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Abstract
Professions, as a special (privileged) category of service-sector occupations, are nowadays perceived as under threat from organizational, economic and political changes. Many of these threats concern the medical profession (and sometimes the legal profession). The use of the discourse of professionalism in other occupational contexts is seldom addressed, however, yet it is this, which is providing a much more interesting challenge to social scientists. In this paper the increased deployment of the concept 'professional' is critically discussed and the power of the discourse of professionalism is explored more closely. The increased use of 'professionalism' in new and existing occupational contexts is considered as a mechanism for facilitating and promoting social and occupational change. Many of these occupations provide services and often women constitute the bulk of the practitioners in these occupational groups. It is time to look again then at professionalism as a set of persuasive ideas or an ideology and to examine the power of these ideas and this discourse in terms of social order and control of occupational groups and individual 'professionalised' practitioners.
Introduction
It is sometimes claimed that professions, as a special (privileged) category of service-sector occupations, are in decline. Professions are perceived as under threat from organizational, economic and political changes (e.g. Crompton 1990; Greenwood and Lachman 1996; Reed 1996). They are portrayed as experiencing a reduction in autonomy and dominance (Freidson 1988; Mechanic 1991; Allsop and Mulcahy 1996; Harrison 1999; Harrison and Ahmad 2000), a decline in their abilities to exercise the occupational control of work (Freidson 1994), and a weakening of their abilities to act as self-regulating occupational groups (Macdonald 1995) able to enter into `regulative bargains' (Cooper et al. 1988) with states. Indeed others have discussed the end of professions as a particular form of social institution (Krause 1996; Broadbent, Dietrich and Roberts 1997; Stichweh 1997). Many of these claims focus on the medical profession (and sometimes the legal profession). The use of the discourse of professionalism in other occupational contexts is seldom addressed, however, yet it is this, which is providing a much more interesting challenge to social scientists.
Despite such claims of professional decline and fundamental changes to the social, economic and market contexts in which professionals work (Svensson 2000), nevertheless the discourse...