Professionalism

“In particular the last three decades show a double movement – away from antimarket elements in professional organization and ideology, and toward a more exclusive emphasis on bonafide formal knowledge as the critical element in the constitution of professions. In so far as this is true, the professions show signs of consolidating around a narrower and more exclusive base. “Beginning in the 1960s, social trustee professionalism fell under increasing attack for its apparent lack of correspondence to the organizational realties of professional life. At the same time, a variety of forces – from the increasing importance of income as a status element in the general population to the population explosion within the professions – favored the rise of expert professionalism to a position of greater significance” (Brint, 39).