Rapidly Growing Professions and Social Closure : Conditions, Consequences and Counter-Movements

• Students of the history of professions are likely to observe in their profession(s) of choice one or more major quantitative leaps when the number of practitioners set off in an exponential pattern. The growth of the welfare state after WWII, for instance, gave rise to such patterns both in the established professions and in the then burgeoning semi-professions. Growth rates with similar time-shapes occur in other historical contexts, driven by state commitment, market expansion, or other forces. In this paper we explore the relation between professional expansion and social closure. We focus on those mechanisms which are concomitant with expansion and arise as a reaction within the jurisdictional fields of rapidly expanding professions. But expansion does not only strengthen the position of such professions – it also lead to changes in task structures, in aspirations for more highly valued tasks, and encourages new divisions of labour among occupational categories in the fields, including the new “kids on the block” . We will analyse the effects of professional “take-offs” after WW2 as a key example, although the main focus of the paper is theoretical.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Sociology

Sociologi

Sociologi – utbildningsvetenskaplig inriktning

Sociology Education

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