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The Professions in Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Everett C. Hughes
Everett C. Hughes*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

“The Recent History of Professionalism in Relation to Social Structure and Social Policy” by T. H. Marshall was published by this Journal twenty years ago. It has since become a classic; and may be fittingly celebrated in this anniversary issue. Its classic quality lies in the skill with which Marshall worked enduring themes with current trends and problems into a common web. He defines professions as, in effect and with some other characteristics, those occupations in which caveat emptor cannot be allowed to prevail and which, while they are not pursued for gain, must bring their practitioners income of such a level that they will be respected and such a manner of living that they may pursue the life of the mind. There are certain problems which surround such occupations in all times.

The current changes noted by Marshall are the ever greater dependence of modern society upon professional services, an increase in the variety of such services and in the number of the professions, and the tendency for many practitioners of the older professions and for most or all of some newer professions to work in organizations with an employer, rather than to set up a shop to which clients come, one by one, are served, and pay for the service. He also noted that while the community at large is in all times and places concerned with the manner in which professional services are performed, this is especially so in our times; indeed, the community at large is the client of some new professions and, in increasing measure, of older ones.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , February 1960 , pp. 54 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1960

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References

1 V, no. 3, Aug., 1939, 325–40.

2 The Principles of Sociology (London, 1896), XI, chap. 1.Google Scholar Spencer, Comte, Bagehot, and others of the period, wrote in two moods: in one they presented pretentious theories of social evolution; in the other, they commented sharply and sometimes passionately on the affairs of their day. The work of such men is often completely misunderstood because the notebooks used by graduate students contain the pretentious theories, and those only in brief caricature, but not the more timely discussions and the ideas and theories implicit in them.

3 De la division du travail social, Préface à la deuxième édition (Paris, 1902)Google Scholar, “Quelques Remarques sur les groupements professionels.”

4 Laski had lately argued this point in Harper's Magazine, as Marshall observes.

5 Professional People (London, 1952).Google Scholar

6 Carr-Saunders, A. M. and Wilson, P. A., The Professions (Oxford, 1933).Google Scholar

7 Oswald Hall did one of the pioneer studies in this field, “The Organization of Medical Practice in an Eastern City,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1944.Google Scholar Solomon, David N. pursued certain aspects of the same problems in his Ph.D. dissertation, “Career Contingencies of Chicago Physicians,” University of Chicago, 1952.Google Scholar

8 See Reitzes, Dietrich, Negroes in Medicine (Cambridge, Mass., 1958).Google Scholar

9 Stuttgart, 1956. Arbeit und Beruf, by Scharmann, Theodor (Tübingen, 1956)Google Scholar is perhaps the best recent German general book on this whole matter.

10 Tübingen, 1954.

11 Die freien Berufe, 124. Deneke compiled a series of tables from the 1950 census of occupations in Western Germany. As one would expect, certain specialties in medicine, law, and other occupations are practised independently more often than others. The newer technical professions are predominantly not independent. The age differences in medicine and law may be due to a secular trend which takes effect first on the young, or it may be due in part to the fact that in some professions a young man must work for older men or in agencies for a long time before he is able to get a private practice.

12 See Field, Mark G., The Soviet Physician (Cambridge, Mass., 1958).Google Scholar Also his “Structured Strain in the Role of the Soviet Physician,” American Journal of Sociology, LVIII, 03, 1953, 493–502.Google Scholar

13 Carlin, Jerome E., “The Lawyer as Individual Practitioner: A Study in the Professions,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 1959.Google Scholar Carlin compared a sample of lawyers in one-man offices with others.

14 “Industrial Medicine: A Low-Status Branch of a Profession,” unpublished Master's thesis, University of Chicago, 1958.Google Scholar