Continental sociologists did not contribute to the sociology of professions until the 1980s in part because no continental language developed indigenously a synonym for profession. Today, however, some continental sociologists are contributing to this literature, but they are inadvertently recapitulating within it the theories and concepts that for decades were applied to the middle classes more generally. This article explores why these theories and concepts revolve around cultural and social psychological variables, and why they neglect invariant structural qualities. The article concludes by proposing schematically a structural and institutional turn in the study of professions that distinguishes professions from middle-class occupations and reveals the consequences that professions uniquely introduced into civil society.

No abstract

AppendixReceived wisdom in the sociology of professions employs two approaches, a narrow socio-economic approach (largely in the Anglo-American world) and a much broader cultural and social-psychological approach (largely on the Continent). Both approaches agree on two points. First, professions cannot be distinguished at a conceptual level from other occupations. Second, whatever consequences either successful or failed professionalism introduces into civil society or state administration are confined to the occupational order and stratification system. They do not and cannot affect the direction of social change. The alternative approach outlined and discussed here is structural and institutional. With this approach we distinguish professions proper analytically from other occupations and we identify consequences of professionalism proper that uniquely reflect or anticipate notable shifts in the direction of social change.One consensus in the sociology of professions today is that professions are simply a type of status category in the occupational order and stratification system. They are no more significant than thousands of other occupations, which also confer statuses. Professions are not more distinctive socio-economically, nor culturally and social-psychologically -to say nothing of structurally and institutionally. Certainly, they are hardly capable of contributing (somehow) to "social order," let alone of doing so uniquely among

T HE SOCIOLOGY of professions has been controversial since its inception in the 1930s, and it remains controversial today. Where Max Weber had decades earlier presented an ideal type of bureaucracy that remains standard across the social sciences, there is no such ideal type of profession. We propose that by considering a pivotal, unambiguous case of occupational striving and simultaneous social and cultural uplift on the Continent during the last half of the 17th century, we disrupt and redirect the eight-decades-long trajectory of the sociology of professions. Only by taking such a step, we propose, can sociologists eventually identify the qualities constitutive of professions, and then identify in ideal-typical terms the place and purpose of professions in civil society in both historical and cross-national perspective. Overview: Trajectory of Sociology of ProfessionsFrom the 1930s through the 1970s, first British sociologists who followed the lead of Alexander Carr-Saunders and Paul Wilson (1933) and then American sociologists led by Talcott Parsons (1964 [1939]) endeavored to identify essential characteristics of professions, both universal and immutable. More than anyone else, Parsons appreciated the elusiveness of defining professions ideal-typically and yet he insisted on their centrality in modern societies. Across his career, he argued in various ways that the presence or absence of professions in civil society carries consequences for 'social order', for shifts in the direction of social change (Parsons and Platt, 1973).

No abstract