The term profession originally denoted a limited number of vocations which were the only occupations in pre-industrial Europe that enabled people with no unearned income to make a living without engaging in commerce or manual work. Law, medicine and divinity constituted the three classical professions, but officers in the army and navy were also included in the ranks of the professions.
The process of industrialization was associated with major changes in the structure of these older professions, and with the rapid growth of new occupational groups, many of which subsequently claimed professional status. These changes within the occupational structure were reflected in the sociological literature in the attempt, for example in the classic study by Carr-Saunders and Wilson (1933), to define the distinguishing traits or characteristics of modern professions.
This approach—sometimes called the ‘trait’ or ‘check-list’ approach—has not, however, resulted in any widespread agreement as to what constitutes an adequate or useful definition of profession. For example, Millerson (1964), after a careful examination of the literature, listed no fewer than twenty-three elements, culled from the work of twenty-one authors, which have been included in various definitions of profession. No single item was accepted by every author as a necessary characteristic of a profession, and neither were any two authors agreed about which combination of elements could be taken as defining a profession. However, the six most frequently mentioned characteristics were: possession of a skill based on theoretical knowledge; provision of training and education; testing of competence of members; organization; adherence to a code of conduct; and altruistic service.
During the 1950s and 1960s many sociologists used this check-list approach to examine occupations such as social work, teaching, nursing and librarianship, in order to see whether such occupations could properly be regarded as professions. However, from the early 1970s, this largely descriptive approach was increasingly abandoned in the light of some telling criticisms, particularly from Freidson (1970) and Johnson (1972). It was argued that those traits held to define a profession were frequently analytically or empirically ambiguous, while the lists of defining elements appeared to be constructed in a largely arbitrary manner, with little attempt to articulate theoretically the relationships between the elements. Finally, critics felt that this approach reflected too closely the ideological image which professionals try to convey of their own work, with an uncritical acceptance of the professions’ claims to such attributes as ethical behaviour, altruism and community service.
From the 1970s, the literature on professions became much more critical, and tended to focus on the analysis of professional power, and on the position of the professions in the labour market. In relation to the latter, Berlant (1975) saw professionalization as a process of monopolization, while Larson (1977) saw it as a process of occupational mobility based on securing control of a particular market. However, the dominant influence throughout the 1970s and 1980s was probably that of Freidson and Johnson, for both of whom the central problems concerned professional power.
Freidson argued that it is professional autonomy—the power of the professions to define and to control their own work—which is the distinguishing characteristic of the professions. In this perspective, specialized knowledge or altruistic behaviour are not seen as essential characteristics of professions. However, claims to such attributes—whether valid or not—may be important in the professionalization process in so far as they constitute the rhetoric in terms of which occupational groups seek to obtain from the state special privileges, such as a system of licensing and self-government, and a protected market situation. The professionalization process is thus seen as essentially political in character, a process ‘in which power and persuasive rhetoric are of greater importance than the objective character of knowledge, training and work’.
Johnson’s work centred on the analysis of practitioner-client relationships. He noted that those occupations which are conventionally labelled ‘professions’ have, at various times and in various places, been subject to a variety of forms of social control. Thus, in certain contexts, practitioners may be subject to control by powerful clients (patronage), or practitioner—client relationships may be mediated by a third party, such as the church or state (mediate control). The term ‘professionalism’ is reserved for a particular form of occupational control, involving a high degree of self-regulation and freedom from external control which, in its most developed form, was a product of the specific social conditions in nineteenth-century Britain and the USA.
Abbott (1988; 1991) has argued that professions are exclusive occupational groups which exercise jurisdiction over particular areas of work. This jurisdiction is held to rest on the control of a more-or-less abstract, esoteric and intellectual body of knowledge; groups lacking such knowledge (e.g. police as opposed to lawyers) have generally been unsuccessful in their attempts to professionalize. What is distinctive about Abbott’s approach is not his definition of profession, but his insistence that professionalization cannot be understood as a simple linear development of individual occupations considered in isolation for, since the jurisdiction of one profession pre-empts that of others, the developments of the various professions must be seen as interdependent.
There remain numerous and sometimes conflicting definitions of profession. Abbott (1991) has noted this confusion and has suggested that ‘to start with definition is thus not to start at all’. Perhaps more helpfully, Freidson (1986) has pointed to important differences between professions in Britain and the USA and high-status occupations in continental Europe, and has suggested that professionalism is ‘an Anglo-American disease’. He argues that the problem is not created
by including traits or attributes in a definition. The problem…lies much deeper than that. It is created by attempting to treat profession as if it were a generic concept rather than a changing historic concept with particularistic roots in those industrial nations that are strongly influenced by Anglo-American institutions.
Ivan Waddington
University of Leicester
References
Abbott, A. (1988) The System of Professions: An Essay on the Expert Division of Labor, Chicago.
——(1991) ‘The future of professions: occupation and expertise in the age of organization’, Research in the Sociology of Organizations 8.
Berlant, J.L. (1975) Profession and Monopoly: A Study of Medicine in the United States and Great Britain, Berkeley, CA.
Carr-Saunders, A.M. and Wilson, P.A. (1933) The Professions, Oxford.
Freidson, E. (1970) Profession of Medicine: A Study of the Sociology of Applied Knowledge, New York.
——(1986) Professional Powers: A Study of the Institutionalization of Formal Knowledge, Chicago.
Johnson, T.J. (1972) Professions and Power, London.
Larson, M.S. (1977) The Rise of Professionalism, Berkeley, CA.
Millerson, G. (1964) The Qualifying Associations: A Study in Professionalization, London.
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