NOTES ON THE SOCIOLOGY OF PROFESSIONS.
Some Notes on the Sociology of Professions.
Peter Morrell, Hon
Research Associate, Dept of Sociology, Staffordshire University, U
K
- Professions can be ranked as either Primary or Secondary
- Primary professions
- Secondary professions
- While all professions enjoy high social status, primary
professions have the highest status, regard and esteem conferred upon
them by society at large. - This high esteem arises primarily from the wider, deeper and
higher social function of their work as compared with other lower
ranking professions. Their work is regarded as more vital to society
as a whole and thus of having a special and very valuable nature. - By contrast, the secondary professions, while also enjoying high
standing in society, yet the value of their work is seen as less
vital to society and thus they enjoy a correspondingly lower status. - All professions involve technical, specialised and highly skilled
work. - Training for this work involves obtaining degrees and professional
qualifications in order to gain entry into the profession,
and without which entry to the profession is barred [occupational
closure]. - Therefore, all professions can be seen to involve some degree of credentialism;
indeed, in modern times this credentialist aspect of professions is
increasing all the time, such as through professional upgrading of
skills and ‘payment by results’ by which the true merit of a
professional person is deemed—rightly or wrongly—to be measured by
the number of skill update courses they have recently attended. - All professions have a high measure of control over their own
affairs and therefore tend to be self-regulating or institutionally
autonomous. - All professions have control over their own knowledge base—epistemological
autonomy. - All professions have evolved their own ‘codes of practice,’
both to maintain the overall integrity and high status
of the profession itself, through regulating the behaviour of its
members, and to protect the public or client-base which they serve.
Codes of practice need to be reviewed and policed, and breaches of
discipline punished, ultimately by expulsion from the elite
group of the profession. Such is the highest sanction imposed for
persons found guilty of professional misconduct in the legal,
medical, military and clerical worlds. - Thus all professions have overseeing regulatory bodies
[professional bodies and associations, sometimes several] to judge the
conduct or misdemeanours of members, which are regarded as a serious
matter. These bodies often also serve to protect and justify to
outsiders the rights and privileges of the profession, and to
defend it in times of public scrutiny or criticism. - All professions enjoy various privileges and rights
associated with high office and hence also these rights and
responsibilities can be reviewed or forfeited if codes of practice
are breached. - Thus all professions have evolved strict guidelines and protocols
concerning the behaviour of members, within which accepted rules apply
and if they are broken, then various sanctions and punishments
come into effect to moderate such conduct. - All professions are hierarchical and have a graded structure;
they are finely stratified by rank, age, experience and
qualifications, etc. This inevitably generates a deeply conformist
culture within which behaviour patterns like cronyism and
obsequious sycophantism [brown-nosing] tend to be commonplace, in
devious attempts to curry favour and gain advancement within
the hierarchy. - The finely graded nature of professions also generates fierce
internal competition at all levels, acute rank awareness
and a struggle between individuals to gain advancement within the promotional
structure of the profession. - This also generates a culture of whispers, rumours and people
being either in or out of favour and being continually judged as to
their competence and merit. This in turn generates strong social
tensions within the profession and helps to sustain a climate
of suspicion, and petty jealousies - All professions more or less represent a distinctive social group as
an elite social class, which is disconnected, distanced and
isolated to some extent from the host society which it serves.
There is thus an intrinsically ambivalent and conflict-ridden
relationship between members of a profession and the public they
serve, often described as paternalistic. - This sense of dislocation from the rest of society breeds paternalism
and professional arrogance as well as a cold indifference, professional
distance, with which they are liable to treat their clientele. - Being paternalistic is an aspect of the sense of elevation, demarcation
and underpinning arrogance of members of all professions as a
self-acknowledged elite social group, and it runs in the
feeling they have of higher status and of being demarcated from the
host society as special and elite, privileged persons with a
specialised technical knowledge and expertise that places them
above most of the rest of society - All professions have and exert power. This power, for
example, is used to control its own members, and also its area of
expertise and interests. - A profession tends to dominate, police and protect its area
of expertise and the conduct of its members, and asserts a dominating
influence over its entire field. - This domination over its field means that a profession frequently
acts monopolistically, ‘seeing off’ competition from ancillary
trades and occupations, as well as subordinating and
controlling lesser but related trades. - This generates friction and ‘border disputes’ with any
ancillary trade that threatens [or is perceived or suspected of
threatening] encroachment upon the interests, affairs and/or
field of activity of the established more powerful profession. - All professions therefore implicitly and tacitly endorse social
inequalities and divisions in society. A profession only rarely
seeks to change or challenge established ‘given’ patterns in society,
but implicitly rather accepts them and works with or around them. - Likewise, professions tend to be hidebound, conservative, and
resisting of change and innovation. They are reactionary
and assert their own authority within their own field of operations.
They do not welcome newcomers, but regard them rather with suspicion
and hostility. - Professions have generally arisen and become elevated naturally from
lower trades and occupations through a slow process of maturation.
They have established themselves, put down roots, established approved
procedures and qualifications, obtained legal and political
recognition and so have grown in size, power and sophistication
through time, often from modest beginnings.
include, for example: Judges, Doctors,
Surgeons, top Police Officers, top Military Officers, Professors, higher
ranking Lawyers and Bishops
include, for example: Dentists,
Architects, Civil Engineers, Surveyors, Accountants, Lawyers and all
other specialised technical occupations [Scientists, Educators, Nurses,
etc]
Discussion
As is apparent, a profession is not really identified
by its specialised technical nature or by its control over its own
knowledge base, as is commonly supposed, rather it is better defined by
the power and high prestige it has in society as a whole…dustmen [waste
collectors], for example, have their own knowledge base of sorts, and
autonomy over their own affairs, and while regarded as a true specialism,
or trade, they are not regarded highly by society as an elite high
prestige group…thus, it is the power and prestige or value that society
confers upon a profession that more clearly defines its inclusion in this
category. This is why Lawyers, Clerics, Military, Police and Medical
personnel enjoy this high social status and are regarded as true
professions.
Many ‘secondary professions’ also have high status,
autonomy, power over their own distinctive knowledge bases, closed entry
and high value to society—such as architects, dentists, civil engineers,
military officers, land surveyors, etc—but crucially, they do not share
the same high professional and social status of doctors, lawyers and
clerics and this seems puzzling. It therefore seems that these primary or
true professions have a wider remit, a deeper value in society that breeds
their higher status and confers upon them an even higher value within
society…they apparently deal with more compelling and more crucial
aspects of social life than the secondary professions or the lesser
trades.
What seems clear therefore is that the classical
definition of a profession regarding occupational closure, its clear
epistemological autonomy and high status, while valid and useful, is also
a somewhat fuzzy and deficient definition that requires some fine-tuning
to give it greater kudos and reality.