Professionalization

Professionalization is the set of processes and strategies through which leaders in an occupation strive to obtain (and then maintain) professional status, authority, and privileges for occupational practitioners in a specific social-historical context. Because the term professionalization implies a trend toward a fixed end-point (full professional status), many scholars prefer the term professional project to emphasize that leaders may never achieve their ultimate goal; many professional projects fail. This entry explains what kinds of strategies have typically been utilized by aspiring professional groups seeking professional status. Further, it considers variations in the outcomes of professional projects across occupations, times, and places.

Scholars have distinguished between an Anglo American model of professionalization, which is more occupation driven, and a European model of profession creation, which is more state directed. Regardless of the location and time period, professionalization involves both occupational and state actors. Professional projects are most likely to succeed when the ambitions of a group of occupational leaders for greater status, autonomy, and authority coincide with (or at least do not run counter to) state actors' governance agendas.

Although the nature of professionalization varies, in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, occupational leaders typically organize and then endeavor to convince state actors and the public that they deserve status and privileges because of their extensive expertise. That is, aspiring professionals seek public patronage and state protection (from competition from the untrained) on the grounds that the services they provide are superior, and that the practice of untrained individuals not allied with the professionalizing group endangers public safety. In order to make an effective case, professional leaders draw on a variety of arguments; historically, claims to a broad education, scientific knowledge, ethical character, and even gender, race, and class background were utilized by professional leaders to demonstrate their importance. Today, claims respecting cost, access, equity, and specialized education are more prominent.

The first modern professions in many countries were medicine and law, which—although in existence centuries previously,—were redefined and reorganized in the late 18th and 19th centuries. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many other professions emerged, including dentistry, pharmacy, engineering, architecture, and accountancy. Others sought professional status but failed to achieve it (for example, barbers and embalmers). The status and claim to respectability of practitioners in most of these fields was originally ambivalent at best.

Nevertheless, leaders in each field campaigned to convince the public and state actors that the work they did was socially important and required considerable knowledge and skill. As part of these campaigns, leaders established advanced training programs and founded scholarly journals to facilitate knowledge transfer. They also pursued social closure strategies, which entailed restricting access to education, training opportunities, and, ultimately, practice to high-status individuals who could convincingly convey an image of respectability, expertise, and authority. Historically, most successful professions were practiced by middle- and upper-class white men. Social closure mechanisms often explicitly excluded women and racial minorities, and, more implicitly (through the high cost of training), the poor. In recent decades, women have made inroads into many traditional professions and have been active in establishing new ones; nevertheless, social closure (processes of exclusion) by education and financial background are still common.

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