Professions and Power (Routledge Revivals)

Book excerpt: First published in 1972, this book rejects as inadequate the ‘trait’ and ‘functionalist’ theories of the professions and instead presents an alternative framework to analyse the contemporaneous occupational change in industrial societies. The author describes how occupational specialisation creates varying degrees of social distance between producers and consumers of goods or services, thus several institutions of control social have developed — collegiate, corporate or oligarchic patronage, mediative. The author looks at the social conditions necessary for the development of these methods of control and the apparent decline of professionalism in both developed and undeveloped societies.