Theorising Professions by Edgar A Burns

Author:Edgar A Burns
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030279356
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

The idea of post-professional in analysing professions and professionalism has been used in the academic literature, but not so much by sociologists. Several literatures emerged in response to cracks in the previous functionalist hegemony of sociology of professions scholarship that replicated professions’ own beliefs and concerns. These addressed the complex process of rethinking explanations about professionals and professionalism . The terms post-professional and post-professionalism are used interchangeably rather than being used to make distinctions in the following discussion. It is scholars’ different applications of the terms that provide instructive contrasts in how they attempt to understand what is happening to professions.

Scholars in particular professions have been greatly invested in thinking about professions and professionalism , in the process employing multiple theoretical frameworks and not infrequently articulating ‘post’ perspectives (e.g. Mohanty 1991; Ball 1994). These draw leverage from the combination of perspectives like Lather (2004) or even critiquing the use of ‘post’ in relation to other ‘posts’ such as postmodernity. It is the common pressures on professional groups and theoretical reflection trying to articulate contemporary social change that has generated this post-professional reframing of professions and professionalism more than sociologists using this term.

The post-professional literature outlined in this chapter shows diversity in applying of the idea of post-professionalism. Innovative professions-based scholars making use of post-professionalism, such as Illich (1977), Hargreaves (Goodson and Hargreaves 1996; Hargreaves 2000), and Kritzer (1999), have been followed by others in the same or adjacent fields struggling to interpret professional change. Table 6.1 summarises selected concerns and themes writers have identified, some positive, some negative, across a range of fields over these several decades. The confusion of competing uses of the term post-professional confirms the tentative, provisional reach of theorising ‘what comes after’ the modernist confidence and rise to power of western elite professions in the first half of the twentieth century. The idea of post-professionalism, as in all socio-theoretic use of ‘post’ terminology, signifies a break from a prevailing hegemony into new unclear terrain. It also identifies continuing referencing if not engagement with the previously dominant structural and discursive formations and ideologies about modern professions and their projects.Table 6.1Selected post-professional literature themes

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