Content area
Full text
The Quest for Authority and Honor in the American Professions, 1750-1900. By Samuel Haber. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. xiv + 478 pp. $39.95, ISBN 0-226-31173-2.)
The Quest for Authority and Honor in the American Professions, 1750-1900, Samuel Haber's monumental work on the history of the professions in the United States, marks the maturation of a subspecialty in American intellectual history. Haber argues that the professions from 1750 to 1900 sought to conserve an archaic model of honor and authority that was repeatedly challenged by the twin developments of market capitalism and political democracy. This insistence on "the presence of the past" in regard to the political and ultimately economic functions of inherited authority is the book's greatest strength, for it promises to augment an already flourishing investigation of the historical nature of authority. Yet the book does not fulfill its promise.
Haber opposes both the neo-Weberian tradition in which professions epitomize processes of modernization and the neo-Marxian literature that, in his view, attempts to "dissolve history into theory." Haber argues that the subtler insights of both Karl Marx and Max Weber on the complexity of history, the cultural mediation of economy, and the contradictory aspects of authority and consent have been neglected. These charges amount to an argument against sociology, in favor of history, but Haber himself rejects the theoretical task. He appears instead to banish theory through appeal to two plain models or metaphors, one (the gentleman) defining the professional, one (the family) defining the professional's relations to...