Removing the Blinkers? A Critique of Recent Contributions to the Sociology of Professions

The rapidly growing numbers and influence of both professional organisations and professional personnel in the industrialised world in general and Western capitalist societies in particular has been noted and documented more times than the author would care to recount. * Yet, although such claims have come to assume the status of mere sociological platitudes, it remains that they continue to raise crucial questions about the nature and role of professions in modern society. These questions have been tackled from a shifting and diverse range of theoretical frameworks over the past few decades within the sociology of professions. The'main purpose of the paper, though, is to examine critically the most recent Anglo-American contributions to the debate—focusing especially on those deriving from neo-Weberian and Marxist writers whose perspectives have come to dominate the field. In short, it will be argued that, while such contributors have advanced the broader study of the professions in significant respects, they have so far failed to transcend the most central limitations of the traditional taxonomic orthodoxy which they have, for the most part, supplanted. The paper concludes with some suggestions as to how more fruitful work might be produced in this important area of sociological research. Of necessity, however, the discussion begins with a brief consideration of the main features of the taxonomic apptOAcYi, the primary criticisms to which it has been subjected and the initial development of a more sceptical orientation to the analysis of professions in sociology through the unlikely vehicle of symbolic interaaionism. This is fairly well trodden ground but it is only against this background that the recent neo-Weberian and Marxist contributions can be fully evaluated.