Professions
The idea of a "profession" did not exist in ancient times. Although there were people who did what is currently denoted as professional work, these "professionals" often labored in dependent positions. For example, physicians in the Roman Empire were slaves in wealthy households, and architects worked as salaried public employees. Lawyers in ancient Greece were merely friends of the litigants who spoke before a gathering of their peers. Neither lawyers nor physicians received formal training (Carr-Saunders and Wilson 1937). By medieval times, the three classic professions—medicine, law, and the clergy (which included university teaching)—began to approximate more closely the modern conception of professions. With the development of universities, then under religious auspices, would-be professionals completed lengthy training in their chosen fields. They also began to constitute a new class of intellectuals. As society increasingly secularized, the professions emerged from under religious control and began to organize professional associations. By the eighteenth century, they had achieved independent status.
In the nineteenth century, middle-class occupations such as dentistry, architecture, and engineering began to professionalize, aspiring to the gentlemanly status of the classic, learned professions (Dingwall and Lewis 1983). "Gentlemanly" was the appropriate description, since the majority of professionals were men. It was not until the 1970s that women began to make significant inroads into these occupations, and even today men predominate in the status professions.
This is a free page. This page contains 201 words. This
article contains 4,037 words (approx. 13 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our Professions Access Pass.
