a period of post–professionalisation in which it may deal with the ongoing challenges it faces, in part, by expanding its boundaries. This example is intended simply to demonstrate that, despite valid concerns about deprofessionalising pressures facing social work around the word, future prospects for the profession are not as bleak and one might imagine based on a review of the literature.

If post-professionalisation is a process, there may be lessons to be learned in deploying the idea from Chapters 4 and 5 discussions of the gains and dangers in professionalisation itself. This is certainly what Halmos (1973) and others like Johnson (1973) were doing, theorising in new ways the language of professionalisation, looking going forward in time, and what it might mean. In a related domain, Fielding (2016, p. 44) brings together several candidate meanings from working in mental health administration, firmly committing to an active process: ‘My premise is that although some practitioner autonomy could erode as program evaluation moves from the evaluator as expert to one of facilitator/ teacher… evaluators are not necessarily deprofessionalised or proletarianised – they are post–professionalised’. This offers the possibility of not feeling so personally attacked even though invested in a professional career. Coming back, then, to a larger picture, for Susskind and Susskind (2015a, p. 231), the post-professional era is still ahead: While we do not anticipate an overnight, big–bang revolution, equally we do not expect a leisurely evolutionary progression into the post–professional society. Instead we predict what we call an ‘incremental transformation’ in the way we organise and share expertise in society, a displacement of professions in a staggered series of leaps and bounds. Although the change will come in increments, its eventual impact will be radical and pervasive.

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Consciousness that society is changing rapidly is well supported by economic, demographic, climatic and technological data. In some respects, the pace of change might be viewed as accelerating. Every important social institution, professions no less than others is, or will soon, face pressures for change in what they offer, what clients know, want and are willing to pay for, and what the state deems appropriate in terms of cost. A postprofessional world, or at least a post-professional state of affairs, discerned by each of the writers in this literature, names an emerging if not already here progression from present-day arrangements. It is this further transition, not the 1970s transition from trait hegemony to uncertainty, that requires ongoing engagement and analysis by social scientists, government planners, policymakers and professions themselves. The future costs, consumer demands, value assessments and efficiency gains in the expertise of professions, sketched in the opening pages of this book, mean both scholarship and occupational energy will continue attempts to resolve the dilemmas in new ways, bundling and rebundling the options and possible solutions. There is never an unambiguous line demarcating complex cultural transitions like the post-professional transition, not even single events, but many of the arguments Johnson, Freidson and Larson expounded, are being confirmed in the new configurations in the present century. It would be a mistake, however, to think of this survey of post-professional literature as a simple kind of smorgasbord where you pick the usage you like most and leave the rest. I have tried to indicate where I think different usages provide insight, but also where uses are defensive, of limited sociological use, or struggling to achieve new sociological theorising. At the same time, it is necessary to be respectful of analogous thinking in other ‘post–’ domains offering impressive insights, as other social theorising similarly goes beyond obvious connections to previous patterns and social arrangements as is discussed here in relation to professions and professionalism. The literature on post-professionalism shows many twists and turns and disagreements in how writers make their case about what they think is going on in and around professions. All writers draw on or challenge the core conjoined ideas of professional goodness and expertise, sometimes in contradictory ways. This is by no means always explicit, nor is this set out in the context of the other characteristics and demands within

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which professions exist that were identified through the chapter. This inchoate sense about how professions are positioned or how they should be repositioned today is progressed in the next chapters by using the bundled idea of goodness and expertise. Empirically the processes of unbundling that are occurring for professions need further explanation than these post-professional themes provide. The present chapter took the view that the post-professional era is rapidly passing to a new era, rather than still in a post-professional era. But there is no inherent disagreement about the complexity of pressures around professional work today. These changes have been disrupting professions increasingly for some decades, and their outline is highly significant and should not be ignored. The coming decades will see continuing contestation as containerised forms of professional expertise are reconfigured. The normative, digital and global unbundling process laid out next in Chapters 7 and 8 appear to have already shifted beyond any reinstatement of individualised professional autonomous existence from an idealised past.

References Abbott, A. D. (1988). The system of professions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Abel, R. L. (1979). The rise of professionalism. British Journal of Law & Society, 6, 82–98. Anderson, P. (1972). More is different. Science, 177 (4047), 393–396. Appiah, K. A. (1991). Is the post- in post-modernism the post- in postcolonialism? Critical Inquiry, 17 (2), 336–357. Ashcroft, K., Davies, J., & Riddell, R. (1997). Changing orthodoxies in teacher education and the making of professional partnerships. The Redland Papers, 5, 46–51. Baldwin, J. (2014). James Baldwin’s National Press Club speech 1986. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=CTjY4rZFY5c. Ball, S. J. (1994). Education reform: A critical and post-structural approach. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.

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Ball, S. J. (2004). Education for sale! The commodification of everything? King’s Annual Education Lecture 2004. London: University of London. http://www. asu.edu/educ/epsl/CERU/Articles/CERU-0410-253-OWI.pdf. Ball, S. J. (2005). The commodification of education in England: Towards a new form of social relations (pp. 1–30). Kyoto: Japan-UK Education Forum. http:// wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/juef/ac/2005/kyoto05.pdf. Beck, U. (1992). Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage. Berg, I., & Govel, S. (1973). Education and jobs: The great training robbery. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Bricheno, P., & Thornton, M. (2016). Crying in cupboards: What happens when teachers are bullied. Kibworth Beauchamp, UK: Troubador. Burns, E. A. (2007). Positioning a post-professional approach to studying professions. New Zealand Sociology, 22(1), 69–98. Burrage, M. C., & Torstendahl, R. (Eds.). (1990). Professions in theory and history. London: Sage. Carnegie, G., & Edwards, R. (2001). The construction of the professional accountant: The case of the Incorporated Institute of Accountants, Victoria (1886). Accounting, Organizations & Society, 26 (4–5), 301–325. Casey, C. (1995). Work, self and society. London: Routledge. Collins, R. (1979). The credential society. New York: Academic Press. Cronin, B., & Davenport, E. (1988). Post-professionalism: Transforming the information heartland. London: Taylor Graham. Derber, C., Schwartz, W. A., & Magrass, Y. R. (1990). Power in the highest degree: Professionals and the rise of a new mandarin order. New York: Oxford University Press. Duyvendak, J. W., Knijn, T., & Kremer, M. (2007). Policy, people, and the new professional: De-professionalization and re-professionalization in care and welfare. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press. Empson, L. (2006). Profession. Oxford, UK. http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/ccc/ Profession.htm. Evetts, J. (2014). Professionalism: Theoretical changes and challenges. Travail Emploi Formation, 11, 90–110. Fielding, S. L. (2016). Empowerment evaluation, postprofessionalization, and oligarchy: A retrospective. Journal of Applied Social Science, 10 (1), 44–54. Fournier, V. (1999). The appeal to ‘professionalism’ as a disciplinary mechanism. The Sociological Review, 47 (2), 280–307. Fournier, V. (2000). Boundary work and the (un)making of the professions. In N. Malin (Ed.), Professionalism, boundaries and the workplace (pp. 67–86). London: Routledge.

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7 Public Good and Professogenesis

Professions and Normativity The responses in the post-professional literature examined last chapter express concern across many disciplines about what is happening in professional work today. In the present study, sociological recognition of such anxiety and confusion interprets this post-professional diversity of opinion and explanation by applying the bundling idea described in Chapter 4. The next chapters challenge in turn the naturalised bundling of professional goodness and expertise by applying an unbundling method. The focus in this chapter is investigating the normative half of this bundling, namely professional ‘goodness’. The second unbundling analysis is applied to ‘expertise’ and is put aside until Chapter 8. As the present chapter unfolds, it turns out that this goodness half of the built-together pairing is itself much more problematic than commonly supposed. The uncoupling of goodness from expertise can be seen empirically happening in modern society today, shifting to greater prioritising of the expertise half of the pairing. Describing this theoretically forms a critical part of a new framing of professions and professionalism as they are being repositioned today. © The Author(s) 2019 E. A. Burns, Theorising Professions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27935-6_7

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In this distinctive goodness and expertise bundling characterising professions, there is a qualitative imbalance between these two parts and how these discourses combine. The commonsense of professional expertise is relied upon via training, licencing, professional development, knowledge updates, in-service training, refresher seminars and courses. The commonsense of professional ethicality and service—all the things that go into the ‘goodness’ part of the equation—increasingly tends to be simply assumed or mandated in often generic ways, with some professional ethics instruction in the mix. Increasingly across the post-professional period, it is the technical knowledge and qualifications of professionals that has assumed greater weight that allows professionals to act, and which they believe is what entitles them to act and which, further, justifies a worthwhile remuneration. As earlier chapters have emphasised, this firm conjunction of goodness and expertise claims is not new but has characterised professions in various forms for at least two centuries. Since early modernity, the bundled discourses of goodness and expertise have constituted a unique key for understanding professions. The energy from this conjunction continues to animate professional discourse today. The argument made here, however, is that significant late-modern unbundling pressures have been building in recent decades and are likely to continue to do so. Abel (1979, p. 82) warns that as ‘empirical studies become larger and methodologically more complicated, ethical analysis and criticism alternately excoriates and excuses’. On this view, the last chapter provided evidence of many attempts to understand this unbundling revealing greater or lesser success in applying insights to professional change. Scholars have mounted several arguments for the original bundling of expertise and goodness in professions: first, social class propriety as ‘good people/the right sort’ (Reader 1966; Perkin 1989); second, expressive if not secularised Christian values for work and care (Sobota 2017; Steckel 1981); third, as morally satisfying work (Maister 1990; Sennett 1998; Sullivan 2005), or even religious values seeking secular expression; fourth, as governmental outsourcing of work applying science or policy to modern society to responsible occupational groups; and fifth, fascination with technical solutions for human problems. In addition, humanism, progressivism, the science-technology imperative or the idea of a social contract

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can also be invoked as explanations (Cruess et al. 2004). Many of the authors cited so far demonstrate elements of these and other influences empirically in quite different professions, fields and national contexts. Implications of normativity have been present in every chapter. In social theory discourse, norms encompass much more than just moral categories; but sociologists often resist moral categorisations because they so readily dichotomise interactions and enable social actors to claim to be good in contrast to others, minimising negative information. Professionals or other parties obviously speak from one perspective, whereas social analysis aims for a wider perspective of all the actors and the justifications for their respective claims (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006) This goes beyond the understandable interpretations by professions of their own ‘economies of worth’. The interesting questions to study in these interactive processes are whether and how much other parties acquiesce to professions’ beliefs and how much they may instead choose to contest such beliefs. Affected parties include different groups in their own profession as well as clients, patients, customers, communities, groups by race/gender/region, the state, policymakers and society. Normative analysis goes much deeper than this introductory statement. A first and perhaps obvious distinction is Merton’s (1957) clarification of manifest and latent functions, co-opting the language of functional theory to develop possibilities of examining and describing negative effects of supposedly beneficial actions, challenging functionalism by using its own tools. It is worth a reminder here too, that Johnson’s (1972) typology is another theoretical instrument that enables much more balanced thinking about the advantages and disadvantages, goods and bads, of professional action. At the very least, it is always possible to ask: Who benefits? Who benefits most? In what ways do these different benefits work? How does this benefit change over time in society? Who defines a professional-client relationship is as important as cost-quality parameters which are themselves never finally objective and separable. Two caveats are necessary at this point. The first is the practical one that the terms good and bad are everyday terms that simplify by dichotomising, describing and judging a phenomenon all in one breath, so they are rather fraught for sociologists: I have avoided endlessly putting quotes around every use of these terms as unhelpful exactitude. Goodness is professions’

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primary claim for any kind of regulatory protection or social prestige—that they are good and beneficial to clients and society in applying expertise. Second, there is a clear overlap with the moral language of philosophy and higher goods, for which I make no apology, but which can remain a background consideration here. The chapter now turns to its task of exploring two components of professional normativity, public good and professogenic or adverse impacts, dealing with these in the two main sections below. This seems straightforward enough, as this simple divide suggests. If the discussion was using everyday language, this would simply be phrased as good and bad. For present purposes, however, productive, beneficial professional work is considered first as public good, and then in the later part of the chapter, adverse professional impacts, poor work, mistakes made, are discussed under the heading of professogenesis. Thus, the categorising is not as simple as it appears, the first section not so much philosophising about public good, but about problematising public good (Smith 1987). The idea of benefit and goodness is so embedded in professional habitus, that notwithstanding evident changes in recent years outlined by leaders of professions and academic commentators, it is important to examine normative strategies of defence, boundary keeping, entitlement to substantial earning and maintaining public plausibility as central to professional performance. It is the normativity underpinning professional practice that provides the basis for analysing professions under these two main headings in this chapter. First, the idea of professions as a public good that is socially desirable, as in ‘True professionalism: the courage to care…’ (Maister 1990; Cunningham 2008), exists in a tension with a countering discourse, ‘campaign against established knowledge’ (Nichols 2017) or efforts to reaffirm professional values as a ‘professionalism movement’ (Macdonald 1989; Ginsburg and Stern 2004). Second, the opposite of a positive view of goodness and benefit is seeing professions and professional action as also generators of adverse effects, wasted or mixed benefit (Evetts 2013), sometimes even as a ‘tyranny of experts’ (Feher et al. 1983; Chafetz 1996). The overview provided in the last chapter showed scholars consciously using the idea of post-professional, intersecting or not with the broader terrain of new and alternative approaches to social theorising. Important arguments about the beneficial or adverse effects of professions raised by

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scholars in several of the innovative uses listed in the first chapter now help in focusing on professional goodness.

Problematising Public Good To theorise the public good of professions is not to automatically assert or imply the opposite is the case though it raises the question. It is to draw attention to the much more ambiguous reality of effort, costs, quality and benefit that are mechanisms in play in both good and poor performance. These may be derived from individual or group factors, they may be features of a specific professions’ functioning at a given period of time, they may be resources, or attitudinal and social positioning about what can be done or is worth trying. In professional work, like any complex and difficult human endeavour, there are great advantages to gain, but also the risk of things going wrong or partly wrong, regardless of whether such risks are known or not. Worse still is the belief that things are going fine, and the bank, pharmaceutical company, the church or the government department being served finds the alleged, or intended results are not happening in the way meant, at the quality level expected, or in the time frame, or to the right population cohort or supplied cost-effectively. Reflection on professional normativity, even today, is insufficiently robust in social policy and political discourse about professions. Yet professions themselves are almost invariant in affirming their value, goodness and benefit to society as the basis of their privileges. In this section, I want to pursue this line of inquiry as it underpins the notion of public good, following in the later part of the chapter with what seems the opposite circumstances that might be described as professional ‘bads’ or adverse impacts. Connecting these contrasting, even contradictory, elements in this chapter enables a more nuanced sociological treatment of professions to develop. In consequence, better professional practices may be identified, scoped and developed along with more empirically based understanding of the changes happening to professions today. Professions are not inherently good in the way claimed by the trait approach. Words like altruism, trust, care and so on form a litany of

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intention or aspiration at best and special pleading for more average performance, rather than being objective descriptors. If this seems negative to professional practitioners, it is worth reiterating that letting go of such automatic claims as explanations allows a more robust claim to goodness and integrity. The social-class claims of goodness, like the poor, have always been with us, but they have no inherent rationale or logical merit. They are simply understandable as class-based self-interest, in a class-based social order. That is, not evil but not wonderful either; it is certainly a very circumscribed basis for claims of ethicality. Norms and aspirations encompass occupational advantage, cultural prestige and moral worth, seen in Larson’s (1977) distinguishing between economic and status projects as a double agenda for professions, either in development or in maintenance stages. Norms are everywhere, like air. Any society creates hegemonic framing of major institutions and expectation that encode norms and cultural normativity in them, naturalising them as commonsense and everywhere, universal. In professional interaction, logics like ‘doctor knows best’ is the articulation of such understanding; this can be contested in turn by consumer logics that aver ‘I’m paying for this, what do I want?’. Normative social-class positioning of providers, recipients, funders and competitors of professional services is a key aspect of delivering such work. The diversity of themes in the previous chapter was imbued with value prioritising and critique.This is the language of normative analysis, providing readers a review of ways scholars interpret events as good or bad in their occupational and organisational worlds. Many of these uses of the idea of post-professional were not particularly sociological, repeating assumptions from previous eras, or addressed to the internal logics of different professional groups but were no less normative for that. At times, there was mixing of useful analysis with tropes to be expected from professional groups’ occupational or sectoral perspectives. It can be acknowledged that there are multiple cross-pressures of political, policy and socioeconomic change for theorising professions that each of these post-professional attempts demonstrated. These contested professional values showed strongly differing views about the delivery of and access to professional services. One

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example is academics’ sense of distress at dumbing-down of student learning, or structural demeaning of teachers (Goodson and Hargreaves 1996; Ball 2005) from societal changes outside professions themselves. Brint’s (1994) detailed historical account of the professional ideal of expertise and altruistic service describes the trait functionalism that emerged in the twentieth century. Professional self-perception stands in contrast to actual behaviour described in Chambers’ (1993) challenge— where do professionals live and whom do they service, at what cost and what convenience? This supports Hart’s (1971) inverse care law argument that across health, and indeed many professions, professional care is least available where it is most needed, and vice versa. This is the classic example of the contradictions inherent in professional work that emerges as the thrust of Chamber’s contention. Hart’s (1971, p. 405) summary has been empirically measured in different places and for different conditions in the decades since written and is still eloquent today: The availability of good medical care tends to vary inversely with the need for it in the population served. This inverse care law operates more completely where medical care is most exposed to market forces, and less so where such exposure is reduced. The market distribution of medical care is a primitive and historically outdated social form, and any return to it would further exaggerate the maldistribution of medical resources.

In literally the same span of years in which Hart was writing, the countermanding of prevailing orthodoxy by Freidson’s and Johnson’s ‘power approach’ explains why functionalist and professional scholarship reacted so strongly. Freidson’s (1970) and Johnson’s (1972) work exposed the simplistic core value and belief of self-goodness twinned with expertise. Much better explanations were needed, and in a series of inquiries sociologists and other scholars set out to find better accounts of how modern professions had come about. This produced detailed reports and studies discerning who had what power, in what forms, as better indicators of the conduct of professions than assertions of inherent goodness. It is worth noting even within this run of disruptive literature, some US efforts continued mining

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the importance of the functionalist vein of beneficial elements of professional attributes and contribution in these occupations’ social contract, continuing the fascination with goodness without theoretically challenging this aspect of functionalist precursors: Halliday (1987), Abbott (1988), through to later reiterations like Cruess et al. (2004). Understanding the idea of normativity, though it perhaps carries a softer public profile as an idea than other key sociological concepts such as social class and community, is of fundamental importance for developing a sociological understanding of professions. For the sociologist, it is hard to imagine a clearer site than professions to examine issues in how judgements are made and how human values people always bring to their activities and institutions are applied. Professions and professionalism provide a hugely practical place to illustrate this, to study countervailing pressures for practitioners, clients and policymakers. They offer the opportunity to demonstrate the basic sociological postulate that all social relations, expectations, behaviours and interactions are imbued with normative components. The mistake of functionalism, at least as more latterly configured in mid-century American sociology (though hardly so in Durkheim’s original sociology), was to presume the possibility of being ‘value free’ (Gouldner 1962) and yet paradoxically at the same time inherently good. Granted early-modern professions could engage in associations and study groups and do innovative things, but it was the theory formulated by professionals’ aspirational selves, their desired persona of self, that sociologists made the mistake of following as representing an objective explanatory model, when it was simply a special claim. Further, it was a cluster of traits that quite reasonably from professions’ point of view put their actions in the most favourable light. As modernity has found in almost every field and is finding more and more, each social phenomenon, both institutional and discursive, formulates human action within an ecosystem of legitimacy. Herein lies a much better framing of the normative status of professions (Chafetz 1996; De Vries et al. 2009; Nichols 2017). As Pfadenhauer (2006) recognises, the loss of trust in professions is part of recent western history, the crucial erosion that is not explicable via expertise by itself, autonomy by itself or even ethicality by itself. All these primary virtues can be seen in many other places and institutional formats than solely professions.

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Dingwall and Fenn (1987, p. 57) draw on Simmel from over a century ago to locate trust in professions within the largest possible frame of negotiating orders of trust in modern, distanced, social interaction: Our modern life is based to a much larger extent than is usually realised upon the faith in the honesty of the other. Examples are our economy, which becomes more and more a credit economy, or our science, in which most scholars must use innumerable results of other scientists which they cannot examine. We base our gravest decisions on a complex system of conceptions most of which presuppose the confidence that we will not be betrayed. … If we were not deterred from [lying] by the utmost severity of the moral law; then the organisation of modern life would be simply impossible.

Is this last statement really the case for professional expertise? What counts as trustworthiness in the experts we rely upon? Plumbers’, electricians’ and hairdressers’ claims of professionalism list all the characteristics of professionals except long abstract training but include the key importance of experience, care, expertise and doing good. Mostly professionals do not mount coherent, direct engagement with these claims. Dingwall’s (2008) transition in his work from professional knowledge to expertise, even before contemporary considerations about inbuilt technique within digital technologies, suggests that simply reasserting previous professional claims in the new century is not helpful; and this is separate, even before exploring questions around erosion of ethical discourse. The remainder of this section problematises public good via several everyday discourses articulating and protecting the common assumption that professions are ‘good’ in various senses, and that professional work is unproblematically important and beneficial to society. But it avoids Alexander’s societalisation conception derived from a professional problem focus as unsatisfactory (Schmidt 2019). Maintaining the public good value of professions is the foundation of the professional project described in Chapter 4, even though as has been noted, the shift to technocratic and credential measures is in full swing (Collins 1979; Glover and Hughes 2000; Gillies 2005). The good half of the good–bad continuum is thus a site of subtle but intense contestation for the moral high-ground for professions and society.

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Counter-Strategies to Professional Goodness and Legitimacy Discourses Moving beyond understood or conventional explanations of professional ‘goodness’, that professionals provide help solving key life problems, have expert knowledge and skill, or that professions are inherently altruistic or service oriented, is difficult. Doing so, however, allows the complexity of claimed benefit to be seen. Compromises and hard choices mean even in benefit and goodness there are grey areas. Sociological speaking, naming culturally entrenched discursive layering, articulates the continuing ‘maintenance project’ strategies of professional claims to legitimacy and respect. Taleb’s (2012, p. 52) advice is that such brittleness means ‘most modernistic professions are usually not [antifragile]’ in terms of layered strategies of adaption and recognition of changing grounds of action. First: repeated assertions of professional goodness. Trait definitions from Flexner (1915) through Goode (1957), Parsons (1968), Elliott (1972), to Pavalko (1988) make normative assertions in some form that professions are ‘good’. When read post-professionally (Burns 2007), these are moral assertions, not empirical definitions. They parallel commonsense definitions by members of the public and echo professional groups’ beliefs. Professional traits—that professionals help us, serve clients and community, or represent secularised spirituality—are social attributions of ‘goodness’ and worth of professionals, not referents to necessary empirical factors. Ultimately, these ascriptions have to be regarded as important social constructions based on a variety of sociocultural and material causes. Second: counters to normative claims by professionals. Conflict theorists, economists and others have critiqued the ‘goodness’ model, pointing to evidence of negative outcomes, occupational self-interest and symbolic violence (Johnson 1972; Freidson 1970; Illich 1975, 1977; Larson 1977). Such counter-discourses in both everyday life and academic theorising contest the legitimating optimism of professional normativity, pointing to expert production of ‘bads’ as well as ‘goods’. Despite such countering challenge, professional groups, lay publics and some academic analysis still continue to presuppose the simple goodness of professions and professional actions, a kind of moral licensing of professionalism (Merritt et al. 2010) regardless of impacts.

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Third: discourses that ‘counter the counter’. A further level of discourse can be identified that counters the counter-discourses. This is done through various strategies by reframing professional actions and assertions of legitimacy or ‘goodness’, such that the counters to mainstream professional ‘goodness’ discourses are themselves undermined. Three of many possible examples are assembled in the following paragraphs: Poveda’s (1994) Gordian knot of double-denial, Pratt’s (1992) ‘anti–conquest’ narratives, and the science-goodness coupling. Each of these indicates how they are used in everyday denials that professions and professionals might be ‘bad’, ‘do’ bad things, or that professional action could possibly have adverse rather than beneficial consequences. These three discursive moves are used by professionals today to defend their worth and goodness. Even against the grain of increasing unbundling and commoditised expertise, they are very powerful. Each is expanded here as follows. 1. Double-denial of anything but benefit In Rethinking White-Collar Crime, Poveda (1994) identifies binaries that impede clear analysis and ‘provide ideological support to conventional thinking’. This example of a counter-discourse to possible suggestions that professions are not ‘good’ or may be ‘bad’ in some way he describes as a ‘dualistic fallacy’ seen by Poveda (1994, p. 45) as a double myth. Poveda’s work about criminality, like the moralism of professions, dichotomises the world between us and them—the former between good people and criminals, the latter between good professionals and the lay public. The analogies and homologies are quite remarkable. By asking how professions fit such a schema, Poveda’s reasoning shows that this mythic dichotomy is then redoubled for professionals, seen in the following four points. First, professionals clearly ‘fit’ within general definitions of ‘law–abiding citizens’. This is not an assertion based on evidence, but on commonly held belief. Second, even within the law-abiding category, professions by convention are held to be ‘good’ and different from ordinary law-abiding folk. That is, the category of law-abiding citizen is further dichotomised by the discourses of professional ‘goodness’. Thus, the ideological assertion of professional ‘goodness’ creates another

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dichotomous myth, by which professions are attributed with an enriched normative standing. Third, these dichotomies can be read in a discursive analysis concerning professions and professionalism. On this reading, there is ‘professional’ and ‘lay’ within this duality. ‘Lay’ is an inadequately theorised normativity (be compliant, show respect, listen, follow), while professionals occupy the enriched zone of relative ‘goodness’. Fourth, by reading the argument in terms of professions, it does not take much to see that in the ‘extra good’ half of the professional–lay dichotomy, the mythic quality creates an even higher unlikelihood of a professional person doing anything untoward (let alone specifically untoward or criminal) that would have an adverse impact on a client, other party or society. Thus, the double-denial of any suggestion of professional ‘badness’ is produced in a dense and complex process of social construction. As Poveda notes, it creates major conceptual barriers for analysis of behaviour leading to adverse impacts. Located within the ‘law–abiding’ segment of the population, and further, within the enriched identifiably worthy part of that population, professional conduct gains substantial security from effective challenge. When specific data or evidence is produced, multiple mechanisms ‘mend’ the discursive fabric that is torn, creating denial or minimising individual disturbance.

Bell-Curve Thinking In studying public good as professional performance in either or both of its goodness-service or expert aspects, a useful thought experiment applies the statistical tool known as the bell-curve to professions (Fig. 7.1). Its normal distribution tells something about groups being studied, though uncritical use (Fraser 1995) elides statistical, that is, normal, descriptive commonness with moral judgements (Prum 2017, p. 327). Applying the bell-curve to professional competence invites empirical testing, even if this is not easy. University professor evaluation metrics are infamous for being merely satisfaction ratings, with biases from age, charisma, subject difficulty, compulsoriness, gender and small numbers. What makes a ‘good

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Fig. 7.1 Bell-curve of professional competence

teacher’ (Bain 2004)—or any other expensive professional—intuitively makes sense, even if it is hard to measure. Some professionals are outstanding social agents (Fig. 7.1), solving or resolving significant need. Applying bell-curve logic, however, posits that no profession has all its members sitting in the righthand spaces of the table. Two-thirds of all professionals—doctors, lawyers, surveyors, teachers, accountants, psychologists, social workers and so on—fit under the middle two spaces, either side of the ‘average’ professional midline. The logic of the bell-curve says the left side are not competent professionals.The implications of this are simple but serious. ‘Competent’ and ‘outstanding’ professionals may well be in some key respects less professogenic. There is only a few of them to go around, however, and expertise is not the same as professions’ service and benefit, possibly even contributing to opposite outcomes. Better focus dealing with professional conduct in medicine can be seen in Currie et al. (2018) as a template for other professions. This is an example of a non-strident, matter-of-fact approach to the bell-curve realities of the range of performance quality within elite professions. Stewart (1999) in discussing the medical crimes of Dr. Swango footnotes that at any one time towards five per cent of US registered doctors are unfit to practice, citing problematic drinking, drugs and mental health. Grinspoon (2016) suggests considerably higher percentages. This is before clinical and diagnostic competencies are considered in the remaining portion of the medical cohort. Makary and Daniel (2016) report medical error as the third leading cause of death in the United States, citing Leape before them, and still arguing that underreporting minimised huge adverse effects of

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professional intervention. Susskind and Susskind (2015) cite pharmacist error occurring in 1:100 prescriptions, in contrast to AI technology’s current 1:6-million gold-standard. A current Australian report summarises, ‘If all hospitals lifted their safety performance to the level of the best 10% of Australian hospitals, the complication rate across the nation would fall by more than a quarter’ (Duckett et al. 2018). Problematising professions’ public good shows the need to develop a language about the range of competence, public goodness, the range of benefit to society, engaging with changing efficiencies, the application of new technologies and the complexity of care or service objectives in every sector. 2. Pratt’s notion of anti-conquest Pratt’s (1992, p. 7) idea of anti-conquest is a useful second example of counter-discourse to possible suggestions that professions are not ‘good’ or may be ‘bad’ in some way. In her account of colonial representation in written accounts, Pratt refers to ‘the strategies of representation whereby European bourgeois subjects seek to secure their innocence in the same moment as they assert European hegemony’. This could be amplified using Foucault’s notion of micropower. The notion of anti-conquest constitutes a different discursive strategy to the double-denial of professional criminogenic possibility. Pratt discerns two imperial narratives: the first is close to if not identical with the official political (or commercial) processes of conquering new and distant (from Europe) lands. It clearly deals with the steps of colonising, claiming, discovering, learning about and reporting, for the purposes of ‘taking over’ either militarily, or by populating by political, nautical or economic means. Along with such apparently ‘obvious’ activities, Pratt identifies a second theme in this travel literature of exploration. This second theme she names as anti-conquest, in inverse relationship to the first theme. Within this theme, she says writers bracket, avoid or excuse the content of writing that reflects the first theme. Four points are made: first, these travel accounts are claimed to be ‘merely’ scientifically depicting the physical world; second, writing such as Mungo Park’s heroic adventures (not conquest) about all the things that happened to him

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(not what he and others are doing to assist colonisation), concealing the initiation of colonial takeover and conquest; third, ethnologies of newly ‘discovered’ peoples bracket the bloodshed or adverse consequences of the newcomers; and fourth, landscapes of fertile lands appear empty, ‘writing out’ the fact that substantial populations, villages and farming exist where the gaze of the visitor is directed. Each strategy denies or minimises the major fact of conquest or domination. The post-professional perspective identifies parallel anti-conquest narratives within the range of professional goodness discourses. Willis (1983) describes the appropriation of nurse Sister Kennerley’s polio work; accounts of wresting midwifery from traditional midwives reveal medicine involved in such anti-conquest narratives (Donnison 1977); in law, Grisham novels like The Partner (1998) have strong anti-conquest themes such as ‘the client at all costs’ discourse. The anti-conquest narrative of the ‘heroic’ defender of the downtrodden ‘little guy’ is twinned with the activities of immensely resourced corporate conquest by abusive commercial and civil litigation today (Nader and Smith 1996). As Esland (1980, pp. 213–214) states, ‘the idea that professional authority and right to monopoly are strongly legitimated by a wellrooted ‘mythology of professionalism’ which proclaims the altruism, ethical scrupulousness, and neutrality of expertise which these occupations are reputed to offer. In other words, the expertise and techniques of the professional group are not normally seen as serving the interests of that group’. This bipolar quality between two distinct normative professional narratives is explicitly utilised by Esland to counter professions’ internalist arguments and assert the importance of outside interests and stakeholder viewpoints. Esland argues (1980, pp. 216–217) that: The premise from which we are approaching the professions is therefore one which underlines the political nature of their work [‘to generate certain kinds of knowledge for society as a whole’]. As such it differs from, and is ‘sceptical’ of, the claims about their function and social value which might be made by the professional bodies themselves. From this viewpoint it appears that the service ethic specific to professions is, as Halmos [1973, p. 6] puts it in his description of the ‘anti–professional’ position, ‘a sheer

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mystification of status claims and a device to silence the critics of monopoly, privilege and power, to which the professionals are alleged to cling’.

This argument, too, is not saying that professions and professionals are ‘bad’. Rather, it deconstructs claims of ‘goodness’ as simply claims to legitimacy. Social constructions of various sorts about any segment, occupational group, or role in society remain just that; they are not ‘bad’, they are simply not fact, just one stakeholder version of truth or desire. Whether the empirical evidence supports a social construction is open to empirical verification, but the power of social construction is that it may create a definitional reality where none actually exists. This ‘reality’ is then defended, attacked or used to obscure social process and may ironically produce socially more adverse, less than equitable, or less than efficient, consequences or impacts. 3. The conjunction of ‘scientific’ and ‘good’ The conjunction of ‘scientific’ and ‘good’—terms like benefit, altruism, service, community orientation—provides a third instance of a counterdiscourse neutralising the possible suggestion that professions are not ‘good’ or may be ‘bad’ in some way. The historical development of the collective professional project in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries drew deeply from these two sources of science and goodness in demarcating and extending occupational domains. The clarity and developments of the emerging scientific paradigm forming part of the modern industrial era (Kuhn 1970) found in science a source of innovation, refining knowledge and methods, and sufficient success to contribute to a modern idea of continuous linear progressive improvement. Science became the modern epistemological exemplar of knowledge, even when other modes of knowledge and ‘truth’ were active principles. Professions and governments saw the application of science to practical action for service to and improvement of society. These two traits still form central features in any definition of professions, regardless of changes in society. Importantly, justification for either goodness or expertise is usually expressed in terms of the other.

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Only medicine of the traditional three professions is conventionally scientific. Law, though not scientific, found analogous coherence in the conjunction of procedural rationality and its traditions of normativity, such that the phrase ‘rational–legal’ is now emblematic of modern social structural and culture practices and institutions. Terminology such as ‘legal science’ invokes the positivity and legitimising value of ‘scientific’ in association with education and the positive normativity of law. Clergy and priestly professional groups helped imbue professionalism with normativegoodness in imitating the professional model (‘theological science’). The confluence of the two ideas of science and goodness in the professional role is a singular achievement, inherently part of modern western professionalism. It occurred partly as a result of the professional project, as well as deriving from wider societal discursive changes that gained sufficient agreement or acquiescence to this discursive coupling. The argument here is that a challenge to either of these discursive elements of professions and professionalism, ‘science’ or ‘goodness’ is often met with reference to the other component. Such defence or justification of actions or the motivation for professional action, because of this discursive elision, gives the respondent twice the breadth of explanation or demurral at outsider inquiry. There is a mystifying element when such defence shifts from the point of inquiry (from fair/right, or equitable, to a technical explanation, or from technical explanation to what is ‘best’, fair, reasonable, or equitable) to the other party in justification of professional actions, as defined by the professional. Again, this does not make such response inherently inappropriate or wrong, but it does two things: first, this argument undermines claims that such explanation is sufficient explanation; second, when the elision between responses occurs, such a strategy—wittingly or unwittingly— suggests lack of ‘good faith’ either in the veracity of the response or the reflexivity of the professional. Fournier (1999, pp. 286–287) draws on Foucault in observing that the ‘prime mechanism of legitimation is the articulation of ‘competence’. Competence embodies the government of ‘truth’. This slippage between traits of ‘science’ and ‘goodness’ countering challenges to professional performance reflects a deep cultural paradox, and the post-professional problematising of it has had only limited effect reworking it.

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Outlining public good arguments for professional interventions shows it is the mainstay of professions’ claims to be good and doing good. This section has outlined a complex and layered discursively powerful maintenance project by professionals that counters accusations or suggestions that the goodness may not be inherently as client-centred, altruistic and community-serving as is promulgated. These claims of benefits are especially thin rhetoric when salaries, narrow assertions of responsibility, loyalty to corporate bosses may outweigh these claimed characteristics. I do not discount these arguments, but they are not explanations. As commitments, statement, accomplishments and claims these are well worth investigating and supporting when justified. Society needs the service of articulate, clever, society-orientated actors and professionals. But as with any human endeavour, activity and institution—from the microscale such as family to the macroscale such as religious systems and corporations—power corrupts, or can corrupt, and self-interest or absorption distorts the simple delivery of care and benefit.

Professogenesis Having attempted to problematise professional goodness directly, and then indirectly via the bell-curve thought experiment, this next section proposes a way of talking about less desirable effects of professional conduct and work. The term professogenesis broadly captures effects and consequences of professional activity that are in some way or ways not good. In terms of the preceding discussion, it is important to reaffirm the point of the term is to open a space to empirically assess value, worth, benefit—goodness—of professional action or intervention in normative and practical results rather than moral terms. There is place for the latter, in celebration and challenge to do well and better. Conceptually, professogenesis offers a broad reach that avoids immediate decisions about right and wrong, preferring inquiry and empirical evaluation rather than normative assertions. Professogenesis parallels the notion in the medical literature that distinguishes health or medical problems brought to professional care for attention and amelioration, from problems that arise as a result of the intervention, presence or delivery of professional action itself.

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Medical literature uses the term iatrogenesis to mean doctor caused condition, harm or problem, sometimes defined as doctor caused illness. Inaccurate diagnosis, leaving a swab or instrument inside a person after an operation, side effects of drugs administration, adverse effects from a treatment given/undertaken, clogged emergency departments, all illustrate health issues arising not from the presenting problems but from the interaction of the professional or health system with the patient. In medicine, the term is often specific to a condition or particular intervention, though it is also used of overall rates of negative impacts on patients. This later deployment has closer similarities from an insider’s viewpoint to Illich (1975) and others’ use of the term as sociopolitical critiques of professional behaviour. A different kind of distanced professogenic impropriety was many decades of testing female medication pharmaceuticals on males because of convenience; or unconsented testing of drug therapies on prison inmates; or for women or members of marginal groups to be inadequately attended to properly as clients. Professogenesis offers an integrating perspective that current terminology is often not quite able to achieve. Adverse effects or events, untoward action or results, things gone awry, negative impacts: these are all part of the lexicon, but very easily are formulated as individual or perhaps institution or sector-level issues. While professogenic process offers a more unified approach to critique of professional work, it simultaneously supplies greater connection to contemporary issues of institutional complexity beyond the control of any one practitioner, management team, or single institution (Dettmer 2007; Culmsee and Awati 2013; Blomgren and Waks 2015). Note, too, that iatrogenic figures are usually more publicised for patient deaths rather than less professogenic impacts that need to be added to other metrics of harm or adverse impact. But are doctors worse than other professions? I do not think so. The complexity of the industry has parallels in every major sector professionals work within; and furthermore, lethal medical risk has some ‘focusing’ effect within health care. So perhaps not direct fatalities, but in other professional fields equally dysfunctional or negative consequences arising from the complex process of professional action and intervention. There is indeed ample evidence. In the movie Spotlight (McCarthy 2015), the investigating team struggled to track down professional priest offenders,

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until high-level advice that there were hundreds not just one or two bad priests, allowed them to reinterpret their own database revealing those highly mobile priests being moved to new locations by bishops, fitted the classic religious ‘geographic cure’ of failed resolution of problematic or predatory professional conduct. Nader and Smith (1996) and Nesson (1991) illustrate a near endless stream of accounts of improper professional behaviour. The pharmacy profession has special full-time itinerant auditors checking patterns of pharmaceutical misuse and miss-supply. Many national and state jurisdictions have permanent commissions or boards for one profession or another, or clusters of professions, investigating untoward behaviour. The Australian Royal Commission (2017) on institutional responses to clergy professional abuse is a precursor to the US Pennsylvania inquiry (Goldstein and Otterman 2018). Even more prolific failures have come from banking behaviours in general even before specific financial scams and scandals in all modern societies, decade after decade, only a few being subject to adequate inquiry. All professional interventions across every profession have the potential for adverse consequences (Gillespie 1987). From my own inquiry into legal work and lawyers, the similar idea of lexogenesis provides a more specific parallel term for adverse things arising from involvement of the legal profession and lawyers (Oreskes and Conway 2010). Such adverse effects contradict the formal commitment in all cases of professional activity, where the nominated purpose of professional involvement is to improve a situation, to bring the relevant professional skills and knowledge to solving the problem. While good intended outcomes are the appropriate statement of high-level purpose, without specification and operationalising these goals become simplistic doxa, as experienced practitioners in any field know. I will come back to lexogenesis shortly. The significance of Wrigley and Dreby’s (2005) research with childcare centres is that it showed evident professional commitment and dedication across the whole United States, yet still the production of adverse results in child fatalities. This is not slackness or carelessness and the conversation around professional goodness and ordinariness needs to get beyond polarised debates around goodness and adverse impacts. Abel’s (1979) usefully astringent phrase ‘excoriates or excuses’ at the start of this chapter

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recognised such shutting down of these important but difficult conversations. Ongoing evaluation also needs to get beyond the ‘bad apples’ attitudes and beliefs by comfortable professionals (Pratt 1992) that individualises adverse impacts and misrecognises and ignores broader adverse effects of the professions. As Wrigley and Dreby (2005, p. 752) observe: A small but influential body of work in sociology analyses failures and mistakes (Perrow 1984, Vaughan 1996). These are considered to be systematically produced as a part of the social organisation of work’ (Vaughan 1999, p. 284), but the relationship between work structure and mistake remains largely uncharted.

Public good and its nemesis, risk, pivots to the broad topic of professional performance to include the concept of professogenesis. Beck’s (1992) Risk Society notion of risk is a hugely significant present-day concept for the formalist and institutionally structured arrangements of late western society. A short observation about risk is made here to assist this pivot: from professions focused on being good, aiming to achieve good, doing well themselves and benefiting society, the creation of adverse effects, often latent dysfunctions, arising from the very process of supposedly doing good, is a modern-day mystery, a paradox. Analytically documenting the empirical unbundling of the built-together goodness and expert pairing of professions is one step in looking for solutions. Without an elaborated language of possible harm, including summary concepts like professogenesis, the prescription ‘do no harm’ is shallow and specious. The singular assertion of intended professional benefit is one-sided and adds unnamed risk to patients and clients. Expressed another way, this is a re-naturalising of discourses of benefit, competence and quality, core ingredients of the old trait approach. The fairer and ultimately more effective approach—to both professionals and their client groups—is recognising professional services like other forms of human action and endeavour, range from poor, to good, to excellent. What this kind of reframing of benefit and competence means is that professionals, clients, funders and policymakers have some greater levels of assessment and adjudication of professional performance, opening ways

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for better demarcation that constitutes the still relatively uneven governance of professional service provision today. Beck (1992) argues for a dichotomised conception of modernity and risk, a long distance from the commodified application of risk in business to projects and corporations keen to deflect legal consequence. In Beck’s view, modern society used to be about the distribution of goods. In the present discussion of professions, this can be inferred as professional goods and services and abstractly the public good, for the present moment not examining whether delivery was to commercial, governmental or individual clients. The second part of Beck’s dichotomy comes from his perception that later modernity shifted from creating and distributing goods to the distribution of risks and hazards produced by the conduct and actions of society itself in achieving present modernity. He means produced by western society, but in the present narrative this translates as later modernity produces professional risks. What Beck helpfully does is enlarge the necessary conversation around professional poor performance, not the novelty of this idea since this is nothing new: poor teachers, conflicted lawyers, hustling opticians and others exist, along with the many excellent, careful and useful professionals. Nor is it the idea of conceptualising poor performance in a term like professogenesis anything profoundly new except for the extensiveness of what it encompasses. Rather, discursive shifts in society in and around professions and professionalism make it possible to speak to some professional actions as conduct that is not what should be expected, not adequate, not acceptable. The conversation has moved in certain respects beyond the definitional closure of earlier forms of professionalism. It is these contemporary discourses that call for theoretical encapsulation in a term like professogenesis, not the other way around. Movements against eliminating lead from car fuel (Davidson 1998), smoking and secondhand smoking (Oreskes and Conway 2010) had the active support of the medical and legal professions for decades, thus counting as professogenic conduct at an enormous societal scale, cost and detriment to well-being. Refinements in health delivery over several decades (Walton 2004) yield benefits for professionals in assisting in shifting from a covert blame culture. Even with these improvements and others like the Cochrane initiative, high percentages of adverse events indicate deeper professogenic

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system issues. Daniel’s (1998) study of individual practitioners in different professions scapegoated by peers shows how difficult it is to maintain high levels of professional standards over time and invites admiration where she showed it was evident. The answer, however, is not brittle denial or accusation of individuals raising questions since this only exaggerates nonperformance if not hostility from consumers or policymakers. Circuits of less-than-ideal professional practice, behaviour and control persist as a problem of professional culture and organisation, sometimes in self-focus if not general defensiveness when identified.

Lexogenesis Similar use of the term lexogenesis opens up possibilities for seriously talking in a broad sense about adverse consequences of legal processes and activities at lawyer, law-firm, corporate and judicial levels in civil, criminal and regulatory settings. It raises inquiry about law firms, legal education, departments of justice and regulatory bodies, even the mediatisation of legal process. It asks about taxation regimes, including offshore arrangements, the connections between law disciplines and between lawyers, governments and corporations. Lexogenesis presumes a Bourdieusian understanding of the breadth of the field of law, which Bourdieu calls the ‘juridical field’, to avoids false closure by positivist, legal, technical, formalist, definitions of law and legal professions and institutions; these exclude as much as they include. The legal field in this sense includes the sociocultural and socioeconomic spaces in which law functions, taking as primary data for inquiry (Terdman in Bourdieu 1987, p. 805), ‘the structured, socially patterned activity or ‘practice’, in this case disciplinarily and professionally defined’. For Bourdieu the formal system of law has a constitutive force in modern society, and its complexity and power mean its internal normative structure make it resistant to external reorientation. Identifying professogenic actions or situations in the legal field parallels Sutherland’s (1945) language of white-collar crime. Sutherland’s move was an innovative challenge against professional and middle-class assertions, even assumptions, that crime was a lower-class thing. The point

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of Sutherland’s phrase was to liberate jargon from heavy formal and official terminology to a more immediately graspable idea. At that time— and now—legal terminology obscures the serious amount of professional middle- and upper-class infractions in a justice system inefficiently and unfairly targeting working-class individuals (Kahn 1999). Why is it important to have a term specific to law and related professions about adverse impacts? The broad answer must be because of the important role legal professionals play in modern rational–legal society. To this must be added the commercialisation and corporatisation of legal processes. More specific answers include the following. First, lexogenesis parallels professogenesis in avoiding accusing specific people of specific criminal or civil infractions. These have attention and relevant consequences of legal processes—depending on whether or not observed and acted upon—surrounding them (Frankford 1997). This means no disrespect to legal process, merely a statement of the obvious. On the contrary, it aims to support appropriate processes from the vantage point of social science research. Stopping short is of course procedurally fair when available information is limited and actual intention and seriousness are not yet known or fully understood. In academic terms, this is the point of theory and research, that together they scope out, provisionally and iteratively, then revise and adjust theory from fact as they proceed. Truth can never be fully top-down to be determined formally only, nor solely emergent (Rogers 2014). Second, professogenesis and lexogenesis allow consideration beyond specifically ‘bad’ or ‘good’ categories to think about the benefit and usefulness of practices, actions and values informing judgements and decisions. Counter-discourses that rebut or marginalise challenges to professional ‘goodness’ contribute no less than the affirmative narratives of benefit and altruism to the discursive positioning of professions and professionalism. The legal equivalent of the inverse care failure (Hart 1971) for marginalised populations may not be anyone’s decision or fault, but it is professogenic, or lexogenic when the professional legal system is involved. There are clearly intertextual connections between these discourses as part of the inscription of professions in contemporary society, forming a matrix that can be difficult to question in conventional situations, let alone in circumstances of adverse impacts. The necessity of the #MeToo movement

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challenges long-standing professogenic gendering of law at multiple levels (Dong 2017). The counter-discourses described above are embedded within others, taking sociological analysis beyond the initial discursive surface. Third, aggressive legal cases to intimidate citizens exerting their rights (Nader and Smith 1996): late discovery, spoliation, different justice and imprisonment rates for the poor are not just tactics or strategy. These are all lexogenic. Disproportionately focusing on Blacks, ethnic groups or migrants is a lexogenic waste of public money, time and other public resources, not public good. These activities interact with and corrode the quantum of justice and lawfulness in society. Professogenesis and lexogenesis, like claims of professional altruism and benefit, are broad ideas that incorporate quality as well as attitudinal and even structural aspects of being a professional. Mostly these are not matters of legislation or even regulation but inscribed professional habitus, social class and discourse in Bourdieu’s (1991) terminology. Instances of disempowering effects of lawyers, police, the judiciary, regulators and other professionals overruling clients, are lexogenic. So too are ‘failing professional ideals’ (Kronman 1995)’, decline of professionals’ (Abel 1986) and respect for the constraining formalities of lawyers as officers of the court bound to practice according to codes of ethics, even before more overt adverse actions. At the other end of the interactional scale, so too is the exclusion of ethnic minorities or women aspirants to be lawyers, police, probation and welfare officers or other professionals; with more than half of law graduates now women, the continuing patriarchal hierarchy and sexism of the profession has negative impacts in several ways. An argument can be made that of all the major professions, the legal profession is most in need of the sort of complex quality and audit processes and challenges began and continuing in medicine over several decades. Higher court review, often proffered as that process, is an insufficient answer and can only partially overcome lexogenic practice given current levels of resourcing and judicial practice. Mechanisms of appeal can be part of the lexogenic effects from lexogenic application or functioning of law; confidentiality logics often inappropriately protect other professionals; lawyers as officers of the court, often lightly managed if at all, may exert

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miss-functioning of the supposed rational–legal process (Nesson 1991). As Brooke and Catalano (2009, p. iii) summarise, ‘New methodologies and metrics for analysing the professions should be formulated, as well as greater transparency and consistency in reporting, in order for the full extent of professionals’ contributions to society to be brought to light’. Nader and Smith’s (1996) book is replete with similar lexogenic accounts. There are ample academic and cases studies and research project evidence of a parallel kind. In terms of moving from concept to method, Nesson cites over two-thirds of lawyers surveyed stating they had experienced unethical lawyer behaviour, a damaging percentage understated by the bell-curve’s normal distribution (Fig. 7.1). Even an initial numerical rendering of such behaviour is cause for attention to much more substantial investigation. In the Enron corporate scandal (McLean and Elkind 2003) lawyers and accountants were deeply implicated, evidencing lexogenic and professogenic intersections. In any field, inadequate checking is often lexogenic, as in the following example: ‘No blame was apportioned, nor were any disciplinary measures or personnel measures suggested. Meeks conclude that the “lawyers relied on the doctors” and the “doctors relied on the lawyers” and thus no one was really at fault’ (Stewart 1999, p. 129). Two final examples of lexogenic or potentially lexogenic dimensions of the functioning of law. Muzio and Ackroyd (2005, p. 615), in looking at changes in the legal profession, see differential forces at work than what can be subsumed under either traditional deprofessionalisation or managerialism. They point to ‘decline in the legal profession’s historical performance, and a defensive strategy’ benefiting some parts of the profession, but not other members, in the changed model of wealthy equity partner versus salaried lawyer staff in large law firms. This change in the law professions consolidating this new hierarchisation further embeds patriarchal discrimination. Muzio and Ackroyd conclude this different kind of professional ‘closure regime’ supports, ‘Freidson’s continuity thesis whereby reorganisation is safeguarding traditional privileges and rewards for certain sections of the profession at the cost of a progressive process of intra-occupational stratification’. This concentration of legal corporate power can be argued as lexogenic in several ways or defended on several grounds. The point being made in this chapter is to have the language of normative description and

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real-world assessment available in the debates rather than defaulting to discussing such changes in simply functional terms. Harvard law professor Nesson (1991, pp. 703–704) tells this personal story about the deep lexogenic practice of spoliation—the destruction or claimed ‘loss’ of documents: ‘I was one of a team of lawyers who represented a group of plaintiffs against two major corporations in a toxic tort suit’. It is not necessary to quote Derrida (1977) about modern production, circulation and consumption of text to see real-world effects of texts in Nesson’s tale: The lawyers for one of the defendant corporations played straight in the discovery process, and, after suffering an adverse jury finding in a liability phase of the case, settled with the plaintiffs for eight million dollars. The other corporate defendant and its lawyers suppressed and destroyed evidence in a variety of ways during the discovery process without being detected and won a jury verdict. This defendant paid the plaintiffs nothing. When evidence of the spoliation began to surface after trial, the trial judge was unwilling to investigate it. When forced by the Court of Appeals to hold a serious inquiry, the trial judge found that the defendant had engaged in deliberate misconduct but imposed no sanction. The judge found that the plaintiffs had violated Rule 114 by pursuing the claim on which the defendant spoliated the evidence! The Court of Appeals affirmed, deferring to the discretion of the trial judge.

Nesson’s story here raises multiple lexogenic issues in the field of law today (I count ten), intersecting in their assaultive effect. He summarises, ‘The lesson was obvious. Not only were the cheaters allowed to win, but those who raised objection to the foul were punished. I have not personally had a more depressing experience in the law’. Even so, only half of US state jurisdictions have torts of spoliation; criminal ‘use of a document’ provisions are rarely applied to lawyer professional conduct. The power of documents/text and their misuse in spoliative and other practices in legal systems are mostly misunderstood as a second-order problem. However, the claim that spoliation is analogous to perjury, but done by text, is false. Spoliation is not inspected in the face of the court, and it often intersects and buttresses perjury and other lexogenic behaviours, as Nesson found.

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Given the centrality of text in modern professional society, much needs to be further excavated about these ills of modern law.

Conclusion This chapter argued several things about the normativity of professions in presenting critiques of professions’ assertions, implied assertions and denied assertions, about professional functioning as a matter of public good. First, from the post-professional literature of the previous chapter it attempted to create space to talk about the pressures, adverse effects and professogenic consequences of professional intervention, in addition to public good contributions professional cadres make to society today. Second, notwithstanding the difficulty imagining modern society functioning in the absence of professions, the argument in this chapter countered normative hegemony proclaiming professional goodness, insisting on a more balanced discussion of both public good and professogenic effects of professional work. A third point of critique concerns professions defending and contending for their career investments in the spaces within which professional work occurs. Leape and colleagues over several decades found they were up against this in the health sector (Leape 1998; Leape et al. 2002). Fourth, it is important to offer politicians, organisations, interest groups, consumers, more nuanced languaging around professogenic and lexogenic analysis. This allows more realistic interpretations to direct needed change. Latent consequences in all aspects of professional life and functioning may create negative impacts of greater or lesser consequence but must not simply be written out of the script. Many aspects of the public good of professions are indubitable but are undermined in being co-opted to legitimate or obscure poor practice, short-cuts, and less than full client orientation—or in the case of corporate masters, compliance with unprofessional corporate pressures. Major changes in professions today continue, and substantial work is needed to redress poor practices and imbalances in both new and established professional groups. The gender-bullying culture of surgeons is a

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byword in the medical field, like male privilege in law firms and all toofrequent unconscionable behaviour of banks and bankers. Contemporary issues in the computing professions reflect pushback of older conservative values that undermine claims today of benefit and fairness. Public good arguments piggyback on the contention that expertise is necessary for policy plans and delivery. Further, professogenic consequences have come from race, class and gender structures in modern society, as professions contested for their ‘place in the sun’. Early-modern formation of these inefficient and unfair practices encapsulating these premodern norms, built them into purportedly emancipating and ameliorating key societal functions, making society better off. But at the same time less attention paid to some groups meant less well-being, less healthy, less fairly governed and less evenly well taught. The broad concepts of professogenesis and lexogenesis serve as one counterpoint to banal statements about benefits and public good of professional work that often discounts cost, time, quality, convenience, marginalisation of some cohorts and broad patterns of client need. Latent consequences may have nothing to do with clinical problem-solving, or practice matters being addressed, but are brought into the mix, or emanate from, social and institutional categories. The chapter’s focus on examining the goodness half of the goodness and expert bundling applied a simple dichotomy of goodness and professogenic conduct to unbundle the problematic nature even of goodness itself, mixed with professogenic outcomes. Positively, with additional sophistication in this broader way of thinking and analysing professional competence, even professogenic actions and situations can be researched to identify negative consequences and regain possible benefit out of, or because of, what is found and learned. This chapter has charted many empirical threads in theorising the unbundling of professional public good. The generic ideal traits of service, altruism and goodness have been increasingly unbundled from the role of guarantor of expertise in contemporary society. The focus is much more on the knowledge and skills authorised by professional qualifications, with less focus on professional goodness. Not that goodness is absent—the argument here has been the twinned nature of the two is of prime significance—but cultural discourses around professional expertise continue to shift. These metrics of change include more market-driven demand by

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consumers, greater information available in a digital era for consumers and intervention by funders in what and how professional services are provided. The next chapter now turns to consider the other part of the built-together core of professions’ claims, and traces out several threads in the unbundling of professional expertise. For professions’ planning their futures, and society more generally, there are many implications that follow from this process.

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8 Unbundling Professional Expertise

Interrogating Professional Bundling In the previous chapter, the bundling of traits of professional goodness and professional expertise provided the platform for analysis of one half of this conjunction, the normative claims for professions’ public contributions and beneficial action. The value of having pushed the professional goodness and expertise zusammenbauen in this way is that it enables the possibility of connecting with and inspecting empirical changes in society and economy about expectations and performance around professions today. Combining theorising about professions with empirically observing professions, what else can be seen in how the goodness and expertise bundling has changed in recent decades? The next step after last chapter’s examination of the goodness part of this conjunction is to now look at the expertise dimension of professionals’ work in today’s sociopolitical environment. As a first step, describing the de-emphasising of goodness in the last chapter by default makes questioning expertise more significant. Less bundled goodness does not, however, automatically lead to more bundled expertise. Professional expertise, for its part, also faces unbundling pressures arising from increased usage and demand for expertise, and © The Author(s) 2019 E. A. Burns, Theorising Professions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27935-6_8

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greater attention to the quality of expertise. This occurs because specialised knowledge contained within professions is now less distinguishable from other sources and kinds of expertise. Other modes of generating, acquiring and controlling expertise within professions, outside them, and in hybrid forms, have arisen. The phrase ‘professional expertise’ is even more common today but is increasingly a generic label rather than indicating who, how and in what ways professional expertise is configured and contained. Hence, as Larson (2008, p. 4) states, ‘[I]f… we consider the larger society’s institutions broadly, the… exclusive feature[s] of professionalism becomes not exclusive at all but applicable to a host of social phenomena’. Contemporary demand for acquiring or needing specialised forms of knowledge comes from several sources, most of which are connected to the economic value of knowledge that different agents wish to exploit and apply either commercially, or as consumer end-users, or by governmental agencies pursuing policy rationales. Processes of specialisation and differentiation are currently at play in these many efforts to extract value from technology and expertise in more efficient and effective ways. In this chapter, this unbundling of expertise is seen in terms of present-day institutional, technological, trade, or commercial activities, engaging and competing over expertise. The first section of this chapter describes three ways professions’ expertise is increasingly unbundled. First, how professions are today positioned largely in relation to organisations is described as an unbundling of profession-controlled and managed expertise. Second, the impact of digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) appears likely to challenge every bundled and currently coherent role of professions in the production and distribution of expertise. Most professionals are in denial about this. Third, globalisation continues to unbundle conventional western nation-centric models of professions. As global change interacts with digital technologies, this alters the impacts of distance and the economics of price differentials, allowing expertise to flow both ways across borders in novel combinations.

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From these three major unbundlings reshaping professions, the latter part of the chapter anchors them to the simple but profound logics of production and consumption of professional expertise. This economic language grounds the idea of bundling and unbundling of professional expertise in socioeconomic relations of demand and supply. This is sociologically relevant in addressing both material and cost questions economists take for granted, as well as understanding how professional projects bring expectations and social capital to the issue of who controls or defines the nature of the production–consumption relationship for expertise. As will be seen, who defines and shapes the relationship is a deeply cultural and social question, out of which economic drivers and possibilities for handling expertise emerge. Professions exist as professions in multiple and different relations between themselves as producers of expertise and their client groups. The steps in the second half of the chapter cover first, producing expertise and second, producing professionals. In these considerations of how production impacts on unbundling expertise today, Johnson’s work using the production–consumption concepts in his definitional outline of professions is reintroduced. It is used here as a tool for analysing professional expertise. It is not until the next chapter that a fuller restatement of Johnson’s relevance to the present discussion is set out.

Unbundling Professional Expertise Professions’ built-together goodness and expertise can be analysed further than concentrating on the ambivalence of claimed goodness traits. By now giving attention to the expertise part of the coupling, the result of this new examination is to see that expertise, too, is only practically but not logically tied to professions and professionals’ services. At first this is counter-intuitive, at best a somewhat pedantic point, but such a viewpoint expands to eventually challenge commonsense views that professionals are the experts. This becomes significant in that conventional views beg the very question being problematised here: by almost any definition, professions are the experts. The concept of unbundling helps break this circularity. As the chapters have worked through to this point in the argument, it can be seen that the dance around definitional closure in

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Chapter 2 was not some clever game but necessary resistance to simple continuance of professions’ symbolic dominance of the conversation itself. For two centuries, professions have been central figures in the delivery of practical knowledge and expertise. What we saw in the unbundling of goodness discussed in the last chapter has direct parallels to the potential unbundling of expertise. What if some digital alternative performs the same task quicker, better, cheaper, all day, remotely or using half-skilled operators because most of the skill and expertise is inbuilt? Maybe some or perhaps eventually most of these features. Even if not there yet, could some segment of the client market find value in a cheaper, faster, more convenient, more available, more accurate or more basic service? Susskind and Susskind (2015a, p. 122) describe particular types of expert unbundling, task-disaggregation and multi-sourcing: ‘Professional work is no longer regarded as a monolithic, indivisible lump of activity, but … is… being decomposed… that is, broken down into constituent tasks’. So far, this has been mostly seen happening in other more mundane work settings, but what if intelligent machines could take substantial slices of professional activity, doing them as well and even better than human experts? Elite professions like medicine and law have shown considerable imperial capabilities in extending claims of expertise, absorbing new fields like acupuncture, patent analysis, and proliferating new subspecialities like paralegals and paramedics, veterinary nurses and allied professional cadres, in complex divisions of labour. The unbundling of professional goodness from expertise in the post-professional period means that the still-arriving technological changes in professional expertise delivery will create very different challenges in this present century. Such unbundling reduces cultural perceptions of professions as the containers of expertise, already less imbued with the valence of goodness. Thus, Becker (1970, p. 92) affirms that ‘“Profession” is not a neutral and scientific concept but, rather, what Turner has called a folk concept, a part of the apparatus of the society we study’. Another corollary using the idea of unbundling queries is whether expertise today may be shifting towards untrammelled technical knowledge, liquid and mobile, less able to be contained in a specific profession or any other space than previously? In significant ways, the answer is yes or becoming so, and the scholarly networks studying professions mentioned

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in Chapter 1 have charted this at many points. Interdisciplinarity is seen in most fields, where insights of adjacent, subaltern, competing or even quite separate fields generate new knowledge and repurpose insights from the original professional field, or in new professional areas. Comparative studies likewise bring bodies of information together about issues and how and why things are done in certain ways, in other countries and jurisdictions, extending these new understandings (Lupton 2014; Possamai-Inesedy and Nixon 2017; Savage 2017). There are three main ways contemporary professions are experiencing unbundling pressures: in managing professional work, in technological unbundling and through global unbundling.

Managing Professional Work In the twentieth century, new forms for the delivery and control of professional expert service and applied knowledge unbundled previous apparently fixed arrangements and bundled them in new ways. Chapter 3 explored some major instances of these institutional reconfigurations. There was constant reiteration in the literature at mid-century, often forgotten today, of the impossibility of mixing professional and organisational values and shifting autonomy in the control of expertise. This referenced the rising consciousness and concerns of professionals that professions were more and more being folded into other organisational formats. The post-professional decades started out with this as a key problématique, but today, although long-run outcomes are as yet unknowable, the integration of organisations and professions is generally acknowledged as how things are. Being located in or servicing organisations and being directed by corporate managers is a key element of this unbundling of professional expertise. Reactions to this unbundling pressure come from previous positioning of professions in relation to relatively rough or imprecise managerialist discourse and practice of corporations. This also means professional autonomy becomes restricted to the goals of the organisation in using professional expertise. Apparent exceptions like mid-century ‘medical dominance’ (Freidson 1970) meant professionals could dominate a complex

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division of labour for a time. Ultimately, however, organisational objectives differ from professionals’ interests—revenue expansion, cost reduction, denial of insurance claims, legal excusing defending corporate behaviour, control of welfare populations, and so forth. Although highly contested, both mediatised and scholarly discourse no longer makes strong claims about the unmixability of these two modes of control over specialised work, rather how best to manage the roles, functions and expertise of professional work within the organisational prerogatives of top-down management and issues of managerialism. The reality of professions today is their members mostly work in, for, or in relation to, complex organisations of one kind or another in far greater numbers than ever before. Researchers and theorists increasingly see that for good and ill the conjunction of professions and organisations is all around them. They move to a different set of questions: How is professional work managed, how should it be managed, how best to manage it? Thus, managing professional expertise and the conduct of professional work relative to organisational imperatives becomes the focus (Cohen et al. 2002). An important step, therefore, in analysing unbundling of professional expertise is acknowledging this bundling of professions and organisations, an apparent contrast to this overall unbundling theme. Observing expert work being produced inside or on behalf of organisations identifies a shifting locus of control from professions to organisations in terms of how expert knowledge is created and distributed, a shift from Tables 3.1 to 9.1. In Johnson’s terms, this is a shift from collegial professionalism to corporate forms. This shift directly contradicts the earlier claims examined in Chapter 3 of proposed control in professions and organisations as inherently oppositional and in competition to one another. This is found to be true only when collegial-type professions are able to impose their definition of the situation onto the producer–consumer relationship. It may or may not empirically be the case that they are able to direct and define the relationship in given circumstances, but it is not logically or essentially true. This change to new forms of professionalism is remarkable. In terms of the present argument, organisations and professions are an unbundling of professional expertise, but institutionally a new kind of bundling .

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Organisations appear to have successfully absorbed professions and their expertise in many respects. Many corporations employ millions of professionals globally (Green 2016), riding a historical global economic and trade super cycle (Baldwin 2016) with political and commercial ramifications. For both professions and organisations, however, the common source of future risk is not initially political, but comes from automation, artificial intelligence, and the increased mobility and outsourcing of highlevel expertise. Even within this naturalised corporatist and credentialised world today, the production and control of expertise are vulnerable in similar ways to professional expertise. Relocating many forms of professional work into bureaucracies and organisations curtailed the previous autonomy enjoyed by elite professions. But it did little to change the underlying technological content or delivery issues beginning to change in the emerging digital era, beyond accelerating applications of expert knowledge. Continuing profession–organisation changes see regular reassertions of incompatibility with bureaucratic modes of management direction of professions whose attention is focused on demand-side client need. Bureaucratically necessary management of costs and personnel towards overall goal achievement may be asserted on both good and unconvincing grounds. For many complex organisations, looking into the near future raises questions of whether digital technologies will effectively undermine all or parts of their organisation and professional service creation and delivery of expertise. The organisational unbundling of management of professional expertise may in turn give way to some organisations being undermined by the technological changes considered in the next section. Consider, for example, the ambivalent nature of control of expertise over time in these major organisational settings: • Finance: Could financial services such as banking and financial services’ profit-seeking, inefficiency, cost, nineteenth-century business hours and attitudes be forced to change? The presence of online providers threatens significant segments of this industry. Online accounting providers like Xero (www.xero.com) are revolutionising small business and accounting services. New blockchain technologies raise complications at present, but address the fundamental issue of modernity—how do you trust

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individuals and organisations you do not know, at a distance? (Gowers and Aminoff 2017; Pardo-Guerra 2013). Other applications than money for this technology are also compelling. • Health care: Hospitalisations peaked in the United States in the 1980s. Expectations and costs are having significant impacts on health services and increasing availability of more domestic-scale, high technology facilities, closer to client groups will continue, addressing costs, time and de-industrialising medical complexity. Online and real-time diagnosis, even before considering possibilities of robotic dexterity and accuracy, could dramatically shift how health expertise is organisationally configured. • Education: Western education command and control is still little changed from nineteenth-century invention of education outside family or religious instruction. Universities are currently in overhang—too expensive and too inefficient relative to results, after decades of growth. Now extending training to a new generation of non-western experts and educators, but the sector could change quite suddenly. Rapid growth in tertiary institutions in developing countries is not simply copying: China’s recent change of 600 universities to technical institutions on the German model shows nuanced adjustment. • Religious: Often professionally involved in philanthropic and pastoral work, but commonly also imbued with significant class, political and economic convictions. There is no adequate argument churches and religious organisations worth millions and even billions of dollars should not fully publicly report their accounts like other corporates. The Australian Roman Catholic Church’s secretive financial underreporting exists alongside child abuse under-reporting (Royal Commission 2017)—both professional failures. Professional expertise has been co-opted by what is going on inside each of these organisations or institutional spheres. This simultaneously creates potential troubles for organisations reliant on conventional professional expertise, and for professionals themselves. Seddon’s (2005, p. 9) critique of organisational management of professional work shows how managed and coordinated expertise can achieve efficient outcomes of better quality. But many empirically measurable instances show bureaucratic

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management practices degrade professional expertise and resist applying knowledge to achieve improvements.

Technological Unbundling The second pressure for unbundling professional expertise comes from the expansion of sophisticated forms of digital technology. This has profound long-term implications and will have permanent consequences for professional expertise. The initial set of questions for professionals is the relation between production and supply of professional expertise in society. However, for groups other than professionals such as policymakers, organisations and client–consumers, a different set of questions prevails: What if other institutional or organisational forms than professions could deliver knowledge and expertise faster, better, cheaper, more consistently? Susskind and Susskind (2015a, p. 271) observe: In relation to our current professions we argue that the professions will undergo two parallel sets of changes. The first will be dominated by automation. Traditional ways of working will be streamlined and optimised through the application of technology. The second will be dominated by innovation. Increasingly capable systems will transform the work of professionals, giving birth to new ways of sharing practical expertise.

Instead of professions being the inevitable source of expertise, modern digital technologies are raising questions about who, how and with what effects are professions and other sources of expertise to be preferred, are available, and at what cost and quality. The question is reframed: How is, or might be, expertise delivered to the end-user, the consumer of expertise? Since professions have been so thoroughly naturalised in modern culture, it takes more than theoretical reframing to mount the argument and persuade that the possibility is more than an academic one. Hence, chapter by chapter in this book, the repeated unpicking of the present-day certainty of professions as they currently exist. Thus, the several examples described here make the case for academics and professionals to consider how technological change might

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force changes in the delivery of professional expertise today and in coming decades. Richard Susskind (2016) cites being publicly reprimanded by the Law Society of England and Wales for his 1996 statement that someday legal professionals might use emails for communication. This is laughable today but indicates the rate of change. Rapidly developing technology challenges professions’ expertise with increasingly capable digital expertise using algorithms, Internet solutions, virtual presence and robotic dexterity. The Susskinds (2015a, p. 1) argue that the claim to professional expertise, however, is about to be repositioned much more decisively and dramatically than the problems needing attention in the previous chapter about professional public good would suggest. We are on the brink of a period of fundamental and irreversible change in the ways that the expertise of these specialists is made available in society. Technology will be the main driver of this change. And in the long run, we will neither need nor want professionals to work in the way that they did in the twentieth century and before.

These authors are careful to avoid futuristic or utopian language in considering digital innovations and their possible impacts on professions. There is a big gap between common professional acceptance and use of technological innovations, and realistic apprehension of likely effects on professions as institutions and the reconfigurations, redundancies and niches ahead for professional work. It is sensible to be careful to avoid over-asserting the rate, degree and significance of changes to professions. There is also a responsibility to move beyond scholarly reticence to consider projections about existing strong and continuing digital trends. Fortunately, scholarship in sociology and elsewhere continues to articulate these incipient social and technological changes impacting professions and expertise and other parts of society (Mclaughlin and Webster 1998; Savage and Burrows 2007, 2009; Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier 2013; Orton-Jones et al. 2013; Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2014; Ford 2015; Wajcman 2017). A few illustrative examples suggest possibilities for professionals and those outside professions to think through, perhaps making the case more powerfully than theoretical arguments:

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Skin cancer: Vincent (2017) reports a deep-learning algorithm after training on only 130,000 images (Esteva et al. 2017) and a list of over 2000 skin conditions being compared to about twenty dermatologists. It identified skin cancers with the same accuracy as doctors, a little over 90%. These authors cite an app option for home use for initial identification (there are as many mobile phones as humans), carefully saying they are not aiming to replace dermatologists. There are 5.5 million new cases of skin cancer per year in United States, earlier detection making for better survival rates. There are multiple questions for professions here: cost, convenience, time of day, public availability, expertise, well-being and size of required dermatology workforce. These are different questions country by country. Are general practitioners disintermediated in this process—direct to specialist? This digital expertise, now equal to medical experts, will soon surpass them by a long way, creating quite different social and economic pressures. Similar health stories are proliferating (Fu et al. 2018). Therapy: Al-Mosaiwi and Johnstone (2018) applied computer text analysis methods to linguistic comparisons to ‘absolutist’ language content and style, including use of pronouns, across a variety of written materials to identify concerns ‘specific to anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation’. They examined 64 different online mental health forums with over 64,000 participants, as well as looking at ‘recovery forums’. Al-Mosaiwi (2018) observes, ‘Such classification is already outperforming that made by trained therapists. Importantly, machine-learning classification will only improve as more data is provided and more sophisticated algorithms are developed. This goes beyond looking at the broad patterns of absolutism, negativity and pronouns already discussed’. Once again, note the current situation is now surpassing professionals’ expertise in accuracy and near-instantaneous results that ‘will only improve’. This theme affects all professions, whether abstract knowledge, technique or dexterity based, text based, or requiring large datasets, or Internet retrieval. Other care professional fields like social work agencies are already data-mining case records to identify high-risk situations for early intervention. Driverless vehicles: The third example is not at first glance about professions but raises questions about the numbers and kinds of work for

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which professionals are required (if not cars, other circumstances). The hurry–yet–caution of companies promoting driverless cars remains after long use of almost driverless commercial planes traversing the planet’s skies. This is because of sociopolitical perceptions that even one death might outweigh the real benefits and efficiencies. This goes beyond the frisson of present-day maps and directions and future questions like, ‘Why did I waste so much of my time and my life’ behind a steering-wheel? Today, estimates of 1.25 million people a year die worldwide in vehicle accidents, with perhaps 20–50 times that number of people injured. The US annual road carnage is about 37,000 fatalities (http://www.who.int/ gho/road_safety/mortality/en/). The real issue is of course the sad waste of human life, capability and happiness. For professions, this can be used as a thought-experiment to recalibrate need for professional work in the above scenario. Recall the pharmacy dispensing algorithm mentioned earlier (Susskind and Susskind 2015b): it is not the danger of one death or iatrogenic consequence: at one in six million instead of a professional expert’s one per hundred, this is overall safer and more reliable by orders of magnitude. For vehicles, guesstimates start at one million fewer emergency events, hospital events, lawyer/wills events, funeral events. In parallel, 20–50 million fewer professional events for the injured-alive, like repeat trips to physiotherapy, further operations, prostheses, workplace adjustments, home care, financial help. Similarly, there are possible impacts for other professionals helping with the human tragedy of losing family nurturers and breadwinners. National circumstances play very differently, but the general picture is clear: each technological change resizes professional activities and specialities in multiple sectors. It is sufficient to recognise that even if parts of each professional role are removed, sped up or lifted to a higher quality, by algorithms or robotic process of automation, this will have consequences for the numbers and types of practitioners required. Susskind and Susskind (2015a, p. 85) point to parallels for various professions. If 50 million US tax returns are done electronically each year without professional help, that is a big drop in the number of single or repeat consultations with accountants and financialconsultants. In law, the many examples of online dispute resolution include eBay resolving a ‘staggering 60 million disagreements that arise

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amongst [eBay] traders each year… more than three times the total number of lawsuits filed in the entire US court system’ (p. 70). Offering these figures is merely the start of a cascade of effects that change the numbers of professionals required, the value of professional intervention, the relevance of professional involvement and the views that funder entities like governments and insurance firms will hold. Understandably, many objections are raised about dramatic change for currently successful professions, like professional work involving judgement and intuition, the human touch. The Susskinds contend, however, that if higher-level professional tasks are significantly automated, it may be that present-day lower-order empathetic professions gain new relevance in these respects. But what about creativity, interpretation, gut instinct from experience? The examples above demonstrate these objections are simply not the case and are becoming even less so for more aspects of professional work as time passes. Arguments that algorithms cannot think like humans mostly miss the point: of course machines do not think like humans—Kasparov did not get beaten at chess by IBM computer Big Blue thinking like a human. Kasparov himself acknowledged being beaten by pure digital brute force at millions of computations a second. The resultant expertise—not thinking like a human—will be most of what is required. Cost, commerce and efficiency are not the only drivers at work reconfiguring the function of professional expertise. Kahneman (2011) offers a reminder in terms of the limited capability of human expertise, rather than in terms of the digital imperative end of the debate. His research into the universality of human bias identified how widespread and common errors are in experts’ judgements and decision-making. All the human abilities and characteristics—mental maps, experiences, ethnicity, gender, age, previous experiences, and more—he found undermined objective assessment. Kahneman argues only a very small cohort of even trained experts use intuition accurately. The skin cancer detection and prescribing accuracy examples illustrate how algorithms are today producing more accurate, more consistently reliable and less biased decisions in all professional areas of work. Most professionals, however, do not believe this applies to them—an example, in Kahneman’s terms, of exactly such bias. There are hundreds more examples of digital expertise at this developmental stage, becoming in Susskind and Susskind’s (2015a) phrasing,

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increasingly intelligent and increasingly capable. It is not a matter of being a technology fan, though educated and professional people stand to gain great improvements in life. Objections to these enormous changes are understandable but most do not withstand scrutiny. The presence of the objections nevertheless points to very significant tensions and sociopolitical cross-pressures for rebundling in new ways that will affect professional service delivery. Vehement disagreements seem likely. The top few per cent of professionals in any field will be positioned very differently than the bottom three-quarters. There will be false starts, and machines will make errors, but in time mostly at much lower rates than human experts, and therefore less professogenic in the aggregate. The generation and control of applied expert knowledge have long been viewed as within the ambit of professions. Digital information technologies are offering big opportunities and potential threats to current professions’ work. Digitally generated and collected information is at every level not just changing what professionals can do but refiguring the function, control and further deployment of knowledge. In strategic ways, professionals are well placed to keep on top of this new game but in other ways, even with effective organisational management of professional expertise, these new technologies and governance processes around them are a new order of significance affecting lives and powers globally. It is not a simple matter of adding on the new technical expertise to professions; the present innovations are simply the start of continuing large-scale shifts in society. As alluded to earlier, accompanying these present digital impacts is the growth of ever-smarter technologies—large datasets, warehousing of databases, search algorithms, neural learning, near-limitless cloud storage, algorithms assembling and interpreting through constantly new applications in professional work and elsewhere. It is important to note that mostly this information has escaped all or part of professional control. Often, it is not controlled by government for society, but commercial corporations motivated by profit or government agencies motivated to achieve civic control (O’Neill 2017; Eubanks 2018). This chapter’s emphasis at this point is the technological reconfiguring of professional expertise. The other two contemporary unbundling patterns described here—organisational subsumption and global extension—lead to asking questions in the

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latter part of the chapter about the enormous production-led output of professional cadres by universities today.

Global Unbundling Further complexity is added to the technological unbundling just described by identifying the conjunction of this digital expertise with further globalisation. All current and future digital technologies will be present and intersect with globalisation as it continues to unfold in a variety of ways, many consequences not yet foreseeable. The globalising of manufacturing expertise was the forerunner of today’s emerging relevance of global need for professional expertise. Identifying this conjunction, beyond each considered separately, increases understanding of changes and alternative futures for professional expertise. The Susskinds’ contribution undercuts beliefs the digital economy applies only to low-skill work, since greater gains come from replacing higher-level expensive experts. Increasingly capable technologies offer speed of calculation, recognition, dexterity and instantaneous adjustment that combine in outperforming human experts. The Susskinds argue (2015a, p. 9) that professions will be enhanced in the short term, but new ways of making expertise available will push against professions, and ‘In the long run… we will find new and better ways to share expertise in society, and our professions will steadily be dismantled’. Fusing technological impacts on professions as envisioned by the Susskinds with Baldwin’s (2016) two-century historical economic perspective of globalisation shows further unexpected effects of technology for professional work. It is not just about expertise, but how expertise interacts with labour costs: not solely that developing countries’ labour is cheap, but also the case that western countries’ expert labour and expertise are too expensive, increasingly too delayed and too distant. As technologies remorselessly improve, the current labour availability will not be of the right kind or flexibility to meet requisite quality differentiations. This creates unintended consequences for professions and expertise when understood in relation to advancing digital technologies in a globalised context.

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Modern globalisation in Baldwin’s view is created through the unbundling of three elements of exchange: movement of goods and services, communication between parties and the presence of the parties. Premodernity naturalised and localised all three constraints, but modern globalisation successively unbundles each constraint. Unbundling movement of goods in the nineteenth century led to the trade take-off of industrial western countries. Unbundling communications through telecommunications, phones, visual and computer links further dismantled global distance, leading to the late twentieth-century Asian take-off. Unbundling the third constraint—presence—Baldwin describes as imminent. Each shift, but especially digital technologies in the second and third unbundlings, removes constraints delivering expertise globally (Gereffi 1994). Baldwin’s third unbundling, the presence of the parties in the professional expertise exchange, includes and builds on the two previous unbundlings, offering new challenges and opportunities for professions and professional work: material and equipment combine with information exchange of content and decisions; communication becomes more instantaneous and real in other places through high-quality Internet and other communication systems; virtual presence is increasingly achieved around the globe. Think how quickly Internet and mobile telephony became commonplace. These and multiple newer digital forms of expertise make professional work ripe for further innovation. Consider first a blue-collar example demonstrating possibilities of being present: Kenyan contract staff teleconnect to robotic AI devices cleaning a New York apartment while the owner is at work. The expertise is built into the machinery and reliable teleconnection. Global salary differentials combine with digital technology; it is competitive to use AI to sweep British, French or American households at much cheaper labour rates. This example is powerful for its human ordinariness—except it is globe-spanning high-tech. The following examples illustrate gains from remote presence for delivering expertise, as well as other combinations of digital technologies supplementing or replacing expertise: Medicine: An example of globalised expertise demonstrates overcoming the presence constraint, starting from a French hospital example (Baldwin 2016, pp. 168–169):

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Because of advanced ICT, certain medical tasks that used to be done locally can now be done remotely. For example, arthroscopy (“Key–hole surgery”) is done by a doctor manipulating controls while looking at a computer screen. When the ICT got good enough, the patient and surgeon could be in different countries. The first instance came in 2001 when a New York surgeon operated on a patient in Strasbourg. It is not yet routine, but as telecommunications get better and more reliable, remote surgery could become as routine as remote call centres are today.

The United States performs a million knee replacement operations annually, but expectations are of three or four times that number in another decade. Multiple cost and equity issues apply to every similar statistic in health, law, education, welfare and other areas of professional expertise: Where and by which nation’s professionals will these services be provided? Professions will face multiple effects of such global change, different countries and regions adopting different rules and practices, change happening rapidly, less predictably and less controllably. Geographic monopoly of professions may still exist, but medical and dental tourism suggest the production and consumption of expertise may involve consumer mobility in greater numbers. Medical and dental tourism, however, are merely the foothills of these new ways that supply and demand for professional expertise are matched. Labour rates controlled by national and state labour market laws and regulations will be progressively undermined or recombined in ways that defer less to the western triple hierarchy of nation and state regulation, tertiary credentialing, and science-practice legitimation. The implication for professions is that the same pressures across current national borders impacting factory work are—notwithstanding most professionals’ beliefs to the contrary—also happening at the highest levels of expert work. The $100 billion global medical tourism market sounds like a current disruption but is simply one alternative of more globalised variations in the Johnsonian production–consumption modes of delivering expertise (Sandberg 2017, p. 281) that include dental, optometry, age care and potentially all fields of professional work. Nelson’s (2016) remarks about unskilled workers will become increasingly apposite for professionals: ‘American workers

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are competing with robots at home and China abroad, and neither one is going well’. Nursing, Japan: A within-society example of a skill shortage and professional replacement, in this case not about cross-national links but presence in a different sense. Hurst (2018) reports: With Japan’s ageing society facing a predicted shortfall of 370,000 caregivers by 2025, the government wants to increase community acceptance of technology that could help fill the gap in the nursing workforce…. According to Japan’s robot strategy, the government hopes that four in five care recipients accept having some support provided by robots by 2020.

Government strategies are clearly not the same as achieved reality, but note several drivers: first, demand—not enough professional nurses; second, the rapidity of the change; third, task decomposition of professional role—replacing unpleasant/hard work—lifting and detecting human need; fourth, client acceptance issues even in Japan; fifth, culture— but where else but Japan for this ambition; sixth, this is government-led change. School health checks and English learning are other projects. Computing, Law, architecture: Bangalore in India is only one instance. Getting London preparatory legal research and document drafting work done in India via contract, or an Australian architect group getting eighty per cent of its back office preparation outsourced to India, are becoming common. Shifts and debates are happening outside the western countries hitherto used to the power of setting standards, retraining and adjudicating equivalence in qualifications. Indeed, what structural, social and practical differences will emerge in countries away from western modern histories and markedly different contemporary drivers of socioeconomic change? Discussions and decisions between major non-western countries are changing international professional accreditation. A current example is the Indian government’s decision to restrict by about a third the number of entrants to medical degree courses in that country. But more than this, the development of ‘China as a preferred destination for medical education’ (Mishra 2012) is a change from previous expectations. Some 8000 Indian students enrolled in Chinese universities in 2010. Callaghan

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(2014, p. 1514) observes that such global movements are key components in unbundling professional expertise: Viewing professionals as a commodity for exchange on global markets, means that national forms of self–regulation are increasingly being challenged, making way for greater standardisation, external monitoring, and assessment. The response by many professional bodies to this pressure has been to introduce further layers of internal monitoring and regulation to produce standardised and internationally portable knowledge and skill sets (Evetts 1999). Global structures demand increased accountability and standardisation of professional training and accreditation.

Globalisation of the digital revolution may mean passing over socioeconomic patterns western modernity developed—think of mobile phones (Kreutz and Schwaab 2014; Kaigwa 2015), or how the demographic transition of later modernity occurs within previous demographic transitions (Lesthaeghe 2010). But as contests over multinational agreements on climate heating have shown, non-western countries have an ambivalence in not wanting to be dominated by western first-mover economic advantages in professional developments yet needing every gain possible for the betterment of their societies. As Kuhlmann (2015) comments, ‘Further, leap–frogging of earlier western industrialisation and modernisation developmental processes will mean unexpected events and impacts of, and on, this large professional workforce, among other things commodifying earning power’. Most western professionals do not understand these changes are happening as part of bigger shifts than just professional work. Susskind and Susskind (2015a, p. 290) see the sombre future of professional work replacement, but they do not see less professional work: ‘Broadly speaking, we expect the number of tasks to increase. In part this is because our economies are likely to grow and develop, incomes will rise, and so there will be growing demand for practical expertise. It is also because there is, we believe, a great ‘latent demand’ for professional work… a vast reservoir of need for practical expertise that is currently unmet… The professions, as they are currently constituted, do not and cannot provide affordable expertise to all who want to benefit from their services’.

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In each of these three unbundlings of professional expertise—in organisational incumbency, the proliferation of new technological forms of expertise, interprofessionally and outside professions, and the global diffusion of expertise—the unbundling is part of other broader discursive and structural shifts. Kuhlmann (2013, 2015) comments such changes, ‘call for a critical revision of existing theoretical approaches for various reasons’. In China, contrasting processes can be seen in the development of a modern legal profession (Alford 2011), or university graduate unemployment, or the current need of some 400 million people requiring dental expertise. Scholars might also view these as new bundlings, for example the conjunction of organisation and profession, or the bundling of technological and globalising shifts (Pemer et al. 2018). This does not contradict the argument about loosening professions’ control over these forms, but offers further productive avenues for theorising professions.

Producing and Consuming Expertise The second part of this chapter brings together socioeconomic analysis with cultural and historical definitional analysis. Bundling expertise within legislated professional control and commitment to beneficial outcomes has been viewed as integral in the supply and utilisation of professional knowledge. This includes basic economic thinking about supply-demand curves, even if for the most part professions’ monopoly was seen in a different light compared to large-scale economic monopolies in agriculture, manufacturing, business and other commercial sectors. Embracing this economic threshold directly, however, does not commit to solely economics framing because the same clarity, seen in the various bundling/unbundling analyses in Chapters 7 and 8, is useful in questioning symbolic supply and demand in cultural theory terms in similar ways as well. Professions’ goodness and expertise are each ‘unbundle–able’ and able to be rebundled in new and different ways. This insight is now incorporated into the broader framing of the production and consumption of professional work. Built-together goodness and expertise has not been simply replicated decade by decade in some linear, progressive fashion as western

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professions have developed. Instead, it reflects asymmetries in the production and supply of professional knowledge. Why and how, for example, did New Zealand develop a very successful dental nurse profession in the 1920s (Brooking 1980)? Or how did western dentistry come to be separate from medicine (Otte 2014)? Two centuries ago these production–consumption exchanges were relatively modest in small urban populations within mostly illiterate, uneducated, subsistent rural and small-town communities. But these examples show significant changes under local contingencies. Today, standards of living, education, scientific knowledge, formal-rational civic and governmental systems, secular education, modern media and culture in general, provide very different mixes of supply and demand for practical expertise and expectations of what professions can deliver. Johnson’s (1972) statement of professions as producers of applied knowledge to consumers of such applied knowledge continues to offer a more objective analysis of professional work. It steers between too universalistic assertions about professions and statements that are too specific to one professions or set of historical circumstances. It does this by reasoning backwards from the sociocultural and socioeconomic characteristics of the producers and consumers of professional expertise, to who controls the creation and delivery of professional expertise. This may be full or partial control or simply influencing; it may be negotiated or contested, and it plays out differently in different places and situations. Reasoning in this way pays serious attention to the profession or professions concerned, the recipient or recipients involved, and what other stakeholder or stakeholders are invested in the exchange in supporting or undermining it. To see all the empirical variety of professions and professional work as instances of one type of occupation is at best simply mistaken, and at worst an ideological assertion, as has been argued by applying several methods in each of the previous chapters. Adding more or different traits hoping to strengthen definition is an unsatisfactory adjustment that still fails to explain. Fortunately, this does not stop scholars having enormous and important occupational fields to investigate with the aim of both ameliorating and enhancing professions’ contribution to human well-being. However, to affirm that professions have key relationships to applied knowledge and

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skill gives little help explaining professions. More useful is the productionsupply framework which can be summarised by saying that relationships in the production of expertise stem from the means of production of expertise, that is, how professional expertise formed, and for whom is it used. To reiterate this key point in Johnson’s work, the doctor–patient relationship that Parsons saw as paradigmatic is merely one historical form in one time and place, no more essential than that. This production–consumption framing gives greater leverage in explaining how bundling of congruent or contradictory elements in professions operates. These can be viewed as consequences of changes to the broader labour market and cultural means of production through time. Within the focus of this chapter, this can be seen to have an acute importance for professions as widely applicable digital technologies come onstream. Bundling and unbundling respond to these symbolic, material and technological shifts, since they are linked or bound together in different ways, giving rise to new forms of professional work. These new institutional forms and roles are commonly still called professions. They still do professional work. If downgraded, the language of deprofessionalisation comes into play. If new inter-professional links are needed, these may be either resisted or reinvented with new labels. The process is normal rather than special or aberrant. It is ongoing in a modern world of active differentiation and specialisation. Building on the contribution of Johnson’s framing of professional analysis outlined in Chapter 3, theorising professions is approached in two ways here. First, analytically distinguishing ‘expertise’ from ‘professional expertise’ is important, even though there are clearly overlaps. Second, tertiary education, that is, the ‘production of the producers’ of professional expertise, has its own trajectory of contemporary change impacting the creation and provision of expertise. Integrating these ideas helps see the broader cultural pressures on unbundling professional expertise. Each contributes to analysing professional expertise according to the three unbundling drivers described in the first part of this chapter. Later, in Chapter 9, the connections between mechanisms of unbundling expertise from the production-driven supply-side tertiary training are reconnected. This is done setting out a contemporary model that brings together ideas

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from Johnson’s typology and Susskind and Susskind’s proposals for possible expertise distribution and institutionalisation.

Producing Professionals Using the production–consumption frame identifies how most thinking about professional work concentrates on the profession end and inadequately theorises how the user or consumer end shapes professional service. Applying production–consumption framing explicates this asymmetrical thinking between the two parts of applying practical expertise in society. However, in the business of producing degrees and credentials, there is clearly more than just the direct but abstract logic of an economics equation involved. As a first call, elements in this relation such as social class, learning, opportunity, status are immediately recognisable. This brings back into consideration the bundling mechanisms of culture, government and socioeconomic patterns. However, it is easy to understand that tertiary institutions produce graduate professionals with expert knowledge. It is, however, much less commonly front-of-mind to speak of producing consumers or creating markets for expertise. Yet that end of the relation requires elaboration too at various societal scales. Ultimately, this is just as important, since questions of using expertise correspond to questions about the production of expertise. Empirically, of course, any mismatch of these is a problem. There are inquiries and commissions from time to time into such production of professions in most major professions. The issue of increasing production of professionals is central to such matching or mismatching. In the present chapter, concern with unbundling expertise pressures identifies the linkage between producing professionals and how professionals or other stakeholders control or influence this process are of central interest. Uncoupling the production of professionals themselves from the services they produce as professionals yields new insights. Thus, a given piece of knowledge, skill or expertise is only in limited ways controlled by professions. Professional expertise may rely on tools, chemicals, materials, procedures, equipment that are patented or copyrighted, or special

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products/materials, as Table 9.1 in the next chapter elaborates. With further digital technology change coming, such cross-overs can only increase. Particular professional expertise or control is a kind of occupational commons held within the occupation, but the profession may be required to act in less monopsonistic ways because of this increasing interdependence since each profession has different opportunities and constraints. To date, however, in many instances, this control has simply slowed the delivery of relevant expert service or enmeshed it in bureaucratic processes, raising the spectre of complexity and wicked problems. Nevertheless, disaggregating expertise from professions themselves returns the conversation to the fundamental issue of supply and consumption of expert knowledge addressing practical or everyday needs of individuals, groups, companies and governments in society. There is an explosion around the world in the number of higher education institutions producing millions of engineers, scientists, doctors, nurses, teachers, veterinarians, therapists, social workers, computer coders—experts in every kind of professional work and activity. Increasingly, this growth is centred on the emerging economies (Schofer and Meyer 2005). It corresponds to the demand for education by individuals seeking quality work and improved livelihoods. As Noordegraaf (2015, p. 187) comments, ‘The contemporary study of professionalism is lively, because much is at stake’. Individual demand is, in turn, connected to and fuelled by global efforts to develop modern economies and societies outside western advanced economies. Furthermore, in every country, applications of digital technologies, but not restricting this observation to any single sector, are also exploding at such a rate that they too will have immense consequences for professional work within and across national borders in coming decades (Roser and Ortiz-Ospina n.d.). The proliferation of professions both helps and hinders the shift to new ways of professional functioning in society. What counts as assistance or hindrance of course depends on one’s point of view. It helps in raising population living standards in terms of such things as health, education, housing, transport and similar. It complicates things by over and under mismatches in many countries between market for professional services and state plans. Neither governmental nor commercial settings are sufficient by themselves in forecasting and adjusting. It hinders on the one

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hand by contributing to unnecessarily commoditising some professions such as school teaching while enabling rent-seeking in other professions. To mix metaphors, such undue emphasis on the supply of professions and professional services is like the sound of one hand clapping. What about the demand side—the consumers of professional services, the funders and regulators? The answer to this question becomes clearer in synthesising an overall understanding of professions in Chapter 9. Before that a final specific point about universities needs to be made here. Universities as the primary intervening institutions between government or industries and sectors in the production of professionals have a pivotal role. The rapid adopting of corporatist models around the western world combines the narrow focus of target-setting and management by objectives with several layers of assertion but does not typically reach outside the neoliberal envelope to ask more profound questions. The point of critique that is pertinent at this juncture is the lack of insight in this corporatising and marketising of training professionals of production or demand-driven strategies. It is maxim of management education that businesses must be marketdriven. Almost universally, business school criticism of primary production and producer-controlled businesses, even large-scale and successful ones, is that they are commonly production-driven. It is farcical today to see universities being production-driven, even while collectively universities spend billions on marketing. Funder-provider separation policies do not overcome the limits of quasi-markets to produce better outcomes. Rather the entrenched hierarchies of university league tables and status influenced scholarship and endowed wealth effectively counter such corporatising imperatives. A basic blind spot that persists in professional recommendations and often in government policy settings is orientation to the supply side, focusing attention on professions and professional training. Without deeper theorising here, this is unsurprising even as it makes unwarranted assumptions about the professions’ definitional role in the process. The demand side is often more diffuse, at least in how it is perceived. Yet the shifts and size of client markets are, if not by definition, empirically in the long-term needing to match production of profession services, and then one step

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back, matching the production of professionals. Differentiation of clientele wanting or requiring better levels of service or being met by cheaper or lower-quality professional service is stumbled upon rather than being the drivers of innovation and application of professional skill and knowledge.

Producing Expertise It is important to reiterate the distinction between professions and expertise. As discussed, typically in the western world over the last couple of centuries, expertise has been seen to be a property of professions. There has been process expertise in bureaucratic administration ‘by the manual’, but as this book argues content expertise has become thoroughly culturally inscribed as characteristic of professions. Trades and other areas of expert functioning have not been valorised in the ways that professions have. This has culturally embedded the view of professions as the containers of expertise. The Susskind and Susskind (2015a) argument is that there is a technological unbundling happening that is separating professional expertise from professions. This is not simply an analytic distinction, but for them is a current empirical process, and likely to accelerate. Reviewing this in the context of the production and consumption framework of applied knowledge involves rewiring commonsense logic that constrains thinking about professions by the admittedly powerful but simplistic conjunction of professions with expertise. Seeing professional expertise and expertise in general as fused with one another leads to misreading changes happening today to professional work. Avoiding misrecognition of what is changing works in both directions— better managing threats to existing professional work and identifying opportunities for new ways of working. The standard understanding is nonetheless of professions as producers of expertise. This is not, however, the sole empirical reality. Johnson’s (1972) analysis elaborated this producer–consumer framework identifying three kinds of substantive relationship. As was demonstrated earlier, only in one does the producer define and control the relationship. In another, Johnson identified the consumer had

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the ability to define the relationship and control most aspects of it. Johnson also named a third kind of relationship where another party mediated and controlled the relationship (Table 3.1). This production–consumption logic can be opened out to identify other possible sources of expertise involving professionals, but also other organisational forms, some combining with professions, others having different suppliers and sources of expertise, equipment or materiel than professionals. Some of these have a hybrid format—professions being part of a value chain as intermediate consumers and producers of expertise (Gereffi 1994). It follows from this multiplicity of sources of expertise, and the multiple ways they are linked, that some of the intermediate entities can conceivably be disintermediated or changed in their roles. Today, professions are only one supplier of expertise. The point that professions in this digital age are not the only or sole providers of expertise is core to the unbundling logic sketched in the first half of this chapter. If professions are not the containers of expertise but agents within a more complex division of labour, it follows that changes and reprioritising costs, efficiency, convenience, immediacy and other factors can be expected to occur in different ways. Professions may be less central, or even tangential, to some of these. Since such changes affect individuals higher and lower in socioeconomic hierarchies, new markets at new price points for parts of current professional-client arrangements are possible. It is not necessary to postulate wholesale change, though that is the warning of Susskind and Susskind about professionally held expertise. Describing the unbundling of expertise as challenging the container logic by which professionals see themselves as the holders of expert knowledge does several things. First, it becomes immediately clear that the boundaries of expertise are not the same as professional boundaries, nor are these present-day boundaries simply the edges of past or future expertise categories and delivery. Second, expertise in general can reside across professional boundaries or within multiple professional and expert domains, and this is sometimes contested. Third, consumer views of expertise, and collective forms of consumer knowledge, as was seen in discussing public good, are not always naïve or passive. Recipients of expertise run the full socioeconomic spectrum and at every level have some sensibility of their own needs, even if the full relevant expertise is outside their understanding

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(Damelang et al. 2017; Redbird 2017). New combinations are touching every part of scientific and sociocultural life. Thus, just as there are different kinds of professionals, there are different groupings, recipients, targets populations, organisations utilising educated applied knowledge. It is easier to think of containers for expertise, namely professions, but much less easy to seriously attend to the consumer/consumption/distribution entities as being receiver–containers of expertise. Assumptions of anonymised consumers, atoms in a sea of individuals, relatively passive recipients of specialised practical knowledge, however, miss the overall sociohistorical narrative of professions in western society. Unfortunately, there is a small truth in such an understanding for stakeholder interest and occupational need, but it obscures who, how and what, and in what ways, expertise is used. When expertise is analysed as this section has done, the inevitability that expertise is professional expertise in its present form is broken in principle, if not immediately in practice. Modern society that applies advances in science, technology and other forms of social functioning commonly operates on specialised knowledge that only some members have learned and practised. The specialness claimed in the early days of modern professions has been diffused, or is being increasingly diffused, in the ways described in the first part of this chapter. This partly accounts for the commoditisation of information and expertise that seemed so problematic and injurious to many post-professional scholars in Chapter 6. But part of the explanation can be seen empirically in the growth in tertiary graduate numbers in ever-larger and evermore complex institutional sectors. Commodification of expertise in this sense is a result of the very success of the professional idea.

Conclusion The message of this chapter is not obvious to everyday professionals. The chapter explored unbundling of professional expertise in recent decades. New corporatisation and globalisation processes have come into existence and increasing use of digital technologies such as the Internet and AI breach what were previously, for the most part, professionally contained

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forms of expertise. The role of large corporations as employers of professionals and in directing professional expertise to organisationally defined ends is part of this change. Professions would do well to heed Susskind and Susskind’s nuanced arguments about the consequences of increasingly capable digital technologies exceeding human skills and expertise in most areas. This indicates dramatic changes ahead for professional work as conceived today. Not smooth change but bumpy and irregular change. Further, the interaction of these new forms of delivering expertise with the unmet need across the globe, along with the economic drivers of wage and cost differentials, mean this continuing extension of practical expertise in more diverse, convenient and cost-effective ways, calls for rethinking the roles and utility of professions and will compel change anyway. The unbundling of expertise can be seen in the proliferation of new organisational forms containing knowledge. The artifice that professions were the containers of expertise is increasingly strained. Johnson’s insight was that it is the institutional arrangements that controlled expertise, not expertise itself, that shape professions. This can be seen today in a shifting landscape of organisational forms holding knowledge and expertise. Increasingly extracting commercial importance, not simply individual occupational or cultural significance of that knowledge and expertise, is being differentiated in new ways. The unbundling of professional expertise taking place is creating new kinds of economic value—new value chains and new cost and quality differentials. These shifts are taking place within advanced economies and also re-arranging relations between professions in western and non-western countries. Existing forms of professional expertise are now in flux in ways not seen before. Using the production–consumption equation to describe the relationship of professional experts and users of expertise provides two benefits in theorising professions. It ties the unbundling/bundling logic to the economic value of professions and the production of experts, avoiding the charge of an endlessly plastic concept. Further, this economic grounding also allows the same equation to anchor analysis of the sociocultural symbolic capital out of which the economic relationship is ultimately generated in how and who provides and consumes expertise. The value of extending Johnson’s model is several-fold. It recognises and positions the economic importance of professional expertise. This overcomes the failure of trait models to say anything useful about

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this basic reality of professions. Significantly, however, it does not ignore the interactive claims of goodness and expertise but enfolds them into the discursive ensemble along with socioeconomic description. The focus on economic implications and consequences of professions on expertise thus builds on the previous chapter’s cultural and normative argument. What is learnt in developing a contemporary typology is the value to be gained from better understanding the integration of sociocultural and historical aspirational and normative elements with these economic considerations.

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Pemer, F., Sieweke, J., & Werr, A. (2018). The relationship between national culture and the use of professional services: Evidence from two cross-country studies. Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management, 24 (4), 314–325. Possamai-Inesedy, A., & Nixon, A. (2017). A place to stand: Digital sociology and the Archimedean effect. Journal of Sociology, 53(4), 865–884. Redbird, B. (2017). The new closed shop? The economic and structural effects of occupational licensure. American Sociological Review, 82(3), 600–624. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0003122417706463. Roser, M., & Ortiz-Ospina, E. (n.d.). Tertiary education: Empirical view. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/tertiary-education. Royal Commission. (2017). Royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse [Australia]. Vols. 1–17. https://www.childabuseroyalcommission. gov.au/our-inquiry. Sandberg, D. (2017). Medical tourism: An emerging global healthcare industry. International Journal of Healthcare Management, 10 (4), 281–288. https://doi. org/10.1080/20479700.2017.1296213. Savage, M. (2017). Sociology and the digital: A response to Alphia PossamaiInesedy and Alan Nixon. Journal of Sociology, 53(4), 885–886. Savage, M., & Burrows, R. (2007). Reflections on the coming crisis of empirical sociology. Sociology, 41(5), 885–899. Savage, M., & Burrows, R. (2009). Some further reflections on the coming crisis of empirical sociology. Sociology, 43(4), 762–772. Schofer, E., & Meyer, J. (2005). The worldwide expansion of higher education in the twentieth century. American Sociological Review, 70 (6), 898–920. Seddon, J. (2005). Freedom from command and control (2nd ed.). New York: Productivity Press. Susskind, R. (2016, April 14). The future of the professions. Artificial Intelligence and the Law Conference at Vanderbilt University. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=xs0iQSyBoDE. Susskind, R., & Susskind, D. (2015a). The future of professions: How technology will transform the work of human experts. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Susskind, R., & Susskind, D. (2015b, October). The future of professions. YouTube Google Talk. London. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= ulXwTpW2oFI. Vincent, J. (2017, January 26). Artificial intelligence can spot skin cancer as well as a trained doctor. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/26/ 14396500/ai-skin-cancer-detection-stanford-university. Wajcman, J. (2017). Automation: Is it really different this time? The British Journal of Sociology, 68(1), 119–127. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12239.

9 Professions Unbound

Seeking Synthesis This final chapter draws together ideas and arguments presented in various forms throughout the book. A succession of methods has investigated standard views, identifying strengths and limitations of existing conceptions used to explain professions. In each chapter, the discussion has proposed new ways of describing how professions operate, both in practical terms and in terms of their position in society more generally. Sometimes this has involved adding new empirical information; at other times, it has meant re-reading existing information in new ways. Theorising professions thus emerges at the intersection of factual evidence that may only become apparent in empirical changes. The task of theorising involves both deconstructive and constructive steps, and challenges made in these pages offer new insights that professionals and policymakers can utilise. This chapter recapitulates three implications from the present study that anchor it to the pragmatics of present-day professional actions and position. These are described under three headings. First, in theorising professions the contemporary relevance of Johnson’s typological framing of how profession-client relations are structured is used to identify new possibilities. Second, the persistence of functionalist thinking cannot be © The Author(s) 2019 E. A. Burns, Theorising Professions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27935-6_9

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overestimated. It should not be ignored. The general importance of ethical goodness and good conduct is reaffirmed without relinquishing points of critique made in Chapter 7. As an ideal, rather than an occupational ideology, professionalism offers numerous valuable contemporary contributions inside and outside formal professional settings. Third, the politics of expertise, the second half of the goodness-expertise zusammenbauen, looked at in Chapter 8, continues to be contested in new ways through several key drivers placing unbundling pressure on professional expertise. Seeking to synthesise these findings draws particularly on the last two chapters which probed the unbundling of the unique conjunction of goodness and expertise claims that made professions the force they are today in western advanced economies. Chapter 7 examined the two-sided normativity of professional goodness and its shadow; and Chapter 8 considered professions as containers of expertise and how this is changing. Pressures for change come from greater routinisation of professional expertise, new digital technologies, the power of large organisations, the shifting expectations of governments and from clients-consumers. The bundling and unbundling processes of professionalisation discourses can now be integrated into the ongoing need to theorise professions. Each chapter in this book has been argued within the continuing discursive contest between recrudescent functionalist perspectives and post-professional efforts to rethink professions and professionalism in the circumstances of a new century. This synthesis picks up the hint in the last chapter about using Johnson’s typology in creating a contemporary model of professions and professional work. This further emerged from exploring the singular feature of the tertiary education university system’s production-driven commitment to turning out more professionals. There is a functionalist disconnect operating here: it is all very well to speak of universities being necessarily autonomous from government control—this argument is an example of professional logic at play! But the classic production-driven instincts of primary producers are apparent in insufficient needs-research or nationallevel evaluation. Special pleading about how society as a whole would benefit is commonly simply reduced to more-is-better. An appropriately even-handed and consistent theory of professions must engage both supply

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and consumption of expert knowledge, without over-determining forecasts, as well as identify that there are multiple stakeholders beyond any simple definition of producer and consumer. This ongoing complexity is described in the present chapter. Openended framing of new economic and symbolic formats and arrangements of exchange between professionals and clients is necessary to adequately theorise professions. This in turn necessarily reconnects expert delivery to discursive forces of professionalisation. Do these helpfully elaborate social purpose and societal function, or do they obfuscate in the interests of some stakeholders and not others? Such issues raise the significance of successful exceptionalist claims to special expertise that is morally imbued with goodness. Such bundling viewed in hindsight is nothing short of brilliant; but unbundling processes for such built-together discourses takes theorising professions back to questions about how they are embedded in society. Implicit in the discussion are urgent contemporary questions about the externalising moral self-focus of many commercial corporations employing professionals in the financial sector and digital and social media corporates. Furthermore, the likely spillover into regular professional work from near-exponential improvement of digital technologies is reasserted as an urgent issue for professions in view of radically new ways information, expertise, locality, communication and dexterity are being combined. There are also implications for methodological nationalist choices about licencing and accepting training as part of greater present-day redistribution of globalisation emerging for professions.

Theorising Professions Theorising Professions has provided sociological language to better understand professions and professionalism. This has been done at every stage conscious of the rich sociological research evidence around each area of discussion. Each chapter applied a particular approach to challenge continuing functionalist explanations for professions’ success and dominance for over two hundred years in western society. At the same time, the core

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argument was cumulatively built that the discursive conjunction of professional goodness and expertise—not either separately—is the constitutive feature holding the professional projects of western modern professions, singly and collectively, together. Identifying this conjunction reframes professions’ claims to goodness and expertise as being a powerful claim. It is an instrumental claim that is undoubtedly very effective sociopolitical rhetoric, but it not an explanation of what professions are, nor does it account for what they do. Traditional theorising of professions paid insufficient attention to the marketplace in producing and consuming professional services and professional expertise more generally. Functional accounts do not deliver on the promise of providing this wider societal connection, mostly restricting explanation to one or two stakeholders’ interests. Elite professions as the dominant voices discussing their own occupational forms have described professional functioning in ways always consistent with their interests or understanding. The hegemonic mentalitie almost always defends by asking ‘But how else…?’. The idea of social contract, for example, could potentially energise theory, but its profession-centrism commonly neglects assessment of the effects of professions’ work as judged by others than themselves. A contract to produce what, for whom, necessarily brings the contemporary producer–consumer model back to centre stage. The idea of social contract has, however, tended to be used to bracket out the fuller social and commercial implications of specialised knowledge as well as the relationship to the state, on which any ‘deal’ or arrangement involving licensure or mandate necessarily rests. Such approaches, therefore, have been treated with caution and not mainstreamed in this analysis. In general terms, the failure to adequately account for the contesting processes used to achieve high-level occupational positions and lifestyle success leaves the story of professionalisation more unexplained than explained. The available narratives are thus more about legitimation and justification of professions than theorising professions, and as a result cannot be realistically expected to engage present-day change or anticipate the future. As such, the traditional narrative actually works against professions’ longer-term interests. Policymakers feel the tension between the costs of professional services and the expectations of professions, over against the need for effective delivery that included quality benchmarks.

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Consumer demand for professional expertise is pushed to seek alternatives in one aspect of service delivery or another—cost, differentiated quality, or others—fed by organisational and technological changes. A more realistic explanation of professions has involved disentangling how the bundled narratives of goodness and expertise have been used to successfully compete and excel in the white-collar modern division of labour. Each earlier chapter examined, and found wanting, standard arguments for how professions came to be, and justifications for the maintenance projects that professions now pursue. Identifying the bundling of key drivers of occupational claims inside and outside professions raised more broadly the logical possibility of such powerful conjunctions also being unbundled. Extending this bundling /unbundling idea in theorising professions provides a modus operandi for then empirically investigating changes to professions today and into the future. It is the theoretic conceptualisation of bundling and unbundling of goodness and then expertise and working from Johnson’s socioeconomic production–consumption framing of professional expertise and service which provides new understanding. Identifying that relationship recast as the production and consumption of expertise generally and in new forms, rather than simply professional expertise, makes clear that professions have a place but are by no means the only agents supplying or controlling the production, utilisation or growth of expertise. The claims for a special place in overseeing applied knowledge bring the symbolic and normative dimensions of professional work into focus as similarly assessable in terms of the simplicity of production–consumption logic. Extending Johnson’s typology from his original types into a greater number of types in the present investigation reflects contemporary changes for professions and different trajectories of change facing professions. A lot of effort is required in repositioning professions, either on their own cognisance or from external policy-resets and other pressures. Such change, however, will in the future be expressed in these or other new ways as expertise is generated, organised, controlled, delivered and utilised. What can be called ‘the constitutive efficacy of symbolic structures’ (Cassirer’s argument in Wacquant 2018, p. 99) supports the explanation of the mutually reinforcing effects of the bundling of socioeconomic and sociocultural processes in professions. These processes are seen in

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Johnson’s explanation and critique: that the socioeconomics of the basic supply–demand relation is grounded in culture and behaviour. Johnson’s typology encompasses both economic and symbolic resources in supply and demand terms. Bundled goodness and expertise narratives do not explain professions—this is the argument threaded throughout this book. Analysing the interactive power of economic and symbolic structures, however, offers the means of explaining the historical conjunction as a sequence of occupational contests around professions. In this way, professions have deployed strategies drawing on the sociocultural power—‘the constitutive efficacy’—of the symbolism of goodness and expertise, virtue and knowledge. In Larson (1977), too, the mutually reinforcing dialectic of status claims and economic reward claims integrates the normative and apparently objective claims of expertise as inherent properties of professions. This is deferral in Derrida’s (1977, 1990) terms between the goodness and expertise bundling components. As has been shown in previous chapters this is contingent, not inherent, and it is indeed possible to unbundle to greater or lesser degree the built-together naturalisation of professional goodness and expertise. Several false opposites to this statement need to be rejected. First, identifying an incorrect explanation is not an assertion that professions are bad. Second, claims Larson was being ideological are themselves ideological and defensive—there has never been an adequately argued defence against the explanation she provided. Third, professions, perfectly understandably, fixate on their knowledge as the defining element but expertise is not bound as professionals believe. The last chapter sketched a number of the ways that the container argument of professions’ expertise is much more porous than commonly believed. The supply–consumption of expertise is in this way descriptive of the bundling and unbundling of professionalisation discourses. Even positivist scholars who speak of economics and sociality and culture as clear-cut and contrasting elements are at least recognising both parts, even if in limited ways. Both economic and symbolic elements can be analysed for what is valued, contributed or contested between parties, thus enabling more sophisticated treatment of professional knowledge production and utilisation. A sociological approach goes further than concrete definitions of knowledge, worth, contained control and delivery. All these important

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elements of professional work raised in previous chapters are less able to be claimed in a proprietorial manner when fuller theoretical frameworks such as developed in this book are foregrounded. The simplicity of the supply–demand model applied socioculturally illuminates the complexities of normative claims and cultural ideas of desirability and worth. A multitude of folk phrases invoke the culturally constructed, but not invariant, relations between supply–demand in the delivery and consumption of professional applied knowledge. For example, ‘it’s the law’; ‘do what teacher says’, ‘listen to nurse’, ‘non–compliant patient’, among others, all assign weighting to definitionally shape this basic relationship that is primarily social and cultural, even though this book has also traced these things having economic effects and consequences. The fiduciary elements—trustworthiness on behalf of the subaltern vulnerable party—in this supply–demand relationship vary in how they are legislated but they are fundamentally important cultural constructs and relations, as similarly seen in relations between spouses and parents and children. Symbolic constitutive structures of care, upbringing, integrity, sacrifice for the well-being of the other, using greater knowledge for the interests of the other, all have economic correlates but are fundamentally sociocultural. For Johnson like Cassirer these bundled symbolic structures shaped the relationship between professions and consumers as much as material and economic forces. Further, the breadth of Larson’s (1977) analysis of professions’ twin projects for status and economic rewards can now be understood as also being congruent with the material and economic realities of professional expertise and the rewards of expertise. At the same time, Larson’s recognition of the sociocultural desire by professions for status and esteem extended the congruence of applying the same broad logic of supply and demand for professionals’ expertise to the less tangible but no less real supply and demand for professional status and cultural approbation in the modern division of labour. Although Bourdieu’s concept of social capital has been mightily truncated in many disciplines (Fine 2010), his deployment of this and similar terms once again shows the need to strengthen language that integrates economics into sociocultural valuation and meaning. As Daly and Silver (2008, p. 538) express it, this is

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driven by the need for ‘re-envisioning the interrelations between economy and society under conditions of social change’. This perspective has implications worth following. A central issue is to ask, is professionalism one discourse or two? I have been arguing that it is two, but that they are not merely alongside each other, not simply interleaved, but built together to achieve a particular institutionalised purpose. And of course, not only two, even though two have been the particular focus here. It can be suggested following Foucault (1981) that a discourse exercises control over its own production. Yet it remains an empirical question how much the historical moments—there were successive confirmations and departures—of modernising, rationalising developments over the last two centuries, were constructed by the agency of professions and how much by other discourses, agents and structures. As one illustration of such empirical ‘constitutive efficacy of symbolic structures’ let me draw on previous work on the profession-client relationship as a production–consumption relationship of professional expertise (Burns 2007). I found elaborating this core relation allowed—called for— the introduction of specific data showing how neither the profession nor the other grouping or entity could completely constrain the relationship fully to their advantage in the supply and demand for professional skills. In that research project about rural veterinary work, the fairly evenly matched farmer–veterinarian relation could be examined by elaborating what these symbolic structures were and how they worked. The research showed farmers had political, organisational and discursive resources they could bring to bear negotiating their position. Veterinarians also had at least three discursive resources they brought to bear: expertise, market demand and professional ideology. Each of these discourses and structures symbolically and economically engaged and contested the other’s definition of how the relationship should proceed. It may well be that the heteronomous balance between veterinarians and a well-organised farming occupation in this research is what enabled the architecture of the relationship to be seen. More evenly contested control denaturalises the assumed asymmetry of the professional being the font of trusted knowledge and decision-making (Esland 1980). This offers insight into situations today in which such asymmetry is reversed under corporate

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control. As discussed earlier this has been a subject of much debate, confusion and argument. It is the dual expression of the socioeconomic relationship within the definitional capacities of the parties that allows fuller understanding. This applies to all the profession-client institutionalised patterns Johnson identified. In extending Johnson in the present chapter, the same theoretical framing is necessary for understanding new types of profession-client relationships. Put the other way around: by adopting this integrated structural and cultural logic, new types of profession-client relationships, and new types of expertise-client relationships outside professions, can be identified. In each profession at successive points in time such cross-pressures have resulted in different professional forms emerging in contrast to standard professional eschatology. The broad phenomenon of recognisable western professions demonstrates some common societal influences and sequences of change over time. Nevertheless, many variations have been reported in the preceding pages where other empirical circumstances and types of relationship have been formed or denied, generating different forms of expertise or skills delivery according to the facts in each situation. This adaptability has been impressive and is a necessary ingredient in addressing changes for professions this century. When more adequate theorising and conceptual tools are used to address interesting and even puzzling, empirical aspects of professions as they change today, new insights are available for interrogation, and new horizons of opportunity become apparent.

Typological Thinking About Professions Today Johnson’s framing of the control of supply and consumption of professional services is more broadly stated in the present argument as the control and supply of expertise. This brings a basic coherent logic to the multiplicity of interests, professions, political and occupational discourses as well as kinds of technological and global change today. This is what Johnson’s extended typology in Table 3.1 achieved. After some decades of neoliberal governance in both developed and developing countries,

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Table 9.1

New typology of professional work

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Profession–corporate patronage Profession–government funder Mediation of professions Corporate digital mediation Collegial professionalism Consumer driven Citizen–commons network Professional heteronomy

the advent of ever-larger organisations, more sophisticated digital technologies, and further globalisation impacting the position of developed economies, Johnson’s logic can be extended to include other types of professional production and consumption of expertise evident today. This is what Table 9.1 achieves. Not only are professionals of different kinds, but so too are the groups to whom they supply or apply their expertise. Freidson (1970) was right that occupational control was of central interest to professions, and indeed to governments and policymakers. His key term autonomy expressed this, though Freidson was careful in how he presented the central idea of professionals exerting control, since this contestation created professions’ antagonism and opposition to other major organisational forms of modern life, discussed earlier. Susskind and Susskind (2015) express several fundamental points about technology that are highly relevant in identifying contemporary changes in professional work. One of these is their stress on distinguishing professional knowledge and expertise that exists outside professional control. Like Johnson, these authors focus on needs and the consumption of professional expertise. That is, not simply the production of expertise but control of the reception of expertise. Again, of course, who gets to define wants and needs means returning to Johnson’s simple clarity engaging the bundled discourses of production and consumption of professional service. Emulating a socioeconomic frame consistent with Johnson’s (1972) typology combines analysis jointly to economic and symbolic-cultural forces shaping professions and expertise at the centre of the discussion. The last half-century western explosion in the number of tertiary institutions such as technical institutions and universities produced innumerable

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professionals and white-collar workers. There is an irony in the 1980s US business practices now being vigorously applied to western universities at the very time they are edging closer to changes in this sector, when at the same time the sheer number and increasing quality of other tertiary professions-training systems is rapidly expanding in global significance. Dingwall and Fenn (1987) suggested greater emphasis on the supply side of Johnson’s (1972) model would add greater sophistication to his explanation. Indeed it would, as their work elaborates, and as changing legislative and regulatory practices confirm this to be necessary: policy issues like how many teachers, doctors or any publicly delivered professional service are needed, over what time period, and hence what training infrastructure is needed? Their question, from where is expertise supplied, resonates with the Susskinds’ affirmation that multiple sources outside of professions today supply expertise and practical skills. But there are other non-economic questions of supply that Dingwall and Fenn pointed to as well. Work by Seddon (2005, 2008, 2014) and Corrigan (2011, 2012) demonstrates ‘failure demand’ having enormous professogenic impact in over-formalised and managerialised organisations and sectors, adding to complexity and wasting the expertise held in the organisation. However, as is pointed out below, renewed attention to the demand side of professional service delivery is only part of contemporary application to profession expertise delivery. Evetts (1999, p. 123) in her important discussion about ‘reclaiming the concept of professionalism’ comments that ‘Johnson (1972, p. 32), has dismissed professionalism as a successful ideology which has entered the vocabulary of a wide range of occupational groups in their claims and competition for status and competition’. Chapter 4 suggested such discourse had not so much ‘entered the vocabulary’ but been fundamental in modern professions all along. From a present-day viewpoint, it is necessary to problematise public good forcefully as was undertaken in Chapter 7. Indeed, governments, policymakers and consumers have been de facto problematising the goodness and benefits attributed to professionals for some time. Many commissions and inquiries into public scandals and inefficiencies involving professional failures in law, accounting, auditing, clergy, welfare, education and more, suggest Johnson did not so much

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dismiss professionalism, but rather that in naming it as a professional ideology, an ‘–ism’, his challenge was to it being passed off as a theoretical explanation. It is a significant measure of the unbundling of professional control over contained expertise that new organisational forms continue to emerge. Table 9.1 identifies eight such ways professions and clients or users of professional expertise relate to one another using this ‘efficacy of symbolic structures’. Four of these types are found in the earlier Chapter 3 discussion related to Johnson’s work; four new institutional formations are incorporated into the present list. Brief comments below here indicate how the new or amended types might suggest even further potential forms that better describe the contemporary landscape because of societal and organisational changes. These types positively indicate new and emergent forms of the overarching relationship between the production and consumption of practical expertise. This is an invitation to scholars to keep working at offering alternative ways of understanding professions beyond the brief sketches here. Susskind and Susskind (2015, p. 216), for example, advance candidate categories they see professions morphing into in future days. Whether the emphasis is on technological drivers of professional change, or other pressures for change, the question comes back to who initiates and controls the expertise. It is only possible to analogise from the past, rather than specifying in detail in advance, how control is exercised in any of these types beyond trial and error empirical investigation. Type 1 distinguishes Johnson’s patronage without challenging his demand-side emphasis, into two types in this table—corporate patronage, and a second Type 2 here called government funder. Today’s numerous and very large corporations employ millions of professionals. Type 2 distinguishes patronage by corporate giants in today’s economic landscape, a significant development since Johnson wrote, from patronage by governments (Type 1), rather than client patronage generically. Ambiguous categories of patronage by governmental organisations might also be distinguished, such as quasi-governmental and state-owned enterprises carrying on as commercial organisations, with specific characteristics impacting the profession-client relationship.

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Type 3 is Johnson’s original intermediate type of professional control, in which a third party like government exercises defining power to shape the costs, nature of services, recipients and kinds of expertise to be used. Again, typological boundaries between Type 2 and 3 are worth considering. Similarly, boundary issues between Type 2 corporations and the specific Internet giants are raised in asserting the next type. Type 4 is a new variant of Johnson’s previous generic mediation type. It tries to encapsulate the digital information mediating function we now see in entities like Google, Facebook and Apple, Microsoft and Amazon intermediating themselves in creating new forms of knowledge, often about traditional professions’ content areas. If professions had an arbitrating or gatekeeping function historically, these corporations exert such functions in multiple ways for commercial gain and are able to resist challenges to predatory behaviour. Type 5 remains unchanged from Johnson’s original typology. Collegial professionalism, in its twentieth-century Anglo-American idealisation of autonomous occupation, is the most voluble cohort in claiming that other modes of professional work are diminished or commoditised. Subvariations of group practices or specialised practices can be identified. Type 6 points to the flip side of Type 5 where the ‘say’ in defining the production–consumption relationship can at times be held by some collectivity of consumers. It is important to recognise this can be an artefact of corporate manipulation, but there are contemporary examples at political, social and other levels of expert knowledge where assemblages of consumers or client groups exert significant influence. New forms and attempts are likely. Type 7 is the last new public commons possibility proposed here, drawn from Susskind and Susskind’s (2015, pp. 210–211) complementary work, extending via digital formation a particular incarnation of Type 6. This type is also illustrated in Callon and Rabeharisoa (2003) and Parvin (2013) and citizen science websites like Zooniverse.org among many others. Such new formats are desirable possibilities that contribute to repositioning professional knowledge. Type 8 is an intermediate form previously discussed after Table 3.1, seen in Esland (1980) and Burns (2007) but not mediated by a third party, and describing a more even contestation between a profession and another

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group each, perhaps an occupation, seeking to control the conditions of work and define the nature of the relationship between the two parties. There are many possibilities for extending this present-day typology as a theoretical tool about professions and professional change in any context. Its use offers ways of organising information about individual professions that would otherwise go unremarked or not fit prevailing categories. The typology builds focus on what resources from the societal context are brought to understand actions at professional level and by what mechanisms these interact. The expanded typology shows new institutional forms being created as professional expertise is further unbundled today.

Functionalism’s Persistence I have argued that while the contestation of functionalist and other perspectives in the post-professional era is ongoing, functionalism does little to help professions adapt to the changes indicated. Functionalism’s multiple limitations were peeled back as the earlier chapters successively applied definitional, typological, discursive, historical periodisation and conceptual methods. The shame of theorising has been the degree of participation in these functionalist beliefs by academic sociologists before Freidson and Johnson. What I have called the post-professional period since the work of Freidson, Johnson and Larson opened a much richer variety of approaches (Table 1.1) across this very active research field. The persistence of functionalist beliefs and assertions by elite professionals, in the face of continuing changes and expectations, suggests that for many their hegemonic security depends on resisting the evidence of such change. The admiration and conscious emulation of elite professions by other occupational groups using a professionalisation template also supports this functionalist stance. By mid-twentieth century, professionalisation seemed to Wilensky (1964) so inevitable, pervasive, attractive and successful, that he contemplated the possible ‘professionalisation of everyone’. This continual functionalist-post-professional see-sawing shows in more recent responses to Parsons’ (1951) sick role model as archetypal functionalist logic. Its repeated use resists critique that it individualises institutional health delivery, and fails to address mental health, chronic

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conditions or professogenic impacts. On the positive side of this narrative, May (2007, p. 29) clearly rebuts Parson, arguing health, ‘now needs to be reframed in relation to the organising impulses of contemporary corporate professional practice’. In contrast, still on the functionalist side, pushing against such better framing, Cruess et al. (2004, p. 74) propose a ‘clear definition’ of profession as ‘the basis of the contract between medicine and society’. This ends up showing definitional circularity in medical educators—I count at least eight functionalist assertions in their definition. It is almost as though they have been operating in a parallel universe during the post-professional decades. Neither sincerity nor provisionality, however, transmute functionalist assumptions into explanation. Further, this problem of intellectual closure is not restricted to medicine—the functionalist certainty of law’s centrality in Sweet’s (2012) theorising shows undiminished lawyer confidence that the professions’ claimed social contract is intact. Even today functionalism, though discredited in social theorising, remains the default mode of thinking about professions and professionalism for the majority of professionals, if they think about their professions in a broader way at all. It reaffirms for themselves, and reasserts to others, the previously hegemonic conception of conjoined professional goodness and expertise. However, the principle attributed to Einstein, that ‘Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler’ (Zucker 2016) indicates this will not suffice as an explanation. The argument in this book began by resisting conceptual closure such as Cruess et al.’s (2004) attempted ‘clear definition’ recreates. Although the idea of bundling is easy to understand, the apparently clear, unitary nature of the professional goodness and expertise hybrid is less easy to unpick because of the ideological force with which it is built together. Bundling is no less real, however, because it is opinion, assertion, aspiration, or resistant to incursion, but such zusammenbauen is qualitatively different from uncomplicated assertion of historical or moral truth. Claiming that professions are naturally good and expert is certainly not adequate sociological explanation of the presence, position and activity of professions today.

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The book has argued that the contentions of functionalism presuming a list of supposed traits of professions, mostly internally referenced, emphasising benefit and goodness, is an insufficient explanation of the privileges that expert professions enjoy today and wish to maintain. Professions have indeed been part of the success of western modernity, but much more provisionally than mainstream goodness and expertise narratives portray. Challenge to one part of this zusammenbauen has been responded to in terms of its connection to the other. Theorising professions has identified the powerful bundling of professional goodness and expertise as central in explaining empirical evidence within the larger circumstances of western professional developments. This provides a more adequate way to talk about and understand these core issues within professions today. Some final corollary points about goodness and then expertise round out the discussion. Critique of Susskind and Susskind (2015) as technologically determinist seems at odds with the variety of caveats with which these authors surround their case. First, certainly they raise the spectre of future changes which are resisted today and not attended to as they are emerging. Think back to whether the professional Royal Societies believed they would be significantly repositioned by the advent of professional associations (Millerson 1964a, b), or the shift to primary qualification for accreditation by universities? Second, the Susskinds nevertheless write invitationally to professions and professionals, asking what actions professions might take to position themselves in useful ways, given the likelihood of change. Third, these authors are at pains to avoid futuristic commitments that are also foreign to sociology, such as some of the scholarship discussed in Chapter 6 had drifted into. Fourth, Susskind and Susskind lay out for discussion several clustered alternatives, explicitly calling for engagement but avoiding dogmatic assertions themselves. For instance, they run through a variety of changes occurring across professions. Not quite a smorgasbord, but certainly not over-determining how change will happen. Fifth, similarly, they review a list of objections by professionals asserting that such change will not happen, in turn examining each one as understandable but all of them unconvincing. This again is the opposite of over-determining technological drivers of change, instead flagging probable and potential changes and assessing the debates around

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such possible changes to professions. Sixth and finally in this reprise, Susskind and Susskind proffer a variety of mechanisms by which such change may occur and the current pressures for such change, many of which are not technological at all. For instance, the notion of decomposing professional work, like any time-management process that ever existed, shows not all parts of professional work are equal: not equally important, not equally precise, not equally repetitive, not equally quickly done nor equally requiring expertise. Their analysis asks businesses, analysts or sociological scholars to add other concepts like disintermediation, re-intermediation, decoupling and many others that are useful to better understand work and organisational processes.

Ambiguity of Goodness This book has argued that the goodness and expertise claim has been constitutive for professions and professionalism in driving modern western professions to develop to where they are today and how they sustain this successful position. The normative ‘goodness’ aspect of professions was the focus in Chapter 7 and by analytically decomposing this part of the overall goodness and expert pairing, the explanatory force of the pairing became more evident. The chapter identified positive and negative normative elements in professions, the latter mostly being denied or simply lacking the nuanced language to recognise, describe and manage explanations of professions. This dilemma was addressed in two parts: problematising the idea of public good as more ambiguous than the phrase itself suggests; and then introducing the concept of professogenesis to refer to profession-caused harm or adverse effects. Lexogenesis, that is, lawyer harm, was a parallel idea. There are several implications of unbundling this built-togetherness of professions, working from the proposition that this bundling of moral value and formal expertise claims has been constitutive for professions, particularly corporate-oriented professions. For professional normativity, perhaps the greatest challenge to identity and professional claims is the ambiguity of goodness. Unbundling is far more than a simple matter of

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naming good/bad dichotomies. Occupational denial, ignoring, or minimising of adverse impacts, letting bad or poor performing colleagues continue, is no longer acceptable in theoretical or policymaking terms. Worse, in a practical sense, even with genuine willingness by top professionals to engage with quality and professogenic impacts of their fields, there is a paucity of language to engage with these issues of ordinariness to enable sharing concerns with other stakeholders, governments, auditing agencies, tertiary educators and end-users. Dingwall (2008, p. xv) contends that ‘It is arguable that the expertise of professions remains a significant independent source of monopoly, and the uncertainty over outcomes an important basis for ethical practice. These need to be sustained as a check on the potential tyrannies of markets and capital’. The important counterpoint is that good, ethical human values continue to be basic in all spheres of work and public life and of fundamental importance. The attitudes and values claimed by professionalism, even if they are not an explanation of professionalism, have never been as important as now, when there is significant erosion and bureaucratisation of these workplace and civil society values by corporate and sometimes governmental organisational imperatives. The broad cultural shift that has seen the goodness of professionals subsumed to the importance of their technical expertise in no way negates the imperative to reaffirm the importance of integrity and ethical conduct and actions that advance the public good in all occupations and workplaces. Nearing the end of this book I am conscious of the importance of training each new generation of professionals, across many fields, to be the best professionals they can. I say this because the unbundling of the public good side of professional is a major empirical shift, not just an evaluative argument in academic theorising about professionals. Something in the zeitgeist has loosened the tightly reinforced goodness and expert logic for governments, policymakers, consumers as well as high-skill professionals themselves. Real professional integrity is a human beacon in a world of juridified, formalised, corporatised correctness often used to gloss integrity and substantive normative goodness. The empirical fact of the matter is that in recent times all stakeholders in professions, including professionals, have devalorised the generic importance of the goodness part of professions’ value. While this sounds like a

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contradiction of the previous line of argument that goodness is one-half of the constitutive claims of professions, it is not, for the following reason. It is professional projects that have bundled together goodness and expertise. Professions have not actively unbundled goodness; quite the contrary it is still part of their justification of the special character of their work. However, new generations of professionals learn that goodness has a lower priority and emphasis except in ethics classes. They learn that it is their degree or professional association admission that is the sine qua non allowing them to practice. New generations of non-professionals learn much the same thing. Both professionals and non-professionals are socialised by modern culture to expect less focus on goodness and more on routinised expertise and competence. Users of professionals are seeking competence, as the bell-curve suggested in Chapter 7. What do they mean in wanting good people looking after them, advising, informing or representing their interests? Not much different from what they want from their plumbers, electricians and hairdressers. Goodness does not have the moral valence that earlier claims of professionalism have encoded. Professionalism is not about personal value commitments other than the general serving of the person or entity’s requirements. Granted this has become more customer-like in the relationship. The defence that the professional-client relationship is a fiduciary one is terribly important and can be exceptionally damaging when breached. However, things are not as simple as merely making such a statement. Is it not lexogenic to observe formal fiduciary rules while charging enormous fees because the market will bear this, and people cannot afford to pay for the service they need? Such rent-seeking under the cover of goodness is the temptation of any apex social actor, in this instance professions. It accumulates anger and frustration at the gatekeeping, like medieval protests at priestly ‘managing’ of indulgences. Examples of dentists’ and ophthalmologists’ egregious behaviour support such perceptions, but other professions have elements of unconscionable cartel or monopolistic conduct that cannot be classed as ‘good’, representing instead a sense of class entitlement. More than specific instances, however, it is important to recognise these as one element contributing to overall relegation of professional goodness as important in clients’ minds relative to expertise and competence. Many reasons can

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be adduced telling the same story of reprioritising professional goodness. Whether from individual costs, customer discourses, empowerment of lay/women/other groups, government concern at health, legal, welfare, financial scandals or other forms of professional activity—in each case the residual bundling of professional goodness is further secularised. Very different threads in this necessary public debate about professional goodness involve latent and unexpected consequences, Insightful scholars grapple with the unbundling of public good in a new era. For example, Evetts’ (1999, p. 124) suggestion is to ‘reclaim the concept of professionalism’, listing a series of benefits: resistance to radical governments, being ‘under attack from managerialist as well as market cultures and ideologies’. In contrast, Stokes and Clegg (2002, p. 241), discussing new public managerialism, observe a complicated interaction, not simple replacement of professionalism with the ‘bare pursuit of efficiency [and] continuous improvement’, seeing instead ‘the evacuation of professional discourse. In its place is a new kind of peculiarly dysfunctional organisational nihilism’. Such scholarly engagement—reaffirming or revising understanding of how professions interact with broad societal shifts—is the needed contribution for contemporary researchers, professionals and policymakers. From whatever religious, secular, humanist or pragmatic starting point, building positive normative relationships to construct safe and relatively equitable and durable social bonds is fundamental to human society (Schmidt, 2019). Weber et al.’s (2002) account in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism shows sometimes surprising possible conjunctions of values and beliefs with work activity and work practices. Such an approach is preferable to over-formalised rules attempting to govern values and beliefs. Precarity today, even in professional work, places the meaning of work much more central again (Vallas and Christin 2018). That professions have a normative language of doing good needs to be co-opted to this broad human enterprise, reinvented not as a claim for privilege, not assigned to one gender, a dominant ethnic group, or for caring professions only, but for the preferred kind of society most people hold in the back of their minds. I acknowledge this creates ambiguity about what legitimates professions. Perhaps new professions differing along technical versus empathetic priorities will emerge in the coming digital decades.

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The ultimate ambiguity about professional goodness is not the merit or otherwise of angry or radical critique of bad professional conduct. Rather, it is the much softer and more general sociocultural change that previous chapters have explored. The key theme emerging from academic critique of professional goodness is simply the shifting requirements and expectations for professional goodness. These changes are much less immediately visible or measurable. This cultural unbundling may be missed in the admittedly necessary attention to professional and corporate professional misdemeanours and malfeasance. It is possible to wax eloquent in assessing bad professional behaviour yet miss this discursive redefining or rebundling of professional normativity. Films, social media, government commissions and other news forums constantly recount events moving between the larger cultural discourses and specific situations. The functional importance of professions creates ambiguity in these narratives between poor and excellent practice and how good practice is to be safeguarded and maintained. Professional goodness cannot be a simple ‘third–way’ between individual and corporate interests, though Freidson (2001) hoped it would be. Tousijn (2006, p. 471) explains that instead, ‘what is requested from professionals is accountability’ as a new responsibility. This paradoxically both presumes and ignores goodness and may bring new levels of clarity about expectations between the parties. Like more recent language of entrepreneurship and commerce, the absence of commitment to public good is often little more than upper-middle-class conceit. Privatised professionalism’s failure to address inequalities in fields relevant to their expertise, while claiming personal ethicality, is particularly unfortunate in professional cadres trading on their claimed public goodness and benefit of what they do. Algorithms, as Eubanks (2018) documents for policing, and O’Neill (2017) across all professional sectors applying expertise, are often used in inappropriate ways or ways that reinforce discrimination. This ambiguity of goodness is related to the political ambiguity of expertise. The dual implications of technology as good and also the converse, applies not simply to technology, though the point is well made in light of continuing Internet and social media debacles over several years. It also needs to be understood as applying to techniques and skills. This is Ellul’s (1964) argument that technique and technology are forms of the

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same thing and in a technological society like ours become drivers rather than mere tools of enabling. Dual implications, then, means possible outcomes of professional technique that are not automatically good but may have adverse consequences, must be named, problematised and inspected with relevant responses of adjustment or correction offered. The normative issues of goodness indeed connect to the control and management of expertise. Postscript to this section. I find myself responding to colleagues and professionals’ suggestion that since I constantly discuss how professions function I am contradicting myself in critiquing functionalism. I would argue, no. Functionalism unreflectively reads certain current professional functions as implying larger ideas about value, status and hence remuneration. To me there is little inherent connection between the function and what it is worth. Hippocrates did not earn a million a year but he is acknowledged as a profound contributor to medicine; corporate CEOs did not earn millions of dollars a year half a century ago—but it is unconvincing to say they did not function as appropriate manager-leaders. Status and reward come and they may go over time. It is this unconvincing leap to bridge present-day privilege or doing well on the basis of function that is unsatisfactory. The sociologist analysing in theoretical terms is very different from the market in real-world terms deciding what given functions are worth. The technical insight and truth of expertise is a different matter than what someone will pay for it. The strength of professions’ goodness-expertise claims is not analysis; it is the attempt to lean the market preference in their favour. There is nothing inherently wrong in that effort; it simply has little or no correlation with professional function. To unpick that naturalised assertion requires sociologists and other scholars to spend substantial time and effort. That this can seem obsessive shows the framing power of conventional professional claims.

Politics of Expertise The politics of expertise includes explicit forms of negotiation like lobbying and reporting on professions’ areas of focus and interest. But it includes much more. As Bourdieu (1987) observed in the case of law,

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the formalised legal system is only one restricted meaning of the larger juridical field. A more adequate definition of this field needs to specify the emergent nature of the formal part and the roots of legality in culture, practice, institutional and class priorities at a given time and place. This is not some arbitrary flexibility—law is a slow ship to turn around—but application of legal expertise always has political implications even when these are not overt. Contemporary demarcation in common law jurisdictions between criminal and civil breaches and sanctions of law is a pressing example. Summarising the unbundling of professional expertise raises two political questions: first, how to be clearer about what arrangements or social contract between professions and society exist, and second, what and how will things change if professional expertise changes as dramatically in the next few years as Chapter 8 indicated? The politics of expertise frames the importance of the institutional forms and arrangements by which expertise is generated, governed and delivered (Reed 1996, pp. 582–583). For professions that means, ‘conflict over the exclusionary jurisdictional domains arising out of the contested monopolisation of abstract knowledge and technique [which] is becoming more intense and unpredictable’. This intensity comes for the reasons previous chapters have explored about the cost of expertise, relative profession-client advantages, de-moralising goodness and other ways expert knowledge is applied. First, expert knowledge is sometimes conceived as the basis of a social contract between professions and society. In particular, expertise as beneficially curated knowledge that ordinary people do not possess is a cornerstone belief for most professions. This is true for professions with legislated exclusivity, and for many other occupations beyond this group. In a literal sense, this exclusivity to use expertise means admission to the bar, licence to practice, state registration boards, ethics codes, disciplinary subcommittees. Nothing here disturbs functionalist essentialising of what are in fact historically contingent developments. Susskind and Susskind (2015, p. 13) ask on behalf of the changes now occurring, ‘whether the terms of the grand bargain should be revised or whether indeed the agreement should be terminated altogether’. Indeed, professionals’ confidence in the value of their expertise has meant they have themselves repeatedly renegotiated the contract across

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the twentieth century in terms of higher remuneration and status. Hopeful assertion from this positive experience, however, that this one period of great occupational success is the only proper form of social contract for expertise, relies on the usual functionalist assumptions. But change happens. Why should professional occupational worlds not change when the seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century professional worlds did not stay the same? Similarly, twentieth-century professionals find that they too, in a new century, have no mortgage on permanence and staying the same, occupationally, politically or technologically. Second, the speed at which expert knowledge, inside and outside professional boundaries, appears to be changing has been asserted by authors cited in this book and in many other places. Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google corporation, speaks plainly about the rate of digital change and consequences for society at every level (Rusbridger 2013). His observations parallel the Susskinds and other academic scholars on incipient changes to society, nationally and globally. It’s going to happen very fast. It’s going to happen in countries which don’t have the same principles that we in America have from the British legal system – around law and privacy and those sorts of things. All sorts of crazy stuff is going to happen. Human societies can’t change that fast without both good and negative implications.

Professions are not exempt from the impacts of digital technologies. If even a fraction of what is said is likely to happen, and does come about in some form, professions are entangled in many ways. It is difficult indeed to appreciate the forms of contestation that will arise from the changes, sometimes with little negotiation or adjustment. The professional is always political, notwithstanding the desire and belief of many, especially Anglo-American professionals, to bracket out the statutory space created for them and within which they enjoy significant privileges. As one instance, Negrine et al. (2006) look at professionalisation in political communication, that is, the ways political parties, organisations and governments communicate today, reflecting forces in society generally. Similarly, Rose and Miller (2010, p. 271) argue that ‘Modern political rationalities and governmental technologies are shown to be intrinsically

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linked to developments in knowledge and the powers of expertise’. Nelson’s (2016) reminder is that these symbolic powers and constraints correlate and interact with the global political economy outlined in the last chapter, as Baldwin (2016) specifies: Technology will bring globalisation to the people–centric service sector, upending far more jobs in rich countries than the decline in manufacturing has in recent decades. (In the UK, the service sector accounts for almost 80% of the economy; less than 10% of US jobs are in manufacturing.) The disruption won’t come because people will move more freely across borders, but because technologies will provide ‘a substitute for being there’.

How then does scholarship about expertise steer between alarmist, utopian of futurist kinds of presentation of professions’ new world, and the irresponsibility of not thinking through to the inconvenient truths of unbundled digital knowledge, providing alerts for governments, individuals and professionals themselves? What Deloitte (2018) calls a ‘fourth industrial revolution’ matches Susskind and Susskind’s (2015) sense of technological imperative, this time from a corporate viewpoint. The normative freight of social change is not distributed evenly, and it is acknowledged that corporate accounts tend not to see impacts for current producers or consumers of expertise as problematic, except in a generic way. This revolution of digital and physical technologies gives rise to vast possibilities—but it can also upend the status quo and create nearly as much uncertainty as it does opportunity. A newcomer’s idea can disrupt an established industry, or a broad set of digital data augmented by artificial intelligence and sophisticated models can rival expertise gathered over many years of hands–on experience.

Renegotiating the terms of any supposed social contract for professional expertise is likely to be contentious under conditions of rapid change in ways expertise is generated and controlled and how digital technology now interacts with corporate demands and agendas. Much greater consideration is needed around false or malicious uses of digital technologies (Brundage et al. 2018), algorithm-driven logics adversely affecting people

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in all sectors, for example policing (Eubanks 2018), and problematising the societal efficacy of present-day digital imperatives (O’Neill 2017). Expertise is thus not a neutral ‘thing’ controlled by either some invisible hand or the ‘natural’ rulers of that area of knowledge. In many senses, professions are more important than ever, even as their role, opportunities and functions are changing in the late-modern division of labour. Muzio et al. (2013, p. 699) speak of ‘the critical role that professions play in contemporary societies. Professionals and professional service firms are key advisors, analysts, defenders, and developers of the major institutions, such as markets, organisational forms, and business practices that underpin our economies’. Professional expertise thus raises sociological questions beyond technical, profession-specific concerns, looking into the socioeconomic and sociocultural implications for professions, consumers of expertise, governments and policymakers. Professionals have never been so strategically important for their specialised areas of expertise, evidencing in many cases great innovative capacity and intent. At the same time, it is evident across every sector in western societies that there are enormous inefficiencies, sub-optimised behaviours, formalistic structures in place, steady percentage rates of white-collar rorts, and feeble governance-managerial competencies. These things are in turn fuelled by ‘spin’, policymaking by politicians who have failed in their core duties of arranging the affairs of nations in ways that are efficient, caring and effective for the people in the widest senses of those terms. Many of the writers discussed here were trying to apprehend the changes in professions and professionalism that have occurred since the 1970s. The intellectual rupture found in the ‘post–’ conception, a transitional ‘gone beyond’ meaning, in some cases perceived as a downward trajectory of status or autonomy over work. In using this idea, scholars in the last half-century or so experimented with a range of terms to capture the shift. Noordegraaf ’s (2015, p. 199) recent candidate is, ‘organising professionalism’, Svensson’s (2006) ‘new professionalism’, Faulconbridge and Muzio’s (2012) ‘organisational professionalism’. The sense of transition is continually evident in these and other scholars’ analyses (Evetts 2005). Svensson provides several examples: ‘from organisation to professionalism: changing conditions’ (1998a, b), ‘new conditions’ (2000a, b), ‘new organisational contexts’ (2001, 2003a), ‘the quest for professionalism’ (2003b).

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This conceptual ambiguity has been acknowledged throughout the book. It is the movement between talking about theorising on the one hand, and actual shifts and changes taking place in society, economy and professions independently of what scholars are doing. It is very difficult to encompass both among the unwritten tensions of stakeholder commitments to certain beliefs and practices within professions and outside them. Figure 9.1 presents key changes in agenda, governance and practice of professions in recent decades, only some of which have been caught in sociological accounts of professions. Veloso et al. (2015) do not explicitly cite Bourdieu, but in speaking of professional fields, they push the postprofessional understanding of professions towards more comprehensive apprehension of fields, capitals and habitus that can locate the ambiguity of recent professions theorising within a more adequate socioeconomic description (Wacquant 2004). Greater interdisciplinarity and borrowing of concepts would be a considerable gain. Other disciplines than sociology, and professions themselves, bring ideas and requirements to the task of adjusting professions of present-day value. Figure 9.1 offers one glimpse at how this post-professional shift registers in the daily activities of professions. In some ways, this improves understanding of professional outcomes today or is aimed at doing so. In other ways, it listens to the cry from hard-working professionals about compliance burdens, form-filling and onerous responsibilisation regimes for things over which they have limited or no control or time (O’Neill 2002). There are no neat solutions to the complexity of these fields. But it is no

Fig. 9.1 Post-professional transition rebundling of professional services

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help to ignore which stakeholders in the delivery of expertise are capturing the most value in the exchange. These post-professional value chain shifts are not necessarily understood as part of the production matrix of professional expertise, so it is self-evident that as they become part of future professional delivery means consumer and regulatory participation is repositioned. The figure above points away from simply identifying stakeholders as was done in linking the unbundling of goodness-expertise to a contemporary production-supply typology in Table 9.1. It provides the additional dimension of identifying layered processes that when unbundled and rebundled reframe how the discourses of professional, managerial and corporate projects are expressed. An alternative way of making this point is to affirm that sometimes health is not about health (and similarly for each professional project). The apparently mundane processes described in this diagram are as discursively powerful as explicit narratives of professionalism. Though they were not formally part of the language of the original professional projects, ongoing differentiation and specialisation in the modern division of labour necessarily brings them into the frame. From a social science viewpoint, it is not surprising that even the provision of expertise is socially constructed and has normative and political consequences. Several areas of broad further inquiry are noted here: Bourdieu’s (1989, 1991) theoretical and empirical examination of symbolic domination makes connections to multiple layers of professional impacts. Hochschild’s (1983) study of emotion work provides leads of high relevance for all aspects of professional work. A latter-day Witz (1992) would synthesis research of the many gendered dynamics persisting in whitecollar workplaces in contemporary professions that in western countries at least has arrived at the position in which more than half their personnel are women (Rocheleau 2017). In this and other major research areas, there are often latent consequences of actions as well as the manifest, intended results (Merton 1957, p. 51). Applying complexity theory to professional services, from Rittel and Webber’s (1973) ‘wicked problems’ formulation that included reference to professions (Mitleton-Kelly 2003; Camillus 2008; Johnson 2007; Seddon 2008) would draw on this growing literature on complexity in every sector.

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Having explored three ways contemporary professional expertise is being unbundled in Chapter 8, this invites reinterpretation of the takeover of professional autonomy by organisations. There are clear and less clear rights and wrongs in such a shift even if not viewed primarily as deprofessionalisation and extending sympathy for professions’ changed positions or roles as this is warranted. Nor are these changes viewed here as simply bundling of professionals and organisations that Chapter 3 showed was possible. Instead, the changes are better read as an unbundling of individual professions’ control over expertise and knowledge. For historic economic and cultural reasons, Larson’s terminology of twin professional projects yields the surprising feature that at one level the conversation is not about professional expertise at all, but occupational strategy. This means that the discursively bundled legitimising of professional knowledge ‘naturally’ seemed on the surface, over a very prolonged period, to be the obvious salient reality; as did the now-debunked ‘gendered brain’ (Rippon 2019). But contemporary unbundling shows this is not necessarily a permanent condition for professions, at least not in the mid-twentieth-century form that is still idealised, appearing as Type 5 in Table 9.1. The unbundling of expertise will significantly lie in the rapidly increasing capabilities of digital forms of expertise Susskind and Susskind describe. This does not mean professions will disappear, but what counts as a profession, who makes decisions about life, death, taxation and the anthropocene economy, will likely be quite different. Further, unbundling expertise also lies in the socioeconomics of twenty-first-century globalisation. Occupationally negotiated bargains made in very different historical cultural environments will continue to adjust the global balance from western dominance for different skill sets, not simply reproduce the western priorities. This is the least clearly delineated of future forces reconfiguring future professional work but seems likely in the end to have at least as much impact as the other sources of unbundling. New sociology of professions theorising emerges from present-day scholarship and the continuing breadth of empirical research, giving possible labels such as transnational professionalism (Ramirez 2010), a Durkheimian neo-functionalism, perhaps neo-institutional approaches, or others mentioned through this book. Could these contribute in all or part theorise governance in ways that problematise current presumed

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permanence, economic power and importance of corporations, professions or states? Contemporary theorising seeks to summarise main lines of inquiry, political and other concerns, or resistance to agendas; or seeks to assess assertions of corporate justification. Cross-national professional links and expertise will be important long into any global future we can imagine. The enduring ability of sociological traditions of interactionist, Marxist, Weberian and feminist perspectives to discomfort professional orthodoxies means these have ongoing use analysing regulatory, training and licensing issues. The argument of the book is that as currently put forth such perspectives fall short of comprehensively integrating professional functioning across global, managerial and technological levels.

Conclusion This book has considered better ways to sociologically frame how scholars and professionals explain professions and professional work. Thinking through claims made by and about professions has implications for professions’ structures and changes taking place today. Plenty of groups and individuals have strong views about what professions should do, are entitled to, are or are not worth and so on. The brilliance of professions in achieving and sustaining their success through the twentieth century was significantly based on their capacity to naturalise the legitimacy of their position and role in political and popular culture. Sociologists interested in professions and professionalism have continued through what I have called the post-professional period to review and reassemble insights and ideas about how professions work and how professional groups themselves are changing from inside and out. Professions and professionalism form a social phenomenon of great importance in society today. Western professions can now be understood in historical terms as harbingers of the information age emerging at the start of western modernisation era and now in the digital era flowering more fully. As such, various observations may be made about them: they constitute a hybrid category of social institution. On the one hand, they bridged from certain social formations from premodern society: class, religion, guilds. On the other hand, professions also bridged to newly

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emerging institutions of modernity such as science, education, technology, bureaucracy. Since professional formation in its present sense was generated in that early-modern period, these blended characteristics are carried forward to today when, in moving definitively into the digital information age, the reality that professions embody a social epistemology half-modern and half-traditional is now more clearly seen and yet still to be tested in shifting to the new era and new organisational forms. Stakeholder groups outside professions have also participated in this unbundling of goodness and expertise, to varying extents in different settings. These, like professionals themselves have mostly shifted in the same direction: first, consumers believe they are accessing technical expertise because of qualifications, second, tertiary training largely assumes the same thing. Both groups take it as given that technical competence is the thing being supplied or for which they are paying. Third, government inquiries into different professional groups, some continuous audit committees, formal commissions at times of crises of confidence and performance, as well as new regulations and legislation, indicate governments no longer simply believe professions’ opinions as privatised corporatised professions, despite lobbying. Vast amounts of government expenditure on health, justice, education, welfare, military and agriculture occupy huge proportions of government spending budgets and public risk, requiring active managing. This is routinisation and commodification. Certainly, many individual examples can be cited where heroic, dedicated and selfless professionals act with integrity, go the extra mile and are greatly respected. These are good people, this is desirable behaviour and is to be applauded, but these facts do not constitute economic or sociological explanations of professions. Significantly, focusing on these positive things obscures and may bracket out consideration of mediocre and poor conduct, sub-par performance, and general negative effects. These are intimated in professionals’ own disquiet, complaints, fears of risk-averse managers or governments, ongoing policy changes and consumer dissatisfaction. Conceptually speaking, there is a need to be able to talk even-handedly about the good and bad effects of professional action, not just poor aspects as an afterthought. That is, not only has ‘goodness’ historically paired with expertise, but goodness also pairs—or should do so—with its opposite ‘badness’. By this

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is meant evaluative attention to the full range of positive effects through to adverse outcomes, complications, and symbolic domination from professional activity and intervention. Until such even-handed treatment occurs, objective and coherent theorising of professions is difficult. It is necessary to talk about goodness and beneficial as well as adverse effects of professional action—both sides of the coin. There is also a need to use more balanced social or sociological language to consider the application of technical, scientific, official, formal, policy knowledge to issues of education, health, food, law and justice, social welfare and poverty, cities, transport, trade, environment—every sphere of modern life. At present in both scholarship and the lexicon of professions themselves this is, however, a very one-sided vocabulary. To those who believe in some essential goodness possessed by traditional professions, even to raise this sounds negative, but research requires more nuanced assessment of the value and worth of professions’ contributions to society. For sociologists, this includes the language of norms and normativity, value propositions, relative advantages of stakeholders. It is the language that gets into studying behaviour and actions of people and institutions seen as good and bad, positive and negative. Knowledge and expertise are social products not merely self-validating phenomena. That is, evaluating strategic purpose in concepts like should and should not, ought and ought not, preferred, desirable. Theorising professions this close to an era of even greater technological change requires attention to how complex digital technologies work and the implications for society. Change is happening in many areas, such as greater availability and use of large data sets, information flows using the Internet, forms of robotics and artificial intelligence. These perform not only repetitive jobs but also highly skilled tasks requiring dexterity, precision and expertise, and are beginning to surpass what human professionals can achieve. Even newer digital technologies like the blockchain digital guarantor of both suppliers and end-users of professional services and record-keeping have applications for professional work far beyond initial finance possibilities that have so far been pursued. The use of conventional but inadequately theorised ideas about professions is a present danger to professions. This chapter title consciously draws on Burawoy’s (1991) allusion to the classic play Prometheus Unbound

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about ‘power and resistance’. This book has opened doors to where sociological theorising of professions and professional work will be needed. The inexorable shift to less containerised forms of expertise in the digital and globally diverse world requires higher levels of sophistication to engage satisfactorily, let alone successfully, with oncoming changes. Corporate interests actively and ruthlessly sequester expertise, digital or otherwise, in new forms of containment. Business or corporate talk about winners and losers in this new technological and globalised world of professional solutions misses many of the human and societal impacts of changes in professional work. What else about professions is built together? What changes to that combination can be seen taking place or can be anticipated? While ‘wicked problems’ of institutional complexity do not remove responsibility for professions’ or professionals’ actions, exercising capability is obviously constrained by such contexts. It is not until the sociopolitical brilliance of professions’ act of zusammenbauen is identified that the power of effectively bundling two quite dissimilar ideas becomes apparent. Then applying that logic to analysing professions and public good requires balancing this with correlative concepts like professogenesis and lexogenesis. Further, extending the same logic to professional expertise identifies how professional expertise is being unbundled today through co-option by organisations, by more and more highly capable digital technologies, and by globalisation processes interacting with the cost and availability of professional expertise. The argument in this book has provided a sustained deconstructive resistance to the certainties we are commonly given or expected to assume, about professions, professionalism and professional work. As each of the early chapters contributed to that unpicking task—definitionally, structurally, discursively and historically—a positive argument was also piece by piece being constructed. Once professions are understood as containers of knowledge and this is different from control of knowledge, new theoretical possibilities emerge. Johnson and Larson expounded this with clarity and brilliance. Johnson further intuited that the global entanglement he saw in colonies and empires was relevant to the question of what is a profession. This intimated what became a central theme in this book, the need to decentre social theorising including professions theory.

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Naming professions theorising as western social theory is not to belittle it, or any one; simply to appropriately locate it. This book has itself built on western concepts using a wealth of scholarship from Durkheim, Marx and Weber, and professions scholars since then. Applying concepts of discursive and structural bundling and unbundling allowed the claims of western professions’ long-running success to be identified. Poignantly for contemporary knowledge production and application, each of the goodness and expertise claims are today being unbundled and rebundled in new ways. The socioeconomic circumstances of managing professional work, shifting global hegemonies, and producing professionals into a world of rapidly digitising expertise means the coming decades will be very different from the ones before. This book contributes to enriching theorising about professions, encouraging professionals’ and others’ discernment, at least in part, about what is happening to professional work. There will be many different responses and decisions to these coming changes across different jurisdictions. Sometimes these will turn on events, scandals, ethics considerations, technological innovations, personalities, legal or governmental decisions, or choices by state governors or city management in one place or another. Professions could be carving out new ways they can contribute and continue to have a place in the scheme of things, reconfiguring their professions. Governments and policymakers need to review adverse concentrations of corporate power relative to professions and users of expertise in the functioning of civil society. The positive as well as potentially undesirable social impacts of technological changes to expertise should be high on all agendas. There is no doubt that the next era will bring new and surprising standpoints and expectations about expertise, skills, fairness, disadvantage, benefit and public good.

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Index

A

Aboriginal 10 Abstract logic 77, 281 Academic critique 14, 20, 43, 132, 176, 190, 206, 232, 313 discourse, 40, 113, 130, 132, 141, 233, 246 theorising, 6, 20, 40–42, 44, 130, 131, 154, 174, 176, 187, 190, 192, 194, 196, 202, 206, 228, 232, 306, 310 Accountability 136, 198, 277, 313 Accountancy, accounting 197 Accreditation 156, 276, 277, 308 Act professionally 49 Acupuncture 262 Administrating empire 168 Administrative principle 87 Adversarial 162

Adverse impacts 226, 227, 234, 242, 243, 246, 310 Aggregate 74, 272 Agricultural 160 Ahistorical 158, 192 Algorithm 88, 156, 268–272, 313, 317 Alienated 88 Allied health professional 51 Altruism 19, 21, 22, 42, 49, 57, 64, 75, 118, 120, 123, 136, 167, 176, 177, 192, 227, 237, 238, 246, 247, 251 Amateur 170, 171 American dream 170, 172 Ancillary occupations 172 Anecdotes-professions 111 Anglo-America 2, 3, 75, 87, 114, 160, 191, 192, 211, 305, 316

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 E. A. Burns, Theorising Professions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27935-6

371

372

Index

Anglo-European 168 Anglophone 59, 196 Anglo-western 4 Animal 99, 119, 160, 164 Anthropocene economy 321 Anthropology 11 Anti-competitive 12 Anti-conquest 233, 236, 237 Antifragile 232 Antipodean perspective 8 Antiquity 102, 134 Anti-vaccination 99 Apex social actor 311 Apothecary 48, 135, 161 Apparatus 52, 63, 89, 113, 130, 162, 262 Appearance medicine 139 Applying science 172, 224 Archaeological 179 Architect, architecture 276 Arthroscopy 275 Artificial intelligence (AI) 260, 265, 317, 324 Art museum 88 Aspirational 41, 50, 169, 203, 211, 230, 288 Assemblage 62–64, 75, 76, 124, 179, 201, 305 Athletics 170 Audit 207, 247, 323 Auditor 140, 242 Australian Royal Commission 242 Autochthony 129–131 Autonomy 59, 60, 80, 81, 86–88, 98–100, 120, 177, 198, 206, 207, 212, 214, 230, 263, 265, 302, 318, 321

B

Baby-boomer 140 Bad apples 50, 243 Baldwin’s argument 195 Bangalore 276 Banking 94, 242, 265 Beadles 137 Becker, H.S. 60, 171, 262 Beck, U. 12, 97, 118, 132, 203, 243, 244 Beilharz, P. 8, 76, 78 Bell-curve 234, 235, 240 Beneficence 22, 125, 176 Benefit 4, 17, 27, 28, 56, 80, 84, 96, 124, 131, 134, 137, 140, 157, 178, 199, 209, 225–227, 232, 235, 236, 238, 240, 243, 244, 246, 247, 251, 270, 277, 287, 294, 303, 308, 312, 313, 326 Bhabha, H.K. 124 Bias 120, 234, 271 Big Blue 271 Big data 179 Binary 83, 86, 92, 96, 100 Bioethics 99 Blockchain 156, 265, 324 Blue-collar 274 Boardrooms 112, 120 Boundary 13, 30, 47, 73, 82, 83, 96, 102, 116, 117, 119, 137, 152, 167, 198, 226, 305 Bourdieu, P. 2, 11, 24, 25, 39, 73, 90, 112, 159, 175–177, 245, 247, 299, 314, 319, 320 juridical field, 24, 245, 315 symbolic domination, 320 Boys in White 171

Index

Bracketing 160 Branding 64 British Board of Agriculture 167 Broken terrain 40, 193 Built together. See Zusammenbauen Bundling 2, 27, 30, 31, 40, 55, 123–125, 215, 223, 224, 251, 259, 261, 264, 278, 280, 281, 287, 294, 295, 297, 298, 307–309, 312, 321, 325, 326 Bureaucracy 77, 78, 83, 85, 87, 89, 115, 323 Burrage, M.C. 50, 131, 152, 192, 211 Business 8, 82, 83, 86, 93–95, 163, 164, 175, 244, 265, 278, 281, 283, 303, 318, 325

C

Calculative rationality 115 Canonical forms 55, 61 Capitalist 13, 64, 94, 113, 118 Careers 172, 195, 205 Caring professions 41, 312 Carr-Saunders, A.M. 20, 153, 155, 161, 173 Cattle 132 Causal explanation 44 Cause of death 235 Celebrity 53, 171 Census 175, 191 Centralisation 88 CEO 172, 314, 316 Chainlike 122 Charismatic 77, 170 Chartism 138 Chemistry 55

373

Child abuse 266 Childcare centres 242 China educational institutions 170 Chiropractic 52 Christian values 224 Chronic conditions 307 Chunking method 151 Church 137, 227, 266 Cicero 130 Cigarettes 210 Citizens 233, 247 City management 326 Civilisational 64, 116, 131, 158 Civil society 10, 40, 46, 100, 117, 129, 132, 167, 310, 326 Claims of professionalism 46, 81, 231, 311 Class entitlement 311 Classroom interaction 197 Clergy 58, 97, 123, 154, 167, 199, 239, 242, 303 Client at all costs 237 Client compliance 165 Client groups 62, 190, 243, 261, 266, 305 Climate denial 96 Closure 66, 245, 248, 307 Cloud storage 272 Code-based 163 Coder 282 Codes of ethics 247 Collectively 22, 102, 121, 142, 156, 167, 283, 296 Collectivity 305 Collegial professionalism 78, 89, 264, 302, 305 Colonial 88, 128, 165, 166, 173, 236, 237 Command and control 266

374

Index

Commentary on professions 60 Commercial 62, 93–97, 125, 134, 140, 163, 193, 194, 197, 207, 236, 237, 244, 246, 260, 265, 270, 272, 278, 282, 287, 295, 296, 304, 305 Commodification 22, 60, 80, 175, 195, 210, 286, 323 Common law 163, 315 Community 19, 41, 46, 55–57, 84, 98, 136, 137, 167, 169, 174, 176, 230, 232, 238, 240, 276 Compact 137 Companion animals 139 Comparative 4, 7, 21, 30, 49, 81, 135, 155, 177, 192, 263 Competence 25, 167, 197, 236, 239, 243, 311, 323 Competition 21, 57, 124, 170, 264, 303 Complexity 4, 8, 19, 54, 55, 62, 73, 100, 114, 115, 200, 216, 232, 236, 241, 245, 266, 273, 282, 295, 303, 319, 320, 325 Compliance 207, 209, 250, 319 Complication rate 236 Computing 51, 55, 112, 120, 121, 251, 276 Comte 98 Concatenate 85, 92, 120–122, 139, 141, 142, 157, 166 Conduct 7, 29, 42, 49, 74, 124, 136, 161, 229, 244, 251, 294, 310, 311 Confidentiality 247 Conflict approach 21

Constitutive efficacy 297, 298, 300 Constructivist 73 Consultant 94, 95, 210, 270 Consumer 5, 28, 29, 45, 50, 62, 63, 78, 79, 81, 99, 100, 112, 125, 131, 139–141, 215, 228, 245, 250, 252, 260, 264, 267, 275, 279, 281, 283–286, 295–297, 299, 302, 303, 305, 310, 317, 318, 320, 323 Containers of knowledge 325 Contested 5, 29, 40, 43, 54, 63, 89, 92, 124, 141, 163, 166, 167, 169, 201, 212, 228, 251, 264, 279, 285, 294, 298, 300, 315 Context 1, 9, 16, 18, 19, 22, 41, 51, 53–55, 62, 64, 77, 80, 85, 88, 89, 101, 120, 121, 127, 129, 131, 169, 173, 188, 207, 209, 213, 215, 225, 273, 284, 306, 318, 325 Contingent 21, 24, 30, 75, 81, 85, 120, 132, 134, 143, 151, 158, 165, 191, 202, 212, 298, 315 Contradiction 9, 43, 62, 81, 86, 134, 137, 198, 210, 229, 311 Contraries 96, 134, 246, 275, 311 Control autonomy, regulation 263 corporate, 54, 174, 300 Convergence 94, 122 Cooperatives 138 Core attributes. See Traits, trait theory Coroners 48 Corporations 4, 6, 8, 46, 57, 62, 63, 78, 95, 112, 1267, 129, 174,

Index

240, 244, 245, 249, 263, 265, 272, 287, 295, 304, 305, 316, 322 Cost 2, 6, 12, 27, 57, 62, 95, 112, 131, 142, 172, 176, 177, 179, 206, 209, 213, 215, 227, 229, 237, 244, 248, 251, 261, 264–267, 269, 271, 273, 275, 285, 287, 296, 297, 305, 312, 315, 325 Counter 26, 39, 62, 63, 90, 120, 121, 134, 136, 140, 177, 193, 226, 232, 233, 236–238, 240, 247, 250, 261, 283 Coupling/uncoupling 122, 124, 125, 223, 233, 239, 261, 281 Court system 271 Covert blame culture 244 Craft 91, 178 Credentials 195, 205, 281 Crimean war 166 Criminal and civil 315 Crisis 65, 129, 214 Critical Management Studies (CMS) 7, 101 Cuba 100, 177 Cultural capital 63, 165 Cultural-symbolic 31 Culture 10, 15, 41, 50, 52, 53, 60, 102, 111, 120, 169, 178, 196, 239, 244, 245, 250, 267, 276, 279, 281, 298, 311, 312, 315 Curriculum 167

D

Datasets 269, 272

375

Death of professions 59, 61, 66, 190 Decision process 59 Deconstruction and reconstruction 64 De-essentialise 24, 30 Defensive professionalism 51 Deficiencies of modernisation 132 Definitional closure 30, 45, 61, 114, 244, 261 Definitional problématique 30, 39, 65, 138 Definitional resistance 61 Deleuze, G. 62, 63, 75, 76, 124, 179 Deliberate misconduct 249 Delivery 8, 23, 31, 53, 64, 74, 75, 84, 99, 100, 133, 142, 163, 173, 178, 191, 198, 213, 228, 240, 244, 251, 262, 263, 265, 268, 272, 279, 282, 285, 295–299, 301, 303, 306, 320 Demand-side professionalisation 161, 283, 303 Demarcation 59, 64, 111, 163, 167, 176, 244, 315 Democracy 82, 83, 86, 98, 100, 117, 138 Demonise 53 De-moralising 315 Denial 93, 233, 234, 245, 260, 264, 310 Dental 120, 139, 275, 278, 279 Deprofessionalisation 22, 60, 62, 80, 92, 174, 200, 206–209, 211–214, 248, 280, 321 Depthlessness 199 Deracialised 99 Dermatology 269 Derrida, J. 44, 92, 249, 298

376

Index

Deskilling 60, 92, 206, 207, 209 de Tocqueville, A. 163 Dexterity 266, 268, 269, 273, 295, 324 Dialectic 50, 63, 84, 86, 117, 121, 133, 163, 207, 298 Dichotomy 9, 83, 86, 90, 92, 225, 233, 234, 244, 251, 310 Differentials 96, 260, 274 cost and quality, 287 Differentiation and specialisation 62, 94, 175, 260, 280, 320 Digital 3, 10, 28, 31, 62, 96, 99, 133, 155, 159, 179, 192, 197, 209, 210, 216, 231, 252, 260, 262, 265, 267–269, 271–274, 277, 280, 282, 285–287, 294, 295, 302, 305, 312, 316–318, 321–325 Direct action 92 Disabling professions 199 Discipline-specific 13, 14 Discourse 2, 9, 12, 22, 47, 50, 54, 61, 63–65, 81, 86, 93, 97, 98, 100, 102, 111–113, 115, 118, 119, 121, 124, 128–130, 132, 135–143, 151, 155, 156, 163, 168, 170, 175, 179, 195, 207, 224–227, 231–233, 236–238, 243, 244, 246, 247, 251, 263, 264, 295, 300–303, 312, 313, 320 Discretionary power 89 Discursive bundling 115 Discursive ensemble 288 Discursive fabric mend 234

Discursive temptations 30, 115, 125, 132 Disease 18, 75, 119, 132, 160, 171 Disembodied science 171 Disenchantment 77, 116, 204 Disintermediation 5, 309 Dispute resolution 270 Division of labour 24, 44, 48, 57, 84, 93, 94, 141, 161, 199, 264, 285, 297, 299, 318, 320 Doctor 3, 26, 58, 88, 94, 99, 111, 131, 140, 156, 167, 168, 171, 172, 228, 235, 241, 248, 269, 275, 280, 282, 303 Double-denial 233, 234, 236 Double myth 233 Double project. See Twin projects Do what teacher says 299 Doxa 242 Driverless 270 Dr Kildare 171 Drug company 18, 94 Dualistic fallacy 233 Dumbing-down learning 229 Durkheim, Emile 17–19, 53, 92, 230, 326 Dutch society 212 Duty 60, 142, 172 Dystopian 167

E

Early-modern privatising 137 Earnings 17, 57, 64, 74, 158, 166, 177, 226, 277 Ecology 194 Economic value 20, 260, 287 Ecosystem 81, 230

Index

Edinburgh veterinary school 164 Education 8, 13, 19, 20, 28, 41, 44, 46, 64, 74, 95, 118, 127, 137, 154, 156, 164, 166–170, 173, 174, 176, 177, 194–196, 199, 204, 205, 207–210, 239, 245, 266, 275, 276, 279, 280, 282, 283, 294, 303, 323, 324 Efficiency 21, 27, 28, 62, 95, 112, 133, 158, 176, 179, 206, 209, 215, 265, 271, 285, 312 Electrician 231, 311 Elite professions 80, 101, 156, 171, 172, 176, 190, 235, 262, 265, 296, 306 Ellul, J. 134, 313 Emancipatory professionalism 78, 203 Emergent professions 3, 23, 65, 127, 135, 137, 142, 165, 166, 174, 179, 195, 197, 202, 203, 205, 209, 210, 246, 304, 315 Empathetic professions 271 Empire 75, 130, 158, 168, 325 Empirical 7, 11, 15, 16, 22–24, 29, 30, 42, 48, 62, 73, 75, 77, 81, 84, 86–90, 94, 97, 100, 102, 117, 128, 131, 133, 136, 137, 161, 187, 188, 190–193, 195, 204, 212, 224, 232, 234, 238, 240, 243, 251, 259, 279, 284, 293, 300, 301, 304, 308, 310, 320, 321 Empowerment 312

377

End-user 260, 267, 310, 324 Engineering 17, 48, 120, 154, 171, 194 Enlightenment project 119, 204 Enriched normative standing 234 Enron scandal 248 Ensembles of discourse 124 Entitle 224, 322 Entrepreneurial 93, 94, 127 Epigenetics 25 Epistemology 15, 23, 56, 97, 124, 128, 138, 205, 238, 323 Epizootic 132 Essentialist thinking 16 Esteem 74, 299 Ethicality 19, 21, 29, 64, 81, 99, 123, 124, 224, 228, 230 Ethnocentrism 130 Euro-American. See Anglo-western European bourgeoisie 236 Evidence 16, 21–24, 51, 58, 62, 63, 81, 90, 92, 94, 97, 102, 114, 127–129, 134, 135, 154, 156, 158, 166, 191, 193, 224, 232–234, 238, 241, 248, 249, 293, 295, 306, 308 Evolution 4, 75, 76, 92, 125, 127, 156, 165, 166, 175, 178 Exceptionalist claims 295 Exclusive rights 163 Excoriates and excuses 224 Expert-dependent 205 Expert employees 199 Expertise bundled 26, 99, 199, 216, 224, 259, 260, 297, 298, 311 and labour costs, 273 politics of, 294, 314, 315

378

Index

and presence, 268, 274 as property of professions, 284 routinisation, 57, 206, 294 supply and demand, 275, 279, 298, 299 Expert role problematise 209 Expert systems 205 Externalist 81. See also Internalist

F

Factory 91, 156, 275 Failure demand 303 Failures and mistakes 243 Fake news 43 False digital technologies 317 Families 117, 156, 172, 240, 266, 270 Farmers 79, 300 Federal Trade Commission 95 Feminism 11, 12, 21 Fiduciary 99, 137, 299, 311 Field 1, 2, 6–8, 11, 13, 17, 21, 22, 24–26, 28, 40–42, 44, 45, 47–49, 52, 55, 58, 64, 74, 76, 77, 86, 88–90, 92, 95, 96, 117, 118, 128, 130, 132, 136, 137, 141, 152, 154, 155, 160, 164, 167, 168, 171, 172, 177, 188–196, 201, 207, 209, 212, 214, 225, 230, 241, 242, 245, 248, 249, 251, 262, 263, 269, 272, 275, 279, 306, 310, 313, 315, 319 Film industry 120

Financial 22, 58, 75, 119, 124, 138, 194, 242, 265, 266, 270, 295, 312 Financiers 56 Flexner, A. 56, 153, 170, 232 Florence Nightingale 166 Florist 135 Folk phrases 299 Food 5, 8, 154, 171, 324 Formalist 65, 135, 243, 245 Foucault, M. 12, 21, 39, 63, 100, 111, 112, 118, 121, 122, 134, 160, 175, 178, 179, 236, 239, 300 ethic of discomfort, 178 micropower, 236 Foundationalism 127 Fourth industrial revolution 317 Free markets 164 Freidson, E. 8, 21, 29, 42, 45, 46, 51, 60, 87, 120, 122, 141, 153, 172, 174–176, 191, 193, 194, 200, 202, 210, 215, 229, 232, 248, 263, 302, 306, 313 French hospital 274 French painting and sculpting 128 Functionalism 2, 15–19, 22, 23, 27, 47, 120, 210, 211, 225, 229, 230, 306–308, 314 Funding 139, 173, 178, 200 Future 3, 10, 16, 23, 28, 30, 61, 62, 65, 101, 102, 113, 118, 120, 126, 157, 159, 178, 194, 214, 215, 252, 265, 270, 273, 277, 285, 296, 297, 304, 308, 320–322

Index

G

Galileo 59 Gatekeeping 305, 311 Gender analysis 12 Gendered Project 22, 120 Witz, 12 General well-being 2 Genomics 156 Gentlemanly class 51 Geographic cure 242 Geographic monopoly 275 Geopolitics/Geopolitical 1, 8–10, 13, 27, 154, 157, 169, 193 Georgian England 51 German model 266 Giant corporations 46 Global framing 66 Globalisation 4, 174, 260, 273, 274, 277, 286, 295, 302, 317, 321, 325 Global salary differentials 274 Global unbundling 216, 263, 273 Globe-spanning high-tech 274 Gold-standard 236 Goodness bundled 26, 30, 125, 199, 216, 223, 224, 251, 259, 297, 298, 308, 312 Goodness and expertise 23, 26, 28, 123–125, 199, 215, 216, 223, 224, 259, 261, 278, 288, 294, 296–298, 307–309, 311, 323, 326 Good teacher 235 Google 57, 305, 316 Gordian knot 233 Governance 8, 13, 29, 40, 73, 100, 124, 159, 161, 162, 165,

379

179, 194, 200, 244, 272, 301, 318, 319, 321 Government 6, 8, 10, 23, 29, 40, 44, 46, 47, 54, 62, 63, 65, 79, 80, 83, 112, 124, 132, 135–138, 156, 159–163, 166, 167, 169, 170, 173–178, 193, 200, 201, 206, 215, 224, 227, 238, 239, 244, 245, 260, 271, 272, 276, 279, 281–283, 294, 302–305, 310, 312, 313, 316–318, 323, 326 Governmentality 60, 87, 159 Graduate employment 281 Grand bargain. See Social contract Great man history 132 Grisham novels 237 Group morality 123 Group projects of occupations 119 Group status 74 Group threat 125 Guattari, F. 62, 63, 75, 124 Guilds 116, 138, 161, 322

H

Habitus professional 226, 247 Hairdresser 231, 311 Haug, M.R. 80, 90–92, 174 Healing 130, 154 Health care 266 Health is not about health 320 Health nostrums 163 Hegemonic 43, 112, 157, 188, 194, 210, 213, 228, 296, 306, 307 orthodoxy, 188

380

Index

Heroic professional 160, 170, 323 Heteronomy 78, 87, 177, 302 Hierarchy 87, 89, 92, 247, 275 Hippocrates 130, 314 Historical continuities 131 Historical research 116, 119, 137 Hogan, T. 8 Homosexuality 25 Horses 164 Hospital 18, 90, 236, 270, 274 Hostile reaction 203 Households 274 Housing 8, 282 Human experts 262, 271–273 Humanism 97, 224 Human values 230, 310 Hybridity 124 Hygiene 171 Hyper-capitalism 210

I

Iatrogenesis 241 Idealisation of progress 132 Ideal of professionalism 129 Ideal-type 77, 78, 120 Identity politics 24, 192 Ideological 54, 59, 86, 113, 128, 154, 169, 203, 233, 279, 298, 307 Illich, I. 13, 176, 189, 190, 199, 200, 203, 209, 211, 232, 241 Imperatives 46, 56, 64, 139, 178, 188, 206, 207, 224, 264, 271, 283, 310, 317, 318 Imperial conquest 168 Imprisonment rates 247 Improper professional behaviour 242 Inconvenient truths 317

Increasingly capable 267, 268, 272, 273, 287 Increasingly intelligent 272 Incremental transformation 214 Independence of expertise 212 Independent practitioner 48, 87 India 156, 276 Indigenous 129, 163 Individualising 52, 53, 202 Industrialisation 113, 118, 277 Inequalities 13, 17, 19, 41, 313 Information age 322, 323 Information–haves 205 Innovation 4, 9, 51, 84, 102, 127, 130, 155–157, 167, 179, 208, 238, 267, 268, 272, 274, 284, 326 Inquisitorial law 163 Institutionalisation 29, 45, 50, 60, 84, 85, 88, 95, 118, 121, 142, 157, 177, 192, 281, 300, 301 Institutionalised altruism 192 Institutionalism 202 Insurance firms 271 Insurer 94 Integrity 209, 228, 299, 310, 323 Intellectual closure 307 Intended outcomes 242 Interactionist 13, 322 Interdisciplinarity 212, 263, 319 Interests 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 14, 16, 19, 25, 28, 43, 44, 48, 50, 53, 55, 57, 58, 74, 77, 79, 81, 86, 91, 93, 94, 99, 100, 112, 113, 117, 123, 125, 133, 140, 142, 152, 153, 155, 156, 158, 162, 171, 172, 176, 177, 201, 202, 204,

Index

206, 225, 237, 250, 264, 281, 286, 295, 296, 299, 301, 302, 311, 313, 314, 322, 325 Interleave 86, 95, 120, 164, 300 Internal ambivalence 124 Internalist 66, 74, 79, 81, 83, 100, 136, 237 International Sociological Association (ISA) 6, 7 Internet 131, 268, 269, 274, 286, 305, 313, 324 Interprofessional 280 Intersect/intersection 7, 8, 11, 92, 113, 142, 178, 179, 198, 226, 248, 249, 273, 293 Intra–professional stratification 248 Intuition 271 Inverse care law 229 IQ Binet 25 Iron cage of professionalism 54 Is-ought 124 Ivy League 174

381

294, 297–299, 301–306, 320, 325 mediation, 78, 302, 305 Journalist 58 Judgements 20, 99, 205, 234, 246, 271 Judiciary 247 Juridification 44 Jurisdictional 52, 82, 83, 192, 210, 211, 315 Jurisprudence 130 Justification 17, 22, 44, 45, 64, 96, 123, 124, 127, 128, 137, 140, 159, 194, 238, 239, 296, 297, 311, 322

K

Kasparov, Garry 271 Key events 21, 178 Key–hole surgery 275 Knee replacements 275 Kuhn, T. 41, 58, 59, 238

L J

Jackson era (USA) 164 Japan 276 Johnson’s typology 78, 79, 281, 294, 297, 298 Johnson, T.J. 8, 10, 21, 29, 31, 42, 60, 77–79, 87, 89, 99, 113, 122, 138, 139, 159, 162, 166, 173–178, 191, 193, 194, 207, 210, 214, 215, 225, 229, 232, 261, 264, 279–281, 284, 287, 293,

Labour market 57, 157, 202, 211, 275 Landscape architects 51 Larson, M.S. 29, 50, 52, 56, 60, 74, 87, 89, 91, 92, 94, 97, 116, 119–121, 128, 137, 141, 152, 153, 169, 191, 204, 215, 228, 232, 260, 298, 299, 306, 321, 325 Late modernity 96, 204 Late-modern unbundling 224 Latent consequences 250, 251, 320 Latent demand 277

382

Index

Latent dysfunctions 243 Law-abiding citizens 233 Law-firm 245 Law profession 248 Law Society of England and Wales 268 Lawyer 3, 49, 56, 58, 88, 94, 95, 99, 127, 129, 137, 164, 165, 167, 172, 173, 191, 192, 210, 212, 235, 242, 244, 245, 247–249, 270, 307, 309 Lawyer corporations 95 Lay public 26, 232, 233 Lay–professional 203 Leadership 200 Leap–frogging 277 Legal 6–8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 25, 45, 49, 53, 56, 77, 88, 94, 97, 101, 116, 117, 123, 127–129, 132, 156, 179, 192, 194, 210–212, 239, 242, 244–249, 264, 268, 276, 278, 312, 315, 316, 326 legal field, the 245 Legal-rational 77, 101 Legislation 18, 137, 138, 163, 167, 178, 247, 323 Legitimacy discourse 232 Legitimation 167, 239, 275, 296 Lexical drift 171 Lexogenesis 25, 242, 245–247, 251, 309, 325 Liability 95, 249 Licensing 59, 232, 322 Life problems 232 Limiting competition 21

Linear/linearity 21, 24, 30, 42, 114, 116, 120, 126, 132–134, 140, 143, 151, 158, 173, 194, 238, 278 Linear narrative 114, 134, 151 Linguistic shift 53 Links/linkages 5, 10, 80, 85, 86, 97, 100, 120–122, 125, 128, 130, 142, 154, 160, 168, 170, 194, 196, 199, 205, 274, 276, 280, 281, 285, 317, 320, 322 Literacy 167 Literatures post-professional 189–191, 194, 195, 202, 204, 209, 215, 223, 250 Livestock 167 Lobbying 136, 314, 323 Logic calculative 117 Logics of professionalism 46 London veterinary School 164 Loyalty professional 172

M

Macroscale 14, 81, 240 Maintenance 124, 139, 228, 232, 240, 297 Malfeasance 313 Malicious digital technologies 317 Management 5, 8, 13, 28, 88, 94, 97, 101, 140, 172, 200, 204, 205, 208, 241, 264–267, 272, 283, 309, 314, 326 Managerialism 13, 100, 206, 208, 248, 264, 312

Index

Managing professions 165, 173 Manufacturing 273, 278, 317 Mäori 10 Maps 63, 270, 271 Marginalisation 133, 251 Marginalise 100, 112, 246 Marginal professions 3, 246 Market advantage 64 Market cultures and ideologies 312 Market-driven 251, 283 Marketising 210, 283 Markets for expertise 281 Market society 209 Market-state 117 Martineau, H. 163 Marx, neo-Marxist 13 Masculinist project 120 Masculinities 197 Material 3, 59, 91, 111, 112, 119, 121, 132, 151, 152, 155, 163, 177, 178, 232, 261, 269, 274, 280, 281, 299 Mathematics 121 Matrix 75, 77, 117, 246, 320 Media 10, 16, 26, 73, 88, 90, 92, 94, 125, 142, 176, 199, 201, 279, 295, 313 Medical complexity 266 courses India, 276 dominance, 172, 200, 263 error, 235 professions or medicine, 51, 90, 235, 307 tourism, 275 Medical Association 90 Medicalisation 44 women, 241

383

Medieval state power 127 Mediocre conduct 323 Membership in a profession 49 Mental health 235, 269, 306 health administration, 214 maps, 271 Mentalitie 204, 296 Meritocratic 195 Meta-discourse 115 Metanarrative 40, 85, 112, 115, 121, 132, 139, 168 Methodology 29, 77, 84, 135, 151, 153, 178 Metropolitan 128, 134, 166 Middle-class 40, 51, 57, 134, 139, 165, 172, 190, 195, 202, 204–206, 245 Middle-class projects. See Project Middle-order concept 85 Midwifery 168, 237 Migrant 51, 129, 247 Military 28, 58, 136, 323 Milk 169 Miniaturisation 156 Minorities 63, 247 Misrecognise 17, 87, 128, 243 Mission 165, 168 Mistakes 130, 131, 215, 226, 230, 243 Mobile phone 269, 277 Mobilise 119 Mode of organisation 73 Modernisation 3, 4, 41, 42, 48, 61, 75, 77, 81, 85, 93, 122, 125, 128, 132, 133, 141, 152, 155, 158, 159, 173, 175, 277, 322 Modernity and risk 244

384

Index

Modern/modernity 2–4, 6, 10, 12, 19, 21, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 31, 40, 42–44, 46, 48, 50–53, 62–66, 73–78, 80–86, 88, 91–94, 97, 98, 100, 101, 112, 113, 115, 117–119, 122–124, 128, 130, 132–136, 138, 139, 141, 142, 152–154, 156, 157, 159–163, 165–171, 175, 177, 190, 193–196, 203, 204, 206, 223, 224, 229–231, 238, 239, 242, 244–246, 249–251, 265, 267, 274, 276–280, 282, 286, 296, 297, 299, 302, 303, 309, 311, 316, 320, 323, 324 Modern universals 193 Money manager 198 Monopolisation 116, 315 Monopoly capitalism 94 Monopoly on expertise 212 MOOCs 208 Moral capital 123 categories, 225 communities, 92 de-moralising, 315 discourse, 63 landscape, 201 language, 226 leadership, 200 licensing, 59, 232 self-focus, 295 valence, 311 Moralism of professions 233 Morally imbued 295 Multi-paradigm 188

Multiple logics 100 Multiple pathways 84 Multivalent 212 Mungo Park 236 Myth/mythologies/mythologise 88, 127, 128, 233, 234

N

Nader, R. 41, 237, 242, 247, 248 Naïve realism 179 Narrative 3, 4, 12, 21–23, 25, 26, 40, 42, 60, 62, 74, 82, 83, 91, 119, 120, 122, 124, 126, 128–130, 132, 133, 139, 141, 143, 153, 158, 160, 161, 168, 173, 177, 188, 191, 194, 195, 200–203, 207, 233, 236, 237, 244, 246, 286, 296–298, 307, 308, 313, 320 Narrative tension 151 National 5, 6, 9–11, 14, 27, 40, 41, 43, 65, 79–82, 119–121, 129, 130, 135, 136, 138, 158, 160, 162, 169, 170, 173, 193, 197, 201, 212, 225, 242, 270, 275–277, 282, 316 Natural history accounts 113, 121, 168 Naturalise/naturalisation 16, 28, 42, 59, 65, 74, 84, 102, 111, 115, 126, 130, 137, 138, 140, 143, 153, 173, 175, 178, 209, 223, 265, 267, 274, 298, 314, 322 Needs-research 133, 214, 234, 240, 243, 294

Index

Negativity 211, 269 Negotiation 55, 65, 88, 92, 139, 165, 314, 316 Neo-institutional 12, 321 Neo-institutionalism 202 Neoliberal envelope 283 Neoliberalism 208, 210 Neo-Weberian 13, 82 Nesson, C. 242, 248, 249 New-class debates 205, 206 New occupations 136, 174 New professional, the 202 New professionalism 202, 208, 318 New responsibility 313 New Zealand 9, 279 NGO, Third sector 62 Non-compliant patient 111, 299 Non-government sector 62 Non-incrimination 127 Non-professional 5, 60 Norm/normative analysis 225, 228, 259, 287 claims, 52, 230, 251, 259, 288, 297–299, 309, 312 counters, 232 ideal, 79 justification, 142, 225 stance, traits, 41, 52, 62, 232, 259 Nursing 51, 120, 166, 172, 174, 276

O

ObamaCare 130 Obstetrics 168 Occupational advantage 137, 228 association, 114, 117, 166 capital, 159 closure, 102, 116, 117, 137

385

commons, 102, 127, 282 control, 21, 64, 82, 161, 172, 198, 279, 282, 300–302, 306, 321 domain, 82, 117, 130, 197, 210, 238 imperialism, 169 Occupational therapy 56 Odiham Agricultural Society 160 OECD nations 98, 133 Oestrogen 96 Official 43, 49, 64, 88, 112, 119, 121, 169, 177, 236, 246, 324 Offshore arrangements 245 Online classes 208 Ophthalmology 94, 311 Opportunity 65, 121, 129, 163, 208, 230, 281, 301, 317 Opposite to professions 75 Opposition 83, 85, 86, 88–90, 92, 93, 96, 98, 119, 120, 123, 132, 188, 264, 302 Optometry 275 Ordained ministers 199 Organisational forms 30, 31, 46, 66, 73, 75–77, 79–81, 83–86, 88, 95, 100, 101, 112, 115, 142, 154, 160, 171, 198, 208, 264, 265, 267, 278, 285, 287, 302, 304, 318, 323 nihilism, 312 profession, 85, 87–89, 102, 137, 171, 172, 194, 202, 204, 211, 265, 278, 300 professionalism, 46, 50, 62, 66, 73, 75, 83, 84, 87, 89, 90,

386

Index

100–102, 113, 165, 205, 211, 212, 264, 312, 318 scholarship, 101, 209 subsumption, 272 Origin story 102, 158 Orogeny occupational 161 Orthodoxy. See Hegemonic Other professionalisms 51 Outside western countries 3, 282 Outsourcing 4, 156, 162, 176, 224, 265 early modern, 4, 48, 112, 224 Oxbridge 174

P

Pandemic 132 Paradigmatic shift 57, 61 Paradox of professionalism 179 Paralegal 210, 262 Parsons, T. 18, 19, 89, 128, 173, 232, 280, 306, 307 The sick role, 19, 173, 306 Pastiche 76 Patent analysis 262 Path-dependent 121 Patronage corporate 304 government, 160, 161, 165, 304 Peace of mind 199 Peak professional experience 60 People–centric service sector 317 Performance 14, 22, 23, 40, 44, 61, 64, 91, 136, 167, 177, 179, 193, 201, 202, 226–228, 234, 236, 239, 243, 244, 248, 259, 323 Performance quality 235

Performance targets 209 Periodisation 151, 155, 157, 158, 306 Perjury 249 Personal depth 199 Personal ethicality 313 Pharmaceutical misuse 242 Pharmaceuticalised 177 Pharmacist error 236 Pharmacy 95, 242, 270 Phenomenology 11, 13, 14 Phenomenon 2, 4, 6, 11, 18, 25, 44, 53, 54, 56–58, 61–63, 74, 85, 89, 131, 153, 199, 206, 225, 230, 301, 322 Phoenix of functionalism 117 Phylogenetic 128 Pivot 75, 83, 155, 160, 178, 243 Planes 270 Plumber 231, 311 Polanyi, K. 132 Polanyi, M. 59, 97 Policing 99, 132, 313, 318 Policy policymaker 8, 26, 28, 29, 45, 62, 194, 215, 225, 230, 243, 245, 267, 293, 296, 302, 303, 310, 312, 318, 326 rationales, 260 vicissitudes, 208 Political ambiguity of expertise 313 of expertise, 91, 125, 159, 265, 301, 313, 315, 317, 320 influence, 43, 166, 211 managerialism, 209 power, 9, 166, 317, 322 rationalities, 316 science, 97, 179, 320

Index

Polysemy 53, 55 Poor conduct 323 Poorhouse 137 Poor work. See Competence Popper, K. 97 Popular culture 65, 322 Population 3, 80, 98, 129, 132, 133, 137, 163, 166, 227, 229, 234, 237, 246, 264, 279, 282, 286 Porous boundary 83, 102 Positivist 47, 55, 56, 61, 65, 115, 127, 245, 298 Post-capitalist 119 Post-concept 189, 318 Post-industrialism 189 Post-Marxists. See Marx, neo-Marxist Post-materialism 189 Post-Professional benign society 203 contemporary work problems, 190, 209 debates, 205, 206, 209 deliberative, 212 deprofessionalisation, 22, 190, 197, 200, 206, 207, 209, 211–214 dilemma, 179, 207, 215 ethos, 199 loss, nostalgia, 213 malaise, 206 new middle-class, 190, 202, 204, 205 new professional identities, 190, 199, 200 organisation of work, 199 stage in occupational path, 190, 196

387

transition, 29, 42, 63, 117, 166, 187, 188, 190, 194, 196, 198, 213, 215, 319 uses of, 187, 190, 195, 196, 212, 213, 215, 228 vision of new society, 190 Post-structural 12, 111, 120 Power approach 11, 20, 21, 120, 229 Power, intention, strategy 121 Power of discourse 30, 61, 79 Practical application 50, 162 Practical expertise 267, 277, 279, 281, 287, 304 Practitioner 6, 18, 29, 51, 53, 78, 88, 91, 92, 126, 127, 131, 135, 138, 154, 160, 170, 177, 214, 228, 230, 241, 242, 245, 269, 270 Precarious work 206 Pre-labelled 191 Premodernity 1165, 274 Pre-professional age 196, 197 Presentism 30, 179 Prestige association 166 Pricing of services 93 Priest offenders 241 Priests 242 Principles of professionalism 46, 90 Privacy 316 Private benefit 92 Privatised 177, 313, 323 Privilege/ing 2, 9, 10, 22, 24, 26, 56, 58, 93, 114, 122, 124, 127, 162, 205, 227, 238, 248, 251, 308, 312, 314, 316 Problematise 17, 20, 31, 101, 175, 176, 209, 231, 240, 303, 314, 321 definitional, 261

388

Index

Procedural fairness 95 Processual 20, 213 Producing professionals 261, 281, 326 Production–consumption logic 285, 297 Production-driven 280, 283, 294 Profession -based scholars 189 bureaucracy, 82, 86–89 -centric, 22, 95, 152, 169, 179 collectively, 73, 102, 121, 142, 156, 165, 296 conflict approach, 21 containers for expertise, 216, 262, 284–287, 294, 325 in denial, 92, 233, 260 elite, 42, 45, 51, 60, 80, 101, 135–138, 156, 161, 163–165, 170–172, 174–176, 190, 205, 235, 262, 265, 296, 306 and normativity, 223, 225–228, 230, 232, 234, 239, 250, 294, 309, 313 and professionalism, 1, 3, 5–9, 11, 14, 16, 22–29, 31, 39, 41–44, 46–50, 53, 54, 56, 57, 59–61, 65, 66, 73, 75, 83, 84, 86, 101, 102, 115, 123, 127, 143, 152, 154, 155, 161, 166, 170, 174, 187–189, 191, 193, 194, 199, 204, 212, 213, 215, 230, 234, 239, 244, 246, 294, 295, 307, 309, 318, 322 research, 1, 2, 6–8, 12, 14, 15, 22, 29, 42, 47, 60, 62, 78,

113, 114, 128, 129, 133, 190–192, 195, 320, 321, 324 routinisation and ethics, 57, 84, 206, 294, 323 as social movement, 162 typologies, 3, 30, 31, 76–80, 82–84, 95, 101, 102, 111, 139, 162, 166, 177, 301, 302, 306 Professional adjective 52 approach, 2, 8, 11, 17, 19, 21, 22, 47, 49, 53, 57, 62, 79–83, 91, 102, 120, 122, 127, 131, 132, 143, 164, 178, 187, 194, 196, 197, 201, 203, 210, 212, 213, 226, 227, 235, 241, 243, 278, 280, 295, 296, 298, 306, 312, 321 association, 7, 80, 91, 116, 123, 137, 142, 152, 156, 165, 166, 230, 308, 311 authority, 51, 65, 75, 87–89, 92, 98, 165, 177, 200, 237 behaviour, conduct, 29, 74, 234, 249, 311, 313, 323 classes, the, 175 competence, 167, 197, 199, 234, 235, 239, 251, 311, 323 conduct, 29, 42, 49, 74, 136, 161, 229, 234, 235, 240, 242, 244, 249, 251, 264, 294, 310, 311, 313, 323 conventionality, 51 development, 15, 17, 20–22, 30, 41, 46, 62, 85, 88, 96, 101, 102, 113–115, 119,

Index

120, 122, 129–131, 136, 138, 142, 143, 151–153, 157, 159, 160, 162, 165, 168, 169, 173–178, 188, 191, 193, 201, 204, 207, 208, 210, 224, 228, 238, 276–278, 300, 308, 315, 317 discourse evacuation of, 312 more or less, 20 production of, 28, 31, 156, 191, 195, 281, 283, 284 Professional diversity -client 175, 225, 285, 293, 301, 304, 311 education, 41 expertise, 2, 5, 15, 27–29, 31, 43, 96, 127, 134, 157, 169, 177, 216, 224, 231, 251, 252, 259–268, 271–275, 277–282, 284, 286, 287, 294, 296, 297, 299, 300, 302, 304, 306, 315, 317, 318, 320, 321, 325 supply and demand, 275, 299 goodness, 29, 31, 134, 176, 215, 223, 227, 232, 237, 240, 242, 250, 251, 259, 262, 294, 296, 298, 307, 308, 312, 313 growth, 172 habitus, 226, 247 hubris, 200 imaginary, 171 incomes, 169 knowledge, 5, 43, 58, 93, 172, 211, 224, 231, 242, 278,

389

279, 281, 284, 298–300, 302, 305, 321 leaders, 43, 57, 125, 177 legal system, 246 manager, 94 peddlers, 199 performance, 14, 22, 23, 40, 64, 177, 179, 201, 202, 226, 234, 243 personnel, 191, 265, 320 power, 14, 116, 157, 194 prerogatives, 125 project, 23, 60, 65, 74, 115, 116, 119–123, 139, 142, 164, 165, 167, 192, 195, 198, 231, 238, 239, 261, 296, 311, 320, 321 project maintenance, 232, 240, 297 quality, 7, 53, 284, 310 risks, 201, 244 role decomposition, 276 disintermediation, 5, 309 re-intermediation, 309 self-interest, 21, 92, 164, 170, 176, 232, 240 services, 4, 7, 27, 28, 44, 57, 63, 74, 78, 79, 81, 131, 134, 139, 163, 168, 173, 177, 191, 209, 228, 243, 244, 252, 265, 272, 281–284, 296, 301–303, 318–320, 324 situatedness, 200 studies, 7, 174 teacher insubstantial, 208

390

Index

training, 41, 134, 167, 174, 195, 277, 283 value chain, 4, 287, 320 values, 60, 62, 127, 226, 228 work, 1, 3–8, 14, 17, 22, 23, 27, 29, 40, 42, 44, 50, 53, 60, 64, 82, 84, 90, 95, 113, 120, 125, 126, 130, 135, 136, 139, 140, 142, 157, 159, 169, 177, 178, 191–193, 195, 199, 206, 207, 213, 216, 223, 226, 227, 229, 231, 241, 250, 251, 262–266, 268, 270–275, 277–282, 284, 287, 294, 295, 297, 299, 302, 305, 309, 312, 320–322, 324–326 Professionalisation chunking 158, 159 contingent, 121, 126, 132, 164 discourse, 30, 63, 102, 113–116, 119, 126, 140, 142, 143, 165, 179, 294, 298 of everyone, 306 narratives, 121, 126, 153, 159, 209 projects new occupations and subgroups, 210 Professionalising group 51, 141 Professionalism and managerialism 81, 205, 206, 312 mythology of, 237 not binary, 211 proper, 43, 57, 154

public, 74, 93, 120, 169, 194, 199, 204, 226, 230, 303, 310, 312, 313 as reductionist, 201 uncertainty, 202 unmaking, 207 Professionality 79, 80 Professionally-held expertise 285 Profession antecedents 48, 135 Profession origins 135, 263, 320 Profession template 52 Professogenesis 31, 226, 240, 241, 243, 244, 246, 247, 251, 309, 325 Professogenic 31, 226, 235, 241, 244–248, 250, 251, 272, 303, 307, 310 Program evaluation 214 Progress 12, 21, 23, 43, 63, 90, 116, 118, 126, 132–134, 139, 140, 162, 166, 171, 194, 216 Progressive good 98 Progress, theories of 188 Project, concept of 116, 119, 120 Projects middle-class 81, 165, 204 Proletarianisation 92, 209, 212, 213 Prometheus Unbound 324 Property of professions expertise 284 Protection of group 80 Protestant Ethic 312 Provision of expertise 280, 320 Psychologist 25, 235 Psychotherapy 204 Public good 31, 74, 91–93, 167, 226, 227, 231, 234, 236, 240, 243, 244, 247, 250, 251,

Index

268, 285, 303, 309, 310, 325, 326 Public professionalism 199 Public sector 169

Q

Quackery 163 Qualifications 10, 49, 63, 65, 134, 137, 167, 168, 195, 224, 251, 276, 308, 323 Qualifying association 166 Quantum 56, 247 Quasi-markets 283 Quest for professionalism 318

R

Radical governments 312 Radiography and radiology 58 Rational goodness 118 Rationalisation imperative 139 of knowledge, 211 legal-rational, 77, 101 Reagan-era supply-side economics 174 Rear-view 179 Rebundled 278, 320 Reconstructive surgery 139 Record-keeping 324 Recreational therapy 51 Recursive 125 Reductionist professionalism 201 Reflective practitioner 208 Reflexivity 43, 239 Reframing definitional debates 61 Reframing/unframing 1, 22, 24–26, 29, 30, 61, 63, 179, 188,

391

201, 210, 212, 233, 243, 267 Regulation 18, 95, 165, 173, 179, 208, 247, 275, 277, 323 Regulators as innovators 80 Reify/reified 77, 121, 129, 170, 205 Re-intermediation 309 Religion 80, 118, 136, 322 Religious systems 240 Remediation 137 Remote surgery 275 Rent-seeking 283 Re-politicise 158 Research 1, 2, 6, 7, 14, 15, 22, 29, 41, 42, 47, 60, 62, 76, 78, 94, 96, 113, 114, 119, 140, 154, 157, 166, 177, 190–192, 212, 242, 246, 248, 251, 271, 276, 295, 300, 306, 320, 321, 324 Research Committees (ISA) 6, 7 Research scientist 94 Resources 6, 31, 78, 85, 91, 92, 112, 116, 119, 121–124, 133, 139–141, 179, 227, 229, 237, 247, 298, 300, 306 Respectability 74 Responsibilities 17, 98, 112, 136, 138, 142, 193, 240, 268, 325 Restorative justice 99 Re-theorise 30, 41 Retraining, professional development 276 Rewards 45, 53, 59, 81, 121, 123–125, 137, 172, 248, 298, 299, 314 Rhetoric 42, 50, 86, 92, 119, 240, 296

392

Index

normative, 83 Rich concept 2, 41, 55, 61 Ricoeur, P. 126 Rights, co-opted by corporations 127 Rinderpest 132 Rise and fall narrative 200 Risk analysis 12 Risks and trust 201 Ritzer, G. 59, 88, 192 Road toll 270 Robotic careers 270 Japan, 276 Robotic dexterity 266, 268 Robotics 156, 270, 274, 324 Roman Catholic church 266 Routinisation 57, 84, 206, 294, 323 Royal College 161, 162 Rubric 6, 136, 142 Rural tele-medicine 5

S

Scandal 4, 50, 65, 242, 248, 303, 312, 326 Scapegoats 245 Schmidt, Eric 316 Scholarly reticence 268 Scholarship 21, 23, 40, 57, 101, 133, 155, 188, 189, 209, 215, 229, 268, 283, 308, 317, 321, 324, 326 post-professional, 187, 213 Science goodness 97, 224, 233, 238, 239 knowledge, 55, 58, 96, 97, 155, 171, 238, 286, 305 scientific management, 97 Secondary education 174 Second nature 15

Sector-level professogenesis 241 Secularise/ation 98, 113, 116, 118, 155, 224, 312 Secularised spirituality 232 Self-interest 21, 58, 90, 92, 164, 170, 176, 228, 232, 240 Selfless 323 Selfless doctor 168 Self-reflexive 74 Self-serving rhetoric 176 Semi-profession 80, 90, 92, 214 Sequester expertise 325 Service ethic 90, 177, 237 sector, 169, 172, 175, 200, 236, 317, 320 Servicification 159 Settler society 166 Shaw, Bernard 167, 176 Shop floor to CEO 172 Signifiers 54 Sister Kennerley 237 Skin cancer 269, 271 Skill, skill-set 57, 277, 321 Slave labour 163 Slippage 26, 52, 239 Small business 78, 265 Smith, Adam 168, 176 Social class denial of 93 propriety, 224 Social closure 116, 198 Social constructionist 81, 232, 234, 238 Social contract 124, 162, 224, 230, 296, 307, 315–317 Social-corporate 53 Social epistemology 323 Social forces 48, 84

Index

Social history 126, 135–138 Social issues 162 Socially desirable 226 Social media 313 Social media corporates 295 Social movement 119, 162, 197 Social status 3, 52, 162 Social work 13, 48, 49, 79, 137, 214, 269 Society for the Advancement of Socioeconomics (SASE) 7 Sociocultural and socioeconomic 245, 279, 297, 318 Sociolegal studies 128 Sociology of professions 1, 6, 16, 19, 21–23, 40, 41, 46, 56, 57, 82, 83, 115, 120, 130, 154, 155, 189, 191, 192, 194, 321 Sole practitioner 78, 88 Solidarity 129 Sovereign power 100 Specialists 43, 74, 94, 268 expertise of, 269 Spectacle frames 139 Spencer 98 Spin, policymaking 318 Spirituality 199, 232 Split within professionalism 93 Spoliation 247, 249 Sports 170, 171 Spotlight movie 241 Staff turnover 95 Stakeholder 19, 45, 54, 62, 63, 83, 142, 173, 179, 237, 238, 279, 281, 286, 295, 296, 310, 319, 320, 323, 324 Standardising skills 209 Standards of living 279

393

State governors 326 The state, nation state 139, 165, 195, 215, 225, 296 State-profession 131 State-sponsored 162 Strategies counter 232, 233, 236 repertoire of, 214 strategy, 91, 236, 276 Stratification. See Social class Structural alternatives 111 Structural-functionalism 19 Structure, structural relationship 79 Student learning 17, 229 Students 17, 111, 140, 207, 276 dumbing-down, 229 Study association 166 Subjugates 151 Sub-optimising 170 Suicidal ideation 269 Sui generis 65 Super-profession, medicine 171 Supply and demand 207, 275, 278, 279, 298, 299 symbolically, 300 Supply-demand curves 278 Supply side of professionalisation 160 Surgeon 48, 50, 112, 161, 162, 250, 275 Surveyor 48, 56, 95, 137, 140, 235 Susskind, D. 27, 74, 118, 178, 204, 214, 236, 262, 267, 270, 271, 277, 281, 284, 285, 287, 302, 304, 305, 308, 309, 315, 317, 321 Susskind, R. 27, 74, 118, 178, 204, 214, 236, 262, 267, 268, 270, 271, 277, 281, 284,

394

Index

285, 287, 302, 304, 305, 308, 309, 315, 317, 321 Sussman, M.B. 80, 90–92 Symbolic meaning 54 Symbolic resources 112, 298 Symbolic supply and demand 278 Syndicalism 80, 138 Synthesise 23, 26, 120, 192, 195, 294

T

Targets of compliance 208 Tax returns 270 Teacher professionalism 196, 197 Teaching 112, 152, 174, 197, 199, 208, 283 proletarianising, 203, 207 Technical and expert 176 Technical efficacy 3 Technical knowledge 137, 224, 262 Technical occupations 59, 310 Technical professionals 95 Technocratic 231 Technological imperative 317 Technological society 314 Technology 3, 5, 10, 13, 41, 58, 65, 84, 94, 96, 111, 130, 135, 137, 155, 156, 159, 172, 179, 211, 213, 224, 236, 260, 266–268, 272–274, 276, 282, 286, 302, 313, 317, 323 Telecommunications 274, 275 Teleconnect 274 Template effect 52 Tertiary education 41, 210, 280, 294 commodification, 195, 210 Tertiary training 84, 280, 323 Text analysis 269

Theologian 176 Theological science 97, 239 Theory and research 246 Therapist 56, 269, 282 Third logic 202 Third party 79, 305 Third sector 62 Third way approach 60 Time specific 162 Tobacco litigation 210 Tools 3, 77, 83, 116, 129, 141, 142, 179, 195, 202, 203, 211, 225, 234, 261, 281, 301, 306, 314 Top-down managerialism 264 Toren, N. 60, 80, 87, 214 Torstendahl, R. 20, 50, 128, 131, 152, 192, 211 Tourism dental 275 medical, 275 Trade union 82, 90 Traditional privileges 248 Training school 80 Traits, trait theory 1, 19–22, 26, 29, 40, 41, 46, 49, 51, 56, 59, 62, 63, 74, 81–83, 85, 98, 99, 118, 120, 123, 125, 127, 130, 136, 141, 154, 165, 170, 176, 188, 191, 194, 198, 206, 210, 213, 215, 227, 229, 230, 232, 238, 239, 243, 251, 261, 279, 287, 308 Transnational professionalism 11, 13, 321 Transparency 141, 248 Trust 93, 123, 176, 200, 227, 230, 231, 300

Index

blockchain, 265 Trust, norms of 201 Tuberculosis 169 Twin projects 204, 299 Typology method or theory driven 76 of modernity, 76, 78, 80, 82 typological thinking, 76, 77, 80, 301 typology to discourse, 114 Tyranny of experts 226

U

Unbundling global 31, 79, 216, 263, 273, 274, 277, 278, 321 managing professional work, 263 technological, 28, 260, 262, 263, 265, 267, 272, 273, 278, 280, 284 unbundle-able, 278 Unconsented testing of drugs 241 Underreporting 235 Uneven governance 244 Unilineal. See Johnson, T.J. Unintended consequences 273 Union. See Trade union Uniqueness claims 75 Unitary 173, 201, 307 United States Bureau of Animal Industry 167 United States Department of education 167 Universalist 8, 51, 89, 93, 130, 201, 279 Universal, universality 14, 39–41, 53, 82, 134, 136, 193, 228, 271, 283

395

Universities 7, 43, 130, 133, 134, 140, 170, 174, 195, 208, 212, 234, 266, 273, 276, 278, 283, 294, 302, 303, 308 Unmaking of professionalism 207 Unpicking 64, 84, 137, 138, 267, 325 Unprofessional 125, 170, 250 Unskilled workers 275 Untoward action 241 Updates 224 Upward mobility 170, 174 Urban governance 194 Urban populations 132, 166, 279 Urban–rural divide 166 US court system 271 Utopian and dystopian 167

V

Value and power 211 Value free 230 Value prioritising 228 Value proposition 63, 117, 137, 324 Values 4, 29, 31, 40, 49, 54, 55, 60, 62, 63, 91, 93, 94, 97, 100, 102, 115–117, 119, 122, 123, 125, 127, 129, 137, 140, 153, 154, 158, 163, 164, 174, 192, 194, 204, 210, 215, 224, 226–229, 231, 237, 239, 240, 246, 251, 259, 260, 262, 263, 271, 285, 287, 288, 309–312, 314, 315, 319, 320, 324 dialectic of, 50, 63

396

Index

Variable-rich 77 Variant modes 85 Vehicle accidents 270 Vested interests 125 Veterinarian 51, 52, 79, 99, 160, 169, 282, 300 Veterinary 78, 132, 135, 139, 140, 160, 162, 168, 300 Veterinary nurse 262 Vocational commitment 44 Voluntary groups 166 W

Warehousing data 272 Washington Consensus 210 Weber, Weberian 13, 87, 117, 322 Welfare 8, 28, 91, 95, 177, 194, 199, 247, 264, 275, 303, 312, 323, 324 Wertrational 117 Western expertise, too expensive 273 Western industrialisation 277 Western modernity 6, 24, 52, 64, 82, 101, 115, 119, 141, 198, 202, 277, 308 Western professional developments 30, 152, 308

Western professionalism 118, 239 Western societies 3, 22, 52, 95, 177, 210, 318 Western triple hierarchy 275 White-collar 209, 320 White-collar cohorts 191 Wicked problems 282, 320, 325 Wilensky, H.L. 3, 4, 20, 21, 52, 77, 79, 80, 135, 153, 156, 170, 306 Working definitions 46 Workplace 17, 116, 156, 270, 310, 320 Worth 27, 42, 54, 77, 124, 142, 157, 160, 163, 164, 166, 169, 199, 203, 225, 227–229, 232, 233, 240, 266, 298–300, 305, 314, 322, 324 Writing out bracketing 237

Z

Zusammenbauen 115, 123, 124, 142, 259, 294, 307, 308, 325 Zweckrational 117