Professions in Civil Society and the State: Invariant Foundations and Consequences

Professions in Civil Society and the State

International Studies in Sociology and Social Anthropology Series Editor

David Sciulli, Texas A&M University Editorial Board

Vincenzo Cicchelli, Cerlis, Paris Descartes-CNRS Benjamin Gregg, University of Texas at Austin Carsten Q. Schneider, Central European University Budapest

VOLUME 110

Professions in Civil Society and the State Invariant Foundations and Consequences

David Sciulli

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2009

Cover illustration: Picture and Drawing Vendors, Piazza Navona, Rome, July 2004. Photograph by David Sciulli. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Detailed Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available on the Internet at http://catalog.loc.gov

ISSN 0074-8684 ISBN 978 90 04 17831 1 Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints BRILL, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................ 1 SECTION I the professions literature today 1. Approaches and Debates from 1930s to Today...........................19 2. The Situation on the Continent.....................................................49 SECTION II professionalism outside historical and contemporary pools 3. The Paris Visual Académie .......................................................... 75 4. Corporate Governance and Delaware Courts...........................113 5. Reflections, Analyses, Appraisals................................................149 SECTION III a structural and institutional approach 6. Professions and Structured Situations .......................................179 7. Independent Socio-Cultural Authority of Professionalism .............................................................................225 8. Consequences of Professionalism, Immediate and Institutional ...................................................................................243 9. Fiducial Responsibilities of Professionalism .............................293 10. Occupational Orientations of Professionalism: “Dividing Line” in the Occupational Order ..............................317 11. Additional Constitutive Qualities: Profession Governance, Behavior, Shared Cognition .................................349 12. Drawing Distinctions: Structural Qualities, Illustrations and a Rereading.............................................................................403 References................................................................................................461 Index ........................................................................................................475

INTRODUCTION Lawyers and doctors, scientists and engineers do not always and everywhere provide expert services in the same or commensurable ways. In some societies, both historically and today, “professional” associations (as well as state agencies) openly accommodate corruption within the occupational order, as manifested in favoritism, opportunism or caprice. In other societies, professional associations proper typically act with greater integrity, truly “professionally.” Because professional behavior is obviously a variable, both historically and cross-nationally today, it is futile to define professions directly in terms of the programmatic or substantive-normative behavior – the qualitative everyday behavior – of lawyering, doctoring, or any other occupational livelihood. It is futile, for instance, to distinguish professions from other occupations in terms of whether practitioners adhere behaviorally to any particular standard of “integrity” which is directly programmatic or substantive normative. Any such standard of behavior will happen to be accepted in one or a few societies but not others. Or it will happen to be accepted during a given period of time but not earlier or later.1 Likewise, it is equally futile to distinguish professions by the occupational tasks practitioners perform in substance, or for that matter by the particular occupational fields in which practitioners earn their livelihoods. The field of law, for instance, does not always and everywhere yield professionalism projects, whether historically or today. Moreover, professionalism was simply not possible in medicine, science or engineering until around the turn of the twentieth century. However, it nonetheless does matter always and everywhere, first structurally and then institutionally, whether any occupational field of a certain type – any which contains what we call structured situations – professionalizes or fails to do so. Indeed, we will see that the major consequences of professionalism, as well as of failed professionalism, are invariant, and precisely because they are structural in source. For this 1 On substantive norms and procedural norms, see Chapter 1, pages 22–26, and Chapter 9.

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same reason, these consequences can be readily explained historically and described today, and they are also readily predictable looking forward. There are four sets of questions any credible sociology of professions fairly may be expected to answer: – What is a profession? In what specific ways does a profession differ from other expert occupations and middle-class occupations? If professions are distinct, why does popular parlance, particularly in English-speaking lands, refer to hundreds or thousands of occupational practitioners as “professionals:” from prostitutes to entertainment and sports figures, to chefs and couturiers, to doctors and lawyers? Why, on the other hand, does received opinion on the continent (and elsewhere) cast professionalism in insidious terms, as narrowly instrumental or “expert” and thus invariably disrupting of valued communal or national practices? – What is the source of professional power? Is this source a variable, such that it evolves historically and differs cross-nationally today? Or is it invariant across time and place? – Why does professional instruction invariably include an abstract, theoretical or liberal component rather than being exclusively applied, vocational or mechanical? Is abstraction a clever way of restricting professional entry, a mere ploy in establishing and consolidating unwarranted monopolies in the labor market for expert services? Or is abstraction in professional instruction vital always and everywhere to professional activities and responsibilities? – What are the consequences of successful professionalism, and of stillborn or failed professionalism projects? Are these consequences immediate or also longer-term? Are they strictly socio-economic, restricted to the occupational order and stratification system, or do they reverberate far more broadly across society, thereby affecting the direction of social change? In answering these questions, any credible sociology of professions needs to draw sharp distinctions, at once analytical and also empirically fruitful, between professions and other occupations. It needs also to identify unambiguously why such distinctions matter, whether narrowly socio-economically or more broadly, institutionally. Moreover, these two requirements of any credible sociology of professions are ultimately interrelated. After all, if the consequences of successful professionalism, or of regressions or failures, are short-term and restricted or insignificant,

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then it hardly matters whether bright-line distinctions between professions and other occupations are drawn, or can be drawn. 1. Two Sources of Today’s Controversy and Disarray The sociology of professions has been controversial since its inception in the 1930s and it remains controversial today. Decades earlier, at the turn of the century, Max Weber had presented an ideal type of bureaucracy which even today remains the standard against which social scientists describe and explain changes in formal organizations. In the sociology of professions, however, no ideal type is available. Indeed, there is today no standard definition of professions, or for that matter any conceptual approach to professionalism which sociologists apply generally across Western societies, let alone to societies of the East and South. To the contrary, many sociologists today question the need to distinguish professions from larger, generic categories, such as “expert occupations” or “middle class occupations.” We can trace the origins of today’s controversies in the sociology of professions, including this definitional and conceptual disarray, to two related problems. One is insufficient abstraction and the other is Whiggish historiography. Across the entire eighty years of its trajectory, from the 1930s to today, all contributors to the sociology of professions – including Talcott Parsons and other functionalists – theorized professions with insufficient abstraction. Even as they seemingly proposed ideal types (during the 1960s) or provided analytical distinctions (during the 1970s), they were essentially operating at a more primitive level of abstraction, that of empirical generalizations. Unlike ideal types and analytical distinctions, empirical generalizations are incapable of claiming epistemic grounding against the relativism of particular cases and particular interpretations of them. As a result, empirical generalizations are also incapable of yielding cumulative findings across time and space; they are instead prone to constant adjustment in concept formation, as new developments and evidence on the ground come to light. Equally troubling, empirical generalizations are prone to inconsistency or incommensurability in empirical application, such that “new” developments and evidence literally can elude shared recognition and understanding by social scientists. Wilfred Prest, an historian of English law, puts the matter bluntly – but also, regrettably, with a readiness simply to accommodate this

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received state of affairs as opposed to appreciating why greater conceptual rigor matters. “It would be excessively pedantic to exclude [estate stewards and schoolteachers] from a survey of early modern professions on the grounds that they do not conform to twentieth century notions of what constitutes a profession, especially since the term and concept have in fact no single agreed contemporary definition.”2 Making matters worse, from the 1930s to today sociologists of professions have been generalizing empirically about professions through a flawed prism. They have been taking their bearings from a remarkably shallow pool of four modern exemplars of professionalism: law and medicine, science and engineering. To be sure, there are thousands of studies of occupations, and scores of occupations rightly qualify as professions. Moreover, one can find a scholar or journalist who refers to literally any occupation as a profession; prostitution, after all, is routinely called the oldest one. However, rarely if ever does a sociologist of professions consider any occupation outside of law and medicine as providing an exemplar of early or originating professionalism. The pool of earliest historical exemplars is shallow in that it is confined along three dimensions: occupational, geographic and historical. Sociologists have been drawing empirical generalizations about the historical origins of professionalism from occupational and organizational developments: in law, in Great Britain and the United States, during the mid- or late nineteenth century. They then supplement these empirical generalizations with others drawn from later developments in medicine, from the turn of the twentieth century forward, and then also with still others drawn from modern science and engineering. Here the range of exemplars also broadens somewhat geographically, extending from the Anglo-American world to the continent. However, originating professionalism is then associated with quickening industrialization and, as a result, with the modernizing economies, states and societies accompanying industrialization. With all of this in mind, sociologists have been assuming, seemingly benignly because it appears self-evidently established by the historiographic record, that mid- and late nineteenth century Britain and then the United States provided the literal seedbeds of professionalism. Given this prevailing assumption, it has been an easy matter for sociologists likewise to assume that professionalism is associated intrinsically with 2

Prest 1987b:15.

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three constituent characteristics of Anglo-American modernity: not only (relative) economic liberalism amidst industrialization but also (relative) political liberalism and cultural dominion by the middle classes (as opposed to the landed or urban aristocracy) in civil society.3 Notwithstanding efforts by Talcott Parsons and a few others (including Harold Wilensky and Joseph Ben-David) to introduce greater abstraction into the sociology of professions, sociologists manifestly failed to match Weber’s conceptual contribution to the sociology of formal organizations. They failed to provide any widely acknowledged ideal type. They also failed, despite Parsons’ yeoman efforts here, to identify any widely acknowledged set of analytical distinctions or qualities putatively constitutive of professions exclusively. As a result, sociologists failed to define professions and professionalism on any invariant basis, on any basis that could resist or overcome the relativism intrinsic to simply generalizing from historical and cross-national cases through a prism preset by four modern exemplars. To the contrary, “theory” in this sub-discipline not only remained ultimately case driven. Worse, because all cases were (and today remain) identified and considered only through the prism preset by the shallow pool of exemplars, “theory” in the sociology of professions remains pitched at the rather modest level of empirical generalizations. This level of analysis simultaneously reflects and perpetuates both the shallow pool and case relativism. More abstract theorizing is nonetheless possible, and an analytical turn, as Parsons in particular well appreciated, is far more promising of advancing the sociology of professions than any continuing quest for an ideal type. In truth, ideal types elude most areas of social inquiry: aside from the one of bureaucracy, there is also an ideal type of religion (from Durkheim). But there is no ideal type, as examples, of family or of daughter-mother or son-father relationships more particularly. There is none of community and neighborhood, or of cultural values (other than religion) and social norms, or for that matter of democracy (or authoritarianism). An abstract, analytical turn is more promising in the sociology of professions, as well as in the other areas just noted, not only because it 3 As examples, from Parsons 1939 (1964) to Freidson 1970:335–58,363–82 and then to Halliday and Karpik 1997. To his credit, a mature Parsons worded this putative relationship a bit more abstractly, insisting that professionalism contributes uniquely to what he called “institutionalized individualism.” We will see, however, that a sociocultural context of individualism is no more constitutive of professionalism than a socio-cultural context of liberalism, whether economic or political.

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can be applied fruitfully to any area of sociology lacking a widely acknowledged ideal type. An analytical turn is also more promising because, when done properly, it results in concept invariance, in concept “grounding” against case relativism. Any set of analytical distinctions or qualities truly constitutive of professionalism (or of family or any other sociological category), after all, is invariant by definition: The same analytical qualities will be in evidence (to greater or lesser degrees) in any and all instances of professionalism, both historical and crossnational. Put differently, being constitutive and thus invariant, analytical qualities are capable of identifying professions at a categorical level, universally and immutably, among all other occupations. There is a second problem with the sociology of professions, as noted above, and it is related to this sub-discipline’s lack of sufficient abstraction. By default of any invariant mooring at a conceptual level, crude empirical generalizations continue to orient the identification and then analysis of cases, of putative instances of professionalism, both crossnational and historical. The quotation from historian Prest attests to this. That is, whenever sociologists (and then historians) endeavor to identify those occupational developments historically which might qualify as professionalism projects they reflexively do so through the remarkably narrow confines of the prism noted earlier, a prism moored strictly and solely by the shallow pool of exemplars itself. The result is a hermeneutic circle of sorts which is literally self-regulating and selfperpetuating. Strictly phenomenal contexts of modernity which happened to accompany the exemplars literally delimit the sorts of cases thought worthy of studying subsequently, going forward; simultaneously, they delimit which primary historiographic documents are approached and then how they are read and interpreted. For instance, because nineteenth century Anglo-American law is assumed to have yielded the first professionalism projects, sociologists dutifully confine their historiographic inquiries into originating professionalism anywhere else in the West to the field of law. That is, they seek the earliest instances of legal professionalism in France, Germany, Italy, or elsewhere and, invariably, they always find, and correctly so, that these instances of professionalism lagged behind those in England and the United States.4 Sociologists then supplement all 4 See Karpik 1995; Bell 1997; Blankenburg and Schultz 1988; Jarausch 1990a; Ledford 1990, 1997; McClelland 1990; Siegrist 1989, 1990b; Rueschemeyer 1997; Mazzacane 1995; and Olgiati and Pocar 1988.

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such case findings by doing the same thing, secondarily, in the field of medicine, the other occupational field in which modern professionalism happened to unfold most unambiguously but always somewhat later. As a result of operating with relativist empirical generalizations rather than invariant analytical distinctions (or any ideal type), sociologists simply continue to seek the rise of professionalism historically only as far back in time as available documentary evidence in law, and then medicine, permits. Or, alternatively, as Prest advises, they throw open the floodgates. They treat every instance of occupational striving – in any field – as a possible manifestation of professionalism.5 This not only destroys any possibility of hitting upon an ideal type of professions proper; it makes an analytical turn futile and, worse, irrelevant. If the term “professionalism” can be applied to any instance of occupational striving, why bother to distinguish professions from other occupations at all, let alone on any invariant basis? In both cases, the result is the same: these two lines of inquiry skew at the outset how the historiographic record is approached and then, as a result, how the documentary evidence is read and interpreted. This sort of Whiggish historiography – only law possibly could have originated professionalism anywhere historically, if not today – shields the shallow pool of exemplars from effective challenge. In this way the hermeneutic circle closes, sheltered securely from case challenges of any kind. Whiggish historiography enshrines the phenomenal and relativist empirical generalizations drawn first and foremost from the received pool of modern exemplars because these generalizations are then simply read back into history – irrespective of what historiographic documents contain in any occupational fields outside the four exemplars.

5 Thus, Abbott takes seriously the “professionalism” projects of palm readers and other spiritualists at the turn of the twentieth century, whom he calls “psychological mediums” (1988:29). And we saw above that Prest takes seriously the “professionalism” of early-modern estate stewards and schoolteachers (1987b:15). More recently, others take seriously all sorts of “professionalism” projects, including those of: French landscape designers and industrial designers (Champy 2006), German schoolteachers (Jarausch 1990a), electricians and plumbers (Evetts 2006:134), entrepreneurs and artists, innovators and “infotainers” (Kreutzer 2003), business consultants (Luzio 2006), teachers, nurses, health and social workers, civil servants, and local authority officials (Gleeson and Knights 2006), and Swedish political “professionals” in government and bureaucracy, political parties and labor unions (Brante 1990).

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2. Today’s Received Wisdom: A Syllogism of Professionalism Taking both problems together we see why a seemingly benign but nonetheless faulty syllogistic reasoning skews and distorts first historical research and then theorizing in the sociology of professions. The major premise of the syllogism is a projection of Whiggish historiography, falsely reading the context and characteristics of modern legal professionalism back into all earlier occupational orders. This is not seen as distorting – Whiggish – but instead seems self-evidently consistent with the available historiographic record. But this only seems self-evident because the historiographic record is approached through the prism grounded solely in the shallow pool of modern exemplars. Seeming self-evident, this major premise is simply upgraded unalloyed to a conceptual or theoretical level of analysis: Professionalism originated historically in British law and then American law; it did not originate earlier in law anywhere else and, certainly, it did not originate in any other occupational field anywhere, let alone centuries earlier. Moreover, there is also a standard backup to this major premise, which further shelters the latter from case challenge: If professionalism did not originate in mid-nineteenth century British law, then surely it was first consolidated in medicine somewhat later, during the turn of the coming century. That is, the most promising early trajectories of occupational upgrading are indeed confined to law.6 After all, literally no one argues seriously that medicine earlier could have taken the lead here, to say nothing of science and engineering preceding law.7 Given this major premise, at once sweeping yet seemingly self-evident and thus benign, sociologists are predisposed at a conceptual level to proceed not simply with one minor premise but four, all of which 6 Actually, very few historians and sociologists mention occupational developments in medieval law, including canon law, and even they do so in passing (eg. Burrage 1990a:16–17, citing James Brundage). They never elaborate on why canon law instruction and practice, or any other pre-modern instructional and occupational developments are salient in theorizing professionalism today and since the nineteenth century. 7 Prest asserts the reverse, but only in passing, namely that medical, scientific and technological occupations were exemplars of professionalism, not law (1987c:85). The problem is he cites no references in support of this reading of occupational history, whether from the secondary literature or from historical documents. Magali Larson had keyed originally on medicine in her 1977 revisionist challenge to Parsons’ sociology of professions, as did Paul Starr in 1982. But from the 1980s to today Larson keys on law (1989,1990) and architecture (1993) and, correctly, she regrets her earlier focus on medicine.

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seem mutually reinforcing. A first minor premise, which is indeed correct, is that any early trends toward legal professionalism on the continent were invariably fledgling at best as compared those in British law, and frequently unsuccessful (in Germany, France and Italy). A second minor premise, however, is patently false, as we will see: no other early occupation on the continent, and certainly none during the ancien régime, whether artisanal, learned or merchant, could possibly have professionalized before British law, let alone two centuries earlier. Given the major premise about English law and first two minor premises, sociologists (and historians) of professions have already effectively closed off any good reason to comb the historiographic record looking for possible predecessors to English legal professionalism in other occupations on the continent. More generally, they certainly have closed off any good reason to search historiographic documents for exemplars of originating professionalism in any occupations outside the shallow pool of modern exemplars, law and medicine, science and engineering. This explains why sociologists (and historians) simply do not consider the possibility that the earliest professionalism projects might well have originated empirically in occupational fields entirely unrelated to any of the four just noted. The result is Whiggish historiography, as we noted earlier, and then also the prism which distorts cross-national analyses of modern occupational developments. Whiggish historiography results because particular characteristics of modern occupational orders are simply read back into history. It is assumed that these characteristics remain salient across the centuries, rather than reading the historical record of occupational orders of the ancien régime on its own terms, independently of whatever happened to unfold occupationally centuries later. In turn, distorted cross-national analyses also result when sociologists endeavor to identify modern professionalism projects on the continent (or in civil law countries of the East and South), those from the turn of the twentieth century to today. The same seemingly benign syllogistic reasoning orients these inquiries as well. Sociologists approach all cases of possible professionalism outside the Anglo-American world through the major and minor premises already preset by Anglo-American law and then secondarily by three other modern exemplars. Going still further, the same syllogistic reasoning moves sociologists of professions, however reluctantly at times, to yet a third seemingly self-evident, thus benign, minor premise. They are confident that professionalism is (somehow) linked intrinsically on the ground to

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industrialization and (relative) economic liberalism, (relative) political liberalism and, most important, the rise and consolidation of middleclass (Bürgerlichkeit) cultural dominance in civil society, succeeding that of the aristocracy. Professionalism seems linked intrinsically, that is, to a particular gestalt of economy, state and society which was simply not available during the ancien régime. As a result of this third minor premise, the scholarly study of professions becomes embedded within a contextual gestalt of appearances which seems deeper than this, seemingly grounded epistemically rather than phenomenal, merely coincidental. The contextual gestalt now seems invariant with the rise and consolidation professionalism, seems constitutive of professionalism as such. We will see, however, that this contextual gestalt is strictly phenomenal and coincidental, not essential or constitutive. It is comprised of a set of variables which simply happened to accompany British legal professionalism. This gestalt is hardly evident in, let alone salient in or constitutive of, all instances of professionalism always and everywhere, whether historically or today. One unfortunate but inexorable result of this third minor premise is that, with it, the sociology of professions was dragged for a time into the domain of political (and economic) sociology on intrinsically shaky grounds, on false premises. Not only did these false premises complicate the effort, within the sociology of professions, to identify the place and purpose of professions in modern civil societies. These same false premises literally invited, for a brief period from the late 1960s to the late 1970s, ideological interpretations and equally ideological criticisms of professions. The whole debate was ideological because professionalism was wrongly associated with liberalism at a conceptual level too crude to defend with reasons, that of empirical generalizations. Professions were interpreted and criticized as contributing to “bourgeois society,” if not “liberal democracy,” and thus to “conservative” or “elitist” outcomes in the occupational order and stratification system. All of this was unfortunate but inexorable because the third minor premise not only closes off any possibility of professionalism taking root during the ancien régime, before the contextual gestalt became available. It also leads to a prediction about professionalism future, first articulated by Terence Johnson in 1972 (see Chapter 6), which seems equally “inescapable:” Professionalism will invariably wither away as the same contextual gestalt of early liberalism gives way to

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any succeeding gestalt of economy, state and society, including that of welfare states and that of post-industrial societies. Thus, professionalism is assumed to be threatened (somehow) intrinsically – ontologically – as industrialization gives way to information societies or as economic and political liberalism give way to greater state intrusiveness. Instead of moving to a more abstract level of analysis and thereby revealing whether there is any invariant relationship between professionalism and the larger social order, historians and sociologists of professions instead have treated the profession-social order relationship as self-evident, given the contextual gestalt of appearances in the Anglo-American world. With this, we arrive at a fourth and final premise in the syllogistic reasoning of received wisdom in the sociology of professions. It seems obvious that successful – ongoing – professionalism projects contributed (somehow) to Anglo-American liberalism, and then later, particularly after World War II, contributed to liberalism on the continent (and elsewhere). Because historians and sociologists of professions simply point to the contextual gestalt of appearances in support of this fourth premise, they never feel particularly compelled to identify the structural and institutional consequences of professionalism more abstractly, analytically. They defer instead to a faulty empirical generalization, whose only support is Whiggish historiography and a distorting prism. In turn, failing to identify these consequences at a conceptual level, the issue of whether and how either successful or failed professionalism today contributes to economic or political liberalism in the East and South is lost from sight entirely. Indeed, today the professionssocial order relationship is simply no longer a topic of interest in the enormous and contentious literature of comparative democratization (from O’Donnell, Schmitter and Whitehead in 1986 to the most recent theories and studies).8 Yet we will see that the relationship between professionalism and institutional design is structural and, for this reason, invariant across place and time, and thus eminently predictable. 8 Recent works include the following influential contributions: Collier and Levitsky 1997; Diamond 1999; Schedler, Diamond and Plattner 1999; Bunce 2000; O’Donnell, Cullell and Iazzetta 2004; Schneider and Schmitter 2004; Merkel 2004; and Morlino 2005.

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introduction 3. The Situation Today: Irrelevance, Ethnocentrism and Cultural Imperialism

One result or outcome of today’s received wisdom in the sociology of professions is, of course, the conclusion to the syllogism just described. Because professionalism seems to be associated intrinsically with a particular contextual gestalt of economy, state and society, a case can be made, seemingly credibly, that professionalism today is in irreversible decline. No longer accompanied by the contextual gestalt of its founding but instead by information societies and welfare states, professionalism no longer seems interrelated, let alone (somehow) intrinsically so, with mature liberal democracy. Instead, the sociology of professions is increasingly being treated, from Andrew Abbott’s System of Professions in 1988 to today, as a rather minor sub-discipline in an unexciting field of sociology, that of work and occupations. The sociology of professions is no longer associated in the slightest respect with comparative sociology and, more particularly, comparative democratization. This turn of events came about because irrespective of the sociology of professions’ numerous internal controversies, this entire field of theory, research and inquiry has never been able to break out of the remarkably constricting confines of its origins in the 1930s, at once historiographic, empirical and conceptual. Our point at the moment is hardly to elaborate now on why the relationship between professionalism and what we will call institutional design is invariant, constitutive of professionalism as such. Our point is that the very foundations of the sociology of professions from the 1930s to today account for sociologists’ longstanding failure to distinguish professions from other expert and middle class occupations at a conceptual level. Sociologists fail to identify the analytical and then empirical qualities constitutive of professionalism as such. As a result of this failure, they then also fail to identify any invariant structural and institutional consequences of professionalism. Only by taking steps toward greater abstraction can sociologists possibly overcome both failures. Only greater abstraction can bring into view a conceptual approach to professionalism that is truly generalizable, applicable empirically across time as well as in cross-national analyses today. Only a truly generalizable sociology of professions, in turn, can reveal for the first time the centrality of professionalism not only to work and occupations, to the occupational order and

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stratification system, but also to the institutional design of the larger social order and its trajectories of change. Precisely because steps toward sufficient abstraction have not been taken in Anglo-American theories of professionalism, including those by Parsons, continental sociologists continue routinely to consider the eight decade-long effort to identify professions to be an idiosyncratically Anglo-American exercise, one which is intrinsically ethnocentric, ideological or both. This was in fact the default position of European sociology up to the 1980s (see Chapters 1–2). Even today the late Pierre Bourdieu went even further, proposing that the very term profession is itself a manifestation of “Anglo-Saxon cultural imperialism.”9 Unfortunately, received wisdom in the sociology of professions is indeed vulnerable to all of these dismissals and charges. After all, there is not a single study in the sociology of professions in which it is argued explicitly that qualities constitutive of professionalism may be traced to any occupational and organizational developments which originated on the continent, as opposed to originating in Great Britain (and then the United States). There is also not a single study that seeks analytical qualities constitutive of professionalism in any expert occupations other than law in particular and then medicine secondarily. In addition, sociologists have certainly never endeavored seriously to trace the origins of professionalism further back into history, into the ancien régime and the seventeenth century or earlier – well prior to the advent of the contextual gestalt discussed above. We propose that by breaking away entirely from today’s received wisdom, beginning first and foremost with its shallow pool of modern exemplars, we can finally overcome the conceptual defects and disarray of the sociology of professions. We can finally distinguish professions analytically from all other occupations, including all other expert occupations and middle-class occupations. In addition, we can also explain and predict the trajectory of professionalism projects, whether historically or today, and we can identify the invariant structural and institutional consequences for any social order of either successful or failed professionalism projects. We break from the shallow pool of modern exemplars by introducing into the sociology of professions two pivotal cases of professionalism not heretofore considered, one historical, the other contemporary

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Bourdieu and Wacquant 1998:197–98 note 40.

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and ongoing. Because our historical case unfolds on the continent, during the ancien régime, in an occupational field entirely unrelated to law and medicine, it jettisons at its core all three confines of the received pool of modern exemplars: geographic, historical and occupational. By challenging the very underpinnings of received wisdom so directly and unambiguously, our historical case alone, in itself, shatters the prism we noted earlier. It literally compels a wholesale rethinking of the qualities constitutive of professions. That is, by providing empirical counterexamples so dramatically different from Anglo-American law and so utterly incompatible with the latter’s contextual gestalt tied to industrialization, our historical case invites – demands – greater abstraction in conceptualizing professionalism. After all, on its face, it forces us to conceptualize professionalism entirely independently of the contextual gestalt which simply happened to accompany British legal professionalism. As we accomplish this we arrive at a new conceptual framework, one which is more abstract than any provided by Parsons or his critics. This is what permits us finally to distinguish professions analytically from all other occupations. The same conceptual framework also enables us to describe and explain in a new light all later instances of professionalism, including occupational developments in Great Britain and the United States and in the four modern exemplars from the nineteenth century forward. In turn, our contemporary case of professionalism, still unfolding today, invites us to employ our new conceptual framework prospectively, not simply retrospectively to the historiographic record. The trajectory of this ongoing professionalism project is subject to change and, of course, its outcome is uncertain. One result of applying our new conceptual framework to this case is nonetheless startling. While the outcome of this (or any other) contemporary case of professionalism is uncertain, we are nonetheless able to predict and explain the structural and institutional consequences of any outcome. Being structural, and only then institutional, these consequences are invariant – even as institutional designs vary today and evolve over time. This is why we are able to predict and explain the structural, and then institutional, consequences of either successful (ongoing) or failed professionalism in this case (and others like it) for any gestalt of economy, state and society. Stating our point more generally, our two cases do not simply disrupt and redirect the eight decade-long trajectory of the sociology of

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professions. More important, our cases permit us to identify for the first time the characteristics, first analytical and then empirical which are constitutive of professionalism as such. Being constitutive, these characteristics are invariant: They have been in evidence in all professionalism projects historically, remain in evidence in all professionalism projects today, and will be in evidence in all professionalism projects in the future – all irrespective of these projects’ contextual gestalts, the types of economy, state and society in which they happen to unfold. Equally important, our cases also permit us for the first time to identify with specificity the invariant structural, and then institutional, consequences of either ongoing or failed professionalism. Our historical case is one of unambiguous prototype professionalism on the continent during the last half of the seventeenth century. We propose that the successful prototype professionalism project undertaken by the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris exceeded by far not only any and all contemporary occupational developments in law (to say nothing of medicine, science and engineering). It also exceeded by far all later developments in any occupational field, including law and medicine, for two full centuries to come, until literally the turn of the twentieth century. We also propose that successful prototype professionalism in French painting enervated structurally, thus completely inadvertently, the institutional design of the day, that of an aristocratic society and dynastic state. In turn, our case of contemporary professionalism, whose trajectory is subject to change and whose outcome is uncertain, is that unfolding today in the corporate governance of publicly traded corporations in the United States. We propose that this ongoing professionalism project is currently introducing inadvertent structural consequences into a quite different institutional design: a liberal-democratic, economically competitive, middle class society. We propose that only by considering each of these instances of professionalism in their respective contextual gestalts, one historical, the other contemporary, can sociologists finally identify the qualities constitutive of professionalism as such. Sociologists can then, in turn, identify on an analytically reliable basis the place and purpose of professions in civil society. They can thereby describe and explain with specificity the historical and cross-national differences and similarities of particular instances of occupational and organizational upgrading in civil society.

SECTION I the professions literature today

CHAPTER ONE

APPROACHES AND DEBATES FROM 1930s TO TODAY From the publication in 1933 of The Professions by Alexander CarrSaunders and Paul Wilson through the 1970s the sociology of professions remained a largely Anglo-American enterprise. European social scientists rarely if ever contributed to this line of inquiry and theorizing (for reasons we identify momentarily). The early literature was developed most notably by works of Talcott Parsons but it also included influential theoretical statements by Harold Wilensky and Eliot Friedson as well as major studies of British professionalism, historical and contemporary, by William Reader and Geoffrey Millerson.1 In all of these works and hundreds more, English-speaking sociologists and historians endeavored to identify putatively essential characteristics of professions. They did so with the goal of eventually formulating an ideal type of profession, a universal and immutable definition or standard which distinguishes these occupations from all others. Parsons stands out in this early literature because he, more than anyone else, appreciated that greater abstraction was needed if professions were possibly to be distinguished from other occupations. He correctly saw that it was futile to seek an ideal type simply by generalizing piecemeal from contemporary and historical cases of professionalism on the ground. If professions are to be distinguished from other occupations at a conceptual level, this will have to be done more analytically, by identifying more abstract qualities or building blocks that are literally constitutive of professionalism as such, at all times and in all places. Only on the basis of invariant, analytical distinctions, Parsons believed, will it be possible also to identify the consequences of professionalism for “social order,” to discover whether and how professionalism affects the trajectory of social change.2

1 Parsons 1937b,1939,1952,1956; Wilensky 1964; Reader 1966; Millerson 1964; Freidson’s 1989 collection contains his major discussions of professions during the early 1960s. 2 T.H. Marshall saw professions performing the same macro-sociological or institutional function, of increasing orderliness in civil society.

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chapter one 1. Baseline: Parsons’ Approach and Two Core Tenets

Parsons’ early contributions were vital in increasing dramatically the theoretical sophistication of the emerging sociology of professions, which otherwise revolved around empirical generalizations. Yet, his most sophisticated analytical approach to professions and his most sustained effort to grasp the professions-social order relationship came rather late in his career, and also late in this initial phase of the professions literature. Only from the mid-1960s forward did Parsons arrive at his mature general social theory, the “AGIL schema.”3 It then took him a few more years to apply it explicitly to professions.4 Moreover, his most conceptually sophisticated use of the AGIL schema in discussing professions was not published until 1973, in a book co-authored with Gerald Platt.5 1.1 Functionalist Dyad: Essential Qualities, Distinctive Consequences It is not important for our purposes to review how and why Parsons’ approach to professions evolved over time. What is important is to appreciate that two core tenets animated Parsons’ sociology of professions across his entire career. One tenet was that professions and professionals are distinct, first analytically and then empirically, from all other expert occupations and their practitioners. The other core tenet was that the presence or absence of professions in civil society bears uniquely on “social order,” bears uniquely on the trajectory of social change. In defending the first tenet, Parsons pointed out, for instance, that professions and professionals uniquely bear fiducial responsibilities, an impersonal trust. In the case of practicing professionals, this typically manifests itself in taking responsibility for client wellbeing; in the case of academic professionals, it manifests itself in ongoing efforts to 3

Parsons 1963,1964. Parsons 1968b,1970. 5 Remarkably, none of the sociologists and historians discussed and cited below footnote, let alone discuss, this 1973 book. Indeed, few critics of Parsons bothered to read this book even though it contains his most elaborate discussion of professionalism. This happened because during the mid-1970s the entire initial phase of the sociology of professions was considered so wrongheaded, and ideological, that it was increasingly disregarded. Even today most contributions to the sociology of professions fail to cite the Parsons and Platt book. 4

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advance knowledge “rationally.” In both instances, professionals adopt a “service orientation” rather than acting strictly self-interestedly.6 Once Parsons developed his mature formulation of the AGIL schema, he employed it to elaborate further on this first core tenet. He proposed, now more analytically, that as academic and practicing professionals bear fiducial responsibilities, they exhibit fidelity to two substantive norms of behavior simultaneously. They exhibit technical “competence” in delivering expert services or in undertaking research and at the same time they exhibit “integrity” more generally. That is, they conduct themselves consistently with, rather than disregarding or affronting, “valued cultural patterns” in the larger civil society. One such value pattern of particular concern to professionals, Parsons held, is to exhibit “cognitive rationality” when advancing knowledge. All of this comes together in Parsons’ AGIL schema because the latter classifies competence as one of four analytical components of what is called the “cognitive complex” of modern culture.7 Because Parsons sees the university institutionalizing this entire complex most fully in modern civil societies his most elaborate mature comments on professions typically revolve around how he conceptualizes the place and purpose of universities. This accounts for the title of the Parsons and Platt collaboration, The American University. Looking simply at this brief description as a piece, we see clearly already that Parsons essentially recapitulates received wisdom in the sociology of professions, as described in the Introduction. He treats professionalism as a distinctly modern phenomenon, as the phrase “cognitive rationality” clearly conveys. Moreover, he seeks his theoretical bearings ultimately from occupational and instructional developments in the United States, the most “advanced” political democracy and liberal economy of the day. The United States, more than any European society, not only maintains a market economy but also revolves culturally around quintessentially middle-class (rather than lingering aristocratic) values and norms. Parsons is proposing, in short, that academic and practicing professionals bear fiducial responsibilities for upholding “valued cultural

6

Parsons likely took this phrase from T.H. Marshall. The other three components of the cognitive complex are knowledge, a cultural contribution from the adaptive subsystem of the cultural system; rational action, a type of social action guided by cognitive standards; and intelligence, a part of the general system of action anchored in the person. 7

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patterns” which turn out being unique to modern liberal-democracies. With this point of departure, Parsons elaborates somewhat on the two substantive norms of behavior which he believes broadly orient professionalism as such, always and everywhere: technical competence (in delivering expert services) and fiducial responsibility (for client wellbeing and advancing knowledge cognitive rationally). Parsons adds to this a secondary substantive-normative characteristic of professionalism which he believes accounts for professionals’ shared motivation to attain technical competence and to bear fiducial responsibility. He argues that during lengthy instruction and training professionals are re-socialized: they typically internalize motivations of “disinterestedness,” which is a substantive-normative guideline of behavior related to advancing knowledge cognitive rationally. 1.2 Substantive Norms and Cultural and Social-Psychological Approaches All of this means that Parsons’ central concepts in describing and explaining professionalism are all directly substantive normative. The term “substantive norms” refers to the personal beliefs and expectations which motivate people and the cultural understandings which orient people as they take actions and make decisions in their everyday lives. The importance individuals attach to their careers and the responsibilities they feel toward spouses and children are examples of substantive norms. Other examples include: whether people are motivated to work hard and expect co-workers to be similarly motivated, how they otherwise interact with co-workers, and where and how they spend their leisure time. Still other examples are: whether people are family-oriented, religious or otherwise spiritual, and whether they are patriotic or otherwise public-spirited. All of these motivations and orientations speak to people’s substantive norms, to the behaviors and beliefs they consider acceptable, then laudatory, in particular lived situations. They also speak to the behaviors and beliefs they consider unacceptable, then deviant or condemnable. Being tied to everyday meanings people attach to their own behavior and the behavior of those around them, in primary groups, substantive norms are very much lived beliefs and expectations and cultural understandings. As such, they are typically site-specific in scope. They are more familial or communal than societal. Substantive norms tend to span primary groups and particular sites of interaction (such as

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school classrooms or work divisions), not large geographic areas or entire organizations, let alone economic sectors, cities, or societies. Their source or point of origin, after all, is more social psychological (share individual beliefs) and interpersonal (shared understandings developed in local interactions) than structural and institutional (shared behaviors, beliefs and understandings coupled with sanctions, all of which span larger social units). German theorists often refer to substantive norms as people’s “lifeworld” (Lebenswelt) and French theorist Pierre Bourdieu aptly says they comprise a “habitus.” They are as uncontroversial and seemingly normal to people as the clothes they wear, like a nun’s habit. Parsons added to this by proposing, as had Durkheim before him, that whenever most individuals have been broadly socialized to internalize some set of substantive norms in common, at least some social-psychological beliefs and cultural understandings can overarch localities, can span entire societies. Durkheim called this spanning “collective conscience” and Parsons called it a “medium” of “value commitment.” Today, Amitai Etzioni calls it “core values.” In bringing a substantive-normative approach to the sociology of professions, Parsons’ concepts are first and foremost cultural, referring to institutionalized value patterns putatively orienting in common the substance of professionals’ everyday occupational (and instructional) activities. Then secondarily they are social psychological, referring to internalized norms putatively motivating professionals in common to undertake these activities responsibly, with integrity. All of this is directly substantive normative in that Parsons defined competence, trustworthiness and respectfulness in terms of qualities (behaviors, beliefs and expectations) attending professionals’ everyday, local activities (substance).8 He did not adopt a procedural-normative approach instead, by defining normative standards of behavior first and foremost in terms of whether professional activities simply respect (or breach) procedural thresholds, irrespective of variations in the substance of professional competence, trustworthiness and respectfulness. The problem with applying any substantive-normative standard of behavior directly to any group in society, including any occupational group, is that the standard itself, and then the behavior putatively meeting it (or falling short of it), are intrinsically vague, not bright line. 8

Parsons and Platt 1973:77.

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Both the standard and the behavior can be sources of controversy, and particularly when the group being studied is comprised of dispersed and heterogeneous individuals. That is, both the standards and the behavior are subject to competing constructions of meaning by participants, in this case by professionals and their clients. Likewise, both are equally subject to incommensurable interpretations by outside observers, whether association leaders and state regulators or social scientists and journalists. Procedural-normative thresholds of behavior are quite different in that, at the very least, they overcome this problem of intrinsic vagueness. The thresholds themselves and then the behavior respecting them (or breaching them) are both much more bright line. Participants and observers can more readily recognize and understand in common what procedures demand and then also when behavior, irrespective of its variation in substance, at minimum either respects or breaches procedural thresholds. Explaining now why this holds true would move us unnecessarily to issues which we can more fruitfully discuss much later. For now our point can be put simply, as a basic assertion about Parsons’ sociology of professions. An accurate shorthand way of characterizing Parsons’ approach to professionalism across his career is that it was directly substantive-normative and, as a result, cultural and social psychological at its core. We will see below that this sort of approach can be contrasted not only to the narrowly quantitative and socio-economic approach which Parsons’ many Anglo-American critics much preferred during the 1970s. It can also be contrasted to an alternative qualitative approach – a procedural-normative one that is also structural and institutional – which is at once more expansive than critics’ socioeconomic turn and yet more focused than Parsons’ cultural and socialpsychological core concepts.9 We will draw these contrasts across this entire volume, but for now the point at hand is that the first tenet of Parsons’ sociology of 9 Parsons also alluded at times, albeit in vague terms, to an abstract, structural and institutional approach to professions. At these times he correctly noted that professions typically adopt and maintain a collegial form of organization rather than a bureaucratic or democratic form. The problem is that his suggestions here suffered not only from vagueness at a conceptual level, stemming from his more basic cultural and social-psychological approach. It also suffered from restrictiveness at an empirical level, stemming from the confining vision of the shallow pool of exemplars discussed in the Introduction.

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professions, that professions are distinct from all other occupations, was sufficiently controversial on its face to attract criticism across Parsons’ career. The second tenet, professionalism bears uniquely on “social order,” was even more controversial. Most basically, Parsons was proposing that as professions and their associations and disciplines institutionalize in civil society their own memberships’ behavioral fidelity to substantive-normative standards of competence, trustworthiness and respectfulness, this invariably ameliorates the otherwise deleterious – disorderly – effects in civil society of bureaucracy and commercialism, of hierarchical decree and middle-class cupidity. In this way professionalism contributes to “social order” at least indirectly, if not more causally or predictably. The problem with characterizing the professions-social order relationship in this way is that it simply recapitulates at a more general level of analysis the central defect intrinsic to any substantive-normative approach: it is hopelessly vague (and controversial) on its face. Yet, Parsons could not become more specific in identifying this relationship because he was literally committed at a conceptual level, by his cultural and social psychological approach to professions, to portraying how professions affect social order in directly substantive-normative terms.10 Our point in drawing attention to this unfortunate outcome of the two basic tenets of Parsons’ sociology of professions is to propose that it can be overcome entirely by adopting the alternative approach we mentioned in passing above. If we adopt explicitly and consistently a structural approach to professions, we can then describe, explain and predict the institutional consequences of professionalism in procedural-normative terms. All of this is then capable of overcoming, or at least subduing, competing constructions of meaning by participants and incommensurable interpretations by observers. 10 Florian Kreutzer (2003:36–37), a German sociologist, has returned to this approach more or less inadvertently, apparently independently of any familiarity with the thrust of Parsons’ earlier efforts. He distinguishes what he calls “less formalized, less organized” Beruflichkeit groups (which he illustrates by citing entrepreneurs as well as artists, innovators, “infotainers”) from what he calls “highly formalized, organized” Beruflichkeit groups (where he places doctors and lawyers, priests and professors). The result of this distinction (and his others) is strictly phenomenal comparisons across the occupational order, comparisons which obscure entirely the structural consequences of professions in particular for the institutional design of the larger social order. Kreutzer instead focuses attention exclusively on the putatively social psychological and cultural consequences of different occupational groups more generally.

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We will see that only by making this conceptual turn, from substantive-normative, cultural and social psychological concepts to procedural-normative, structural and institutional concepts, can sociologists possibly retain either of Parsons’ two basic tenets. Only then can they identify any invariant analytical qualities truly constitutive of professionalism as such, both historically and cross-nationally today. Only then can they also identify any invariant institutional consequences of professionalism. Any cultural and social psychological factors which then enter the picture will be by definition extraneous variables which happen to accompany professionalism at particular times and places. They are not qualities constitutive of professionalism as such. 2. Fissures or Aporias in the Baseline 2.1 Three Looming Problems Across the 1970s Parsons’ elaborated on and refined the two core tenets of his sociology of professions. Predictably, his sociology of professions remained controversial in all of its iterations, namely because of the vagueness intrinsic to any substantive-normative standards of behavior yielded by any cultural and social psychological approach. One problem Parsons faced at the very outset is that empirical research frequently revealed that professionals often fail to exhibit the substantive-normative motivations, orientations and behaviors he attributed to them at a theoretical level. Is it really the case that professionals are more competent, trustworthy or respectful of cultural patterns than other occupational practitioners, including state civil servants or members of voluntary associations? More important, Parsons never really identified specifically the contribution professions make to “social order.” The major reasons for this more particular failure are not only the vagueness intrinsic to any cultural and social psychological approach to collective action (including that by Jeffrey Alexander today) but also the vagueness intrinsic to the phrase “social order” itself.11 How exactly are social scientists to gauge the relative orderliness or disorderliness of entire societies, whether 11 Alexander 2003; plus the review by McLennan (2005) and response by Alexander (2005). The latter, unfortunately, is jargon-laden from top to bottom and, in response to McLennan’s specific criticisms, more name-calling or labeling than dispassionate and measured.

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cross-nationally today or in historical perspective? Is it really the case, regardless, that the most “orderly” societies invariably contain the most professions, and less “orderly” ones invariably contain fewer? Even as these first two problems were sufficient to expose Parsons’ sociology of professions to telling criticisms, yet a third problem complicated matters even more, albeit more subtly. For etymological reasons alone, European social science both neglects and resists any focus on professions at all, let alone one that attributes grand social consequences to this particular set of occupations. Not a single continental language either before or after World War II developed indigenously a term synonymous with or generally equivalent to the English term “profession.” Rather, the terms closest in German, French and Italian all refer to much broader socio-economic and socio-cultural formations. Even today, instead of studying professions in particular, continental sociologists typically study middle classes (bürgertum, bourgeoisie, borghesia) or cultivated middle classes (Bildungsbürgertum, bourgeoisie a talents, borghesia umanistica). They also study middle class “callings,” those occupations in civil society or positions in the state administration to which middle classes devote themselves (in German: Berufe, Beamte, Stande).12 This great cultural division within the West, reflected etymologically, was largely lost on the Anglo-American sociologists who initiated the sociology of professions in the 1930s. It certainly did not concern Parsons and other English-speaking sociologists who consolidated this sub-discipline during immediate postwar decades. Across the four decade period of these theoretical and empirical developments, to the late 1970s, the sociology of professions indeed remained largely a “preserve” or “condominium” of English-speaking sociologists and historians. And yet Anglo-Americans assumed all along that their theories of professionalism applied generally, to all modern occupational orders and social orders, not exclusively to English-speaking ones. They failed to consider whether and in what respects English language-usage might apply uniquely only to occupational and organizational developments in the English-speaking world. 12 On these etymological issues, see Sciulli and Halley 2009. Also, Geisen 1984b:10– 11 note 17; Burrage 1990a:4,14; Torstendahl 1990b:1; Kocka 1990:62; Brante 1990:87; McClelland 1990:106–7; Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist 1990:206–7; and Rueschemeyer 1997:214. Freie Berufe refers to self-employed experts only, and then akademische Berufe refers to experts, whether self-employed or salaried, who were trained in universities or other advanced instructional institutions (Kocka 1990:62).

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To the contrary, British and American sociologists simply proceeded apace with their collective effort to identify qualities putatively distinctive to professions as opposed to middle class occupations more generally (to say nothing of the Bürgertum even more generally). They also continued to take their bearings at a conceptual level by generalizing from occupational developments in British and American law (and then secondarily from later developments in medicine, science and engineering, which brought in continental occupations). Treating instances of occupational striving in British law as selfevidently revealing qualities constitutive of professionalism as such, Anglo-American sociologists then endeavored to trace the historical origins of these qualities as far back in law, and then the three other occupational fields, as the historiographic record permits. They found in these inquiries that they could detect British legal professionalism unambiguously only as early as the first third or middle third of the nineteenth century.13 For this reason they increasingly came to believe that professionalism is linked intrinsically to industrialization, and then also to liberalism in the economy and state. Accordingly, British and American sociologists assumed that similar occupational developments in the four exemplary fields unfolded successively in other lands experiencing both industrialization and liberalism – as a result of systematic pressures of modernity, not more directly as a result of diffusion from Britain. In short, British and American sociologists considered professionalism to be a cross-national occupational manifestation of late modernity which happened to originate in Britain, not a set of occupational developments confined uniquely or intrinsically to the English-speaking world. For the same reason they were optimistic that they would soon arrive at an ideal type of professions, a conceptual approach that could stand alongside Max Weber’s earlier ideal type of bureaucracy. 2.2 Etymological Obstacles on the Continent Meanwhile, the terms “profession” and “professionalization,” and the occupational and organizational developments which these terms

13

Prest 1984, 1987a seeks earlier British origins in law but his case is weak, whether compared to later developments in English legal practice or, even more, compared to the far more dramatic occupational, organizational and instructional advances made by the Paris visual Académie as early as 1680 which we describe in Chapter 3.

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denote, appeared to continental sociologists – to say nothing of Pacific Rim or Latin American sociologists – to be idiosyncratic to sociological inquiry in the English-speaking world. Until the mid- or late 1980s, social theory and research on the continent deflected attention from professions in particular. continental sociologists instead drew attention to the more general occupational and organizational developments noted above. Moreover, all of the terms they used to describe these developments blended seamlessly into received Weberian or Marxian class analyses of the occupational order and stratification system. Such terminology did not encourage historical or cross-national inquiry into professionalism projects as distinct social formations. As a result, sociological inquiry on the continent understandably deflected attention from the issue most central to Parsons, namely whether and how the presence of professions in civil society contributes uniquely to “social order,” and thereby to the direction of social change. This situation on the continent has not changed substantially even today, a quarter century after Parsons’ death. Of course, a few European sociologists did begin in the late 1980s or so to adopt the English term “profession,” as we will note momentarily and also in the next chapter. But even for these pioneers (or turncoats) the term retains the “flavor of an import.” Europeans still consider “profession” a Parsonian or functionalist category.14 We may note just two prominent examples, spanning four postwar decades, which illustrate well that professions typically play no role whatsoever in ambitious European sociology. Professions cannot be found in Habermas’ 1962 analysis of the rise and fall of what he calls a bourgeois public realm, from the mid-seventeenth to the midnineteenth century. Professions are also absent entirely from Bourdieu’s 1992 analysis of the rise of an autonomous field of literature and art in Paris, during the middle third of the nineteenth century. Our point in mentioning two such illustrious postwar social theorists on the continent is that when Parsons and other Anglo-American sociologists were developing the sociology of professions, both before and after World War II, European sociologists literally had difficulty envisaging the point of the exercise. Why was Parsons, who was both respected and reviled, attributing such grand significance to one

14

Kocka 1990:62.

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particular set of learned occupations or cultivated middle classes rather than to others, or to the entire social category? Moreover, by the 1980s Europeans began asking a very telling, quite legitimate question:15 Why endeavor to study “professions” in France, Germany and Italy, and then to construct continental social histories around such an Anglo-American category and approach? Why not instead study the Bildungsbürgertum, cultivated middle classes, in England and the United States, and then construct Anglo-American social histories around this continental category and approach?16 3. Revisionism: Today’s Received Wisdom Meanwhile, in the United States and Great Britain from the early 1970s forward, Parsons’ approach to professionalism and its consequences came under fire on its merits. Sociologists led by Eliot Freidson and Terence Johnson, then Magali Larson and Randall Collins, and finally Andrew Abbott, first criticized and then abandoned outright Parsons’ cultural and social psychological approach.17 They instead developed over time a much more restricted, narrowly socio-economic approach. Equally important, they also rejected both of Parsons’ core tenets: They flatly denied that professions are unique among all other expert occupations and middle-class occupations. They also insisted that any consequences of professionalism (and of “expertization”) are confined to the occupational order and stratification system. These consequences do not extend to the larger “social order,” and they certainly do not account for shifts in the direction of social change. By their accounts, Parsons’ two core tenets are at once naïve and apologetic or ideological. They are products of Parsons having simply converted into the seemingly disinterested language of social science the self-understandings – or worse, cynical hyperbole – of the entrepreneurial pioneers of professional associations. More particularly, they pointed out that Parsons and other Anglo-American sociologists might well have been excruciatingly specific in listing the characteristics and qualities putatively unique to professionalism, but these same

15

Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist 1990:207. Jurgen Kocka initiated this line of inquiry directed to the United States in 1977, and see Savage et al (1992) for a more recent one directed to Great Britain. Related historiographic inquiries include those by Earle (1989) and Hunt (1996). 17 Freidson 1970,1989; Johnson 1972; Larson 1977; Collins 1979; Abbott 1988. 16

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sociologists remained notably vague when turning to the second core tenet. They simply attributed grand social consequences to professionalism without establishing credibly at a conceptual level why this followed logically. Parsons in particular tried and failed across his career (from Parsons 1939 to Parsons and Platt 1973) to identify specifically the connection between professions and “social order.” It goes without saying that he also failed to identify the integrative or orderly consequences professions putatively introduce uniquely into civil society. Parsons simply reasoned residually, insisting that expert occupations which fail to professionalize remain too commercial, bureaucratic or both. They thereby exacerbate or accelerate systemic trends of social change whose default trajectory is social control (and autocracy), not social integration (and liberal democracy). Marx called these systemic trends commodification and alienation, Weber called them rationalization and bureaucratization, and Durkheim called them disintegrative egoism or odious individualism (l’odieux individualisme) and anomie. 3.1 Rejecting the Baseline in Four Phases During the 1970s the failure of functionalists to support the second core tenet of the received cultural and social-psychological approach to the sociology of professions set the backdrop for “revisionism,” a second stage in this subfield. Sociologists critical of Parsons adopted a revisionist stance in opposition to both core tenets, culminating in major statements by Magali Larson in 1977 and Randall Collins in 1979, and then Paul Starr in 1982 and Andrew Abbott in 1988. However, revisionists’ explicit rejection of both core tenets of the received orthodoxy did not emerge as a piece at any moment during the 1970s. It instead unfolded incrementally, and in four distinct phases. In the first phase, exemplified by Eliot Freidson’s many writings on the medical profession during the 1960s (see his 1989 collection), revisionists were critical of Parsons’ seemingly apologetic description of profession leaders’ actions and intentions. Yet Freidson was otherwise reluctant to abandon or reject outright either of Parsons’ two core tenets. He instead continued the effort to distinguish professions in one way or another from other expert occupations, at first doing so by stressing the importance of workplace “autonomy.” Freidson also embraced the second core tenet by raising constantly the issue of the place and purpose of professions in civil society, the contribution professions make to what he called a “free society.”

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In the second phase of reaction to Parsons’ functionalism, exemplified by Terrence Johnson’s Professions and Power published in 1972, revisionists explicitly abandoned Parsons’ first core tenet; they were still not prepared, however, to disregard the second. Unlike the early Freidson, Johnson collapses professions into the larger category of expert occupations. But then he explores at length the larger consequences of whether experts, on the one hand, or their clients, on the other, gain control over the delivery of expert services. It is notable that as Johnson explores this issue he is as vague as Parsons in characterizing the putative connection between professions (expert occupations) and the larger civil society.18 The third phase of the revisionist response to Parsons is exemplified by Magali Larson’s The Rise of Professionalism, published in 1977. More than anyone else before or since, Larson established revisionism in the sociology of professions on the basis of a quite different three-part approach. This approach became received wisdom in the sociology of professions during the 1980s and remains so today. Thus, it is important to describe Larson’s three-part approach before turning to the fourth phase of revisionism. 3.2 Revisionist Triad: Expert Occupations, Unnecessary Monopoly, Delimited Scope In the first place, Larson rejects outright as apologetic and ideological Parsons’ conjecture that professions contribute in any way, let alone intrinsically and invariably, to social integration as opposed to social control. Second, she agrees with Johnson that professions are ultimately indistinguishable from other expert occupations. Professions simply manage, by one clever means or another, to establish and maintain well-patrolled but structurally unnecessary and unwarranted monopolies in the labor market for expert services. Third, Larson argues explicitly, but not always consistently, that whatever consequences professions (that is, monopolistic expert occupations) introduce into civil society, these consequences are restricted more or less exclusively to the occupational order and stratification system. Monopolistic expert occupations do not contribute more generally to social order, let alone uniquely and in ways that fairly can be considered 18 Johnson’s contribution to the professions literature is discussed at much greater length in Chapter 6.

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“integrative” or “progressive.” Rather, as unnecessary and unwarranted service monopolies, professions exacerbate occupational hierarchies and socioeconomic inequities. They leave amelioration of these pathologies to the state, which acts in the interests of maintaining social control as well as enhancing its own authority and legitimacy. Or, alternatively, the same occupational hierarchies and socioeconomic inequities stimulate “new social movements” to endeavor to ameliorate the negative consequences of service monopoly. Such social movements may promote “progressive” alternatives, whether those designed to advance neo-liberal economics or those designed to promote some post-capitalist, alternative society.19 Larson, in short, forcefully criticized both core tenets of Parsons’ cultural and social-psychological approach, and yet reservations nonetheless linger in her book. She is reluctant at times to reduce the consequences of service monopolies to those for the occupational order and stratification system. Larson does indeed portray professions simply as particularly zealous expert occupations. But she reckons at times that service monopolies distort “capitalism” – in particular, the principle and ideology of consumer sovereignty – in ways which are likely deleterious to social order in existing liberal-democracies. 3.3 The Fourth Phase of Revisionism Finally, the fourth phase of reaction to Parsons’ functionalism is exemplified by Randall Collins’ The Credential Society: An Historical Study of Education and Stratification, published in 1979, and then most unambiguously by Andrew Abbott’s The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor, published in 1988.20 In these works and many others that followed revisionists treat professions explicitly as a subset within the sociology of work and occupations, nothing more. As Collins put the matter in 1990, Parsons and other functionalists had approached professions wrongly, with an eye to social breakdown, “a mass society.” By contrast, revisionists approach professions rightly, with an eye only to “the structure of privilege.” Revisionists thereby dismiss out of hand any references to grander consequences of professionalism, whether cultural or structural and institutional.21 19 These points are hardly compatible, but for each presented by the same author, as if they are, see Collins 1990b:19–20 and Collins 1990a:42. 20 Abbott’s 1988 book is discussed at length in Chapter 12. 21 Collins 1990b:13–14.

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Collins accepts Parsons’ view that professionalism may well ameliorate the negative consequences of bureaucratization, which had concerned Weber. He accepts, that is, that expert occupations tend generally to be organized more horizontally than hierarchically. But Collins rejects as ideological Parsons’ view that professionalism thereby ameliorates the deleterious consequences of capitalism and state regulation by encouraging a service orientation by dispersed practitioners and thereby introducing “altruistic elements” into “capitalist occupations.”22 Collins instead sees professions introducing unwarranted monopolies into the labor market for expert services. To this end, professions revolve around: normative social controls internally, political power plays externally (against occupational competitors), and, more generally, patron-client networks, cliques of personalist favoritism and allegiances.23 Indeed, Collins refers to professions as “consciousness communities,” no different in this respect than relatively closed ethnic groups.24 Given that professional monopolies are unwarranted as well as contingent on a rather unflattering (false) consciousness, Collins concludes grandly by calling literally for the abolition of occupational credentials.25 This same position had been articulated nearly two decades earlier, in 1962, by Milton Friedman the renowned neoclassical economist (whom Collins fails to acknowledge or cite).26 Like Friedman, Collins wishes blithely to extend the adage caveat emptor from retail commerce to professional services. Unlike Friedman, however, Collins believes this call and wish are not neo-liberal or conservative but somehow progressive or radical – presumably because they contribute to a revisionist critique of Parsons. 3.4 Ironies in the Situation Today Chastened by these and other criticisms of Parsons’ sociology of professions, sociologists today typically no longer endeavor to distinguish 22

Collins 1990b:11–12. For each point respectively, see Collins 1979:48,58–72,171–71; 50–53,71; 55–58, 91,200. 24 Collins 1979:58. Evetts notes more recently (2006:135) that many French sociologists prefer a similar focus, namely on the production and reproduction of what is called “occupational identities” (also Evetts 2003a:398). Consistent with this, Witz (1992) sees professions promoting patriarchy. 25 Collins 1979:179–204. 26 Friedman 1962: chap. 9. 23

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professions from the larger category of “expert occupations.”27 Related, sociologists typically reduce the consequences of “professions” to those bearing exclusively on the occupational order and the stratification system. They assume or argue that professions (that is, expert occupations) differ from other occupations in only one respect: professions secure unnecessary monopolies in the labor market for expert services and thereby confer on practitioners inflated incomes and unwarranted perquisites of status. With this narrow socio-economic approach now firmly in place as today’s received wisdom in the sociology of professions, the study of service monopoly and its immediate consequences for the occupational order and stratification system has displaced functionalists’ earlier inquiries into professionals’ putative service orientation or fiducial responsibilities. It has literally driven from view functionalists’ earlier, always vague references to the larger place and purpose of professions and their associations in civil society. Revisionists instead assert confidently that whatever consequences expert occupations introduce into civil society, these consequences are confined both empirically and analytically to the occupational order and stratification system. As Andrew Abbott put the matter in 2002, the sociology of professions is “a branch of the sociology of work concerned with the analysis of expert occupations;” it is not a branch of the sociology of intermediary associations concerned with larger cultural and social consequences. Two ironies, therefore, lie at the center of today’s received wisdom in the sociology of professions. One irony is that British and American critics of Parsons essentially recapitulate the point made rhetorically earlier by continental sociologists. In failing to distinguish professions analytically from tens of thousands of expert occupations, they are essentially dealing with Bildungsbürgertum, cultivated middle classes, or freie Berufe, liberal callings or occupations. Like continental sociologists, Anglo-American sociologists today see any putative professionalism project first and foremost as a process of occupational striving and collective cultural adjustment to middle-class (bürgerlichkeit) norms. They see it exclusively as one occupational pathway, among 27 Evetts is representative: “In general … it no longer seems important to draw a hard definitional line between professions and other (expert) occupations” (2006:135; also 2003a:398). See the following collections for rare efforts to draw such a line, efforts whose writers acknowledge are either heuristic or unsuccessful: Geison 1984a; Abel and Lewis 1988, 1989; Burrage and Torstendahl 1990; Torstendahl and Burrage 1990; Halliday and Karpik 1997.

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many others, into the Bildungsbürgertum.28 They do not see any professionalism project yielding analytically distinct occupations which, as such, occupy a unique place and fulfill a unique purpose in civil society. Thus, received wisdom does not see particular expert occupations possibly introducing into civil society structurally larger, institutional consequences. They see only immediate consequences; those restricted more or less exclusively to the occupational order and stratification system. Here is the second irony at the center of today’s sociology of professions. Decades after Anglo-American sociologists criticized Parsons’ two core tenets they continue today to fail to identify specifically any contribution expert occupations make to “social order” or the direction of social change. A focus on socio-economic variables and on immediate consequences of service monopolies has displaced Parsons’ earlier focus on the cultural orientations and social psychological convictions professions putatively introduce into civil society and their longer-term consequences. The study of occupational monopoly has displaced entirely inquiry into fiducial responsibility. As a result, the relationship between the place and purpose of professions in civil society as intermediary associations, and whether and how professions alter the larger direction of social change, is typically neglected entirely.29 4. Etymology Again: Confusion More Generally Before turning to the third, currently unfolding stage in the sociology of professions, to which continental sociologists finally are contributing in significant ways, we may stand back and trace an etymological source of confusion and controversy internal to the Anglo-American sociology of professions. Wilfred Prest, a historian of early English law, noted in 1984 that even in English usage the term profession is “surrounded” with “conceptual and semantic confusion.” He also notes that “no historian has yet attempted to trace the changing content and connotations of the term and its derivatives since they were first introduced into the English language in the sixteenth century.”30

28 29 30

Kocka 1990:68, citing Siegrist. Abbott 1988, for example, is scrupulous on both points. Prest 1984:307.

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Prest mobilizes sufficient numbers of historical references to refute received wisdom, namely that profession in its modern usage first came into prominence during industrialization. He thereby rejects the idea that today’s usage emerged conterminously with unfolding Victorian professionalism projects on the ground. Rather, Prest finds that the term profession in English usage had three distinct meanings far earlier, during the ancien régime, and he considers the last one akin to modern usage.31 Profession denoted: occupation or employment; highstatus or socially esteemed occupation (including foreign trade, but excluding retail trade); and, most relevant, the practice of three learned occupations: Divinity, Law and Physic (medicine). Prest’s point is that the term profession assumed this third meaning centuries before industrialization. It was associated quite traditionally with the three advanced Faculties of the medieval university (studium generale). Faculty licenses conferred privileges of both teaching (“professing”) and practicing (through patronage from gentle households, not commercially). The problem is that three years later Prest had difficulty supporting the idea that the third meaning just noted is at all akin to the meaning sociologists had in mind originally when endeavoring to distinguish professions from other expert occupations. Instead, quoting from Dr. Johnson’s dictionary of 1755, Prest acknowledges that through the eighteenth century “the term ‘profession’ was most commonly used as a synonym for ‘calling, vocation, known employment.’ ” He adds: “before the nineteenth century people do not seem to have debated the meaning of the term ‘profession,’ or what distinguished professions from other, less esteemed occupations; nor is there any evidence that particular prestige attached to occupations which claimed the status of professions.”32 We see already that all of this is indistinguishable from continental usage and understanding, both historically and today. Indeed, one irony of Prest’s etymological overview is that he uses it explicitly in support of today’s revisionist disregarding of both core tenets of the earlier sociology of professions. And today’s revisionism, as we have just seen, independently recapitulates the continent’s very point of departure. Prest manages somehow to affiliate the study of professions

31 32

Prest 1984:308–9. Prest 1987b:13.

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simultaneously with both the narrow, socio-economic focus of today’s Anglo-American revisionism and the broader, more synthetic linkage to middle classes common on the continent. As he puts the matter: “the history of the professions [is] simply a branch of the history of occupations, work or the middle classes, no more and no less.”33 Going beyond this etymological overview, all Western usages of the term profession, including English-language usages, stem from the same Latin root, profiteor and profiteri.34 These Latin terms denote simply that one avows, confesses or professes something publicly, whether a learned discipline, a sentiment (friendship), or an aspiration (to volunteer evidence, enter a candidacy, or practice a trade). After the Middle Ages these Latin denotations tended to divide into what Italian historian Maria Malatesta calls two distinctive “semantic fields.” The wider field spanned the various forms of public confession or avowal just noted. A somewhat more restricted semantic field, however, referred to the practice of any occupation, whether learned or manual. In turn, one application within this field denoted the role of university instructor (docente) in one or another discipline. Because professore was synonymous with docente, it was employed to denote an instructor’s membership in his particular guild: his learned corporation or Faculty. Guild membership, that is, indicated one had become a “professionist” or “professional” in good standing. This same meaning was then applied to membership in any other guild, whether learned, artisanal or merchant.35 Consistent with this received meaning in Latin, the term profession in French during the ancien régime denoted guild affiliation. As such, it “was but one term in a rich and shifting ‘corporate idiom’ that included such culturally specific terms as corps, confrerie, communaute, etat and métier.”36 With modernity, the French routinely used professions liberales, cadres and corps when referring generally to occupations and their organizations. In the absence of the qualifier or modifier liberales, that is, profession in French even today refers to any occupation whatsoever. The same is true of professione in Italian, and its qualifier libera.

33

Prest 1984:306, my emphasis; also 1987b:17–20. For elaboration on all of the etymological points which follow see Sciulli and Halley 2009. 35 Malatesta 1995a:6–7; Prest 1984:307, 1987a:Preface; Reader 1966:9–10. 36 Geison 1984:3, citing Sewell 1974. 34

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Thus, French sociologists, Emile Durkheim included, routinely use professions liberales, cadres and corps rather than the term “profession” in any more distinctive sense; again, the Italian synonym is libera professione. As a result, the French term un professionnel refers to anyone who earns a livelihood from any occupational activity, whether learned or not, much in the way that English speakers refer variously to “professional” baseball, soccer or billiard players. The idea that a “profession” properly refers, as also in English usage, to some particular, identifiable subset of expert occupations was “completely meaningless” to French social scientists even a generation after World War II.37 This idea is absent, for instance, in the many works of Pierre Bourdieu, including those in which he examines middle class occupations directly.38 German terminology stems from eighteenth century French usage, when profession was imported into German as a general reference for occupation. Subsequently, during the nineteenth century a German derivative, Professionist, emerged, but it referred more narrowly to artisans alone. Conveying thereby a rather pejorative meaning, this term eventually disappeared from usage, once norms of Bürgerlichkeit prevailed socio-culturally. The meaning of Profession in German otherwise remained consistent with French (and Italian) usage more generally, until Allied occupation. Anglo-American social scientists, including Parsons, then introduced the term Professionalisierung to convey a more distinctive sense of occupational striving. This term quickly entered German usage precisely because it pointed to an occupational trajectory that otherwise lacked any indigenous reference.39 This etymological backdrop accounts, therefore, for the fact that “the extensive literature on the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Hitler virtually ignores the professions.”40 German historians instead typically study the middle class (bürgertum) and educated middle class (Bildungsbürgertum), and their occupations. Professions are absent in the many works of Jurgen Habermas, including when he discusses contemporary law and democracy.41

37 38 39 40 41

Geison 1984b:10–11 note 7; on Italy, see Malatesta 1995b:7–8. For example, Bourdieu 1987,1992,2000. Jarausch 1990a:4, 1990b:10–11. Jarausch 1990a:4. For example, Habermas 1992.

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Finally, Italian usage draws a distinction between arti and mestieri, the former referring to producers of any commodity (whether a sword or a rope). Mestieri, in turn, refers to practitioners “called” to more learned occupational activities. Both types of occupational practitioners are organized in corporazioni, not professional associations in an English sense. But where mestiere (calling) might refer to the practice of law (only later to medicine), professione spans all arti, including manual trades, arti minore. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the distinction between intellectual activity and practical/ manual work became more rigid, but the etymological legacy of more expansive denotations lingers in Italian usage. In the first place, libera professione in Italian today remains synonymous with professione liberale of the ancien régime: neither phrase denotes workplace autonomy or associational self-governance.42 This is why Italian judges, who are civil servants, are nonetheless considered exemplary “free professionals.” They apply liberal arts (discourse and writing) in their everyday occupational activities. On the other hand, professione is used as an abbreviation for libera professione to convey abstract knowledge and occupational monopoly, unlike the term occupazione.43 Yet, in the second place, Italian national statistics classify all fulltime, permanent occupations as professione. In addition, the Constitution of the Italian Republic enacted three constituencies of parliament, one of which was the collegio dei dotti, a grouping which included the clergy as well as men of science, culture and law. All such occupational practitioners were thereby ascribed a function in government, but not because of workplace expertise or specific competence. Rather, they were granted privileged access to parliament because of their presumed ability to build consensus on the basis of trust in their judgment, and on their ability to retain “multiple clienteles.”44 This review of cross-national usages supports today’s received wisdom in the sociology of professions, namely that profession does not denote a distinctive set of occupational and organizational qualities in civil society. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the object of study on each side of the Atlantic today is, respectively, “expert occupations” 42

Malatesta 1995a:7–8. Malatesta 1995a:9. 44 Malatesta 1995a:7 and note 24; at times Siegrist today keys on trust, e.g. 2002a, 1990a:199–202. 43

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and “middle class occupations,” not “professions.” Sociologists today acknowledge that they no longer “take for granted that we know what a professional is” or “what kinds of workers ought to be the subject of the sociology of professions.”45 5. Continental “Neo-Traditionalism:” Back to Parsons A third stage in the sociology of professions emerged unheralded during the late 1980s and continues today, now developing alongside and largely consistently with the revisionist triad discussed above. However, proponents of this new development, many of whom are continental sociologists and historians, proceed quite purposefully in reaction against the economistic reductionism of today’s orthodoxy.46 They endeavor to synthesize at least elements of the earlier cultural and social-psychological approach to professions by functionalists with the continent’s received Bürgertum approach to middle classes more generally. This synthesis seems promising to sociologists on both sides of the Atlantic precisely because both approaches revolve around actors’ cultural orientations and social psychological convictions, as opposed to their narrow economic interests alone. The irony is that the revisionists taking this turn,47 and even more so the continental social theorists seeking a synthesis, are returning, albeit warily, to both core tenets of earlier functionalist approaches in the sociology of professions. They are proceeding warily because they are fully aware that functionalists had failed to establish either tenet at a conceptual level, let alone to support either tenet with case studies. 5.1 Continental Synthesis: From Bildungsbürgertum to Professions Today’s “neo-traditionalists” on the continent (as we will call them, not as they refer to themselves) call explicitly on Anglo-American sociologists to provide them with some guidance, at a conceptual level, regarding whether and how professions in particular were connected historically to the rise of liberal-democracy in English-speaking societies. Was there ever, they ask, any clear connection in these societies 45

Torstendahl 1990b:1; Abbott 2002. We elaborate in the next chapter on the promise and limitations of continental contributions to this third stage. 47 For example, Larson 1989,1990. 46

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between the rise of professions in the English-speaking world and the remarkable stability of liberal-democratic institutions?48 A handful of English-speaking sociologists have also raised this issue independently, the second core tenet of functionalist approaches. They do so by asking: What is the connection, if any, between professions and liberalism?49 Continental neo-traditionalists in particular appreciate that both core tenets of earlier functionalist approaches are intrinsically interconnected at a conceptual level. After all, there is no reason for sociologists to distinguish professions from middle class occupations unless the presence of professions in civil society bears on the larger social order and its direction of change in unambiguously identifiable ways. In endeavoring to push the ball forward, many sociologists today propose that one reasonable point of departure, given the great diversity of historical and cross-national case studies of particular professions, is to concede that there are two principal, general models or types of professionalism, an Anglo-American and a continental.50 Thus, first and foremost, they treat professionalism as bifurcated geographically. In English-speaking societies it unfolds largely in response to market forces whereas on the continent in unfolds largely in response to state policy and planning. With this, sociologists begin inquiry and analysis by assuming that professionalism projects invariably unfold through two very different trajectories. One result of this starting-point is that they treat professionalism as bifurcated in a second way, namely at a conceptual level. They see two very different sets of empirical qualities being putatively “essential” to or constitutive of professionalism, one set in English-speaking

48

For example, Siegrist 1989:866; Jarausch 1990b:216–17. Halliday (1989; Halliday and Karpik 1997a,b) explores most explicitly the putative connection between professions and liberalism. Jarausch (e.g. 1990:31) and Karpik (1995) are most explicit and provocative in posing this question from an essentially continental point of view. Fournier (1999) presupposes the connection, citing Foucault’s The Birth of the Clinic. Evetts frequently asserts it, typically citing presentations by Robert Dingwall (e.g. 2006:137, 2003a:403, 1998:65–66; Svensson and Evetts 2003:5,7). In general, the sharpest inquiries into this question on both sides of the Atlantic revolve around the legal profession. See Larson 1989, Burrage 1989, Siegrist 1990b, Bell 1997, Ledford 1997, Pue 1997 and, more generally, the 1988 Abel and Lewis collection. 50 Collins 1990b:15–18; Siegrist 1989,1990a,2002a; Burrage, Jarausch & Siegrist 1990; Jarausch 1990b:10; Brante 1990:81 and many more. 49

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societies and another set on the continent. Yet, whether they adopt this strategy of bifurcation or not, sociologists today routinely dismiss out of hand the possibility of formulating a single ideal type of profession akin to Weber’s ideal type of bureaucracy. Moreover, they acknowledge that they have difficulty converting either of the two models just noted into ideal types, or essential empirical qualities, or invariant analytical distinctions. What is curious and more intriguing is that some continental sociologists are also rightly warning that it is not advisable, on epistemological grounds, to abandon entirely functionalists’ earlier efforts to list essential empirical qualities of professions. They appreciate that definitional integrity is simultaneously constitutive of the field of study itself, “is the way to discover social reality.”51 This warning is curious because the same sociologists who issue it agree that they, like earlier functionalists, are ultimately unable to identify essential empirical qualities constitutive uniquely of professions, as opposed also to spanning middle class occupations more generally. Indeed, the continental neo-traditionalists seeking definitional integrity today continue to have difficulty envisaging what Parsons and other functionalists had in mind when pointing to the broader, putatively invariant, consequences of professions’ presence in civil society. Today, in short, continental neo-traditionalists are feeling their way as they move at least somewhat beyond Anglo-American revisionism, and even as they retain the negative impression of the functionalist sociology of professions described above. They are taking their bearings, as did Parsons, actually, from basic epistemological principles regarding the importance of definitional integrity in either revealing or obscuring significant historical and cross-national developments. They are not proceeding more concretely, on the basis of new historical or cross-national findings.

51 Torstendahl 1990a:48, also 46–52; Brante 1990:77–79; Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist 1990:203–4; McClelland 1990:98–99. We show in the rest of this volume that only such definitional integrity reveals to historians that early académies of painting and sculpture, in sixteenth century Florence and Rome and seventeenth century Paris, initiated the first sustained professionalism projects in Western history. In the absence of definitional integrity, the sociology of professions is compelled to revolve around its “conventional” understanding that professionalism originated two centuries later, in the mid-nineteenth century, and more or less exclusively in Great Britain, not independently on the continent.

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chapter one 5.2 Distinguishing Professions on Three Bases

More specifically, sociologists on both sides of the Atlantic are today endeavoring once again to distinguish professions from other expert occupations, and they are doing so on one or more of three bases that are at once theoretical and empirical. One basis is the economic qualities professions putatively contribute to workplaces, and then to the occupational order and stratification system. The core argument of Johnson, Larson and Collins, and then also of Abbott is that professions uniquely introduce “jurisdictional monopolies” into the labor market for expert services. In turn, they see these labor market monopolies introducing both inflated incomes and unwarranted status inequality into the stratification system. A second basis is the cultural (that is, substantive-normative) qualities professions putatively contribute to workplaces, and then to the larger society. Here we find two variations in characterizing professions’ cultural qualities and contributions. On the one hand, the four sociologists noted above see professions introducing an unnecessary and unwarranted hierarchy or elitism (“social closure”) into the occupational order. Many continental sociologists join Anglo-American sociologists here in seeing professions both reflecting and complimenting the more general striving by cultivated middle classes (Bildungsbürgertum) for occupational and social status. On the other hand, Parsons and earlier functionalists saw the cultural qualities and contributions of professions quite differently. They saw professions supporting “valued cultural patterns” and, as a result, helping to legitimate the larger social order. Finally, a third approach to professions proceeds on the basis of social-psychological qualities practitioners putatively contribute to workplaces, and then the larger society. Parsons and other early functionalists argued that professionals are oriented normatively by altruism, a service orientation, or some other extra-economic (non-rational) “definition of the situation.” Their point is that the workplace orientation of professionals contrasts sharply with that of other expert practitioners, which is more market-mimicking, more strictly commercial and self-interested. 5.3 Today’s Premier Definition of Profession Our thesis is that when sociologists rely on any of these three bases, or any combination of the three, they can arrive at best, yet once again, at

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empirical generalizations that by definition crudely identify and then describe and explain particular instances of occupational upgrading. For instance, the single most notable current effort to define professions on such an impressionistic basis is by Michael Burrage, Konrad Jarausch and Hannes Siegrist, respectively, a British sociologist, a German-born American historian, and a Swiss-born German social historian.52 Drawn in part from earlier definitions of professions by Bürgertum theorist Jurgen Kocka (in 1986 and 1989), which Jarausch also cites independently, they define profession on the basis of the following characteristics:53 – It is a full-time, liberal (non-manual) occupation; – It establishes a monopoly in the labor market for expert services; – It attains self-governance or autonomy, that is, freedom from control by any outsiders, whether the state, clients, laymen or others; – Training is specialized and yet also systematic and scholarly; – Examinations, diplomas and titles control entry to the occupation and also sanction the monopoly; – Member rewards, both material and symbolic, are tied not only to occupational competence and workplace ethics but also to contemporaries’ belief that their expert services are “of special importance for society and the common weal.”

The point Burrage, Jaruasch and Siegrist are making in offering this listing is that they believe it is best today to generalize on the basis of empirical characteristics drawn from the historical and cross-national record of cases, both Anglo-American and continental. It is not possible to define profession and professionalism more abstractly, whether as a clearly stated ideal type or, more promising, on the basis of invariant analytical distinctions. Empirical generalizations such as the ones found in the listing above are utterly incapable of moving from retrospective description and explanation to prospective application, to prediction. As we discussed earlier, empirical generalizations are by definitions variables, not invariant. Their applicability to occupational and organizational developments varies both historically and cross-nationally. This means that sociologists relying on the three bases reviewed above – economic, cultural and social psychological – cannot possibly arrive at either an 52 I rearrange the order of presentation for purposes of clarity, consistent with my reading of their argument and intention overall. See also Jarausch 1990a:6–7, Jarausch 1990b:11,21 note 13; Siegrist 1990b:46–47; Malatesta 1995a:2,9; Torstendahl 1990a:53. 53 Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist 1990:205.

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ideal-type or invariant analytical qualities in distinguishing professions from other expert occupations. They cannot identify qualities of professionalism which are invariant both historically and cross-nationally. Economic, cultural and social psychological concepts alone instead result invariably in a more thoroughgoing typological relativism. These concepts can inform empirical inquiry only in particular places (for instance, in the English-speaking world) at particular times (from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1980s). They cannot be applied elsewhere (to the continent or Pacific Rim), nor can they be applied historically (to the ancien régime). Equally telling, they also cannot be used prospectively. They cannot explain and predict the future of ongoing professionalism projects today, and they certainly cannot explain and predict where new professionalism projects are most likely to emerge in civil society, in the West, the East and the South, and whether, why and how they will succeed or fail. Putting this point differently, any sociology of professions which relies on any combination of the three bases above will be descriptive phenomenally at best. It will also remain confined to the quite limited scope of application of the first stage of the sociology of professions: geographic, historical and occupational. As so confined, such a study of professions continues to lack the concepts with which to explain and predict the trajectory of professionalism projects today. This means that irrespective of whether and how this trajectory does bear on the larger social order and its direction of change, this entire issue will continue to elude the sociology of professions at a conceptual level. It was one thing, therefore, for revisionists successfully to “debunk” Parsons’ functionalist approach to professions, and for their power approach or narrow economism to become the received wisdom. It was also unsurprising that by 1988 Abbott could essentially consolidate this received wisdom by collapsing professions into the larger category of expert occupations and then explore the “system” in which all such occupations compete for workplace “jurisdictions.” Abbott thereby made the Anglo-American sociology of professions indistinguishable either conceptually or empirically from the continent’s Bürgertum approach to middle class culture and occupations. The problem, as we have just seen, lies elsewhere. From the late 1980s forward sociologists on both sides of the Atlantic have been returning to issues which preoccupied Parsons, issues which are more cultural, social psychological and substantive-normative than economic, strategic and instrumental. They are thereby clearly exceeding

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the scope of application of today’s received wisdom. Complicating matters further, sociologists explore these broader issues of professionalism without bothering to distinguish professions analytically from other expert occupations. They also proceed without making themselves familiar with Parsons’ earlier efforts to identify these qualities. Yet, they still typically dismiss out of hand Parsons’ second core tenet, namely that professionalism bears uniquely in one way or another on the direction of change of the larger social order. 6. A Way Forward in Brief We can provide the sociology of professions with a new conceptual mooring, and thereby advance both historical inquiry and crossnational research, by addressing explicitly and methodically the following four issues. All four issues revolve around the importance of distinguishing professions once and for all, both historically and crossnationally, from other expert occupations and other middle-class occupations. – How can we account for the power professionals exercise uniquely over clients, including clients – individual and corporate – who are wealthier, more powerful and more socially influential outside the professional-client relationship? – How can we account for the full range of norms to which professionals are held and to which they publicly claim behavioral fidelity, but which other experts openly neglect or disregard? – How can we account for the length and rigor of professional instruction and training, including the components of theory and abstraction which continue to be emphasized, seemingly unrelated to any vocational purpose? – Can we identify unambiguously any consequences of professionalism for the larger social order, those which exceed unambiguously any and all consequences for the occupational order and stratification system?

CHAPTER TWO

THE SITUATION ON THE CONTINENT1 As noted in the previous chapter, continental neo-traditionalists are feeling their way as they move at least somewhat beyond AngloAmerican revisionism. They are returning inadvertently to some cultural issues which Parsons had raised in the sociology of professions even as they retain a negative impression of functionalism. Continental neo-traditionalists are nonetheless taking their bearings, as did Parsons, from basic epistemological principles. Only definitional integrity can reveal when significant historical and cross-national occupational developments are instances of professionalism. By contrast, a lack of definitional integrity obscures this entire issue. At the same time, continental neo-traditionalists operate consistently with received wisdom, as did both functionalists and revisionists earlier. They unreflectively read back into history, to the early or mid-nineteenth century, the trajectory of the two seemingly self-evident modern exemplars of professionalization, first law and then medicine. Proceeding epistemologically, continental neo-traditionalists operate on the assumption that in the sociological subfield of professions, as in others such as family, only when qualities constitutive of the object of study can be presented in ideal-typical terms can a subfield attain truly cumulative historical and cross-national findings. The problem, of course, is that the two subfields just noted have notoriously resisted this conceptual step: there is no ideal type of profession, and there is no ideal type of family. Neo-traditionalists are fully aware of this, but they are less aware of Parsons’ point in response. On the same epistemological grounds, Parsons insisted, correctly, that in the absence of an ideal type only a more abstract conceptual grounding, invariant analytical distinctions, can permit sociologists to generalize in cumulative ways from particular

1 This chapter is adapted from an article in Current Sociology titled “Continental Sociology of Professions Today: Conceptual Contributions.” I adapt it here only for its context as a second chapter rather than as a free-standing article. Thus, I shorten or expand its content in places were necessary; central theses are unchanged.

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cases. Short of following Parsons and taking an analytical turn, neotraditionalists appreciate that there is only one other credible option at a conceptual level in the sociology of professions today. Sociologists can operate with typologies of middle class occupations which happen to secure general acceptance today but remain relativist at a conceptual level.2 Such typologies lack conceptual grounding against relativism, and thus cannot possibly resist changing fads of academic thinking. 1. Today’s New Start on the Continent In 1990 Michael Burrage, Konrad Jarausch and Hannes Siegrist proposed their multi-part definition of professions and professionalism, which we presented at the end of the previous chapter (at page 45). Drawn from earlier Anglo-American theories, they “broaden” this definition by taking into account more explicitly lessons learned from historical and cross-national cases of occupational upgrading on the Continent. The problem, however, is that their multi-part definition, like other definitions of professions today, no longer distinguishes professions from expert occupations or middle-class occupations on any basis, empirical or analytical, let alone on an invariant basis. This means the pool of cases of occupational upgrading from which the coauthors draw their empirical characteristics of professions and professionalism fully reflects the leniency or laxity of this conceptual point of departure. The cases are hardly confined to putatively self-evident instances of professionalism. The cases instead span instances of occupational upgrading by all sorts of occupations. Accordingly, the empirical characteristics listed at the end of Chapter 1 fail to distinguish professions in particular and, in this regard, this listing is very similar to dozens of earlier listings by Anglo-American functionalists, during the first phase of the sociology of professions. One of the listing’s co-authors, Hannes Siegrist, has in fact called attention independently to its laxity by employing in his own publications, as he sees fit, different empirical characteristics of professions. For instance, in 1990, the same year in which the co-authored listing was published, Siegrist presented a related but nonetheless somewhat different listing of empirical characteristics of legal professionalization in Germany in particular. Here he calls attention to the attorney-client relationship, to the importance 2

For example, Torstendahl 1990a: 46–47.

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of market regulation (not monopoly), and to lawyers’ “status and position” in “a system of power and prestige” as “mediators between the state and society.”3 A decade later, in an overview of the literature, Siegrist proposed yet another listing of empirical characteristics of professionalization, now repeating the co-authored listing but including the following three additional items:4 – Capabilities and skills which are justified scientifically or systematically; – Knowledge which is “exclusive,” “profound,” “inaccessible,” or “not easily understood” by laypersons, and acquired in special institutions of advanced education; – Rules and attitudes regarding applications of this knowledge, from formal procedures to collegiality and a general orientation toward the common good, which are designed to promote trust more generally across civil society.5

These additional items draw greater attention to qualities of workplace expertise and workplace responsibility. They thereby pull continental usage closer to that of the earlier Anglo-American sociology of professions. Correlatively, the additional items simultaneously distance continental usage further from the broader cultural and social psychological characteristics of the middle class emphasized by the received Bürgertum approach of the continent. At the same time, and here are our central points, the additional items call even greater attention to the laxity, the intrinsic relativism, of all such listings. Equally important, none of these listings of empirical characteristics distinguishes professions unambiguously from middle class occupations on any invariant basis, ideal-typical or analytical. From these points of departure at a conceptual level, the co-authors, as well as Siegrist independently, have no alternative other than to convert these empirical characteristics into typologies of professionalization processes whose scope of application is relative, limited by both historical era and social context. This is why Siegrist explicitly endorses typological relativism today.6 This is also why Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist pointed out in 1990 that sociologists are free to apply each

3 4 5 6

Siegrist 1990b:46–47; also 1989:862. Siegrist 2002a. Also Jarausch 1990b:13. Siegrist 2002a.

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empirical characteristic in their listing independently to particular cases of occupational upgrading. “In the absence of any agreed suprahistorical or cross-cultural definition that can be applied with a consistent meaning to various historical and cultural settings, it is probably best to work with a definition that can be disaggregated and operationalized in this manner.” At best, their listing provides sociologists with a “yardstick,” for it identifies only “one possible way in which certain occupations have been distinguished from others.”7 In short, being lax and relativist, sociologists are free to use any of the listings above preliminarily, to include in (or exclude from) the pool of instances of occupational upgrading any instances they consider worthy (or unworthy) of further analysis, as possible instances of professionalization. This is indeed an important preliminary step: the listings do identify at least in broad strokes how professions might differ from other expert occupations. But this is hardly a grounding upon which a critical, rather than relativist sociology of professions can be based. Reflecting these listings’ laxness and relativism, neo-traditionalists are endeavoring to distinguish professions (expect occupations) on three bases simultaneously: functionalist, revisionist and Bürgertum. These bases are hardly mutually supportive or complimentary. On functionalist grounds, the listings point to association self-governance and laypersons’ explicit acknowledgment of an occupation’s special importance. On revisionist grounds, they emphasize the importance of workplace monopoly, and thereby disparage examinations and diplomas as strictly strategic instruments of unwarranted occupational closure. By contrast, on Bürgertum grounds, the listings point to the distinction between liberal and manual occupations, and thereby treat theoretical instruction as constitutive of professions, not an extraneous variable or strategic instrument. In this light we can see why Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist, having noted the utility of their listing as a preliminary yardstick and also its availability for disaggregated applications, find it necessary to word somewhat differently their listing’s contribution to the literature.8 They acknowledge that sociologists are likely, in disaggregating the empirical characteristics, to end up with a two-tier listing. One tier will contain 7

Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist 1990:205–6. The same contribution is made by Siegrist’s lists in this chapter, as he acknowledges. 8

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short, manageable lists of putatively invariant empirical qualities of professionalism (or “expertization”), “basic, constant characteristics.” The other tier will contain supplementary lists of “optional variables.” It is in this context that Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist then add, somewhat inscrutably, that in their view a satisfactory working definition of professions will be by necessity not only “provisional” but also “institutional” and “political.” They do not mean by these last two terms that they are moving beyond the cultural and social psychological factors emphasized by both the early functionalist sociology of professions and the continent’s received Bürgertum approach to middle classes. To the contrary, they mean that any working definition of professions drawn from their listing will revolve around context-specific cultural orientations – their meaning of “institutional” – and around social-psychological convictions which occupation leaders happen to hold when adopting particular strategies of occupational upgrading – their meaning of “political.”9 Moreover, Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist concede forthrightly that their multi-part definition of profession returns them full circle to earlier, functionalist efforts to identify and list putatively essential empirical qualities of professions.10 They nonetheless proceed on this basis because they are mindful of the epistemological issues discussed at the outset of this chapter. Sociologists cannot avoid, or treat as somehow secondary epistemologically to methodical historical and cross-national inquiry, the task of identifying on some more or less general basis the object of study. The problem they face is that listings of empirical qualities which purport to identify professions both historically and crossnationally have proven for over seventy years to be incapable of yielding an ideal type; they instead yield only typological relativism. Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist are quite aware of this implication of their listing. The problem is that the rationale they offer for treating their listing as a general, theory-based definition of professions differs significantly from Rolf Torstendahl’s (and Parsons’) rationale for definitional integrity. For Torstendhal (and Parsons), definitional integrity is simultaneously constitutive of the field of inquiry itself.11 By comparison to this rationale, the one the co-authors offer in support of their listing initially seems peculiar, given continental sociologists’ 9 10 11

Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist 1990:206. Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist 1990:206. Torstendahl 1990a:52.

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received impression that only linguistic usage in English-speaking countries underlies the earlier sociology of professions. The co-authors argue that social theorists must define profession and professionalism with specificity – and not collapse these terms into larger categories, whether “expert occupation” in English or “middle class occupation” in continental usage – because alternative terms will detach sociological analysis from the self-conscious understandings of actors. The ironies implicit in this line of argument abound. On the one hand, Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist accept as a truism of three decades of revisionist criticism that earlier efforts by functionalists to define professions rested too directly on the social-psychological beliefs and cultural understandings of practicing professionals in English-speaking countries. Revisionists routinely criticized Parsons for converting these beliefs and understandings into the seemingly disinterested language of social science, particularly when discussing a “service orientation” shared by rank-and-file practitioners. Yet, on the other hand, Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist believe every revisionist approach in the sociology of professions “leaves too much unsaid” because of narrow economism. Revisionists focus too one-sidedly on occupational practitioners’ socio-economic interests, workplace closure and either state-guaranteed or association-patrolled occupational monopoly. This strikes Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist as affiliating professions too one-sidedly with economic middle classes (Wirtschaftsbürgertum). It neglects the many cultural and social psychological connections between professions and educated or cultivated middle classes (Bildungsbürgertum). 2. Cultural and Social-Psychological Context of Professionalism 2.1 Meanings and Consequences of Professionalization Hannes Siegrist has written independently and extensively on both professions and the Bürgertum, and recently reviewed both literatures for the International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences.12 Earlier, in 1990, he identified four uses of the term “professionalization” and noted that they designate distinguishable, at times

12

Siegrist 2002a,b.

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divergent processes that can unfold either simultaneously or successively.13 Processes of professionalization unfold within: – Institutions of advanced learning, where professionalization denotes expert knowledge applied to some task; – The division of labor, where it denotes practical expertise which exceeds layperson understandings; – The economy, where it denotes occupational monopoly; and – Areas of political and social power, where professionalization denotes practitioner group identity and efforts to promote shared occupational and social interests.

Siegrist adds that professionalization may also refer more generally to any and all processes putatively constitutive of professions. These are processes which contribute simultaneously to occupations attaining a loftier status, whether culturally, socially or economically, and to individual practitioners and their associations gaining social influence and political power, respectively, in civil society. Finally, because professionalization is also a project occupation leaders can promote selfconsciously, it can provide these leaders with both generic guidelines for and specific strategies of occupational upgrading.14 Siegrist’s point in surveying these various contexts and meanings of professionalization is that their diversity makes it fruitless for sociologists to seek a single ideal type.15 In 2002 he put the matter succinctly: “Abstract and temporally undifferentiated concepts of the professions have only a heuristic value in historical research.”16 The major reason why the categories “profession” and “professionalization” elude idealtypical formulation, in Siegrist’s view, is that their meanings (and consequences) vary with contemporaries’ social-psychological beliefs and cultural understandings of which particular occupations possess greater or lesser social esteem. And attributions of social esteem, being strictly cultural and social-psychological qualities, are inherently variable. Such attributions are not structural qualities which credibly can claim grounding, invariance, across time and space. “The question of what constitutes social esteem and in what ways functional, cultural, political and economic characteristics are valued depends upon the respective historical context.”17 13 14 15 16 17

Siegrist 1990a:177. Siegrist 1990a:177–78. Siegrist 1990a:178. Siegrist 2002a. Seigrist 1990a:178.

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We might add, however, that this also means that Siegrist does not believe a “static, structural definition” can possibly be constitutive of the sociology of professions as a field of inquiry. We will demonstrate in this volume that this belief is mistaken. We will demonstrate that a structural and institutional approach to professionalism can indeed distinguish the sociology of professions from a sociology of expert occupations or of middle class occupations. 2.2 Typological Relativism in Bürgertum and Professions Approaches We can see why Jurgen Kocka, a leading sociologist of the Bürgertum, reads Siegrist’s sociology of professions as simply applying to some particular set of occupations received, continental ways of theorizing middle classes and their occupational activities more generally. In Kocka’s view, Siegrist sees professionalization less as a process of attaining occupational closure (following Anglo-American revisionists) or as a process of attaining occupational autonomy (following AngloAmerican functionalists and Freidson) than as a process of “collective upward social mobility” into the Bürgertum. Professionalization, in short, is simply a process of “cultural adjustment” to prevailing middle class (Bürgerlichkeit) norms and values.18 Still, neither Siegrist nor Kocka note the following implication of pursuing such a parallel track between professions and Bürgertum approaches. Bringing to a sociology of professions an emphasis on participants’ social-psychological beliefs and cultural understandings of their own occupational activities and, correlatively, advising sociologists to constitute the field of study – professionalization processes – using cultural and social-psychological variables, is precisely how Kocka, Siegrist and other continental sociologists theorize, study and constitute the Bürgertum (middle classes) and then the Bildungsbürgertum (cultivated middle classes).19 The Bildungsbürgertum emerged historically at the end of the ancien régime when university-educated middle classes (and others) gained some shared sense or consciousness that they were members of a new, nation-wide social formation, one which shared life-styles as well as social-psychological belief systems and cultural understandings of their place and purpose in civil society. This shared consciousness by

18 19

Kocka 1990:68, my emphasis. For example, Kocka 1999:242–54.

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participants became consolidated during the first half of the nineteenth century and then reached its zenith during the second half, to World War I. From there, however, the group identity shared by the Bildungsbürgertum began steadily to decline in salience, to fragment, and by the mid-twentieth century it began “disappearing” entirely.20 Siegrist’s parallel argument for professions, which he does not acknowledge as a parallel, is that sociologists may seek “meaningful generalizations” about professionalization processes, as chastened always by two countervailing considerations which happen also to inform how Kocka and others theorize the Bildungsbürgertum. One consideration is the hermeneutical method. This focuses sociologists’ attention on participants’ social-psychological beliefs regarding and cultural understandings of their situations. The other consideration is the enormous variability of substantive findings revealed by historical and cross-national studies of particular cases, in this instance of professionalization processes.21 Taken together, both considerations – hermeneutics and substantive case variation – lead ineluctably to typological relativism. They close the door on any credible prospect for ideal-typical (or analytical) invariance. These two considerations also confirm, in Siegrist’s view, his central point in surveying the many meanings and consequences of professionalization. The very idea of professionalizing is, by Siegrist’s understanding, ineluctably type-specific, and precisely because it revolves ultimately around the cultural orientations and social-psychological convictions of participants. This confirms for Siegrist that “meaningful” generalizations about professionalization processes will always be, at best, relevant empirically only “within certain strictly defined social and historical bounds.”22 In addition, Siegrist proposes that in seeking meaningful generalizations about professions sociologists should focus their attention on those factors in professionalization processes which are particularly salient during historical periods when professions are either first being established or significantly disrupted.23 This is precisely how Kocka identifiesthevariousempiricalmanifestations,andtypes,of Bildungsbürgertum which have appeared historically and cross-nationally.24 20 21 22 23 24

Kocka 1999:231–54. Siegrist 1990a:179. Siegrist 1990a:179. Siegrist 1990a:179. Kocka 1999:231–254.

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chapter two 2.3 Why Definitional Integrity Matters: Constituting the Field of Inquiry

Here, however, is where the parallel between professions and Bürgertum approaches breaks down, again unawares to Siegrist or Kocka because they do not draw the parallel explicitly. The problem is that the advice just noted is sound in theorizing and studying a socio-cultural formation as amorphous as the Bildungsbürgertum. When transferred to theorizing and studying professions, however, the same advice begs Torstendahl’s (and others’) point regarding the epistemological priority of definitional integrity.25 We may consider in this light Kocka’s way of defining the Bürgertum: it is “not just a category but also a social formation or group whose members share situational characteristics, a sense of belonging together, common attitudes and values, as well as a disposition for common behavior.”26 We can see that Kocka is constituting this field of inquiry, the Bürgertum, in terms of participants’ social-psychological convictions and cultural understandings about their situation. This decision at an epistemological level, in turn, simultaneously opens this field of inquiry to hermeneutical methods. A parallel strategy in the sociology of professions breaks down for the following reason. If sociologists treat participants’ convictions and understandings about professionalizing as constituting the sociology of professions, then this factor alone severely restricts the pool of professionalization processes both historically and cross-nationally today. It removes from the pool all instances of occupational upgrading during the ancien régime, for the notion of profession was then anachronistic. Worse, it similarly removes from the pool all instances of occupational upgrading on the continent until well after World War II, and many instances in the East and South even today. Notions of professionalism were long absent from the continent both etymologically and social psychologically. Even today they are still considered “alien” – “imports” – across the continent; they remain largely absent in France in particular; and such notions are likely quite rare in the East and South. With this we are seeing even more clearly why our general point regarding the priority of epistemology stands firm: How sociologists 25 26

Torstendahl 1990a:52. Kocka 1999:252 note 10.

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and historians define either the Bürgertum or professions simultaneously constitutes the field of inquiry. This is inescapable, and this is why on epistemological grounds alone definitional integrity antedates hermeneutics as well as case description and explanation, let alone generalization retrospectively and prediction prospectively. But here is where we can also see clearly why profession approaches differ fundamentally from Bürgertum approaches. In theorizing and studying professions, unlike middle classes, sociologists cannot avoid first identifying at a conceptual level the pool of instances of occupational upgrading constituting the field of study in terms that in one way or another go beyond participants’ social- psychological beliefs and cultural understandings of their activities. If they fail to do this in the sociology of professions they eliminate from the pool for further consideration all instances of occupational upgrading during the ancien régime, when notions of professionalism were anachronistic, all instances on the continent until the 1980s, when notions of professionalism were unavailable etymologically, and most instances in the East and South where participant understandings of professionalism are uneven at best. Sociologists at times sense the abruptness of restricting the pool in these ways, of course. But in the absence of an accepted ideal type of professions, they are frequently willing to compensate for this abruptness by operating with one or another of two alternative points of departure which are just as impoverished at a conceptual level. One alternative is simply to be ecumenical: to throw up one’s hands, refuse to make any distinctions, and thereby include in the pool any and all instances of occupational upgrading whatsoever. This alternative is consistent in substance with the received Bürgertum approach of the continent, for the latter categorizes occupations expansively as liberal, learned or middle class. In this light we can appreciate anew why none of the listings of empirical characteristics of professions noted earlier, that by Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist and the two by Siegrist, distinguishes professions from Bürgertum occupations more generally. Leading American revisionist Andrew Abbott is similarly ecumenical. He insists explicitly and adamantly that professions cannot be distinguished from expert occupations of all sorts. Thus, he cannot think of any reason to exclude from his “system of professions” late nineteenth century spiritualists (“psychological mediums”), occultists and matchmakers. By his accounting “mediumship”

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(and the others) fits “very well” the “basic definition of a profession” with which he is operating.27 The other conceptually impoverished point of departure is simply to perpetuate received wisdom, to delimit the pool of potentially relevant occupations arbitrarily, namely by operating unreflectively on the basis of the Whiggish historiography discussed in the Introduction. This alternative is consistent with both received professions approaches of AngloAmerican sociology, functionalist and revisionist (Abbott excluded). Both approaches read only as far back into history as the documentary evidence permits modern occupational developments in law, first and foremost, and then secondarily those in medicine, science and engineering. This simply assumes a priori that these four occupational fields selfevidently introduced professionalism into all Western societies and, correlatively, are most likely eventually to reveal the qualities constitutive of professions, whatever these happen to be.28 When stated explicitly in this way, however, such a teleological reading of the historical record cannot possibly be justified on epistemological grounds or otherwise at a conceptual level. We can see why by asking: What happens when sociologists no longer assume unreflectively that all historical inquiries into the qualities constitutive of professions will invariably be revealed most unambiguously in instances of occupational upgrading in the four putatively exemplary occupational fields just noted? Once the historical record in any instance casts any sort of doubt on this assumption, even provisionally, sociologists can no longer safely restrict the pool of cases in this convenient way. With this they simultaneously lose today’s equally conventional way of dating professionalism, which Carr-Saunders and Wilson happened to introduce into the literature rather casually in 1933.29 27 Abbott 1988:29–30,36, and 332–36 including notes 2 and 34. The following recent listing by Julia Evetts (2006:135), a British sociologist, is equally ecumenical, and she notes it adapts and paraphrases an earlier listing by Vittorio Olgiati, an Italian sociologist (with co-authors 1988): Professions are involved in birth, survival, physical and emotional health, dispute resolution and law-based social order, finance and credit information, educational attainment and socialization, physical constructs and the built environment, military engagement, peace-keeping and security, entertainment, the arts and leisure, religion, and our negotiations with the next world. 28 Prest (1984,1987c) proceeds on this assumption regarding British law, Karpik (1990,1995,1997) regarding French law, Siegrist (1990b) and Jarausch (1990b) regarding German law, and Larson (1989,1990), Burrage (1989), Halliday and Karpik (1997c) and Siegrist (1989,2002a) regarding law generally. 29 Prest 1987b:4–5.

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Once this happens, sociologists then need some new, explicitly articulated epistemological or conceptual rationale for bringing into view on structural grounds – on extra-hermeneutical grounds – other occupational fields which possibly initiated professionalism projects earlier and independently of comparable developments in law – or medicine, science and engineering. After all, any stance of professionalism which predates that in British law invariably occurred independently of participant awareness, whether social psychological or cultural, that they were professionalizing. It thereby eludes the hermeneutic consideration which Siegrist (and others) believes is inescapable. The only alternative to taking a structural turn, again, is ecumenism, to study expert or middle class occupations generally without bothering any longer to identify professions in particular at a conceptual level. This means, however, that any consequences which professions introduce uniquely into civil society, as intermediary associations of a certain kind, are simultaneously removed from view at a conceptual level. With these two types of concealing at a conceptual level professions cannot possibly be identified empirically. In addition, their consequences, even when sufficiently salient to be noticed generically or strictly phenomenologically, will be wrongly attributed to other factors, likely to cultural and social psychological factors idiosyncratic first to the Anglo-American world and then, by diffusion or imperialism, to other selected societies (see Bourdieu and Wacquant 1998). 2.4 Empirical Benefits of Definitional Integrity Only definitional integrity permits sociologists to draw consistent distinctions, on some basis, between instances of occupational upgrading both historically and cross-nationally today which qualify as professionalism projects and those which do not. Moreover, once sociologists endeavor to draw any such distinction, they simultaneously move beyond the hermeneutic methods informing a Bürgertum approach to middle classes and their occupations. Such methods inform Siegrist’s sociology of professions as well as the listing of Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist. Definitional integrity permits sociologists to move beyond the strictly phenomenal (and hermeneutic) issue of whether occupation practitioners happen to believe and understand that they are professionalizing. Sociologists can instead describe and explain retrospectively what participants accomplished occupationally on the ground,

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both historically and cross-nationally today, entirely independently of whatever participants’ convictions, orientations and linguistic usages happened to be. Our point is that only on the basis of an ideal type or invariant analytical distinctions capable of sorting out instances of professionalism in any occupational field from the larger pool of expert and middle class occupational activities can sociologists then proceed to the mission Siegrist proposes. Only then can sociologists seek “meaningful generalizations,” by identifying factors salient at the outset of professionalism projects in any occupational field, in any society, during any historical period. Moreover, only then can sociologists appreciate the limitations of Siegrist’s research proposal, in the absence of first constituting the field of inquiry on sounder epistemological and conceptual grounds than hermeneutics. On the one hand, simply because participants believe and understand that they are professionalizing hardly means that sociologists are somehow compelled on epistemological and conceptual grounds to include their occupational activities within the pool of professionalism projects worthy of historical inquiry and cross-national comparison. On the other, participants may well proceed further – unambiguously further – with professionalism projects in occupational fields completely unrelated to law (and the other three exemplars) without having the foggiest idea that their occupational activities qualify as instances of professionalism. Participants’ failure to operate social psychologically and culturally with “correct” beliefs and understandings hardly means sociologists are somehow prevented on epistemological and conceptual grounds from possibly including their occupational activities within the pool of unambiguous professionalism projects. We may consider in this regard that Weber’s ideal type of bureaucracy can clearly be applied historically and cross-nationally entirely independently of hermeneutic methods. Indeed, this is why it is correctly lauded as a major theoretical achievement. If sociologists identify participants either historically or today who routinely defer impersonally to superordinates in a clearly-defined hierarchical chain of command, but the terms “bureaucrat” and “bureaucracy” are either anachronistic (historically) or alien etymologically (today) to a particular sociocultural context, sociologists are not somehow prohibited from employing Weber’s ideal type in describing and, yes, explaining participants’ behavior as bureaucratic. Indeed, has it not been the responsibility of sociologists for over a century to describe, explain and predict social

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actions in ways which go beyond, at times far beyond, the socialpsychological beliefs and cultural understandings of participants, and thus leap over any and all prescriptions (and limitations) of hermeneutical method? Our point is that any structural qualities constitutive of professions, like the structural qualities constitutive of bureaucracies, are by definition invariant. Moreover, sociologists can identify such qualities independently of participants’ social-psychological beliefs and cultural understandings. In the case of professions, over seventy years of failed efforts to identify an ideal type indicates that the structural qualities constitutive of this field of inquiry are more likely to be analytical, cast at a greater level of abstraction than that at which Weber operated. For both sets of reasons, being impersonal and structural as well as abstract and analytical, the qualities constitutive of professions also recast the issue of social esteem which so concerns Siegrist. The analytical structural qualities constitutive of professions do not disregard out of hand how laypersons evaluate the social significance or cultural centrality of various occupations. But when incorporating these phenomenological attributions into a structural analysis at a greater level of abstraction, they, too, become invariant factors. They apply universally and immutably to all instances of occupational upgrading which credibly qualify as professionalism projects. We will see this beginning in Chapter 6. 2.5 Siegrist’s Typological Relativism Siegrist is explicit that his typology of professionalization processes varies according to two sets of historical and cross-national contexts. First, the types vary according to the context of state controls, what he calls the “kinds of controlling instances and regulatory principles” which “were dominant” in given societies at given times.30 Since the Anglo-American sociology of professions tended to neglect how pervasively this particular context orients professionalization processes overall, Siegrist finds it necessary “to develop types of state and combine them with structures and strategies of professionalization.”31 30 Siegrist 1990a:179,193. See Dyson 1980 on why continental sociologists are likely to key analyses on state activities and prescriptions. 31 Siegrist 1989:861,864.

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Andrew Abbott today endorses such turns to a state-centered approach, calling this “the major development of studies of professions in the 1990s.”32 Siegrist sees types of professionalization processes also varying according to a second set of contexts, that of the cultural principles dominant at particular times and, therefore, how contemporaries, including profession leaders, evaluate “all of those status dimensions” (social, cultural, political and economic) by which they rank particular occupations.33 By Siegrist’s accounting, this second context is related to the first: In his view, the state-profession relationship is “a specific reflection” of a “more general relationship between state and society.”34 That is, “the kind of state influences professional structures and at the same time [the] mentalities and collective strategies” of profession leaders.35 Siegrist acknowledges, of course, that while each state-profession type emerges at a particular time and place, any given type, once established, can linger into a different era and socio-cultural context. Moreover, contemporaries’ rankings of occupations in one society, as well as occupations’ relationships to the state, may over time diffuse across national borders, and particularly in today’s global economy. Thus, a state-profession type which had originated in one society may well be adapted by, or imposed upon, others. However, as it is adapted or imposed, the “same” type will likely introduce different occupational qualities and social consequences into the new host civil society.36 With these provisos, Siegrist presents (1990a:193–98) his four types “of professions and processes of professionalization:” – The corporate type of guild societies during the ancien régime (citing Prest 1981); – The state professions of nineteenth century centralized-bureaucratic states on the continent; – The liberal professions of nineteenth and twentieth century AngloAmerican civil societies; and – The neo-corporatist professions of contemporary European welfare states.

32

Abbott 2002. Siegrist 1990a:193; also 1989:861; 1990b:47. 34 Siegrist 1989:861. 35 Siegrist 1989:864. Again, see Dyson 1980 for why such a syllogism seems selfevident on the continent. 36 Siegrist 1990a:193; also 1989:866–67,870. 33

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More recently, Siegrist also identifies four distinct types of “professional” during the nineteenth century alone:37 – Those bound to the state directly as civil servants, who are assigned particular tasks; – Those who are state-appointed and hold public offices but are only broadly monitored, not assigned particular tasks; – Self-employed practitioners (“free professionals”) within markets for expert services which are nonetheless restricted at least somewhat, whether by the state or associations; and – “Free trade” practitioners who are left to their own devices to regulate their service markets more informally.

With one notable exception these categorizations of the historical origin and cross-national consolidation of professionalization processes track remarkably closely Kocka’s (and Siegrist’s) categorizations of the Bürgertum and Bildungsbürgertum in historical and crossnational perspective.38 The exception is that Kocka sees the Bürgertum “disappearing” from the middle third of the twentieth century forward.39 By contrast, professions and professionalism seem to remain salient in civil societies today, not only in the West but also increasingly elsewhere.40 Siegrist appreciates this difference in the trajectory of change of contemporary professions and the Bürgertum, but only in the broadest historical terms: “The professions profited from a general increase in prosperity and in the cultural needs of the middle classes.”41 Yet, his general hypothesis regarding professionalization processes nonetheless simply recapitulates inadvertently a basic finding of Bürgertum theorizing and research.42 In those lands where the state establishes professions (and supports the Bürgertum) “from above,” the civil service 37

Siegrist 2002a. Kocka 1999:231–254; Siegrist 2002b. 39 Kocka 1999:194–97. 40 Even this exception is being called into question by Anglo-American sociologists, as they continue to fail to distinguish professions from expert occupations and thereby inadvertently to recapitulate the Bürgertum approach of the continent. Andrew Abbott, for instance, notes that his “test” for whether an expert occupation is a profession – “a profession is an occupation that competes [for workplace jurisdiction] by retheorizing others’ work” – is becoming irrelevant in today’s occupational order. It “presupposes fixed and organized occupations of a kind that simply may not exist under modern conditions of employment” (2002). 41 Siegrist 2002a. 42 Compare Siegrist 1989:867 on professions to Kocka 1999:231–254 on the Bürgertum. 38

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becomes for profession leaders (and for the Bürgertum generally) the cultural and social psychological exemplar of occupational and social success. Correlatively, in those lands where “free professionals” (and the Bürgertum) emerge independently, “from below,” professions become the exemplar of success for leaders of the civil service (and for the Bürgertum generally). More important, because Siegrist’s typology and the many other typologies similar to it which sociologists currently employ fail to distinguish professions from Bürgertum occupations more generally at a conceptual level, they obscure rather than bring into view the immediate and longer-term consequences of professions’ presence or absence in civil society. Just as Parsons was vague when referring to the putative cultural and social psychological relationship between professions and “social order,” sociologists today are equally vague. They refer broadly to the ways in which the cultural, social and political contexts noted above convert (or orient) instances of occupational upgrading into different types of professionalization processes and state-profession relationships. These broad correlations can hardly inform detailed historical and cross-national comparisons between autocratic regimes, on one side, and then also between various types of democracies, on the other. Our point is that today’s typologies in the sociology of professions remove from the realm of possibility, at a conceptual level, that certain qualities constitutive uniquely of professions may be structural, and in turn that the consequences for the larger social order of the presence or the absence of professions may be invariant. Abbott, in fact, is more extreme here than Siegrist, averring that it may be best to move from the organizational and structural characteristics of professions to the behavioral and social psychological characteristics of individual professionals.43 Here he recapitulates even more fulsomely in the sociology of professions the emphasis of a Bürgertum approach. The latter relies on cultural and social psychological variables to define both middle classes and their occupations, and now Abbott is calling for the same in defining professions In short, Siegrist and Abbott alike are insisting that, because invariant analytical distinctions (or ideal types) cannot be identified, let alone applied independently of hermeneutic methods, how sociologists

43

Abbott 2002.

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define and categorize professions and their associations cannot avoid empirical variation and type relativism. Siegrist notes, for instance, that when sociologists assess the state’s influence on professionalization processes, everything depends on how sociologists define these processes. If they define them in the way Anglo-American revisionists prefer, as processes of creating and monopolizing a labor market for expertise, then sociologists can say that the Prussian state accomplished both ends during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. But if sociologists define professionalization processes in the way Anglo-American functionalists prefer, as processes of practitioners gaining “autonomy” to control service markets themselves, then the Prussian case is one of “statalization, not professionalization.” Finally, if sociologists define professionalization processes in a way more consistent with a Bürgertum approach, as a means of occupational and social upgrading into the Bildungsbürgertum, then the Prussian state surely intended to accomplish this and in fact succeeded.44 Related, Siegrist concludes one of his 1990 arguments by proposing a social-psychological approach to the issue of how expert practitioners establish interpersonal trust with clients and the larger lay public.45 He believes this approach allows him (and other sociologists) to move from one type of professionalization process, presumably the AngloAmerican, to at least one other type, presumably the continental. By Siegrist’s account, when the state initiates or advances professionalization processes from above it simultaneously guarantees interpersonal trust (through policies and activities he does not label or describe). By contrast, when professions emerge from below they establish interpersonal trust through ongoing bargaining processes with clients. With this, Siegrist arrives at what he considers a meaningful generalization: “Processes of professionalization belong to a general species of process in which access to and control over social goods and values are products of shrewd bargaining.” At stake in this general species of bargaining, Siegrist continues, is arriving at some “fair share” of different forms of capital. The size of the shares each party considers “fair,” in turn, reveals the extent of power and influence each party wields and, simultaneously, determines the outcome of any bargaining process overall.

44 45

Siegrist 1989:868–69; 1990a:177,193; 1990b:50–51. Siegrist 1990a:199–202.

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We might note that all of these consequences of professional-client bargaining in particular, and of the more general “species of process,” are confined exclusively to the stratification system and occupational order. None of these consequences affects the larger civil society and its direction of change. In addition, none of these consequences distinguishes professions from Bürgertum occupations more generally. Indeed, none of these consequences distinguishes occupational practitioners from Bildungsbürgertum members more generally. Thus, Siegrist obscures at the outset, at a conceptual level, whether (and how) the presence of professions uniquely introduces any consequences into civil society, let alone consequences that go beyond the stratification system and occupational order. Our point is that any larger social consequences professions introduce uniquely into civil society, whatever these happen to be, cannot possibly be revealed or identified when sociologists theorize and study professions in any of the ways above. They can only be revealed by replacing hermeneutics and typological relativism with a structural and institutional approach and typological invariance.

3. Conclusions The concepts, definitions and typologies employed in the sociology of professions today close off the possibility of identifying and then studying methodically any instances of occupational upgrading during the ancien régime as possible instances of professionalism, and particularly any instances unrelated to law. The stumbling block, however, is strictly epistemological and conceptual, not at all historiographic. We will see in the next chapter that it is precisely earlier projects of occupational upgrading, on the continent, and in a field completely unrelated to law (or medicine, science and engineering), which reveal most unambiguously the structural qualities constitutive of professions as such. These structural qualities are not revealed as clearly by any more modern projects of legal (or medical) upgrading, whether in Great Britain (or anywhere else), from the nineteenth century to today. The occupational field we have in mind is that of ambitious painting and sculpture, of narrative visual representations; the historical period is the mid-seventeenth century (with antecedents a full century earlier); and the society is Paris (succeeding earlier developments in Florence and Rome). Ambitious visual representations (visual narrations), like

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ambitious literary representations (epic poetry and dramatic playwriting), were assumed universally during the ancien régime, as a cultural truism of the era, to incarnate epistemological and didactic weightiness. They were not appreciated simply “aesthetically,” independently of this content. Such works were assumed universally to represent the immutable “Idea” (for neo-Platonists) or “essential forms” (for Aristotelians) of (human) Nature. Thus, narrative painting in particular was assumed to incarnate immutable Truth, Morality and Beauty (as Goodness) visually. The Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, founded in Paris in 1648, developed the first curriculum of learned instruction in any occupational field in Western history directed explicitly and purposefully to practical, occupational ends. It also developed, unambiguously, the most rigorous regime of examinations and competitions, meritbased standards for entry and advancement, in any occupational field. Accomplishing all of this (and more) by 1680, its project of occupational upgrading exceeded, again unambiguously, any comparable developments in law, medicine or any other occupational field for two full centuries and more. London Inns of Court, for example, did not initiate written examinations until 1872, and Johns Hopkins was the first medical school in the United States to tie entry to examination, in 1897. The Paris visual Académie, in short, was proceeding forcefully and unambiguously along a professionalism project as early as 1680, and thus at the zenith of the ancien régime on the continent, the lengthy reign of Louis XIV (to 1715). It was proceeding well before any notion of “professionalism” had entered contemporaries’ consciousness anywhere, including in Britain. It was proceeding a full century or more before the Bürgertum, however defined, had emerged historically, and so prior to Bürgerlichkeit sentiments being adumbrated, let alone diffused into civil society. The Paris visual Académie promoted a learned, occupational expertise in the field of visual representations in its own corporate and positional interests. Académie leaders were seeking recognition and renown in gentle society, not amongst any Bürgertum. Unfolding in an absolute monarchy, aristocratic society and dynastic state, the Académie’s prototype professionalism project also had no cultural or social psychological connection whatsoever with any advance of “liberalism.” The Académie’s prototype professionalism project was instead in tension structurally with the institutional design of its society and state. By its very presence,

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the Académie enervated institutional design subtly and strictly impersonally. Académie leaders never envisaged threatening the aristocracy directly; this was completely unimaginable. Yet, the Académie itself was nonetheless enervating structurally of institutional design, simply as a prototype professionalism project. After all, any corporate body that tied member entry and advancement to merit-based standards of occupational expertise was incompatible structurally with an institutional design which revolved around open nepotism, patronage and venality. Our point is that the Paris visual Académie introduced this structural consequence into the larger social order without academiciens ever envisaging challenging the aristocracy. The listings of professions’ putative empirical characteristics which continental sociologists propose today, along with the relativist typologies that these listings yield, are not entirely incompatible with the alternative, structural and institutional approach to professions we present later in this volume. But defining professions on the basis of invariant analytical distinctions at a structural and institutional level of analysis brings into view the qualities constitutive of professions in particular. This is what allows us to appreciate that the Paris visual Académie advanced the only prototype professionalism project during the ancien régime, and that it did so two full centuries before any comparable developments unfolded in British law. The structural (and institutional) qualities constitutive of professions as such distinguish professions always and everywhere from other expert (and middle class) occupations – in all societies, in all occupational fields, and in all historical eras – irrespective of participants’ beliefs, understandings and linguistic usages. We provide a definition of professions drawn from our structural and institutional approach now, for preliminary consideration, and then elaborate on it at length in the chapters of Section III. Professions are expert occupations whose members occupy entrenched positions of power within situations which are structured, not either simply embedded or even more fluid, strictly commercial. Thus, professionals ineluctably exercise positional power over all clients and patrons. This remains invariant no matter how wealthy or influential in the wider society particular clients and patrons of professional services happen to be. As a result of the positions professionals always and everywhere occupy in civil society, professionals also bear structurally – thus,

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equally ineluctably – two analytically distinct sets of fiducial responsibilities. They bear fiducial responsibilities structurally for client or patron well-being. This is often acknowledged in the literature, and professionals typically bear these responsibilities purposefully and self-consciously, including during the ancien régime. What is missing from the literature and also typically eludes professionals’ beliefs and understandings is that professions also bear fiducial responsibilities structurally for the institutional design of the larger social order. This escapes the literature at a conceptual level and, as a result of this, any and all empirical inquiries into particular professionalism projects which follow obscure this second fiducial responsibility. Yet we will see that the consequences of professionalism here are even more invariant than the immediate consequences of professionalism for client or patron well being. This holds true even though professionals typically bear this second set of fiducial responsibilities strictly inadvertently, rarely purposefully.

SECTION II professionalism outside historical and contemporary pools

CHAPTER THREE

THE PARIS VISUAL ACADÉMIE Bringing the rise and consolidation of visual académies during the ancien régime into the sociology of professions accomplishes far more than simply adding some seemingly anecdotal exception to the literature. It introduces systematically into the sociology of professions a case of originating professionalism which is unambiguous on the merits even as it dates two full centuries earlier than that of British law. Precisely because our case of originating professionalism not only unfolded (a) at the zenith of the aristocratic societies and dynastic states of the ancien régime, but also (b) on the continent, and (c) in an occupational field – painting and sculpture – entirely unrelated to law (and the other three modern exemplars), it has not been integrated heretofore into the sociology of professions methodically, at a conceptual level. Once this is done, however, this case accomplishes three things simultaneously which no anecdotal exception can possibly match. First, our case of originating professionalism challenges directly, at its core, all three confines of the received pool of modern exemplars: historical, geographic, and occupational. Second, our case simultaneously challenges, equally directly, four received, putatively bedrock understandings heretofore unchallenged across the entire sociology of professions, from the 1930s to today: – First, professionalism is an Anglo-American occupational development, not initiated first in any occupational field anywhere on the continent (or elsewhere). From this geographic seedbed professionalism then diffuses, to a greater or lesser extent, to the continent and elsewhere. – Second, professionalism presupposes modernity and, more particularly, industrialization, urbanization and a narrowing or constricting of the range of household responsibilities. – Third, professionalism originates historically and is typically developed most fully in the four modern occupational exemplars: law first and foremost, then medicine, science and engineering. – Fourth, and most particularly, the first occupational field to professionalize anywhere in the world, sometime during the mid– or late

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Third, by demonstrating unambiguously that all four of these received, putatively bedrock understandings are utterly mistaken, our case of originating professionalism simultaneously shatters the received conceptual prism through which sociologists have been approaching, selecting and then interpreting the historiographic record. Putting this differently, by introducing into the literature a case of originating professionalism utterly incompatible with all four bedrock understandings, our historical case invites – indeed demands – greater abstraction in conceptualizing professionalism. After all, on its face, it forces us to conceptualize professionalism entirely independently of the entire contextual gestalt which happened to accompany English law professionalism. We thereby strip away as if in thought experiment all strictly phenomenal contexts which simply happened to accompany modern professionalism. These contexts include: industrialization, rising middle class cultural leadership, liberalization and democratization and, of course, English common law tradition and English language usage. Rather than simply continuing received theorizing – whether cultural and social psychological, with Parsons and other functionalists, or more narrowly socio-economic, with revisionists – our case of originating professionalism drives us to theorize professions far more abstractly. Greater abstraction, in turn, brings into clearer relief than at any time since the origins of the sociology of professions those analytical and empirical qualities truly constitutive of professionalism as such. It also brings into clearer view the entire issue of the place and purpose of professions in the larger society, and thus the invariant institutional consequences of professionalism. The qualities constitutive of professions are first and foremost structural, not socio-economic or cultural and social psychological. In turn, the consequences professionalism introduces into the larger society are institutional, not confined to the occupational order and stratification system. That is, professions affect the institutional design of the larger social order in ways which are invariant, thus predictable, even as institutional designs vary both historically and cross-nationally. With these dramatically different points of departure, we conceptualize professions anew.

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1. Overview Our primary historical case of originating professionalism is the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris from its founding in 1648 to its consolidation by 1680. This Académie’s unique trajectory – instructional, organizational and occupational – exceeds, by far, not only all earlier and contemporaneous developments by the two major visual académies of the day, the Accademia e Compagnia del Disegno founded in Florence in 1563 and the Accademia di San Luca firmly established in Rome by 1593. Its qualities of professionalism by 1680 also exceed by far any comparable instructional, organizational and occupational developments in law anywhere in the West – and certainly in any of the other three modern occupational exemplars – literally through the turn of the twentieth century. That is, what Académie officers achieve by 1680 will exceed for two full centuries any accomplishments by even the most elite law schools, medical schools, science schools and engineering schools anywhere in the West.1 We demonstrate that the narrative painters who became accademici in Italy and academiciens in Paris share a unique status. They are the first practitioners of any activity, whether occupational or avocational, to endeavor methodically to link advanced liberal instruction (that is, intellection and abstract principles and precepts) to the delivery of expert occupational services believed universally at the time to be socio-culturally consequential. Given this, these expert services were provided within one of the structured situations of the day, not at fluid sites of retail commerce and contracting. Our thesis is that the Paris visual Académie, not any earlier academy of painting, including Disegno and San Luca, and not any later academy of “science,” including the Royal Society in London, initiates the first sustained professionalism project in Western history. However, we refer to this project as a prototype because the Académie professionalized inadvertently, not purposefully. Académie officers and royal sponsors have no idea what a profession in a modern sense might be, just as they have no idea what an artist, fine art or aesthetics might be (see below). All such cultural understandings are anachronistic in their day.

1

For comparisons to English law and French law, see Sciulli 2008a,b.

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Visual academiciens navigate the first sustained professionalism project in Western history utterly blind. For instance, the three advanced university Faculties of the day – Divinity, Physic and Law – cannot possibly provide them with any model, let alone an ideology capable of guiding or orienting a professionalism project. In addition, no philosopher, Francis Bacon included, has yet presented any abstract thought experiment which adumbrates, let alone anticipates, any such instructional, organizational and occupational trajectory of development. 2. From Encyclopedism to Specialization2 Visual académies are one type of specialized academy, the two other major types being literary and experimentalist (natural philosophical). Taken together, all specialized académies constitute a distinct, second phase in a larger academic movement which originated a full century earlier, namely in Florence during the late 1430s. The earliest académies were avocational, neo-Platonist assemblies dedicated to advancing member learning and cultivation in general, not specialized occupational groupings dedicated to advancing member livelihoods. Aside from participants aspiring literally to attain encyclopedic knowledge corporeally or tactilely, by frequent “immersion” within these assemblies (and others), neo-Platonist académies were also informal and residential-based, not official and court-based. That is, they were not typically sponsored by princely courts or, for that matter, by gentle households of courtiers. Eventually, beginning in 1540 in Florence, neo-Platonist académies are increasingly joined on the ground by specialized académies, which are both formally organized and either court-sponsored or courtprotected. This inaugurates a second distinct phase in the larger, still unfolding academic movement which will continue to unfold into the

2 This chapter is a severely abbreviated presentation drawn from two lengthy book manuscripts. One deals with developments in Europe – organizational and occupational, and then also economic and political, social and cultural – prior to France’s visual-cultural competitiveness. This manuscript provides an alternative history and theory to Jurgen Habermas’ Strukturwandel, his The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962). The other (co-authored with Jeffrey Halley) deals at length with the entire French and European context – again, organizational and occupational, and then economic and political, social and cultural – in which the Paris visual Académie was established and consolidated.

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nineteenth century. The first specialized academy in mid-sixteenth century Florence is literary, an Accademia Fiorentina founded in 1540. The second is visual, the Accademia e Compagnia del Disegno founded in 1562–63. A full century later, this same sequence is recapitulated in Paris: a literary Académie francaise is founded in 1634 and an Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1648. In both municipalities, Florence and Paris, writers and rhetoricians initially resist entering the literary academy being sponsored by their sovereign. Being generally men of gentle birth or gentle pretension, they much prefer informal camaraderie and diversion to formal incorporation and dedicated service. However, each respective sovereign, Cosimo I de’ Medici and the Regency of Louis XIV, literally compels them to become, respectively, accademici and academiciens. Very quickly this initial resistance then fades. For instance, within a generation after the founding of the Académie francaise, the most ambitious men of letters in Paris in particular begin competing openly, at times strenuously, for the honor of becoming an academicien. The title academicien becomes an emblem that conveys unusual talent (ingegne) which, in turn, is thought to reflect a natural or God-given virtue (vertu) – an ontological quality somewhat akin, not as grand, to that attributed to gentle birth itself. The title academicien comes to reflect, that is, a new gentle standing of sorts in Parisian society (the milieu mondain), one based predominantly, however, on talent and expertise rather than on open nepotism, patronage or venality. In itself, any such meritocratic basis for recruitment into and promotion within any corporate body during the ancien régime runs directly counter to the institutional design of the larger society. This will nonetheless remain the case with all Paris Académie despite their royal sponsorship, and despite a later Revolution which will hastily associate all Académie with the discredited royal court. In their haste and vindictiveness, revolutionaries hardly appreciate that, structurally, the Académie adumbrated the very meritocratic ideals they were otherwise promoting as a centerpiece of a new republican society. 3. Larger Context: Seventeen Points The second permanent academy in Paris, as in Florence a century earlier, is a visual academy. In both municipalities founding painters and sculptors conduct themselves quite differently than their predecessors,

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the recalcitrant writers and rhetoricians. Rather than resisting sovereign sponsorship, they initiate the idea of establishing a new academy and they participate actively in its formal incorporation. Moreover, unlike any earlier literary academy or any later academy of “science,” all major visual académies – in Italy, Paris and elsewhere – also actively seek and attain a privilege (and thereby bear the responsibility) to provide instruction to students. Before proceeding with our accounting of the new visual Académie in Paris, it is helpful to place it in the context of contemporaries’ cultural understandings, social-psychological beliefs and lexical usages – as well as the even larger context of prevailing social practices, occupational conditions and some notable recent events. The following seventeen points provide basic orientation. First, the institutional design of every aristocratic society and dynastic state in Europe revolves openly around nepotism, patronage and venality.3 All occupational and honorific positions are awarded on these bases, from those in the lowliest guild workshop to those in the loftiest learned corporation, and then to those in the royal administration or at the royal court. Not only is the modern idea of profession anachronistic; equally anachronistic are modern ideas of bureaucracy and formal democracy. Everywhere entry and advancement is personalist, never impersonal. Second, the terms “artist,” “fine art” and “aesthetics” are equally anachronistic during the seventeenth century. These terms will not be formulated and begin to be disseminated until the mid-eighteenth century, and they will not enter general usage anywhere in Europe until a century after that. Painters and sculptors during the ancien régime are simply artisans. Of course, those practitioners exhibiting unusual talent (ingegne in French) are thought by contemporaries to possess a natural or God-given virtue (vertu) somewhat akin to that bequeathed by gentle birth. In addition, those awarded pensioned positions by the French Crown, and thereby work in royal or princely households, attain the status of brevetaires (brevet or warrant holders). They are thereby exempted from the dues and restrictions of the municipal painters’ guild in Paris, the Maitrise. To preserve the ambiguity of the occupational and social position of the most ambitious painters and

3 England is a partial exception in that both venality and open nepotism are increasingly frowned upon; however, patronage is crucial to upward vertical mobility.

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sculptors during the ancien régime, we refer to them as “artificers,” not artists. Likewise, we follow the art-historical literature in referring to their works as “ambitious visual representations,” not as art or fine art. Third, ambitious visual representations, like ambitious literary representations (such as epic poetry and dramatic playwriting), are assumed during the ancien régime to incarnate weighty epistemological and didactic content. That is, narrative painting and sculpture in particular is assumed to represent visually the immutable “Idea” (for neoPlatonists) or “essential forms” (for Aristotelians) of an unchanging (human) Nature. Put differently, visual narrations of ambition are believed universally to represent visually principles and precepts of Truth, Morality and Beauty which are literally immutable and universal. Such works are not seen exhibiting any “aesthetic” qualities independently: Beauty is not yet distinguishable from Morality and Truth but rather synthesized into them, as Goodness. Being immutable and universal, principles and precepts of ambitious literary and visual narration are believed universally to be incarnated in their most perfect expression in the writings and marbles of classical antiquity, and thus accessible in principle through exposure to these remnants. It is assumed that one reason ancient writings exhibit such unrivaled mastery is that spoken Greek was more perfect lyrically than any contemporary spoken vernacular. Likewise, it is assumed that one reason ancient marbles exhibit their unrivaled mastery is that the human form during classical antiquity was more perfect ontologically than the contemporary human form. It is also assumed, however, that once contemporary painters and sculptors in particular either intuit or discover the principles and precepts incarnated in ancient marbles, this can help them to overcome the deficiency of contemporary ontology to some extent. This is what Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and other Renaissance masters in the Italianate tradition are believed to have accomplished in their day, by being exposed to ancient marbles. For this reason their works, too, are considered exemplary, alongside those of antiquity. Fourth, from the Renaissance through the ancien régime antiquity is mined not out of some antiquarian impulse or idiosyncratic affectation. It is mined out of a driving, imminently pertinent quest to identify the principles and precepts believed to bear centrally on any contemporary literary or visual activity of ambition. Indeed, epic poetry and dramatic playwriting as well as narrative painting and sculpture are assumed to possess greater epistemological and didactic

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purchase than historiography, but not as much as philosophy. These literary and visual activities are certainly assumed to possess greater access to immutable and universal Truth than early modern “science” (experimental natural philosophy). This is precisely why early modern experimentalists are often more concerned about the form in which they demonstrate or record their findings than about seeking (or attaining) cumulative knowledge in content. Fifth, more than the occupational and social position of ambitious writers and rhetoricians, that of ambitious artificers is particularly ambiguous during the ancien régime. On the one hand, they are uniformly products of artisan households: reared, socialized and trained in residential guild workshops. In addition, their livelihoods demand a manual component and is also typically tainted by retail commerce. For these reasons, contemporaries relegate painting and sculpture to the lowly “mechanical arts.” Yet, on the other hand, the most ambitious visual representations – visual narrations – are nonetheless believed universally to incarnate universal principles and principles of Truth, Morality and Beauty bequeathed by antiquity. This holds out the promise of at least some painting and sculpting livelihoods becoming affiliated eventually with the more prestigious “liberal arts,” with learned activities worthy of “free” men (rather than members of sworn guilds). However, whereas contemporaries affiliate ambitious writing unambiguously with the seven liberal arts of the secondary school (college and studium generale), few members of gentle society, particularly in Paris, view painting or sculpture this loftily. Artificers are instead typically disdained by the aristocracy because of their livelihood’s manual demands, retail-workshop tradition and guild association. Sixth, the Jesuits have institutionalized the first system of competitions and awards (both symbolic and substantive) in the French secondary school system, in their own colleges de plein exercise.4 The Jesuits test students continually, and as early as the late fifteenth century initiated an annual examination, both written and oral, to make sure students cross certain thresholds of proficiency before advancing

4 By 1610 the Jesuits controlled forty colleges in France and by 1762, when they are again expelled from the country, one hundred and two (Durkheim 1904–5:235–37; Brockliss 1987:13,21). Durkheim puts the 1762 figure at 92. He believes these schools developed their system of competition to a point of greater intensity than has been seen since, including in his own day (1904–5:257–61).

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in instruction. Other secondary schools soon copy this practice, but only in 1601 is it added to statutes of the studium generale of Paris, the Sorbonne, and even then in a modified way. Where Jesuit instruction is exacting, collapsed into three years of intense study, the tempo of liberal arts instruction at the Sorbonne remains leisurely. This is precisely why the Sorbonne becomes more and more attractive to an increasingly cash-strapped aristocracy: they desire for their sons liberal learning short of pedantry. With rare exceptions, this remains the state of secondary education in Paris to the Revolution.5 Seventh, the curricula of the three advanced Faculties of the studium generale – Divinity, Physic (medicine) and Law – are strictly exegetical and pedantic. “Examinations” in all three Faculties consist of formal disputations of the writings of authorities of classical antiquity. Even instruction in Physic, for instance, is detached entirely from any manual activities, let alone practical occupational training. Physic instruction has literally nothing to do with touching patients, let alone employing invasive procedures. It has everything to do with mastering the writings of Galen and becoming versed in astrology and other symbol systems. Likewise, Divinity instruction has literally nothing to do with preparing graduates for the clerisy, and Law instruction nothing to do with the workings of tribunals or the practice of advocacy, legal representation. Eighth, Physic, like Law and Divinity, is a learned activity intended to affect a patron’s behavior through counsel regarding living the good life, a life of Aristotelian moderation. Thus, a physician’s primary responsibility, like that of any successful lawyer or cleric, is to provide advice and care to a particular patron (or household) regarding how to prevent disruptions of wellbeing. Only secondarily does he endeavor to identify and remedy illnesses. In order to live harmoniously, a patron needs to regulate his diet and all activities consistently with (a) his unique physiology and (b) immutable and universal principles and precepts of (human) Nature. Only in this way might one’s being remain attuned with, rather than becoming discordant from, an ever-changing and animated phenomenal natural world. A physician’s primary responsibility, therefore, is to divine this unique physiology (through observations of blood and bile) and thereby help to preserve the somatic and psychic wellbeing of one

5

Durkheim 1904–5:244,257–61; Brockliss 1987:71–2.

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patron (or one household). Thus, Physic is often called “preventive” medicine or “dietetic” medicine, and it is a service provided exclusively by patronage, not retail.6 Ninth, the entire professoriate of all studia generale during the ancien régime, in short, is dedicated to exegetical exercises and pedagogy, not to research, let alone to practical occupational activities. German universities will take the lead in Europe in challenging these priorities, but not until the so-called Vormarz period from 1806 to 1848 – and all of this will begin, ironically, in Faculties of Philosophy and Philology, not in “professional” schools.7 Tenth, specialized académies are new, structurally innovative learned corporations which sovereign courts sponsor and protect from evervigilant and touchy municipal guilds and secondary schools. Specialized académies serve sovereigns’ cultural competition for status honor, their rivalry for gloire in ambitious ceremony and decoration. They also upgrade the literary and visual discernment of gentle society, thereby advancing the diversion and pleasure of patrons and then also of collectors and amateurs (“lovers” of ambitious literary or visual representations). Eleventh, specialized académies increasingly standardize the previously ad hoc practice of particular sovereigns, princes or other gentle patrons dispensing warrants (brevets), patronage and commissions to particular literary and visual practitioners. Under these conditions, each gentle patron had been responsible (directly or through advisers) for identifying worthy commoners and then supporting them materially and symbolically. This exposed each patron structurally to possible ridicule, to being revealed as either unwilling or unable to commission the most ambitious works from the most renowned writers and artificers. In two ways specialized académies insulate patrons considerably (but not entirely) from this structural vulnerability. First, by being selfrecruiting, the académies themselves identify talented writers and artificers largely independently. With this, they simultaneously prevent the idiosyncrasies of particular sovereigns and particular circles of patrons from skewing patterns of patronage across an entire gentle society. Second, by putatively operating consistently with immutable principles and precepts of ambitious literary and visual culture, special6 7

Cook 1990:407–8. Turner 1971.

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ized académies also generally orient member academiciens to meet the highest occupational standards, as they receive patronage and execute commissions serially. Twelfth, the central mission of the literary Académie francaise in Paris is the same as that of the literary Fiorentina in Florence a century earlier, namely to refine, standardize and disseminate the court vernacular, and thereby to help unify the kingdom linguistically. Indeed, each major Académie in Paris has no alternative other than literally to formulate the first standardized lexicon in its respective field of cultural activity. The Académie francaise will upgrade a literary lexicon and thus advance literary discernment and taste in Parisian gentle society. The Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture will do the same in the area of visual culture and the Académie des Science in the area of experimental natural philosophy. In formulating its lexicon, each Académie, in short, is literally helping to broaden its pool of potential patrons for its most ambitious cultural projects and aspirations. Thirteenth, at precisely this same time, the middle third of the seventeenth century, the French aristocracy is experiencing, at a quickening pace, a general upward trajectory socio-culturally. Its ideals of honnêteté (urbanity or worldly behavior) are only now beginning to displace definitively the cruder standards of chevalerie (chivalry or knightliness) and courtoisie (courtesy or breeding) bequeathed by the Middle Ages. The new ideals of comportment, discourse and sociability will soon become consolidated as “uniformly accepted,” substantivenormative standards of access to and advancement within the milieu mondain (gentle society) at the royal court and in the salons of Paris. Fourteenth, the entire ancien régime of the seventeenth century is also undergoing a transition epistemologically, from an emblematic or metaphorical worldview bequeathed by the Renaissance to a fledgling, prototypically “scientific” or experiential worldview. Amidst this transition, an ideal of the phenomenal “hunt” (venato) comes into prominence, first among collectors of curiosities (curieux) and then among pioneering contributors to experimental natural philosophy. The emblematic worldview has been under strain for over a century, as a result of the influx of New World flora and fauna into Europe, and now its limitations are becoming more and more self evident. After all, classical antiquity had not mentioned armadillos, kangaroos and other such exotica, let alone incorporated them into their schemes of associations (such as the association between ostriches and deficient selfknowledge). Put differently, because the authorities of classical antiquity

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had failed to mentioned New World flora and fauna in their texts of “universal knowledge,” these specimens were not supposed to exist. However, a hunter, unlike an exegete, routinely accommodates the unexpected: He proceeds through the forest experientially, unwedded to any pre-understanding (whether the one offered by neo-Platonist humanists or the one offered by Aristotelian Schoolmen). Sixteenth, during the seventeenth century, as earlier, the simple acts of reading a learned text differ experientially or phenomenologically from the ways we read today. We experience scholarly reading as a detaching, largely cognitive activity, and certainly more cerebral than corporeal. Likewise, our entry to a fine art museum separates us phenomenologically from the quotidian. During the seventeenth century, however, the opposite is the case. Learned reading is a more corporeal exercise, and entry to a collection of curiosities (cabinet de curiosites) is a tactile, literally all-absorbing corporeal experience, not a cognitive or contemplative one. Cabinets are believed universally in Europe to incarnate in miniature a literal encyclopedia of the phenomenal world’s physical rarities, wonders and mysteries. Thus, they are assembled with the intention of providing innately receptive visitors – those worthy ontologically – with existential sensations of universal knowledge, sensations which, literally, are osmotic: the worthy attain universal knowledge corporeally – not cerebrally – through immersion, through repeated exposure to these sensations. Finally, in comparison to the date of the visual Académie’s founding, 1648, Galileo has died only recently, in 1642. In turn, in comparison to the visual Académie’s consolidation, in 1680, Newton will publish the Principia soon thereafter, in 1687. In between, the experimentalist Royal Society will be founded in London in 1660, and its secretary, Henry Oldenburg, will begin publishing independently his Philosophical Transactions in March 1665. An Académie des Sciences will be founded in Paris in December 1666, but absent a royal charter laying out its governing statutes. In itself, this omission reflects its lower status as compared to the first two major Académie in Paris. Sciences will not be reorganized, and adopt its permanent structure and practices, until 1699. 4. Founding Peinture et de Sculpture The new visual academiciens in Paris are men of common birth who had been trained in guild workshops or, alternatively, as assistants to

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brevetaires. By necessity, they earn their livelihoods with manual labor but no longer engage in retail trade. Contemporaries consider them artisans, both occupationally and socially, and thus unworthy of learned society (let alone gentle society). Their occupation is not known widely for its demands of intellection, despite the epistemological and didactic weightiness of visual narrations. This weightiness is attributed to the patrons who commission such works, not to the painters and sculptors that design and execute them. Thus, painting and sculpture is not associated in anyone’s mind with the prestigious liberal arts of the studia generale and learned society. There is literally no precedent anywhere in Europe, including in the visual Accademia of Italy, for liberal (or intellection-based) instruction in painting or sculpture. The founding visual academiciens in Paris nonetheless wish to initiate a curriculum and program of more liberal, intellection-based instruction, in their own immediate corporate and positional interests. Only an innovation here can potentially upgrade their occupational activities in the eyes of contemporaries to the status of “liberal arts,” and thereby to upgrade their own social status. Thus, in their own immediate corporate and positional interests they will eventually succeed – by the 1660s and 1670s – where the two premier visual académies of their day, Disegno in Florence and San Luca in Rome, had tried earlier and utterly failed. 4.1 Design over Color At their inaugural meeting, on 1 February 1648, Académie founders, led by brevetaire Charles Lebrun, discuss plans for initiating a liberal curriculum and program of instruction in drawing or design (dessein; today spelled dessin). With this, they broadly emulate the basic, founding aspiration proclaimed in the very title of Europe’s first visual academy, the Accademia del Disegno of Florence. The problem they face is that neither the Florentines nor any other visual accademici in Italy had succeeded in realizing this aspiration. The Florentines had tried through the 1570s and failed; then Roman visual accademici tried again during the 1590s and also failed. Now, in the 1640s, no visual Accademia anywhere in Italy is even attempting to realize Disegno’s founding aspiration. Thus, there is no such curriculum and program of instruction in existence, only a vague, abstract ideal of what it likely demands (as formulated most forcefully in Florence by Benedetto Varchi [1503–1565] and Giorgio Vasari [1511–1574]).

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The point of departure of the new visual Académie in Paris is nonetheless to build, as best Académie officers can, on the broad founding aspirations of Disegno. Parisian academiciens thereby agree to privilege instruction in line (drawing) over instruction in color (painting). Indeed, more than any Italian predecessor or counterpart, they agree to dedicate Académie premises exclusively to the intellection and dexterity demanded by the drawing – the inventing and composing – of visual narrations, the highest genre. They literally ban from Académie premises the manual component demanded by painting and sculpture. Thus, from its founding to the mid-nineteenth century, the Académie refuses to offer instruction on its premises in brush or chisel, in applying paint or in sculpting marble.8 Each academicien is responsible for teaching the students living in his studio or atelier all such mechanical techniques, out of view. The only exception to this hard and fast rule is that the use of brush and chisel is permitted during final stages of student competitions.9 This scrupulousness advances the immediate corporate and positional interests of founding Paris visual academiciens in three ways simultaneously. Unlike the writers and rhetoricians in the Académie francaise, the painters and sculptures in the new Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture appreciate that their entry into a royal Académie seems anomalous, ultimately presumptuous, to gentle society. Whereas the occupational activities of writing and rhetoric have always been affiliated with the liberal arts of learned society, those of painting and sculpture are affiliated with the lowly “mechanical arts” of municipal guilds. Thus, if Académie officers permit open instruction in brush and chisel on Académie premises, this could well cause the Crown to rethink its sponsorship, and thereby jeopardize their very title of academicien. By restricting their premises to instruction in drawing or design, they not only (a) reduce this jeopardy. They also (b) distinguish themselves unambiguously from the Maitrise while (c) associating their occupation on seemingly credible grounds with the liberal arts.

8 Goldstein notes that the visual Académie begins teaching painting in 1863, as part of a general reform program (1996:316 note 5). By then, however, its independent socio-cultural authority is no longer recognized universally, as the Impressionist Revolution gathers momentum. 9 Duro 1997:44–5; Goldstein 1996:225.

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The Italian term disegno and French term dessein convey generally to painters, sculptors and learned society an emphasis on: rigor in observing (human) nature (including the male model), diligence in studying anatomy, and assiduousness in training eye and hand. Now, within the Académie, dessein also conveys to new visual academiciens an even greater challenge. They must find a way to identify explicitly and then codify or standardize, for the first time in Western history, the immutable principles and precepts of perspective and proportion incarnated in marbles of classical antiquity and then also in exemplary paintings and sculptures of Renaissance masters. 4.2 The Instructional Program At the start the new academiciens in Paris initiate the basics at least of what in their day is indeed an innovative, literally path-breaking curriculum of “liberal” visual instruction. They agree that the drawing exercises should unfold sequentially, in clear stages marked by formal exercises of increasing difficulty. However, this instructional format, unto itself, has been a standard feature of guild workshop training since time immemorial. The same is true of the pathway to entry to the Académie: only a workshop apprentice or assistant who has received a certificate from a master, a Lettre de Protection, is eligible for admission as an eleve, a beginning student. Indeed, the very term eleve, “disciple,” conveys that workshop experience remains a prerequisite. Still, even as this pathway of recruitment is utterly ordinary, the Académie does innovate even here: a sponsoring academicien never assumes the control over any student that a workshop master routinely assumes over all apprentices and assistants. A sponsoring academicien may well broadly guide an eleve’s progress in the instructional program, but, once admitted, all eleves are placed in the hands of twelve rotating professeurs. In addition, the Académie will soon distinguish itself from all earlier municipal guilds as well as Italian Accademia by incorporating its ordinary pathway of entry and its standard workshop exercises into a larger curriculum and instructional format which is utterly unprecedented. By the 1660s, Académie instruction will be “based on a more systematic organization [than in any guild workshop], with a full series of courses with set timetables to keep the pupils well-occupied.”10 In addition, the 10

Lanciotti 1963:155; Pevsner 1940:96,107.

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Académie’s instructional program unfolds within an organizational setting that is equally unprecedented, and it is dedicated to advancing a career trajectory which also by the 1660s and 1670s paves entirely new ground. First, student instruction on Académie premises consists exclusively of drawing exercises, lectures, examinations and competitions. In the view of academiciens, the early stages of painting and sculpting – invention and composition – are learned or intellection-based, not mechanical or manual. By contrast, the final stage – execution – is largely mechanical, and thus inappropriate for a site of liberal instruction. Second, and even more dramatically innovative, students receive drawing instruction from twelve rotating masters (first called anciens, then, by the reorganization of 1663, professeurs). Each professeur rotates his instructional duties monthly such that student cohorts never work exclusively under any one academicien. The twelve professeurs also provide their instruction in open view, thereby guaranteeing that any predilections of one will be tested and counterbalanced by the eventual presence of others. There has never been a guild or Accademia anywhere in Europe which ever adopted anything approximating such an open or public approach to visual instruction. Third, given this rotational instructional format, the Académie must devise collectively – thus purposefully and deliberatively – and then institutionalize over time a drawing curriculum which all current and future professeurs can, first, simply recognize and understand in common, intersubjectively, and then can, second, implement in ways which are broadly commensurable rather than disparate. This, too, is utterly path breaking, and the reasons why reveal much about the occupations of painting and sculpture during this era. The “entire artistic world” of the day shares the idea “that beauty [can] be taught.” Everyone believes that immutable rules of visual excellence exist. They simply need to be identified explicitly, as visualcultural “principles” of design, and then codified, as “precepts” of visual instruction. Only the latter can broadly orient cohorts and then generations of students to identify Beauty in their mind’s eye and then to represent Beauty visually, in drawings.11 Beauty, in turn, is synonymous with Goodness and thus ultimately indistinguishable analytically or in substance from Truth and Morality. All three qualities or standards

11

Schnapper 1990:34.

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of pictorial eminence are considered immutable and universal, and thus incarnated first in the remnants of antiquity and then in the paintings and sculptures of Renaissance masters. Because a concept of “aesthetics” independent of Goodness will not even be adumbrated until after the Revolution, the “immutable precepts” the Académie eventually identifies and incorporates into its curriculum, from 1667 to 1669, literally synthesize the epistemological, didactic and aesthetic. Until this path breaking development has occurred, however, any rules of drawing which early rotating anciens suggest to eleves, as putatively immutable precepts, are subject within the Académie to ongoing review, scrutiny and, at times, formal deliberation. None of these early rules are simply imposed on students by any ancien (possibly with the exception of Lebrun). The Académie, in short, steadily institutionalizes ongoing deliberation over weighty visual-cultural and visualinstructional matters in something akin to a collegial form.12 In itself, this already distinguishes Académie organization and internal workings from the networks of nepotism, patronage and venality otherwise institutionalized across every guild workshop and learned corporation of Paris. Returning to the Académie curriculum in this light, lecturing is confined to two hours a day, the ecole publique, with the subjects including architecture, geometry, perspective, anatomy and history. Perspective is taught on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, anatomy on Saturday afternoon. Then students proceed to their respective drawing sequence, which is divided into lower or elementary exercises and upper exercises. The lower level, the Salle du Dessein, is where beginning students, eleves, copy from prints and other basic reproductions provided by the twelve rotating professeurs. As eleves advance within the lower level they draw from engravings and prints after masters of the Italianate tradition and of the Académie.13 A collection of such engravings and prints has already been published, in 1638, by (then future academicien) Francois Perrier under the title Segmenta nobilium. Using these models, students copy either parts of figures or figures in their entirety. Students are compelled to repeat these preliminary exercises endlessly. 12

See Sciulli 1990. The Académie will not possess plaster casts of ancient or Renaissance sculptures until after 1666, when its founding of the Académie de France in Rome permits such copying (Goldstein 1996:144–45). 13

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It is believed that only through methodical imitation can students discover for themselves, tactilely or corporeally, the immutable rules incarnated in ambitious visual representations, including immutable rules of “invention.” The upper level of the drawing sequence is devoted largely to life drawing, from the nude male model, and is reserved for advanced students, agréés (literally, accepted ones). An eleve wishing to advance to this level and thereby to become accepted must execute a painting or sculpture on site at the Académie, a morceau de réception. The entire assembly then inspects these submissions and, by secret ballot, evaluates their merits and thus the talents of each eleve.14 From the very outset, therefore, the Académie “emphasizes the probity of its selection procedure, designed to contrast with that of the guild, in which venality and nepotism were rife.”15 Each new agréé is recorded in a lettre de provision, thereby becoming a provisional member of the Académie. The final stage of the drawing sequence, life drawing, is more or less distinctive to the Paris Académie, for it is no longer being offered either in Florence or Rome: advanced students, agréés, draw “from life” after the male model, nude or draped. Being a costly exercise, most guild workshops in Paris and elsewhere fail to offer life-drawing, and the same is now true of Disegno and San Luca in Italy.16 Agréés are required to attend life exercises from six to eight in the morning during the summer, and from three to five in the afternoon in the winter. They are encouraged at other times to draw from plaster casts. An early secretary of the Académie, Henri Testelin (1616–1695), notes that a “profound silence” comes over agréés as the model poses and drawing exercises begin. When the model rests, agréés present their sketches either to the professeur on duty or to another “excellent master” who might be present. Paul Duro notes that Testelin’s description sounds like an account of a religious ceremony, and it seems agréés experience life drawing as something of a calling: it is said that they approach the model much like supplicants approach an altar.17 14 Pevsner 1940:92,96,107; Goldstein 1996:42–43. Although in principle the Académie privileges visual narrations in its morceau de reception, in practice works of less highly regarded genres are also accepted. 15 GDA, Morceau in French Academy. 16 A rare exception in Paris had been the workshop of Simon Vouet (1590–1649), an aging rival of the early Académie who died a year after its founding. 17 Duro 1997:43–4.

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Once accepted as agréés, students have a fixed number of years, typically three, in which to qualify as an academicien. Those who advance pay an entry fee and, at some point, turn over to the Académie a finished painting or sculpture as their piece de réception. The subject of this work is decided by an Académie officer, not the agréé. When successful, an agréé is received and recognized (reçu) as an académicien. With this, he embarks on a pioneering, heretofore unavailable careerpath, that of academicien-peintre or academicien-sculpteur, with its own rungs of advancement and dignity.18 Running parallel with the drawing sequence, students also attend lectures on anatomy, geometry and perspective. Regularly scheduled lectures will increasingly distinguish the visual Académie not only from all earlier workshops in Paris but also from all visual Accademia in Italy. Rather than simply appending lectures to essentially workshop exercises, the Académie moves immediately to place immutable principles and “infallible” precepts and rules at the very center of instruction. However, it will take a decade and more for the Académie to consolidate its new liberal approach to visual instruction, as a fixed curriculum capable of training future cohorts and generations of students with consistency at the highest standard.19 4.3 The Highest Genre and Three Tracks of Upgrading The ultimate end of Académie instruction is narrative painting and sculpture, the genre that most distinguishes brevetaires and now academiciens from maitrisie. Visual narrations are considered the highest genre of occupational activity for two reasons. They encompass within themselves all other genres and subjects: portraiture, scenes of everyday rural or urban life, landscape and still life. Equally important, they also demand a degree of intellection – invention and composition – which far exceeds anything devoted to other genres. Selecting and then representing visually any particular scene drawn from notable events recounted in Scripture, mythology or historiography invariably surpasses in intellection the drawing and painting of any portrait or any contemporary urban or rural activity.20

18 19 20

Pevsner 1940:89–90, 100–1; Bryson 1981:31. Merot 1994:30; Duro 1997:42,48–49. Duro 1997:41–42.

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History painting and sculpture, in short, is considered serieux, and thus worthy of unusual talent and expertise; by contrast, visual representations of everyday rural or urban life are derided as “cheerful.” They are considered incapable of incarnating epistemological, didactic and aesthetic weightiness – incapable, that is, of representing visually principles and precepts of Truth, Morality and Beauty which are universal and immutable.21 Given that such weightiness is attributed universally in Europe to visual narrations, by occupational necessity the Académie’s founding statutes of governance go far beyond simply mandating visual instruction on premises. They also demand from academiciens both moral character and honnête comportment. First and foremost, founding members and students are to conduct themselves disinterestedly, not commercially. In addition, they are to exhibit behaviorally the politeness, sobriety and docility (vis-à-vis colleague-peers) of gentilshomme. The Académie’s emphasis on regularity, protocol, order and reason (understood in the day as innate or “natural” insight, not as critical inquiry) increasingly distances its liberal instruction and drawing sequence more and more dramatically from the failed antecedents of San Luca and Disegno.22 In advancing their visual corporation’s immediate corporate interests in Paris, in establishing their Académie’s place and purpose in gentle and learned society, Académie officers literally have no alternative other than to proceed simultaneously along three interrelated tracks of corporate and occupational upgrading. On one track, they need fully to institutionalize visual instruction as a liberal art. As part of this effort they need simultaneously, on another track, to formulate and refine for professeurs and students alike the first standardized lexicon of liberal visual instruction. This lexicon will then steadily diffuse in part to amateurs and other interested observers and supporters in the milieu mondain, who in turn will eventually convert it into the most advanced discourse and commentary devoted to visual-cultural discernment and taste in Europe. Both of these tiers of diffusion will become vital in upgrading French visual culture across the entire milieu mondain, the third track along which Académie officers are also proceeding. The Académie’s ongoing

21 22

Wrigley 1993:296. Weyl 1989:214–5.

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formulation, refinement and diffusion of a new visual lexicon is a prerequisite for upgrading visual-cultural understanding and discernment in Paris, including that of prospective patrons and collectors in the milieu mondain. This last track, visual-cultural upgrading, is clearly the most long-term of the three and, accordingly, the most difficult for Académie officers to envisage, let alone to control directly. Yet, it also happens to be a vital groundwork, a necessary socio-cultural foundation the Académie needs in order truly to consolidate its place and purpose in Parisian gentle and learned society. Prior to the visual Académie’s founding, the discourse in Paris dedicated to ambitious painting and sculpture had been strictly ad hoc and thus serial and transitory. It surfaced momentarily and then dissolved in selected circles of amateurs and curieux. Written commentary devoted to visual culture is literally nonexistent in Paris. Moreover, the curieux, the collectors of natural and handcrafted rarities of all sorts, far outnumber the amateurs, the more discerning “lovers” of ambitious painting and sculpture in particular. Curieux are renowned more for their enthusiasm and cupidity in gathering prizes than for their taste, or for their logic or sensibility in assembling and displaying their collections. Visual discourse in Paris, in short, has resisted standardization, as a shared or intersubjectively familiar lexicon of visual discernment. As a result, it has also failed over the years to yield any cumulative erudition even across amateur circles, let alone across amateur generations. Thomas Crow is direct about this, saying that prior to 1648 and the Académie founding there was “virtually no tradition of elevated artistic discourse” in Paris on which the new visual academiciens could build. Paris, in short, is a visual-cultural backwater, particularly as compared to Italy but even in comparison to the Low Countries. Precisely because French writing devoted to commentary on or criticism of ambitious painting is literally non-existent, academiciens have no alternative except to read aloud at their meetings French translations of visual commentaries written by Italian artificer-theorists, such as Giorgio Vasari and Leonardo. Historians consider Idee de la Perfection de la Peinture by Roland Freart de Chambray, published in 1662, to be the first publication by a Frenchman devoted largely to visual discernment and taste.23

23

Crow 1985:29.

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Only by upgrading dramatically the visual culture of amateurs and curieux, and then that of prospective patrons and collectors, can the Académie possibly create for itself a clientele receptive to the intellection demanded by visual narrations. This, in turn, is the most vital groundwork upon which French painting, patronage and collecting can possibly rise to a point of potential competition with that in Italy, let alone to a point of eventually competing with Rome for visualcultural leadership of Europe. 4.4 From Struggling to Survive to Independent Authority With these three tracks lying before Académie officers as, at best, rather grand aspirations, each marking simultaneously a tantalizing opportunity and a formidable obstacle, it is hardly clear that the fledgling Académie can or will proceed successfully along any of them. Indeed, it is hardly likely at times that the Académie will simply survive as a corporate body. The first two decades of its existence in Paris are marked by a succession of crises: financial, organizational and theoretical or ideological. Any one of these crises could have ended its existence. For instance, in late 1650, at the height of the Fronde (a civil war among aristocratic factions during which the Crown, the Académie’s sole protector, is compelled to flee Paris), Académie officers go so far as to seek ways to end their Pyrrhic rivalry with the Maitrise. By August 1651 they actually sign a merger agreement with the guild, which in itself calls into question the Académie’s integrity, its very raison d’etre. During this merger period academiciens endeavor to preserve a (then strictly presumptuous) claim to superior status, both occupationally and socially. More concretely, they also conspire behind the scenes to stage a coup, should the monarchy ever return to Paris. After the Fronde finally dissipates and the monarchy regains control of Paris, Premier minister Jules Mazarin in June 1655 grants the Académie new letters patent (which formally are issued by the childking Louis XIV). These new governance statutes considerably broaden the Académie’s corporate prerogatives, including granting it a formal monopoly over all visual instruction in Paris. With this, Mazarin effectively breaks the back of the Maitrise, by effectively prohibiting it from challenging the Académie’s visual authority either instructionally or in any other way.

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From this point forward, the Académie in general and its leader Charles Lebrun in particular begin successfully to assert and confirm their visual authority. They develop increasingly specific ideas about the “jurisdiction” and conjoined epistemological, didactic and aesthetic responsibilities of ambitious painting. They proceed, moreover, on the basis of the independent visual-cultural authority of visual narrations, an authority which is independent of: the Maitrise, the milieu mondain, including the Académie’s royal patrons, and any particular academicien. They establish and consolidate this independent visual-cultural authority in their own immediate corporate and positional interests, first and foremost that of survival itself. They do not do so as a result of any altruistic sentiment for French gentle society or, certainly, any “service orientation” which, by definition, would simply accommodate received visual-cultural taste in the milieu mondain. Such independence of visual-cultural authority hardly means, however, that the Académie as a corporate body or any of its members ever envisages challenging the overall socio-cultural authority of the aristocracy, which to contemporaries seems literally to be ontologically based. Paul Duro is surely correct, for instance, in noting that in Lebrun’s own paintings and decorations he is ultimately a consummate courtier. He adapts pragmatically when offered significant commissions by Louis XIV and other patrons of consequence. However, by wording Duro’s characterization of Lebrun’s occupational activites somewhat differently, we can better support his related point, which is consistent with our thesis regarding the ultimate independence of the visual-cultural authority of narrative painting. Lebrun is hardly a slavish propagandist. He will not abandon all visual-cultural standards and principles in order to flatter patrons, including the king himself. Indeed, later art historians find Lebrun’s activities to be heavyhanded: “authoritarian” or “absolutist.” They thereby misread the situation in another way. Living in a post-Impressionist era, art historians no longer associate fine art with epistemological and didactic standards amenable to professionalism. They instead associate it with aesthetics and painter insight and creativity. With this in mind, however, we can appreciate better Stranahan’s assessment of Lebrun’s behavior, published in 1888, and Duro’s conclusion, published in 1997. Stranahan points out that despite art historians’ ready charge of absolutism, “frequent records of disinterested kindness more than counterbalance the petty acts of jealousy of which

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[Lebrun] is accused; these are also refuted by the height of the position he held removing all motive for them.”24 Duro’s conclusion (in an interior section of his book) is that Lebrun in his day establishes a general approach to history painting which mediates between the demands of royal patrons and the exigencies of each painter’s individual practice. He thereby upgrades both. Lebrun, that is, successfully establishes in Paris the independent visual-cultural authority of history painting as such, against the idiosyncrasies of both individual painters and individual patrons. This is why Duro says “Lebrun was both authoritarian and liberal, Poussiniste and Rubeniste, flexible and dogmatic as circumstances dictated.”25 The visual-cultural authority of history painting rests ultimately on any painter representing visually: a certain kind of scene of a recounted event, in a certain kind of way, with a particular end in view. Such an end includes depicting visually an eternal Truth, or promoting visually a vertu (such as benevolence or fortitude), or glorifying visually a worthy or exemplary sovereign. The independent visual-cultural authority of history painting is compromised, therefore, to the detriment of painter and patron alike, whenever ambitious commissions, including decorative ones such as murals, simply flatter patron vanity by accommodating their uninformed taste or preferences. Lebrun, in short, treats history painting as a distinctly expert service – a liberal art with a practical occupational end – which can be taught, thus professionalized, on its own terms, according to its own intrinsic epistemological and didactic principles and precepts. As such, the history painting is capable inherently, as a genre, of reconciling seeming opposites into a workable, dynamic whole. Such opposites include reconciling emotion with intellect; painter interpretation with patron taste and decorative requirements; and immutable principles and precepts with momentary fads of gentle fashion (such as the coming rococo). Once a particular scene is selected from a recounted event to fill a commission, whether selected by a patron or by a painter, it is the painter, not the patron, who “invents” the particular approach to representing this scene visually. It is the painter, not the patron, who determines the location of each figure depicted in the scene as well as its

24 25

Stranahan 1888:51. Duro 1997:64,66.

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overall composition: the relationship of all figures to each other as well as to background and foreground. Moreover, it is the painter, not the patron, who is responsible for representing visually “heroic actions of the past in the service of the here and now,” in the service of verisimilitude with current gentle understandings and behaviors of honnêteté. Such a prototype professional does not, conversely, portray the here and now, current understandings and behaviors, in an illusionistic or fictional way, as a modern painter might. Our point is that rather than the demands of Truth, Morality and Beauty, coupled with those of verisimilitude, placing undue or unwarranted restrictions on painters (and patrons) to no good end, as part of some “absolutist” excess, it is the independent visual-cultural authority of history painting which opens a rather grand opportunity for France. It opens the possibility of this northern kingdom developing a “national” standard of visual-cultural discernment and taste which simultaneously can credibly claim universality and immutability. In turn, all ambitious French painters, for their part, have a clear positional interest in credibly asserting and establishing this same grand claim. After all, only on this basis can they, first, distance themselves once and for all from maitrisie, and then, second, begin to compete with Italian masters of the past and present on what contemporaries believe is the same – thus, level – visual-cultural playing field.26 5. Consolidation and Take Off Upon the death of Jules Mazarin, in March 1661, his adept and harddriving successor, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, increasingly promotes the Académie – in his own immediate positional interests, as the king’s foremost domestic adviser. Ever a pragmatist and attuned to organizational opportunities, he recognizes that neither he nor anyone else either in the royal administration or in Paris gentle society more generally is sufficiently discerning visually to assume responsibility for, and thus to direct, the kingdom’s visual culture. By default of Paris’s longstanding status as a literal visual-cultural backwater, Colbert has no choice except to leave this matter largely to Lebrun and the Académie. The fate of the kingdom’s visual-cultural competitiveness in Europe is ultimately in their hands. 26

Duro 1997:66–71.

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But Colbert will nonetheless ceaselessly prod Académie officers in ways that they cannot possibly disregard or ignore. He ceaselessly reminds them of, and compels them to realize, their own founding aspirations, as articulated and codified in their original statutes of incorporation of 1648 and then in the reincorporation of 1655. Colbert refuses to allow Académie officers to revert to workshop exercises, as many of them and other fellow academiciens prefer. He instead insists that the Académie proceed ever more forcefully with its pioneering efforts to establish and consolidate a liberal visual instructional program and curriculum – or else face dissolution. From the moment Colbert succeeds Mazarin, the Académie gains from the Crown increasing support, financial and symbolic. More than any other Académie in Paris, moreover, it now evolves into a model of occupational and organizational success for men of common birth but rare talent (ingegne) and thus implied natural or God-given gifts (vertu). Along with the writers and rhetoricians of the Académie francaise and the future experimentalists of the Académie des sciences (founded in December 1666), the painters and sculptors of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture become the envy of talented commoners in all fields across Europe. But only the visual Académie gains – or has thrust upon it – the privilege and responsibility of instructing students, and only its occupational activities demand a manual component. Thus, only the visual Académie bears the responsibility for developing a liberal curriculum of any kind outside the universities. In addition, and equally anomalously, only the visual Académie directs liberal instruction to advancing practical occupational ends, rather than to exegesis and disputation. 5.1 Why Colbert Presses and Why Académie Officers Respond Colbert converts a still-fledgling and precarious visual Académie into a more established and secure instrument for consolidating the royal administration’s authority over French visual culture. However, rather than imposing his own or Louis XIV’s personal visual taste on reluctant academiciens, Colbert approaches the visual Académie much more nimbly or circumspectly – because, again, he has no alternative. Neither he nor Louis XIV is in a position to know independently how best to compete with Rome and Italy for visual-cultural leadership of Europe. Thus, Colbert’s visual-cultural strategy for the kingdom is ultimately isomorphic, by default, with whatever policies Lebrun and other

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ambitious academiciens have been formulating and articulating for years. But it is Colbert who most fully appreciates, more than most Académie officers that “the Academy could not have hoped for lasting authority unless it could demonstrate that its ideas were generated, ultimately, by its own concerns and needs.”27 Thus, rather than imposing some “absolutist” royal-administrative policy on reluctant academiciens, Colbert instead advances his own visual-cultural strategy for the kingdom by simply taking seriously the rhetoric and aspirations of Lebrun and other Académie officers. To this end, he insists – sometimes more forcefully than academiciens expect, prefer or appreciate personally – that Académie officers realize in practice as fully as possible the very visual policies they have been initiating and proposing since the founding, in their original opposition to the Maitrise. Under Colbert’s ceaseless prodding, the Académie, for its part, has to become increasingly concrete in converting Italians’ vague, rarified references to disegno into a set of readily identifiable principles and teachable precepts. It has to identify, codify and standardize rules of visual expertise and discernment which are at once eminently practicable and yet seemingly universal and immutable, thus “infallible.” Any such regles infaillibles will in two ways advance the Académie’s immediate corporate and positional interests, first in Paris and then more widely, across Europe and then the various colonies. On the one hand, only regles infaillibles can anchor the Académie curriculum and instructional program and then academiciens’ occupational practice on what contemporaries believe are truly secure learned foundations. Only on such foundations can the Académie possibly affiliate itself credibly with the liberal arts. Of even more immediate concern, only on such foundations can rotating professeurs possibly train young eleves and agréés with consistency across cohorts and then generations according to the highest standards of visual intellection and expertise then available. On the other, these same regles infaillibles, once understood and adapted by at least some circles of amateurs in ways that can become congenial to gentle discourse in the milieu mondain, will literally create for the Académie a constituency heretofore unknown in Paris, a constituency of visually discerning amateurs, patrons and collectors. Here 27

Duro 1997:19.

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Académie principles and precepts will eventually provide courtiers and salonnieres with their first refined, more or less standardized visualcultural lexicon, indeed the first such lexicon in Western history based on actual inspection of paintings and sculptures rather than on analogies drawn from literary criticism. Only on the basis of a more refined and standardized visual-cultural lexicon can the milieu mondain possibly distinguish intersubjectively or in common the ambitious visual representations of academiciens and masters of Italy from the lesser genres and styles of maitrisie and the masters of the Low Countries. The same lexicon will also allow gentle amateurs, patrons and collectors in particular to identify and discuss intersubjectively the various constituent qualities of ambitious visual representations. Ironically, as the milieu mondain becomes more discerning visually, the Académie can assume an independent socio-cultural authority in Paris (and beyond), namely that over matters of visual culture. It accomplishes this by effectively wresting from gentle patrons in particular and the milieu mondain more generally the authority to dictate more unilaterally the epistemological and didactic limits of narrative commissions. Painters of common birth but rare talent and rigorous liberal instruction increasingly claim credibly, and will soon firmly establish, unrivaled socio-cultural authority in France and then Europe over visual-cultural matters. Their socio-cultural authority will remain in place for two full centuries, including two generations after the Revolution. 5.2 Second Reorganization One key building block in Colbert’s broad and ambitious cultural policy is laid in February 1663 when he, acting on Lebrun’s suggestions, finally consolidates the place and purpose of the visual Académie in Paris with yet a second corporate reorganization (following that of 1655). This royal decree (registered by the Parlement the following year) provides the Académie with what turns out to be its “definitive constitution.” It finally brings broad structure and control to its governance, administration and instructional program.28 To gain a sense of this visual Académie’s pioneering role during the ancien régime, as compared to that of any academy of “science,” the 28

Goldstein 1996:42.

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Royal Society of London was founded only two years earlier, in November 1660, and an Académie des sciences will not be founded in Paris until three years later, in December 1666. Dedicated to the new, experimental natural philosophy, these académies share somewhat with visual académies a manual component, which does not taint literary académies. However, these and other académies of “science” do not offer instruction, let alone one which culminates in a full-time occupation. In addition, no academy of “science” during the ancien régime, and then for decades after that, will come anywhere near the Paris visual Académie in pursuing consistently over several months and years particular lines of inquiry, yielding comparable cumulative findings.29 From its second reorganization forward visual Académie membership is delineated more clearly, and it is distinctive as compared to the memberships of any other Académie in Paris, present and future. Only the visual Académie is comprised not only of academistes, full members who will soon be renamed academiciens, but also of two tiers of students, eleves and agréés, as well as an occasional amateur.30 The number of amateur positions is strictly restricted, to one or two, but no limit is placed on the number of painters and sculptors who may enter the Académie, either as students or as full members. Like the instructional program, therefore, this open-door policy also distinguishes the visual Académie from all others. Membership in the Académie francaise, for instance, remains fixed at forty (and, of course, does not include students of any rank). Membership in the new Académie de Sciences will remain restricted to between 20 and 25 members into the 1690s; assistants are hired to perform menial tasks (but, again, there are no students).31 Thus, only in the case of painters and sculptors can all individuals of talent and virtue aspire to attain the occupational honor and social dignity of becoming an academicien. This will never be true of writers or experimentalists or, for that matter, of architects (see note 30). As it turns out, until the mid-nineteenth century membership in the visual 29 Historians’ laments about the inability of the Royal Society and Académie des sciences to pursue particular lines of inquiry over time fill the secondary literature. For a particularly well-documented and methodical example, see Marie Boas Hall (1991). 30 An off-shoot of the visual Académie is founded in 30 December 1671, an Académie royale d’Architecture, which also offers instruction to students. For reasons which need not detain us here, its instructional program never rivals that of the visual Académie, either in intellection or in rigor. 31 The post-revolution Académie Beaux-Arts will also have a fixed membership.

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Académie will generally reflect the full range of genres and styles of painting and sculpture in France, indeed in the Western world more generally.32 One immediate consequence of the Académie’s increasingly secure presence in the institutional design of an aristocratic society and dynastic state, therefore, is to liberate the most talented painters and sculptors from the disdain previously attached to all mechanical and retail occupations, including clothing couturier and cuisine chef. In order fully to be affiliated with the liberal arts, however, the Académie needs more than an instructional program. It needs to initiate and sustain learned, that is theory– or intellection-based, discussions and debates which, somehow, simultaneously serve and advance its instructional activities and practical occupational ends, as opposed to being strictly pedantic or exegetical. We have just stated, of course, one of the most fundamental characteristics of any professionalism project in any occupational field today. During the 1660s, however, visual academiciens are literally pioneering this project. Put more generally, they are now proceeding ever more methodically along an organizational pathway that no occupation, guild or corporation in early modern Europe heretofore has envisioned, let alone actually trod. That is, just as the visual Académie begins planning a new conference series, which we describe momentarily, it simultaneously establishes quite literally the first “professional graduate school” in Western history. 5.3 Académie de France à Rome Through an edict from Louis XIV, Colbert and Lebrun in 1666 establish an Académie de France in Rome, after two years of planning. In time, this Rome satellite of the parent visual Académie in Paris will be reserved for agréés of history painting (and sculpture) who win first prize in a new annual student competition. Thus, the most important and prestigious student competition and award is no longer a Grand Prix (initiated in 1664) but now the Prix de Rome. The prize is a fouryear residential pension in Rome at the Académie de France and thus considerable advantages in being promoted to academicien upon returning to Paris.33 32 33

Pevsner 1940:89–90,100–1; Schnapper 1990:34; Crow 1985. Pevsner 1940:98–99; Schnapper 1990:34.

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Colbert’s earlier reforms of 1663 already enshrined formally the hierarchy of genres which privileges visual narration over all others. Now the Prix de Rome and entry to the Académie de France reinforce this formality with undeniable substance. Simultaneously, the founding guidelines for this competition already begin to apply principles of narrative painting which the Académie is only now clarifying and codifying, in its new conference series which begins in 1667. In the Academy precepts of art were held capable of solving all artistic problems. The academicians were convinced that beauty – or artistic excellence – results from the application of infallible rules of art; works were therefore examined with regard to these rules.34

Students are evaluated accordingly, by their ability to “imitate” (human) Nature as “Idea” or “essential forms,” that is to represent the human form in its most elevated or pure incarnations as exemplified by ancient marbles and Renaissance masterpieces. This standard of design, being immutable and universal, is by definition consistent with the visual tradition of Florence and Rome as well as that of classical antiquity. Thus, eleves and agréés in Paris are discouraged from acknowledging, let alone following, any other visual tradition, whether that of the Low Countries or that of Venice. Painters of northern lands are suspect in Paris because they “imitate” human beings more “realistically,” as they actually appear phenomenologically in everyday life, warts and all. Venetian masters in the tradition of Titian (c.1485–1576) are also suspect because they privilege color over line, execution over invention and composition. To the end of inculcating into students rules of design which are unrivaled, “infallible” and unchanging, instruction and training on Académie premises emphasize the following principal exercises. First, composition or disposition of the subject; then expression in general and of each figure, perspective in arranging figures and depicting sources of light, correct drawing in proportioning all picture parts, and finally the distribution of colors.35 Students who excel in the instructional program, and thereby become prize-winning student pensionnaires at the Académie de France in Rome, are freed from financial burdens and expected to serve the king (and themselves) by both studying and copying ancient and Renaissance originals. They are not permitted to venture outside of 34 35

Goldstein 1969:349. Duro 1997:74.

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Rome, in part to ensure they are not influenced by direct exposure to Venetian couleur. “Rome stood for a unified and universal body of tradition by which French art would continually check its bearings.”36 Student pensionnaires are also not permitted to work outside the Académie, to accept commissions. Any hours they do not devote to studying mathematics, geometry, anatomy, perspective and architecture are to be dedicated exclusively to copying, as directed by the recteur (Charles Errard, c.1606–1689).37 Beyond their copying, students are also expected to demonstrate to Paris ongoing improvement in their own original painting, namely by sending one such work each year (as an envois) to the parent Académie for evaluation. Ideally, these envois should constitute a progressive series.38 5.4 Corporate Merger and Student Competitions The first six years of the presence of the Académie de France in Rome, from 1666 through 1673, prove to be ones of phenomenal progress and success. Yet this was hardily predictable by participants. Indeed, it is not possible to overemphasize how path breaking France’s visual satellite in Rome and Grand Prix competition for entry to it is, and not only in its day but for two centuries to follow. There is no precedent in early modern Europe for a school of advanced or specialized instruction in any field with a practical (rather than exegetical) end, or, even more, for entry and advancement based on competitive examination. Indeed, the western World will not see comparable instructional bodies until the turn of the twentieth century, with the consolidation of major medical schools (such as Johns Hopkins), law schools and science and engineering schools. More particularly, the new Académie de France is “the first and most notable instance of a school established by a country in a foreign land in order to facilitate a more direct interchange of culture and to effect a more immediate acquaintance with the material of study.”39 It is also, by far, the most rigorous, talent-based training ground in any field of learning with a practical occupational end during the entire ancien régime. In both respects, in overcoming national and ethnic provincialism

36 37 38 39

Crow 1985:28. Pevsner 1940:99; Smith 1993:8–9. Stranahan 1888:29 and note 1; Duro 1997:54. Lanciotti 1963:156.

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and in institutionalizing entry, advancement and promotion by competitive examination, the Académie and its Rome satellite privilege prototype norms of professionalism over prevailing aristocratic norms of nepotism, patronage and venality. These prototype norms, that is, are equally alien to organizations that will later be organized in a bureaucratic form or in a formally democratic form. Unlike these alternative organizational forms, the Académie is promoting ongoing deliberation among gentlemen-equals or peers, and thus a distinctively collegial form of organization. By comparison to the enormous strides taken by the Académie along a prototype professionalism project, neither the legal bars in London and Paris nor the College of Physicians in London or the Faculty of Medicine in Paris test candidates or practitioners at all. It goes without saying that they do not do so with rigor, by any competitive process capable of subduing patronage and venality. German universities will pioneer in Europe the privileging of research over exegesis, but they will not begin appointing professors in any field based on their research credentials until the middle third of the nineteenth century. Moreover, they will begin this process in the fields of philosophy and philology, not in any scientific field with a practical occupational end (including that of laboratory primary research). Not surprisingly, each of the three major académies of painting and sculpture in Europe – Disegno in Florence, San Luca in Rome, and the parent Académie in Paris itself – find it necessary to react, each in its own way, to the success of the Académie de France.40 The Medici react first, in 1673, by actually establishing in Rome a Florentine satellite school of sorts, an Accademia Granducale; but it is modest in scope and will remain active only until 1686.41 More important, by 1676 the more direct interaction in situ in Rome between the Paris satellite school and the venerable Accademia di San Luca leads to a formal merger between the latter and the parent visual Académie in Paris. With this merger, French pensionnaires in Rome suddenly become eligible to compete in San Luca student competitions, even as the latter have only recently been reformed, in 1664, to conform better with the Paris system of instruction, including its progressive series of student examinations and competitions.

40 41

Schnapper 1990:34. Lanciotti 1963:156; Pevsner 1940:110; Goldstein 1996:47; Smith 1993:13–15.

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In an aristocratic era that revolves from top to bottom around open nepotism, patronage and venality, extraordinary measures have to be taken simply to ensure basic fairness in the newly merged student competitions. Thus, any such measures are utterly alien structurally to the larger institutional design of the day. This remains the case structurally even as these measures are being introduced by and applied within visual corporations sponsored and protected respectively by the Papacy and the French Crown. The format for new concorsi is designed “to ensure fairness” and indeed “seems to have been rigorous.” Students submit drawings or other works they have completed unsupervised over the course of several months. With these submissions in hand, three judges administer the prove: an extemporaneous drawing exercise to compare to the submissions. This ensures that instructors or masters had not assisted contestants. Moreover, all submitted drawings are numbered, not signed, in order to facilitate anonymous reviewing and scoring.42 Again, there is not in early modern Europe any instructional facility in any field, liberal or mechanical, which approaches anything akin to such a disinterested format of examination or competition. 5.5 Conference Series and Visual-Based Lexicon The year after the founding of the Académie de France, the parent visual Académie in Paris moves to establish once and for all its credentials as a venue of intellection and liberal visual instruction. In the process, it refines and then standardizes the first visual-based lexicon of visual discernment and taste in Western history. Heretofore, all earlier terminologies used to discern ambitious visual-cultural qualities, led by those in Italy, have been drawn by analogy from descriptions and explanations of ambitious rhetoric, poetry and playwriting or ambitious musical performance – and, thus, are literary-based. Also being informal rather than encapsulated or presented anywhere in writing, this literary-based lexicon of visual appreciation remains strictly oral and epistolary. Thus, aside from never being codified or published in any text of visual commentary, and certainly not in the minutes of any Accademia, it is also largely confined to discourse on the Peninsula.43 42

Smith 1993:27–32,91. This is precisely why Michael Baxandall found it necessary in 1972 to reconstruct the visual-cultural lexicon of quattrocento Italian patrons, collectors and amatori – from surviving contracts, diaries and correspondence. 43

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From the Renaissance to now, in short, Italians have been employing this lexicon with particular proficiency because it is home-grown whereas the French never really exhibit any basic familiarity with it, let alone mastery. At best, it is in the air in fragmented forms in seventeenth century France, just as lingering medieval notions of pictorial quality remain in the air, resisting “new” Italianate influences. In itself this deficiency in visual-cultural discourse and sensibility places French painters and sculptors – and then amateurs, patrons and collectors – at a notable disadvantage compared to their counterparts on the Peninsula. In March 1667 Colbert approves a plan, likely submitted by Lebrun, for a new series of monthly conferences: advanced presentations and discussions. Colbert demands that presenters no longer read translations of writings by Italian artificer-theorists, as had been done in the Académie previously, and infrequently at that. Instead, one academicien each month is to analyze one exemplary painting (or sculpture) borrowed from the royal collection before the entire assembly. Interested amateurs are also to be invited to participate fully and freely during the discussion period which follows, and no time limitations are to be placed on these proceedings.44 By requiring the Académie to focus its collective attention on particular visual exemplars, rather than permitting it to continue rehashing translations of Italian treatises, the new conference series is designed purposefully to discover and identify “universal” and “immutable” principles and teachable precepts of narrative painting and sculpture. That is, Colbert expects his visual academiciens to identify and articulate regles infaillibles with sufficient precision to inform both instruction and occupational practice. Only with the new conference series, in short, does a lexicon of visual-cultural discernment finally emerge based on methodical observation first and foremost, entirely independently of literary analogies. The new lexicon, visual-based and formally codified, will steadily displace the literary-based, still informal lexicon bequeathed to the Peninsula by the Renaissance. As a result of this lexical development French academiciens and amateurs alike can finally overtake their counterparts in Italy, first on Académie premises and then more widely in Paris. They can finally become more precise, thus more discerning,

44

Pevsner 1940:94; Goldstein 1996:43; Montagu 1993:70–71; Crow 1985:28.

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in their observations, analyses and discussions of ambitious painting and sculpture. In addition, over time the most visual-culturally ambitious amateurs among the courtiers and salonnieres of Paris will steadily glean from Académie conferences and occasional publications a less occupationally specialized visual-cultural lexicon, one more suitable for everyday discourse and sociability in the milieu mondain. Eventually, by the mideighteenth century, it will be this more diffused lexicon that will spawn in Paris the first sustained visual-cultural commentary and criticism in Western history, beginning most forcefully in 1741 with the writings of La Font de Saint-Yenne (1688–1771). But now, at the inauguration of the conference series, “the inclusion of painting among the liberal arts was still not in place.” There is also no reason back then for contemporaries to believe that this will change soon, in the absence of a dramatic new development – such as a refined and standardized visual-cultural lexicon.45 Seven conferences are held in 1667 and then sixteen more to April 1669. One of the most systematic and methodical sets of conferences in the Académie’s entire history are presented in the spring and fall of 1668. Across four monthly meetings, Lebrun delivers his famous Conference sur l’expression generale et particuliere, discussing “general expression” on 7 April and 5 May, and then “expression of the passions” on 6 October and 10 November. With Lebrun paving the way in identifying what contemporaries believe are regles infaillibles within an area of visual representation and discernment as seemingly opaque and subjective as narrative subjects’ facial and gestural expressions, the Académie will continue this mission of methodical analysis on and off for a century. No other Académie in Paris or anywhere else in Europe, including the recently established Royal Society in London, can credibly claim at any time during the ancien régime (and decades beyond) any similarly methodical and cumulative line of analysis in its respective field of inquiry.46 Indeed, the new conference series is path breaking simply as a formally organized event. By focusing an entire assembly’s attention and discussion on one exemplary visual representation at each monthly conference, this marks the first time in Western history in which any

45 46

Duro 1997:117. Duro 1997:98,111,116,128; Goldstein 1996:91.

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group gathers formally before any painting or sculpture with the goal of analyzing it on the merits, in a disinterested and methodical way.47 To the same end of broad visual-cultural upgrading, and thereby of consolidating its own corporate and positional interests in Paris and then across Europe, the Académie also begins in 1667 to exhibit works by academiciens at least on occasion. These infrequent exhibitions – to become regularly scheduled Salons in 1737 – are staged in addition to the Académie’s more regular exhibiting of the drawings and paintings students submit during competitions and promotions. We can conclude this brief overview of the Paris visual Académie by again placing in context its “graduate school” satellite in Rome of 1666, its conference series of 1667–69, its exhibitions beginning in 1667, and its merger with the Accademia di San Luca in 1676 and combined concorsi. As visual academiciens in Paris proceed with their immediate end-in-view, to demonstrate credibly to contemporaries their affiliation with the liberal arts, they quite inadvertently develop the first prototype professional curriculum and form of organization in any occupation in Western history. It will take two full centuries for experimentation in any field of science to become a full time occupation, and thus for the term “scientist” to be coined.48 The vaunted British civil service will not begin to emerge until 1690, and it will not introduce competitive examinations for entry, thereby displacing open patronage, until 1870. As for law professionalism, London’s Inns of Court will not introduce examinations for admission to the Bar until the 1850s. In medicine, the first American medical school to introduce examinations for admission will be Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, in 1893.

47 48

Weyl 1989:133. Ross 1962.

CHAPTER FOUR

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND DELAWARE COURTS Our historical case of prototype professionalism reveals quite tellingly that the pool of modern exemplars upon which received wisdom in the sociology of professions takes its bearings at a conceptual level is far too shallow to bear such a weighty epistemological burden. It certainly demonstrates that received wisdom stems from and perpetuates a strictly Whiggish historiography. By wrongly tracing originating professionalism to legal occupations amidst industrialization, first English and then others, sociologists neglect all of the centuries-earlier occupational, instructional and organizational developments in painting and sculpture just discussed. They instead wrongly presuppose, as a shared prejudice, that professionalism failed to emerge anywhere prior to industrialization. They then wrongly anticipate, correlatively, that professionalism is likely to decline after industrialization, that is, amidst the information, high-technology societies of today.1 As a result of this shared prejudice, of linking originating professionalism inextricably with industrialization and English conditions (including the common law tradition and English-language usage), sociologists have failed to see the importance of first identifying structured situations within any society – whether Anglophile or continental, and whether pre- industrial, industrializing or post-industrial (see pages 128–129 below and Chapter 6). They then fail to appreciate that professionalism unfolds exclusively within these situations, irrespective of whether it does so successfully in each instance or not. After all,

1 Abbott 1988,2002; Broadbent, Dietrich and Roberts 1997; Stichweh 1997; Greenwood and Lachman 1996; Haug 1988,1975; Derber 1982; and Toren 1975. In medicine, Harrison and Ahmad 2000; Allsop and Mulcahy 1996; McKinlay and Stoeckle 1988; McKinlay and Arches 1985; and McKinlay 1982. In law, Kritzer 1999; Anleu 1992; Abel 1986a; and Rothman 1984. Kritzer, citing Solomon 1992, notes that the meme of crisis or deprofessionalization in American legal practice can be traced to the 1920s, and then it recurs during the 1930s (1999:722 note 17). A session of the 2008 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Boston titled “The Post-Professional Era?” takes up Kritzer’s central thesis. This session was organized by Steven Brint, presided over by Magali Larson and included three panelists: Paul Adler, Mary Fennell and William Sullivan.

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we have seen that professionalism was unsuccessful in the Accademia of Florence and Rome and yet succeeded in the Paris Académie. Instead of appreciating the centrality of structured situations as an invariant point of departure, sociologists wrongly attribute to originating professionalism all sorts of variables which are extraneous – some Anglophile, others contingent on industrialization. Now we are beginning to see more clearly two related problems with received wisdom. On the one hand, all of the variables just noted are indeed extraneous; they cannot possibly be constitutive of professionalism as such because they fail to account for the unambiguous case of professionalism during the ancien régime. On the other hand, the presence of structured situations is indeed constitutive of professionalism; this does not guarantee professionalism’s success but it provides the context within which any successful professionalism project invariably unfolds. We turn next to a case of contemporary professionalism, within the governance structures of publicly traded corporations, which confirms all of the defects of received wisdom just exposed in the previous chapter. Indeed, our contemporary case is akin in three respects to our historical case of successful but inadvertent professionalism centuries earlier. It, too, is also unfolding: inadvertently, not purposefully; within an occupational field, corporate governance, which is as unexpected by received wisdom as the occupational field of ambitious painting and sculpture historically; and nonetheless within a situation that is structured, not simply embedded informally let alone fluid or strictly commercial (again, see Chapter 6). Being contemporary, professionalism within corporate governance is still unfolding, such that its outcome is uncertain. Moreover, the trajectory of this ongoing professionalism project has varied in the past, continues to vary today, and will vary in the future. Yet, our point in drawing attention to this case, as to our historical one, is that only by focusing first and foremost on structural and institutional qualities truly constitutive of professionalism as such can this case (and others) be brought into view despite ingrained resistance from received wisdom in the sociology of professions. In turn, once these two sorts of cases are introduced into the literature, they together expose definitively and unambiguously the shallowness of the pool of modern exemplars, the ultimate foundation of received wisdom. For two obvious reasons we can describe and explain our case of contemporary inadvertent professionalism more succinctly than our

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historical case. In the first place, the institutional design and sociocultural context of contemporary advanced societies is much more familiar to readers than that of aristocratic societies during the midseventeenth century. In addition, the structural and institutional qualities constitutive of professionalism remain invariant despite the marked differences in these two sets of designs and contexts, and we have already at least broached some of these qualities. The latter revolve first and foremost around expert services being provided and retained in structured situations, consistently with an independent socio-cultural authority and fiducial responsibilities, and on the basis of intersubjectively identifiable epistemological and didactic standards. Our thesis in this chapter is that the governance structures of publicly traded corporations (in the United States as well as elsewhere), and then also the legal doctrines and judicial decisions being applied to them, advance the sociology of professions at conceptual and empirical levels in three distinct respects. First, as the very phrase “governance structure” suggests, the governance of publicly traded corporations is structured. It is not only organized in some form but also contains positions of power and positions of dependence which are entrenched, not simply embedded informally let alone fluid. The most central participants lack the freedom to enter or exit at will. In addition, corporate governance is also certainly not a matter of inconsequential diversion: its weightiness is as self-evident to us today as the weightiness of visual narrations was to contemporaries of the Renaissance and Baroque. All of this is reflected directly and unambiguously in the morphology of American corporate law doctrine. The “core” of this legal doctrine is comprised of fiducial responsibilities and public law norms which are “mandatory,” literally non-negotiable. This core is not comprised of flexible contractual arrangements open to renegotiation by the parties directly involved. Nor is it comprised of amendable statutory provisions which, by definition, are subject to periodic changes by legislative compromises or interest group balancing. Second, professionalism within corporate governance advances the sociology of professions at conceptual and empirical levels in that publicly traded corporations constitute one of the two most consequential and influential sets of intermediary associations in modern civil societies. The other set is professions. By providing sociologists with a model of inadvertent professionalism within the first set, within corporate governance, we propose sociologists may use this model to describe and explain anew contemporary as well as past developments in the

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second set, the governance, regulation and activities of professions and their associations. Such comparisons across both sets of major intermediary associations are particularly apposite in post-industrial societies. After all, the expert services being provided and retained within any structured situation today, whether corporate or professional, are typically classified at law as fiducial. They are not classified more narrowly as strictly contractual or statutory. In post-industrial societies there are no professions proper whose governance, regulation and discipline are left to participant self-interestedness within self-regulating markets, or to one or another combination of contract law, tort law and basic criminal law or statutory law.2 Our point is that expert services provided within structured situations are ultimately governed and regulated in part by rules which are at once qualitative, normative and procedural, not rules which are entirely quantitative, instrumental or financial, and directly substantive or quotidian. That is, the delivery of such services is not left to experts’ self-interested behavior within self-regulating markets and thus to priced outcomes. By definition, fiducial norms severely restrict participant self-interestedness. Even more, they proscribe outright opportunism or cupidity. This explains why all professional-client relationships, whether today or historically,3 are governed and regulated by rules – legally enforceable mandates and proscriptions – which exceed unambiguously the scope of sanction of contractual terms, statutory provisions and priced outcomes. Fiducial norms of acceptable behavior take precedence over contractual terms. They also take precedence over the substance of statutory provisions as well as over any emergent normative understandings between informally embedded participants. Third, failed or successful professionalism in any structured situation in civil society (or in the state) bears structurally not simply on the economy, on the stratification system and occupational order. It also bears structurally on the institutional design of the larger society. It bears on the most basic institutional arrangements spanning agencies of the state and major intermediary associations in civil society. In our 2 The reverse does not necessarily hold true. Just as not all structured situations invariably professionalize, so too not all occupational (or other) activities at which fiducial norms are salient necessarily professionalize. 3 The Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture was likewise fiducial during the ancien régime, not more strictly contractual or more narrowly statutory.

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case in this chapter this means that successful or failed professionalism within corporate governance is bearing and will bear structurally on the institutional designs of democratic, commercially competitive societies in North America, Europe and the Pacific Rim. 1. Overview A project of corporate governance professionalism is currently unfolding inadvertently in all advanced societies, not only in the United States but also, albeit more unevenly, in the European Union and across the Pacific Rim. However, the leading edge of this global organizational and legal development is currently unfolding within and around the governance structures of American publicly traded corporations. Even more particularly, within the U.S. it is being spearheaded by commercial enterprises incorporated in Delaware, those whose “corporate governance disputes” are adjudicated by Delaware’s Chancery Court and state Supreme Court. Being ongoing, the trajectory and future outcome of professionalism within corporate governance are uncertain. Nothing is somehow over-determined by systemic forces, such as those of Weberian rationalization, nor by any hidden hand, such as that provided by competitive markets, including a market for corporate control. In coming decades, one possible outcome of current trends is for professionalism to proceed much further in corporate governance, and more purposefully so. In the U.S. this is an outcome being advocated most forcefully, yet indirectly and inadvertently, by what are called “legal traditionalists” (see below). It is also being advanced at times, equally indirectly and inadvertently, by certain Delaware court decisions. A quite different outcome, however, is equally possible. The professionalism project currently underway may be stillborn by corporate governance being redefined, and here quite purposefully so, as a fluid site of commerce, of self-interested contracting and informal norm negotiation at which fiduciary law is literally irrelevant, inapplicable. Corporate governance will then cease being defined as a structured situation. This outcome is being advocated in the U.S. today by both “legal contractarians” and “legal balancers” (also see below), and it is being advanced at times by other Delaware court decisions. While the future trajectory and outcome of corporate governance professionalism are uncertain, one thing is clear to everyone involved in and observing corporate America: Delaware state courts are operating

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literally at the leading edge of any and all changes in the structure of corporate governance and in the state law applicable to it.4 Not coincidentally, Delaware state courts are also leading the way in endeavoring purposefully to update the fiduciary law tradition at the core of corporate law doctrine. This legal tradition dates from fourteenth century England and was originally directly substantive-normative. It demanded that anyone exercising positional power in structured situations over dependents conduct himself with some degree of “fairness” and “equity,” as opposed simply to overpowering subordinates or recalcitrants, critics or challengers. Likewise, the fiducial duties and norms applicable to corporate governance in the U.S. were also originally directly substantivenormative. That is, they placed rigid “moral” proscriptions on “corporate purpose,” on what any incorporated business was permitted to claim or to do with its collective wealth and production facilities in the larger society. As examples: – Until 1867, state legislatures did not apply bankruptcy law to corporations. – Until 1875, no state legislature granted corporations a legal right to accumulate wealth without restriction. – Until New Jersey developed the first General Corporation law, in 1888, every act of incorporation in the United States was more like an elaborate naturalization ceremony than like the formality of recognizing the birth of a citizen’s child. – Until a Supreme Court decision in 1910, commercial activity in the United States was formally intra-state, not inter-state. That is, until then all General Corporation state laws had prohibited corporations formally from entering into inter-state contracts even with unanimous shareholder approval. – As late as 1927, only twenty state legislatures permitted shareholder majorities to approve a merger; all others still required unanimous shareholder approval.

Being directly substantive-normative these sorts of qualitative proscriptions on corporate decision-making became increasingly anachronistic as industrialization accelerated along with international competition. 4 There is no federal corporation law in the U.S. For instance, the federal Williams Act of 1968 regulates the timing of tender offers, not how target management teams are permitted to react to them.

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The problem is that this remains the case today: as advanced economies globalize, any lingering qualitative, substantive-normative governance proscriptions likely constrain far too narrowly the scope of corporate officers’ business judgment and decision making. For instance, if read and applied literally, received fiduciary law proscriptions may either restrict severely or prohibit outright the rise and consolidation of a market for corporate control, a market for hostile takeovers and leveraged buyouts. Appreciating this, Delaware’s Chancery Court and state Supreme Court are endeavoring to transform corporate law doctrine. They are endeavoring to replace any lingering absolutist, substantive-normative restrictions on corporate officers’ business judgment bequeathed by the fiduciary law tradition with more flexible, yet more consistently disciplining, procedural-normative mediations on corporate governance structures. That is, Delaware courts are focusing the fiduciary law tradition on how corporate officers are permitted procedurally to exercise positional power over other contributors to the corporate enterprise, namely shareholders and stakeholders. This ongoing juridical-legal transformation of fiducial norms thereby shifts attention from the putative substantive-normative propriety of corporate officers’ decision making to the procedural-normative integrity of a corporation’s governance structure itself. Put more particularly, it focuses attention on how corporate officers respond to hostile bids, leveraged buyouts and other changes in corporate control within a structured situation that is weighty, not a matter of commerce alone or, certainly, of inconsequential diversion. Corporate governance today is a structured situation that, like narrative painting and sculpture during the ancien régime, can introduce significant institutional consequences into the large society. For instance, do corporate officers erect defenses against takeovers or buyouts primarily in order to insulate their own entrenched positions from challenge? Worse, do they accept changes in corporate control primarily because they have been promised lucrative positions in the new corporate entity or preferential investments in it? The European Union faces these same issues, but somewhat more indirectly. The issue facing EU leaders today is whether to adopt British or continental approaches to corporate governance. A British approach is relatively close to an American, and thus to Delaware practice. On what basis will the EU permit – or prohibit – changes in corporate control, that is, mergers and acquisitions? By what standards will EU

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administrative agencies oversee and regulate management defenses against hostile bids as well as other exercises of positional power? More particularly, will the EU permit or discourage hostile takeovers, whether those originating from within Europe or from abroad? Whatever the answers to these questions turn out to be, they will likely diffuse in whole or part to the Pacific Rim. By contrast, an American approach to corporate governance is not likely to diffuse more directly to Europe, let alone to Asia or elsewhere. 2. Corporate Governance and Delaware Courts “Corporate governance” refers to how decisions are made and, more important, to how disputes are resolved within publicly traded corporations. The term draws our attention to a basic fact of any complex team activity: Team members are not simply individuals; they are also players of identifiable positions. Thus, team members are oriented and motivation not only by self-interests, as individuals, but also by distinguishable positional interests, as position players. It is widely recognized that, as individuals, team members can harm the team by acting too self-interestedly. It is less often recognized, however, that team members can also harm the team as players of positions, namely by promoting their positions too one-sidedly. That is, they can advance their “positional interests” too one-sidedly as opposed to acting either self-interestedly or disinterestedly as individuals. This means, correlatively, that they can be disruptive in this way for reasons that are entirely selfless, for reasons they present in utter good faith, and thus without remorse. Team members, that is, endeavor to maximize the power of “their position” relative to that of other positions on the team in the earnest belief that what is good for anyone in their position is invariably good for the team. Corporate law scholar and leading “traditionalist” Melvin Eisenberg has this distinction between self interest and positional interest in mind when he argues that “positional conflicts” within corporations differ fundamentally – structurally – from simple “conflicts of interest” stemming from selfishness or personal animus.5 Within any corporate setting, team success – whether defined as maximizing shareholder

5

Eisenberg 1989.

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equity or maximizing corporate growth – does not rest on containing simple conflicts of interest because the latter are ultimately impossible to contain. Rather, team success within any corporation rests first and foremost on whether the structure of governance, through which top management plans, exercises business judgment and makes decisions, ameliorates or exacerbates positional conflicts between corporate constituents (players of positions) as they compete to advance their respective positional interests. More particularly, the quality of corporate governance structures reveals whether directors, top managers and other corporate officers are themselves acting relatively disinterestedly in their positions, as opposed to advancing their positional interests too one-sidedly at team expense. This is why what economists call a “corporate governance function” can be distinguished, both analytically and empirically, from a “corporate production function,” from whether goods and services are being manufactured and delivered efficiently. 2.1 Delaware’s Place and Purpose in Corporate America Again, there is no federal law in the U.S. that extends to these issues, to the internal governance of publicly traded corporations. As a result, there is also no federal agency that oversees the trajectory of change of corporate governance structures. Rather, the oversight of corporate governance remains a jurisdiction of the fifty state legislatures and their courts. However, from the 1920s to today it is Delaware courts that have assumed clear leadership among all other states in developing American corporate law doctrine. Why this tiny state dominates such an important part of American public law is beyond the scope of this chapter.6 For present purposes we may simply note that Delaware has long dominated state competition for corporate charters, and today no other state, including California or New York, poses a credible challenge to its leadership and influence. Over forty percent of the corporations listed on the New York Stock Exchange are incorporated in Delaware, as are over sixty percent of the Fortune 500, and over fifty percent of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Rather than leveling off or receding, Delaware’s advantage continues to increase. For instance, of 255 corporations that reincorporated from 1982 through 1994, fully eighty-nine percent (226) moved into Delaware. 6

See Sciulli 1999, 2001.

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Some legal scholars view this state of affairs cynically, arguing that Delaware’s longstanding dominance of American corporate law doctrine calls into question its judges’ disinterest and prescience. These legal scholars see Delaware rulings in corporate governance disputes as nothing more than strategic chess moves, designed exclusively or primarily to maintain this tiny state’s attractiveness for corporate charters. Other legal scholars, however, are more sanguine. They point out that Delaware judges need not play any sort of chess game because the winner was declared long ago. No other state today can possibly challenge the numerous advantages Delaware has established over other states in incorporating and reincorporating businesses.7 Delaware’s utter insulation from credible challenges means its judges uniquely enjoy considerable latitude in articulating a broader social vision when resolving particular corporate governance disputes. 2.2 Derivative Suits and Delaware’s Social Vision What everyone at the corporate bar acknowledges today, including the cynics, is that for better or worse Delaware judges are quite prepared at times, whether for reasons of principle or of strategic advantage, to assume a longer-term, deliberative approach to the derivative suits that bring corporate governance disputes before them. But what are derivative suits? Two sets of major issues at stake in these suits help to illustrate their nature more generally. First, is top management obligated, as if it is exclusively shareholders’ agent, to maximize share price during any change in corporate control, such as a merger or takeover? Or is management permitted, as also the trustee or steward of a team, to try to preserve the “stakes” (of career and expertise) other corporate constituents have contributed to the team? On the other hand, may corporate officers protect “stakeholders” in ways that unduly increase the positional power of top management itself at shareholder expense? Second, when and how does a board of directors deliberate over a major corporate decision proposed by top management, such as a sale of control or, conversely, a defensive tactic? Is it permissible, for instance, for individual directors or top managers to derive personal pecuniary

7

Sciulli 2001:211–15.

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benefits, or contractual guarantees of future positions, from a merger or any other change in corporate control? Derivative suits and thus corporate governance disputes are not restricted to these two sets of examples. What is important more generally is that in resolving these and similar issues Delaware courts intervene into the internal governance of corporations. Thus, they intervene into how corporate officers are permitted to assert their business judgment, to exercise positional power. Equally important, Delaware courts resolve such disputes at times on decidedly qualitative, normative grounds. They do not rely more exclusively on quantitative, priced outcomes, whether for shareholders (as profits) or for the corporate entity (as growth). They resolve derivative suits on qualitative, normative grounds with an eye to (a) promoting (or reasserting) the integrity of corporate governance, (b) consistently with evolving social norms and, ultimately, (c) consistently with a more inflexible but hardly immutable backdrop, that of institutional design – as Delaware courts view and understand all three. Thus, Delaware judges at times consider the possible harm that the trajectory of changes in governance structures across corporate America can cause to “society.” They do not resolve all derivative disputes more narrowly, in terms of whether any particular disputed transaction increases corporate growth, shareholder wealth or social wealth. Any broader approach by Delaware judges, of course, comes down to their acknowledging that the internal governance of corporations is embedded within a larger economic, political, social and cultural environment. Only part of this environment is comprised of legal pressures institutionalized by the Delaware courts in particular. Another part is comprised of normative pressures institutionalized by economic elites’ diffuse, often implicit understandings of what in substance are socially acceptable or unacceptable business decisions. Most important, this same normative environment is also buttressed by thresholds of acceptable corporate governance activities that can be traced to institutional design. In the case of the United States and the European Union we are talking about the institutional designs of democratic, commercially competitive societies in a global economy. Our point is that Delaware’s General Corporation law, including the “mandatory rules” stemming independently from the fiduciary law tradition are not primarily instruments of commercial acquisitiveness. They are instead windows to evolving social norms and, ultimately, to

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structural delimitations imposed by institutional design. Changes in Delaware corporation statutes and in how Delaware judges apply these statutes’ core of mandatory fiducial rules either reflect or anticipate broader changes in social norms. Most important, they either support or enervate institutional design. 2.3 Mandatory Rules: Fiducial Duties of Care and Loyalty Delaware judges act most noticeably on a broad social vision when they impose two mandatory normative duties on corporate officers. By definition, such duties hold corporate officers to qualitative standards of behavior, as opposed to permitting them to exercise their business judgment in strictly economizing or market-mimicking ways. In particular, Delaware judges hold corporate officers to fiducial duties of care and loyalty to the corporate entity, to the team, not more directly to shareholders, to the entity’s “owners.” The duty of care requires corporate officers to remain informed as they make decisions, including actively to seek relevant information as opposed to going along passively with the views or proposals of peers or superiors. In turn, the duty of loyalty requires corporate officers to avoid commercial transactions which conflict with their corporation’s business interests, with the team’s survival and success. Taken together, these two fiducial duties require corporate officers to exhibit some degree of independence, some disinterestedness and deliberation, and thus “fairness,” even when they are exercising positional power over other corporate constituents. This explains why Delaware’s Chancery Court in particular and then state Supreme Court (on appeals from Chancery decisions) today imposes these qualitative, normative duties on corporate officers independently – independently of constitutional law, independently of statutory law, and independently of contract law. Delaware judges literally place a value-added “normative capsule” around all assertions of business judgment and all exercises of positional power which corporate officers otherwise initiate lawfully by statute and contract.8 This is why legal scholars refer to fiducial duties of care and loyalty as the “mandatory core” of American corporate law doctrine.

8

See Etzioni 1988 for the phrase.

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When Delaware judges insist that corporate officers exhibit care and loyalty to the corporate entity, they are endeavoring to maintain the integrity of the internal governance of otherwise private commercial enterprises, as judges interpret this integrity. They may not be able directly to compel corporate officers to act strictly disinterestedly, to sacrifice their positional interests to the collective interests of the team. But they are able to identify when corporate officers advance their positional interests too one-sidedly, to a point of abuse, and then to react by inducing or compelling them to behave more disinterestedly or fairly. Delaware judges accomplish this by taking one or more of three actions: – they can rescind the transactions at issue; – they can compensate those who suffered identifiable losses; or, most important – they can require changes in a governance structure.

2.4 Contingency and Vulnerability of Delaware’s Social Vision Delaware courts’ continuing qualitative, normative analysis of corporate officers’ exercises of positional power and business judgment is not a matter of interpretation by legal scholars or sociologists. It is a “social fact” acknowledged across the corporate judiciary and bar. At the same time, we must appreciate that such judicial behavior is hardly overdetermined or destined in any advanced society. To the contrary, it is eminently contingent. Delaware judges’ way of resolving corporate governance disputes is not supported intrinsically by institutions of formal democracy. It is also not supported by any provisions of the U.S. Constitution or, certainly, by structural and systemic pressures of economic and social change spanning all advanced societies. We can consider each of these points in turn. In the first place, the ongoing qualitative, normative analysis by Delaware courts is hardly an intrinsic outcome of any institutions of formal democracy. It is not somehow yielded automatically by regularly held elections, competing political parties, and general First Amendment freedoms. In the second place, such judicial behavior in Delaware is also not intrinsic to – or institutionalized by – any provisions of the Constitution, whether explicit or implicit. The Constitution of the United States, after all, revolves around a lexicon of individual “rights,” not one of corporate

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privileges and responsibilities. The fiduciary law tradition, by contrast, does contain such a lexicon but this legal tradition pre-dates the Constitution by centuries. As such, even though it figured prominently in the thinking of the Founders and Framers, as shared presuppositions, it is but a distant memory even for most members of the corporate judiciary and bar, let alone for members of the constitutional judiciary and bar. At the same time, however, Delaware’s Chancery Court uniquely traces its lineage rather directly to this pre-constitutional legal tradition. Thus, it (and then Delaware’s state Supreme Court) operates uniquely among all other state courts with a lexicon of corporate privileges and responsibilities. As judges sitting in equity, Delaware’s Chancery appreciates far more all other state courts, which sit at common law, that when corporations adopt “inequitable” or “unfair” structures of governance this can harm the larger society. In the third place, the continuing salience of the fiduciary law tradition in American corporate law doctrine is also not intrinsic to – let alone over-determined by – any structural or systemic trends of change spanning all advanced societies, including globalization. To the contrary, these trends favor a general displacing of fiducial norms by contractual agreements and positivist legal statutes. 2.5 Pattern-Maintenance and the EU: Structured Situations Our point, in short, is that Delaware courts’ continuing stewardship of the fiduciary law tradition is a “social fact” but one that is inherently contingent and eminently vulnerable to change, not firmly institutionalized, like formal constitutional rights. The entire fiduciary law tradition is vulnerable not simply to decline but to utter irrelevance, outright disappearance. Ultimately, Delaware’s Chancery Court and state Supreme Court remain uniquely responsible for demonstrating the continuing salience of fiducial norms in American corporate law doctrine. They bear this responsibility by demonstrating to the satisfaction of the rest of the corporate judiciary and bar that the trajectory of change of corporate governance structures indeed carries larger social consequences, as opposed to being confined to the immediate positional interests of corporate constituents. Delaware judges’ social vision in resolving corporate governance disputes revolves around their continuing enforcement of “mandatory rules” at the “core” of their state’s General Corporation law. This “core,”

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in turn, stem in large part from the fiduciary law tradition, not from the U.S. Constitution. Delaware judges exhibit this social vision in two ways. In the first place, they relate their decisions in major corporate governance disputes to evolving social norms regarding the proper place and purpose of publicly traded corporations in American civil society. More critical, Delaware judges also appreciate, at times, that the trajectory of change of corporate governance structures introduces even larger consequences into society. This draws attention to the significance of the unfolding situation not only in the U.S. but in any advanced society, whether in the European Union or in the Pacific Rim. The problem here is that Delaware judges tend to be vague when articulating their social vision, as opposed to identifying with specificity when and why the trajectory of change of corporate governance structures can either generally support or generally enervate institutional design. Thus, when Delaware judges hold corporate officers to fiducial duties of care and loyalty, they are clear about only two things. They are clear, first, that they are consciously and purposefully employing a qualitative, normative standard of analysis. Second, they are equally clear that they are doing this with an eye to reconciling corporate governance (and corporate law doctrine) with evolving social norms. They become less clear, and thus less consistent in their rulings, regarding why this matters, regarding whether and when particular types of corporate governance structures affect institutional design and thus the trajectory of economic, social and political change. Our thesis is that it is precisely this connection to institutional design which nonetheless best accounts for the actual judicial behavior of Delaware courts, irrespective of whatever rationales Delaware judges express explicitly in their opinions. That is, by monitoring the trajectory of change of corporate governance structures in the United States with any larger social vision, Delaware courts are simultaneously performing uniquely for the entire American society what Talcott Parsons called a pattern-maintenance function.9 Delaware’s Chancery Court and state Supreme Court together are functioning quite literally as the constitutional court of the United States for major intermediary associations in American civil society, for major corporate entities of any kind. Put most succinctly, they are endeavoring to encourage disinterested exercises of positional power within and around those 9

Parsons and Platt 1973.

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structured situations – the governance structures – found within major intermediary associations. To appreciate fully this larger – social and institutional – significance of Delaware courts’ pattern-maintenance function, and also to identify implications for the institutional designs of other democratic, commercially competitive societies, we must consider why structured situations in civil society differ fundamentally from fluid sites of commercial contracting and then also from exchanges which are simply embedded informally. At fluid sites of contracting, such as those of retail commerce, everyone participating is free to act as self-interestedly as they wish, as long as they do not violate basic criminal and civil statutes applying to everyone in society. After all, the principle of caveat emptor is acknowledged universally across all modern societies. Precisely because everyone participating at fluid sites is free to enter and exit at will, at little or no cost, the fiduciary law tradition is irrelevant at these sites, literally inapplicable. In turn, informally embedded exchanges, such as those involving personal services, add emergent norms to the mix, such as those playing on reputations for honesty or quality. These may be intersubjectively compelling at times on the ground to the participants involved, but they are rarely if ever enforceable at law. By contrast to fluid sites and embedded exchanges, publicly trade corporations as well as all venues of ongoing professional-client relationships – hospitals and other healthcare facilities, courtrooms and law firms, universities and research institutions – contain situations which are structured. They contain structured situations comprised of two sets of entrenched positions: on one side, positions of power, discretionary judgment and impersonal trust; on the other, positions of dependence, vulnerability and apprehension. The fiduciary law tradition speaks directly and forcefully to these situations. It applies here precisely because participants cannot either enter or exit these situations without anticipating or suffering considerable cost, without having their “stakes” severely altered or diminished. One way to illustrate the costs that bear on structured situations is to consider the dilemma outside suppliers face when top management offers them either a long-term contract or some other opportunity to enter the corporation as a new constituent.10 If suppliers accept, they 10

Williamson 1988a,b.

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tailor their intermediate products – whatever these are – to this corporation’s particular uses and needs. Using economists’ terminology, suppliers’ intermediate products become sunk costs or investments for them and fixed assets for the corporation: Suppliers will not be able to redeploy them later either easily or at little cost. Thus, suppliers know that if they accept any such proposal, their position will change irreversibly, from fluid, within a site of commercial contracting, to entrenched, within a structured situation. As a longterm supplier, they become vulnerable to managerial one-sidedness and opportunism. Thus, suppliers considering any such option have not only a rational self-interest but also a positional interest in finding ways to counterbalance this vulnerability. For instance, they may reject the proposal unless they are guaranteed special compensation packages in the event that (a) their position is later eliminated or (b) managers deplete their fixed assets sooner than expected. More important for present purposes, suppliers may reject the proposal unless they are granted some control over how managers utilize their intermediate products. There is a major problem with this second concession, however, from management’s point of view: It brings suppliers into the corporation’s governance structure. Each such concession management grants corporate constituents simultaneously complicates corporate governance. Here is where the fiduciary law tradition enters the picture. It provides at least some protection to occupants of subordinate positions in structured situations by instructing courts independently of any and all contractual terms to impose qualitative, normative standards of “fair” or “equitable” conduct on those who exercise positional power within them. Unlike the shareholder position, which anyone can “exit” at will simply by selling shares, a stakeholder position in publicly traded corporations, being entrenched, is intrinsically vulnerable to one-sidedness and abuse. More than shareholders, stakeholders have a clear “stake” in whether a corporation’s governance structure permits managerial onesidedness or encourages managerial disinterest. 2.6 Fiducial Duties Independent of Statute or Contract The Delaware courts, being uniquely informed by and steeped in the fiduciary law tradition, become most concerned when derivative suits reveal that corporate officers are so altering a corporation’s governance

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structure that only their positional interests can possibly prevail. If management teams are permitted to do this, this can only encourage one-sidedness, a displacing of care and loyalty with absolutism. The Delaware courts endeavor to prevent this from happening even when management proceeds with shareholder approval, including shareholder unanimity, and even when management’s actions result in increasing corporate growth, shareholder wealth or social wealth. Putting this point more abstractly and generally, within the structured situations Delaware courts define as fiducial relationships, these courts are prepared uniquely to place a value-added “normative capsule” around all exchanges and transactions into which participants otherwise enter lawfully by contract or statute. Thus, Delaware courts do not permit corporate officers to neglect or evade their fiducial duties of care and loyalty even with unanimous shareholder approval. The only option Delaware courts leave corporate officers in exercising this much positional power is to exit the structured situation and enter a fluid site of contracting. That is, corporate officers must make the following stark choice: Either incorporate your business and thereby bind your position to non-negotiable qualitative, normative standards of conduct – mandatory rules – distinctive to structured situations. Or, alternatively, constitute your business in some other legal form, that of a close corporation, for instance, and then do not trade stock publicly and install a board of directors only if you wish.11 Being mandatory norms of behavior, corporate officers’ fiducial duties of care and loyalty are by definition extra-economic. In addition, stemming from the fiduciary law tradition, these duties are also beyond contractual or statutory indemnification. Corporate officers’ only option in trying to elude such duties, therefore, is to steer clear of structured situations entirely, to confine their activities to fluid sites of commerce. Delaware judges impose fiducial duties on corporate officers independently of contract law and statutory law because they are skeptical that directors, top managers, and controlling shareholders will otherwise voluntarily exercise their positional power disinterestedly, or even recognize and understand in common what this entails for anyone in their position. They are skeptical that corporate officers will voluntarily resist exploiting everyday opportunities to advance their positional

11

Mitchell 1990.

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interests one-sidedly, opportunities that, by their very nature, elude any possible wording of statutory or contractual language. They are also skeptical that controlling shareholders will be either able or willing to monitor and discipline top management sufficiently in the absence of independent and vigilant judicial monitoring. 3. Today’s Debate over Corporate Law and Delaware Practice When Delaware judges impose fiducial duties of care and loyalty on corporate officers, they are treating them as trustees of the corporate entity. They are not treating them, more narrowly, as agents of a principal, the entity’s owners. Thus, Delaware law refers to corporate directors as a firm’s “incorporators,” not more exclusively as shareholders’ agent. However, since the 1980s Delaware judges have been facing considerable difficulties of their own. They have been unable to articulate clearly and consistently the qualitative, normative analysis they are bringing to derivative suits and thus are using to monitor the trajectory of change of corporate governance structures. Moreover, they receive precious little assistance from either the rest of the American judiciary or the corporate law bar. On the one hand, judges sitting at common law in California, New York, New Jersey and other states typically operate with no equivalent social vision, for the fiduciary law tradition and its lexicon of corporate privileges and duties is alien to their typical caseload. The same is true, for that matter, of Justices of the United States Supreme Court (but this point is beyond further discussion here). On the other hand, today’s debate among legal scholars over corporate law, the behavior of Delaware courts, and the trajectory of change of corporate governance structures also offers Delaware judges precious little assistance. Today’s debate revolves around three distinct positions, those by traditionalists or imposers, by contractarians and by balancers. 3.1 Traditionalists and Contractarians Legal traditionalists are judicial imposers: they want the corporate judiciary to continue imposing fiducial duties on corporate officers as mandatory rules independently of contract law and statutory law. Imposers advise Delaware judges to continue applying qualitative, normative analyses to derivative suits. By contrast, the applying of

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extra-economic standards of conduct to management (or shareholder majorities) troubles both contractarians and balancers. Such standards, after all, are self-evidently – in terms of basic principles of neoclassical economics – inimical to maximizing shareholder wealth and they may also jeopardize social wealth. For that matter, bringing qualitative, normative analyses to derivative suits does not self-evidently yield any benefits for any of the parties involved, let alone benefits that can be priced or otherwise quantified. Precisely because even leading proponents of legal traditionalism – such as Melvin Eisenberg and Victor Brudney – are unable to identify its benefits with clarity and consistency, this legal position faces formidable problems today.12 On the one hand, like Delaware judges, traditionalists fail explicitly to draw any connection between corporate governance and institutional design; as a result, their references to upholding vital social norms seem hyperbolic to critics and skeptics. On the other hand, many legal scholars and even some sitting judges trace the source of the corporate judiciary’s inconsistency as an institution to Delaware courts’ continuing use of qualitative, normative analyses. They argue that judicial consistency can only be attained by the corporate bench when it relies exclusively on standards of analyses which are more market-mimicking, thus quantitative and economistic. By contrast to the conceptual and doctrinal difficulties Delaware judges and legal traditionalists have been experiencing for over a generation, their leading critics – legal contractarians – have been clear, consistent and forceful in promoting quantitative or market-mimicking analyses. Contractarians readily and frequently articulate general principles in support of their call for Delaware courts to permit shareholder majorities to hold management accountable for maximizing return on their equity. Consistent with neoclassical economics, they want Delaware courts to cease enforcing corporate law’s core of mandatory rules and instead to permit the systemic, unrelenting pressures of self-regulating markets to discipline management. To this end, they want Delaware courts to encourage the consolidation of a robust market for corporate control. This can only be accomplished by preventing sitting management teams from erecting unnecessary defenses against takeovers, buyouts, mergers and other changes in corporate control, defenses which fail to maximize shareholder wealth.

12

Eisenberg 1989; Brudney 1985, 1997.

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A market for corporate control did indeed emerge in the United States in late 1983, ushered in by a rising tide of hostile takeovers and leveraged buyouts. After cresting in 1989 and following a lull of a few months, these sorts of transactions soon resumed and during the late 1990s gathered renewed force. Legal contractarians anticipated this development earlier, in the 1970s, by analyzing corporate governance in strictly utilitarian terms. Accordingly, they define corporate governance narrowly, as a strictly commercial instrument by which suppliers of finance, the “principle,” endeavor to protect their investments by hiring and monitoring management, their “agent.”13 3.2 Maximizing Shareholder Wealth through Contracts As early as the mid-1970s contractarians were proposing that if Delaware courts brought a more market-mimicking standard of analysis to corporate governance disputes, two unambiguously positive benefits would result. First, Delaware courts would finally encourage sitting management teams to maximize shareholder wealth, by any means shareholder majorities approve consistently with corporate law statutes. Delaware courts would no longer subordinate wealth maximization to any broader social vision by treating corporations as structured situations whose governance can somehow harm the larger society. The focus would instead be on harm to shareholders. Second, a quantitative, market-mimicking analysis would also bring consistency to Delaware court rulings, and thereby enhance the integrity of the American corporate judiciary as an institution. Contractarians portray the publicly traded corporation as a “nexus of contracts,” not as a structured situation, an intermediary association. In their view, a corporation is simply a cluster of ongoing commercial transactions amidst self-regulating markets. All participants act more or less directly on their self-interests; there are no positional interests. As such, a corporation is not an “entity” that contains entrenched positions or at which positional power is exercised. Rather, a corporation is literally a power-neutral, ultimately formless, venue of self-interested, commercial activity. Contractarians’ most emblematic expression, “opting out” (of mandatory rules), conveys artfully their view that corporate law tradition is

13

Coase 1937; Alchian and Demsetz 1972; Jensen and Meckling 1976.

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a hopeless jumble of anachronistic formalities or legalisms. The received mandatory rules at the core of corporate law doctrine can, in their view, be replaced entirely by contractual agreements. They call for corporate law to be comprised exclusively of suppletory rules and enabling rules, those that management is free to alter by agreement with shareholder majorities.14 After all, if a corporation is a nexus of contracts, then how logically can Delaware courts hold corporate officers to non-negotiable qualitative, normative responsibilities to an “entity”? The notion of corporate “entity” – or intermediary association – is for contractarians a legal fiction. It does not refer to any organization literally present in civil society. Contractarianism is part of a larger Law and Economics movement in legal scholarship that endeavors to resolve all vexing problems of litigation by reformulating the issues at stake in strictly utilitarian terms. Led by Judge Frank Easterbrook, Daniel Fischel and others, contractarians increasingly influenced the corporate judiciary through the 1970s. From 1984 forward they literally dominated the debate over corporations and law. Aside from drawing considerable authority from basic principles of neoclassical economics, contractarians also cleverly use the lexicon of rights at the center of the U.S. Constitution to put legal traditionalists on the defensive. They call for “contractual freedom” and “governance options,” and juxtapose both to “state paternalism” and “judicial superstition.” Legal traditionalists remain convinced, of course, that should Delaware courts in particular cease enforcing corporate law’s core of mandatory rules, dire consequences will befall American society. But their problems surface at the moment contractarians press them to identify specifically what these dire consequences are. Traditionalists then falter. Contractarians react to this uncertainty and vacillation by saying it demonstrates their point. They accuse Delaware judges and legal traditionalists alike of perpetuating “state paternalism” blindly, more out of judicial habit or “superstition” than reasoned reflection or scientific rigor. The mandatory core of Delaware corporate law stemming from the fiduciary tradition strikes contractarians as embarrassing reminders of medieval “ignorance,” not enlightened judicial reasoning.

14

Fischel 1982; Easterbrook and Fischel 1991.

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3.3 Balancers’ Modified Contractarianism: Stakeholder Representation Legal balancers ultimately agree with contractarians about the nature of mandatory rules. They simply go a bit further than contractarians in trying to reassure traditionalists. If stakeholder interests were represented more adequately in corporate governance structures, they propose, contract law and statutory law could indeed safely displace the mandatory core. Here we see balancers’ modified version of opting out. By their accounting corporations are neither fluid sites of self-interested contracting nor structured situations. They are rather embedded exchanges within long-term commercial enterprises. As such, the parties negotiating the rules of corporate governance should not be restricted to management and shareholder majorities but rather should be extended more forcefully and purposefully to encompass more stakeholders. At minimum, balancers want state legislatures (and then state courts) to encourage or, if necessary, compel management to “represent” at least some stakeholder interests in any major governance changes, including changes in corporate control. Such representation, in their view, would countervail or “balance” not only managerial onesidedness but also any systemic pressures from a market for corporate control which would maximize shareholder wealth at the expense of the team. Balancers, in short, are proponents of inclusive contracting, not defenders of corporate law tradition. They do not defend mandatory rules on principle. Rather, like contractarians, balancers fail to see any connection between corporate governance and institutional design – while, in the meantime, traditionalists fail to draw this connection explicitly. But by treating corporations as embedded exchanges within long-term commercial enterprises, balancers propose these exchanges are worthy of additional legislative and judicial support on this basis alone. Thus, balancers want to use statutory law to protect corporate embedded exchanges in much the way that statutory law is used to support the preservation of national landmarks or endangered species. And by 1988 many states did just this. Once state legislatures (and then state courts) took this step, by either encouraging or compelling management by statute to make major corporate decisions with an eye to stakeholder interests, balancers were then willing to replace mandatory rules with suppletory and enabling rules.

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Amidst the debate at the corporate bar between imposers, contractarians and balancers, Delaware judges were being chastened by criticisms from each camp while also taking note of legal traditionalists’ rather weak responses to contractarians’ unrelenting questioning of basic principles of corporate law doctrine. Delaware judges nonetheless continued to endeavor, from the mid-1980s forward, to update the fiduciary law tradition. They did so by proceeding incrementally (case by case), unevenly (two steps forward, one step back) and often intuitively rather than purposefully. It is possible, however, to discern one general tension at the center of Delaware court rulings over the past four decades. At times, but not consistently, Delaware judges uphold the fiduciary law tradition by replacing substantive-normative proscriptions on management business judgment, which are indeed anachronistic, with more flexible procedural-normative mediations drawn from the same tradition. That is, citing basic principles of “fairness” or “equity,” Delaware judges monitor at times whether directors and other corporate officers exhibit behavioral fidelity to certain procedural-normative thresholds of behavior, taking this as evidence of disinterest and deliberation in corporate governance. This tentative but promising “procedural turn” by Delaware courts is quite consistent with Talcott Parsons’ efforts to account for general trends in the professions and also with Jurgen Habermas’ characterization of general trends in “juridification” as being consistent with “discourse theories of truth” and “communicative action.”15 4.1 Today’s Three Doctrinal Options Our point is that if Delaware judges were following contractarians and balancers in neglecting any and all consequences of corporate governance for institutional design, their rulings would indeed become more market mimicking or, alternatively, their rulings would encourage balancing. The problem is that their rulings remain normatively mediating in some grander sense, whether on substantive-normative grounds or consistently with a procedural-normative threshold.

15

Parsons and Platt 1973; Habermas 1992.

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However, the trajectory of Delaware rulings in major corporate governance disputes is not unidirectional, or easily explained or predicted. Rather, these rulings tack back and forth across the following typology of doctrinal options. These, then, are the general doctrinal options currently available to, and employed by, Delaware courts: – Delaware courts can portray the publicly traded corporation as a nexus of contracts, a power-neutral site of commercial exchanges in civil society. This nexus metaphor is incompatible with the fiduciary law tradition and any effort to impose mandatory rules on corporate officers. It leads either to shareholder contracting (as in Revlon Inc. v. MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings, Inc. 1986) or to stakeholder balancing (as in Unocal Corp. v. Mesa Petroleum Co. 1985). – Delaware Courts can portray the corporation as a long-term economic enterprise containing embedded exchanges worthy of statutory support in a market for corporate control. This metaphor of long-term enterprise and embeddedness leads invariably to treating at least certain corporations as akin to endangered species or national landmarks (as implied in Paramount Communications v. Time, Inc. 1989). Such an approach retains anachronistic substantive-normative proscriptions from the fiduciary law tradition. For this reason, it is ultimately untenable in a global economy and simultaneously distorts and complicates unnecessarily Delaware courts’ otherwise ongoing and promising “procedural turn.” – Delaware courts can portray the corporation as containing structured situations whose governance bears on institutional design. This intermediary association metaphor (implied in three decisions) draws centrally upon the fiduciary law tradition while jettisoning the latter’s substantive-normative anachronisms.16 Here Delaware courts endeavor to identify the structured situations that merit judicial vigilance while also trying to convince contractarians and balancers that their qualitative, normative analyses of corporate governance disputes continues to advance an identifiable public law interest.

When Delaware judges follow the first doctrinal option, they accept and tolerate, rather than criticize and rescind, the particular ways in which important corporate decisions were made in the derivative suits that they hear. Delaware rulings thereby convert these specific decision making processes and specific governance structures into models available for adoption by other sitting management teams across Corporate America.

16 Weinberger v. UOP, Inc. 1983; Paramount Communications, Inc. v. QVC Network Inc. 1993; Cede & Co. v. Technicolor 1993.

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Our point is that Delaware judges follow the second and third doctrinal option at times precisely because they do not want to see certain ways of governing American corporations becoming models. They fear this will skew the trajectory of change of corporate governance structures, and eventually call into question the legitimacy of the Delaware corporate judiciary and bar. The problem is that Delaware courts will not be able to sustain the second doctrinal option over time, because it is anachronistic. In addition, Delaware judges have yet to articulate clearly and convincingly the principles underlying the third doctrinal option. 4.2 From Substantive Proscriptions to Procedural Threshold We propose that contractarians are clearly mistaken when they trace the source of Delaware court inconsistency since the mid-1980s to continuing enforcement of any and all mandatory of rules, consistent with the fiduciary law tradition. The source of Delaware courts’ inconsistency lies elsewhere, namely these courts tacking between applying anachronistic, substantive-normative analyses to corporate governance disputes and applying more promising procedural-normative analyses. Courts of any kind – whether criminal, civil, family, constitutional or corporate – can only enforce laws with consistency over time and across cases when the laws themselves display eight procedural-normative qualities (irrespective of what they require in substance from those subjected to them or enforcing them). Consistently enforced laws: apply generally to violators, do not contradict each other, and are publicized, prospective, clear, relatively constant, possible to obey, and congruent with the actual conduct of enforcement agencies.17 A shorthand way of characterizing this procedural normative approach is to say that consistently enforced laws are clear and possible to obey. They are clear at least to those trained in the law, and they can be obeyed by citizens with modest or typical effort as opposed to unusual or heroic effort. This shorthand description encompasses the other procedural-normative qualities above because retroactive laws, unpublicized laws, laws frequently changed and laws not applied to all violators are simultaneously either unclear or impossible to obey. By bringing this procedural-normative threshold standard into today’s debate over corporate law and Delaware judicial behavior, we

17

Fuller 1964/1969:46–84.

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can both explain Delaware rulings and identify the relationship between corporate governance and institutional design. Put more specifically, the threshold, and those Delaware rulings which inadvertently help to institutionalize it, moves us beyond a stale polarity between “democracy” and “autocracy.” Such a crude contrast is hardly salient today in identifying the more subtle relationship between corporate governance and institutional design in contemporary Europe, the United States or the Pacific Rim. Rather the threshold and Delaware rulings bring into view two other distinctions which draw sharper contrasts within and between all advanced societies today. One contrast is between formal democracy and limited government, and the other contrast is between limited government and lawful democratic society. By drawing these distinctions explicitly, we bring into view the specific relationship between corporate governance and institutional design that is salient today. Our thesis is that it is this specific relationship which implicitly (and inconsistently) informs the social vision of Delaware judicial rulings. 4.3 Formal Democracy, Limited Government, Lawful Democratic Society We begin trivially, by identifying formal democracy: Unlike any autocracy, a formal democracy institutionalizes regularly held elections, competing political parties, and general First Amendment freedoms – the latter reflected notably in the presence of a relatively independent press. The problem is that formalities of democratic government may remain in place while both public authorities and private elites rely on force and threats, manipulation and “distorted communication” to maintain order in civil society. As the case of Mexico well illustrates, both before and after the elections of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon, formal democracy is quite compatible with what we can call an imposed social order.18 Using formal democracy as our baseline, we can now turn to two finer distinctions more relevant in comparing advanced societies today. Limited governments differ from formal democracies in that, beyond adopting the formalities just noted, they also institutionalize rules of public governance (applicable to executive, legislative and judicial branches of government) that are clear and possible to perform. For 18

For example, O’Donnell 2001.

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instance, public authorities may only make arrests or seize property by enforcing publicized statutes and also otherwise proceeding in procedurally acceptable ways. This comports with the procedural-normative threshold noted earlier when courts (or, in Europe, administrative agencies) enforce such rules of public governance with consistency over time. As they do so, their rulings instruct all public officials and all citizens, not simply those directly involved, regarding what existing rules of conduct and procedure require of anyone exercising public authority. This quality of public governance and judicial (or administrative) monitoring is unique to the institutional design of limited government. However, one problem we identified with formal democracy nonetheless remains unaddressed by this: Limited government, too, is compatible with an imposed social order. Japan illustrates this well (in the eyes of many area specialists)19 but the same is true of Europe and the United States, at least in certain sectors of their respective civil societies.20 Consider, for instance, the susceptibility across the continent to onesidedness and abuse in civil society stemming from institutions of “neo-corporatist interest intermediation.”21 This susceptibility in Europe extends, as examples, to university and professional governance when appointments are rotated based on candidates’ political party affiliation and then personal networks. As for the U.S., one-sided exercises of positional power are well documented first in medical research and then in medical practice.22 Indeed, numerous examples of one-sidedness in structured situations run through the continental literature of Bildungsbürgertum (cultivated middle classes) and the Anglo-American literature of professions.23 As for the governance of publicly trade corporations, one-sidedness extends here when administrative or judicial tradition insulates corporate officers directly in substance from any and all changes in corporate control. Management can then entrench itself, and constitute or develop a governance structure in which both shareholders and stakeholders are hopeless subordinates. This enervates the institutional design of a 19 20 21 22 23

Eisenstadt 1996:367–76; Nakane 1970. Diamond and Morlino 2004; O’Donnell, Cullell and Iazzetta 2004. Schmitter 1981; Collier 1995; Molina and Rhodes 2002. Rothman 1992. Burrage and Torstendahl 1990; Torstendahl and Burrage 1990; Sciulli 1996.

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lawful democratic society in two ways simultaneously. On the one hand, it enervates lawful democracy in civil society simply by encouraging one-sidedness in such major structured situations; on the other, it also holds hostage to local loyalties an entire society’s commercial competitiveness in a global economy. Finally, a procedural-normative threshold brings into view how lawful democratic societies differ in institutional design from limited governments. Such societies adopt electoral and First Amendment formalities, of course, and then also share with limited governments judicial (or administrative) monitoring of one-sidedness by public authorities. But they go a step further. Lawful democratic societies also institutionalize procedural norms of clear and consistent rulemaking and rule-enforcement within private governance structures, within structured situations found within major intermediary associations. Here courts (or administrative agencies) endeavor ceaselessly to extend from public to private governance the procedural-normative threshold standard of lawfulness noted earlier. They thereby instruct corporate officers and the administrators of other intermediary associations (including professions and universities, hospitals and law firms) regarding what existing rules of conduct and procedure require of them. 4.4 Vulnerability of Lawful Democratic Society We just noted the additional quality of institutional design which ultimately distinguishes lawful democratic society from formal democracy and limited government: clear and consistent rulemaking and rule-enforcement within and around major intermediary associations, along with judicial (or administrative) vigilance in monitoring it. This quality is also precisely the central point of the fiduciary law tradition. The latter applies uniquely to exercises of positional power in structured situations, whether in civil society or the state. Thus, this quality is incarnated in Delaware court enforcement of the mandatory rules at the core of corporate law doctrine. Delaware judges endeavor, against unrelenting structural and systemic pressures to the contrary, to extend clear and consistent rulemaking and rule-enforcement to the private governance of publicly traded corporations. They endeavor to discourage one-sidedness and abuse by corporate officers who exercise positional power in a major set of structured situations and intermediary associations in civil

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society. Only in lawful democratic societies do courts (or administrative agencies) take this step, endeavoring to extend the threshold of procedural norms of lawfulness from state agencies to at least certain structured situations in civil society. However, we must keep in mind that this process never culminates in any existing democracy, including the United States and every country in Europe and the Pacific Rim. It unfolds asymptotically and contingently in particular sectors of each civil society, without ever extending fully to all structured situations. Moreover, any gains courts (or administrative agencies) make in inculcating into corporate officers any shared recognition and understanding of these qualitative, proceduralnormative standards of behavior can always be reversed, at times quite suddenly. This means that more than any formal democracy or limited government, any lawful democratic society is institutionalized only partially and always in eminently mutable stages: from type to type of intermediary association, from sector to sector of civil society. The institutional design of any lawful democratic society is intrinsically vulnerable to inadvertent enervation, and then also to purposeful challenges by social movements, left and right. 4.5 Procedural Threshold and Collegial Form The procedural-normative threshold standard of clear and consistent rulemaking and rule-enforcement is uniquely constitutive of the institutional design of lawful democratic societies. A second standard of private governance is related, equally constitutive, and equally qualitative and normative, namely the presence of collegial formations within boardrooms and elsewhere in corporate governance structures. This is related because a collegial form of organization is the only form of organization capable of institutionalizing ongoing behavioral fidelity to the procedural-normative threshold standard by anyone occupying entrenched positions of power, including corporate officers. Put more positively, when corporate officers (and other power holders) conduct themselves disinterestedly rather than one-sidedly, they invariably sustain their own deliberation over time. And only a collegial form of organization is capable of institutionalizing deliberation. A shorthand way of describing collegial formations is that they are identifiable venues, either in civil society or in the state, at which participants deliberate over time as they, at minimum, exhibit behavioral fidelity to the procedural-normative threshold of standard of lawfulness

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discussed earlier. Participants discipline themselves in these ways not out of altruism, and certainly not out of self-interest or cupidity. They do so in order to advance identifiable positional interests. This is most clear in corporations engaged in high-value production as opposed to the more routine production of traditional manufacturing firms. Corporate officers in high-value production enterprises find it necessary to deliberate, and to publicize what they are doing internally, because they are seeking a shared understanding among participants in two related areas of their business environment. This shared understanding cannot be attained more simply or directly by relying exclusively on quantitative indices of growth or profitability. They are endeavoring to identify in common those qualities in their business environment which are meaningful or significant for anyone in their position. Related, they are also endeavoring to understand in common how best to keep these valued qualities in collective view by other corporate constituents over time. Only a boardroom and sitting management team organized in a collegial form is capable of institutionalizing such ongoing deliberation over qualities that bear on corporate survival and success and, therefore, on the immediate positional interests of corporate officers themselves. More generally, only a boardroom and sitting management team organized in a collegial form is capable of institutionalizing relatively disinterested behavior by corporate officers (or by top administrators in any other major intermediary association). All other ways of organizing boardrooms and sitting management teams – in bureaucratic formations or clientelist networks – permit corporate officers to substitute hierarchical commands, material incentives, or appeals to personal loyalty for deliberation, for a giving-and-taking of reasons. Put differently, clear and consistent rulemaking and rule-enforcing in corporate governance structures as well as the continuing presence of collegial formations in boardrooms and sitting management teams are certainly not automatic or “natural” outcomes of self-interested behavior, whether by corporate officers in entrenched positions of power or by shareholders in a market for corporate control. Keeping rules clear and possible to obey, and maintaining the integrity of collegial formations, does not necessarily maximize either corporate growth or shareholder wealth. By contrast, corporate officers’ one-sided exercises of business judgment through bureaucratic hierarchies or patronage networks – shorn of deliberation and disinterest – might well maximize growth or profits, and might also augment social wealth.

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This is why the qualitative, normative behavior Delaware courts are trying to encourage within corporate governance structures is not institutionalized independently and automatically across all sectors and industries of any advanced society, whether in Europe, the United States or the Pacific Rim. Such behavior is not institutionalized in corporate governance structures unless courts (or administrative agencies) take quite purposeful efforts to support it. This is why Fiona Macmillan Patfield, an Australian legal scholar, and Judith Freedman, a British legal scholar, say, in terms otherwise too vague, that unless “society” is clear about what “it” expects corporate law to accomplish, this law will not somehow independently, or automatically, guard society.24 The contingency of these judicial efforts exposes uniquely to empirical study the institutional externalities of the trajectory of change of corporate governance structures in contemporary democracies. In the U.S., the Delaware courts help to maintain among corporate officers some interpersonal recognition and understanding of at least certain mandatory rules of corporate governance. They also instruct these addressees about how to recognize one-sidedness in corporate governance structures and thus, by analogy, in other structured situations in civil society. Delaware courts only accomplish this, however, when they take the procedural turn noted earlier, as opposed to attempting to enforce received substantive-normative proscriptions stemming more directly from the fiduciary law tradition. Unlike the latter, the procedural-normative threshold of lawfulness and the collegial form institutionalizing behavioral fidelity to it along with ongoing deliberation comprise bright-line standards of clear and consistent rulemaking and rule-enforcement. Equally important, these bright-line standards are also eminently practicable; they are not thought experiments or counterfactual ideal types (as are Habermas’ early notion of “public realm” and more recent notion of “communicative action”). Rather than demanding unusual insight or heroic effort by judges or corporate officers, these bright-line standards provide clear thresholds of behavior that any judge or corporate officer can readily recognize and meet. Quite ordinary people sitting on the Delaware bench and serving as directors in corporate boardrooms meet this standard every day as they make rulings and

24

Patfield 1995; Freedman 1995.

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exercise business judgment. On the other hand, equally ordinary people in other state courts and in other boardrooms also fall short of meeting this same minimalist threshold standard. Our point is that, amidst any pattern of behavior on either side, this threshold marks a quite practicable standard on the basis of which both participants and interested observers – including the larger corporate judiciary and bar – can draw sharp distinctions. They can draw distinctions between all structured situations, public and private, and between all intermediary associations. 4.6 Corporate Governance and Institutional Design Now we can state specifically the relationship between corporate governance and institutional design. Only when Delaware courts (or in Europe any administrative agency) actively and purposefully uphold the practicable threshold standard just noted can judges (or administrators) themselves possibly establish and maintain any shared social vision in today’s global economy. And such an interpersonal recognition and understanding among judges (or administrators) is a prerequisite for dispersed corporate officers possibly to recognize and understand in common over time their most basic, mandatory responsibilities in governing corporations in lawful democratic societies. Consider what Delaware judges are doing when they extend judicial protection to corporate collegial formations, when they require corporate boards and management teams to deliberate over proposed changes in corporate control and thus to act relatively disinterestedly. They are converting fiduciary law into a set of procedural norms that allows them to identify across cases when the trajectory of change of corporate governance structures either supports or enervates the institutional design of a lawful democratic society. These procedural norms mediate short of one-sidedness not only management’s exercises of business judgment. They also mediate short of one-sidedness shareholder contracting and stakeholder balancing. 4.7 Societal Stakeholders By monitoring whether corporate officers make major decisions within collegial formations, and thus consistently with the procedural-normative threshold standard, Delaware judges are in a position also to draw another distinction in consistent ways. They can identify one delimited set of stakeholders who indeed merit representation in

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corporate governance structures (and possibly also standing in court to initiate derivative suits). These are the stakeholders whose positional interests in a corporation’s survival and success include maintaining the integrity of collegial formations in its governance structure. These stakeholders merit representation (and possible standing) because when they simply advance such identifiable positional interests, they simultaneously advance a public law interest. That is, they help normatively to mediate exercises of positional power in structured situations short of one-sidedness. Such stakeholders might include: outside directors, critical voices within sitting management teams, professional chemists or biologists in private research facilities, and house legal counsel in corporate settings. We may think of these stakeholders as societal constituents. We identify them in terms of the positions of trust and responsibility they occupy within corporate governance structures, not in terms of the substance or “intrinsic value” of their stakes in corporate survival and success. This doctrinal option, extending judicial protection to corporate collegial formations and then to societal constituents whose positional interests include maintaining these formations’ integrity, is neither a heuristic device nor an ideal aspiration. Rather, it is consistent in three respects with existing corporate law doctrine and current Delaware practice. First, it permits opting out of mandatory rules that proscribe in substance management business judgment, shareholder contracting, or stakeholder balancing. Second, it retains greater continuity with management prerogatives under the traditional business judgment rule than does either shareholder contracting or stakeholder balancing. Third, it nonetheless identifies an unambiguous public law interest in the trajectory of change of corporate governance structures. We propose that changes in the internal governance of corporations, professional associations and other major intermediary associations account today in larger part for differences in the direction of institutional change across advanced societies than in earlier eras. All advanced societies, after all, are likely to keep in place formalities of electoral democracy. Most are also likely to remain limited governments. What largely accounts for differences in advanced societies’ directions of institutional change is whether one-sidedness is identified and stemmed within and around major intermediary associations. Our thesis is that the collegial form will be found not only in professions but also in corporations only in lawful democratic societies, not

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in limited governments or formal democracies and certainly not in imposed social orders. How the EU deals with corporate governance in its new Constitution will reveal a great deal not only about the institutional design of Europe today. It will also reveal much about Europe’s likely direction of change.

CHAPTER FIVE

REFLECTIONS, ANALYSES, APPRAISALS Our thesis in Chapter 3 is that the Paris visual Académie, not any other academy or learned corporation during the ancien régime, initiates altogether inadvertently the first professionalism project in Western history. Being inadvertent rather than purposeful, this is a prototype professionalism project. No one participating in it, observing it, or criticizing it has available to them culturally or lexically any idea what a profession in a modern sense might be. Equally anachronistic, of course, are notions of bureaucracy, formal democracy and procedural legality.1 Contemporaries have no more idea what any of these organizational developments might be in a modern sense than they have of what an artist, fine art or aesthetics might be. Yet, just as fine art is nonetheless being executed prior to industrialization, so, too, is professionalism underway. In addition to all such modern notions being unavailable culturally and lexically to visual academiciens, these painters and sculptors also undertake their many instructional, organizational and occupational reforms in the absence of any exemplary model and, certainly, any supporting ideology. By default, the founders and sponsors of the Paris visual Académie take their bearings from their own immediate obstacles and aspirations: on one side, from their own opposition to the Maitrise and, on the other, from their own general impressions of the glittering visual accomplishments of antiquity and Renaissance Italy. Our thesis in Chapter 4 is related, namely that another professionalism project, equally inadvertent, is currently underway within and around American corporate governance. However, the cultural backdrop (among many other factors) differs dramatically: exemplars and ideologies of professionalism have been available since the late 1 See Chapter 1 for uses of the term “profession” on the continent and in Englishspeaking countries. As early as 1610 English jurist Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634) adumbrates a principle of procedural legality in “Dr. Bonham’s Case.” He asserts a principle of judicial review of Acts of Parliament (Fuller 1964:99–101). But this notion hardly takes hold in Great Britain, let alone in France and the continent.

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nineteenth century, and particularly in English-speaking countries. Irrespective of their current lack of purposeful application to corporate governance, these exemplars and ideologies have nonetheless informed various founders of professional associations as well as dispersed professional practitioners. They are also steadily diffusing to the continent and elsewhere. In light of our description in Chapters 1 and 2 of the history and present state of the sociology of professions, we can now also appreciate why both of our cases have been neglected by received wisdom. They have eluded notice for sets of reasons which are at once very different from each other and yet equally understandable. On the one hand, the path breaking contributions made by visual académies in general and the visual Académie in Paris in particular to intermediary associations of the ancien régime are in plain sight in the historiographic record. Yet, these contributions have failed to come to the attention of the entire sociology of professions for two reasons. One is the Whiggish historiography heretofore typical in this subdiscipline (see the Introduction and Chapter 1). The other reason is the transformation of the place and purpose of fine art in modern civil society. Following the Impressionist Revolution from the 1870s forward, we no longer share a basic cultural truism of the ancien régime. We no longer assume that ambitious painting and sculpture are expert services constrained by epistemological and didactic standards of success. Rather, we see such standards as constitutive of law and medicine, engineering and science. During the ancien régime, however, this was true of visual (and literary) occupations dedicated to ambitious ceremony and decoration. On the other hand, today’s nascent professionalism project within and around corporate governance has also been neglected by the sociology of professions, but for two different reasons. One reason is that sociologists, typically being leftist politically and ideologically, simply accept uncritically contractarian assertions that corporate governance is exclusively a preserve of commercial cupidity. They are inclined to dismiss as ideological or apologetic any references to corporate officers’ putative fiducial responsibilities, irrespective of Delaware courts’ repeated, unambiguous references to them. This same partisan inclination, of course, was a central feature in revisionists’ criticisms of Parsons’ sociology of professions, and thus

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a literal foundation of received wisdom today in the sociology of professions.2 Indeed, the readiness of leftist sociologists to adopt points of departure of and prescriptions by neoclassical economists, whether independently and unawares or otherwise is reflected, ironically, in how they think about reforming professions. Here Randall Collins is unambiguous: He follows Milton Friedman in calling for laissez-faire to displace the putatively unwarranted labor market monopolies of professions. This recommendation is utterly consistent with contractarian prescriptions for corporate governance. The second reason why sociologists of professions neglect corporate governance is that their conceptual frameworks are useful only retrospectively, not proscriptively. Received wisdom in the sociology of professions is incapable of identifying emergent professionalism anywhere, and particularly within corporate settings. It is strictly backward looking, capable of adding analysis to occupational developments already completed. Here Andrew Abbott is unambiguous. He acknowledges that his “systems” approach to professions lacks the concepts with which even to attempt explaining, let alone predicting, the trajectories, outcomes and institutional consequences of ongoing professionalism (Abbott is addressed in detail in Chapter 12). 1. Structural Qualities and Professionalism Vulnerability Revolving around structured situations, fiducial responsibilities and ongoing efforts to establish and then maintain meritocracy, deliberation and disinterestedness, professionalism is intrinsically vulnerable to breakdown or regression as a project of occupational, organizational and instructional upgrading. Today, for instance, professionalism is never as firmly institutionalized in any occupational field as is commercialism, market-mimicking behavior. Both historically and today, it is also never as firmly institutionalized as are any one of three alternatives to collegial forms of organization: patron-client networks, bureaucratic hierarchy and formally democratic majoritarianism and leveling.

2 See Sciulli 2008c for a detailed criticism of Larson, whose early book is certainly leftist to a point of being Marxist but whose later writings on professions are more indebted to Foucault.

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All four options of organizational formation or collective activity just cited readily displace deliberation and disinterestedness. They also can readily permit or accommodate opportunism as well as positional one-sidedness, as opposed to institutionalizing fiducial responsibility. Yet, in modern societies both commercialism and the three alternative forms of organization can accommodate meritocracy, whereas none of this was true during the ancien régime. For all of these reasons and more (see the chapters that follow), professionalism remains asymptotic as a project rather than ever finished. Always and everywhere it remains intrinsically vulnerable to displacement on the ground, even as it is distinctive structurally. The intrinsic, structural tension between professionalism and the four other available options – commercialism and clientelism, bureaucracy and formal democracy – is fully in view in today’s debate over corporate governance between traditionalists, contractarians and balancers. Traditionalists do not call explicitly for corporate governance to be professionalized. But they do oppose permitting corporate governance to become dominated by personalist loyalties, hierarchies or simple majorities. They also insist that corporate governance not simply be subjected to market-mimicking behavior because this fails to address the moral hazards of opportunism and positional one-sidedness within structured situations. The intrinsic vulnerability of professionalism to displacement on the ground was equally evident during the ancien régime: the Paris visual Académie could have fallen short of professionalism at any time; and any gains it did make remained subject to (rather sudden) reversal. Even as its professionalism project became more firmly institutionalized from 1680 forward, everything academiciens accomplished nonetheless remained intrinsically vulnerable to displacement at any time, with each cohort and generation. Today in corporate governance professionalism we are witnessing the same state of affairs, the same unevenness, mutability and vulnerability. More generally, the same situation is also quite evident today cross-nationally in many occupations. At best, occupational practitioners who provide expert services within structured situations approximate the model of professionalism asymptotically, always in part. The same is true of the leaders of professional associations who employ the model purposefully as a lodestar by which to orient instructional and occupational reforms.

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2. Visual Académie Professionalism 2.1 Académie Distinctiveness as Intermediary Association Precisely because asymptotic approximation remains the default trajectory of all professionalism projects even today, the pioneering advances made inadvertently by the Paris visual Académie during the ancien régime remain instructive both empirically and at a conceptual level. These advances are hardly matters of sterile antiquarian inquiry. To the contrary, they shed light on any instance of inadvertent professionalism, and thus on that unfolding so precariously today within and around corporate governance. Moreover, this case also sheds light even on purposeful professionalism projects. After all, one of our central theses is that because early advances made inadvertently by the Paris visual Académie bring into view structural qualities – instructional and organizational, occupational and socio-cultural – which are invariant in all instances of professionalism, these qualities are literally constitutive of professionalism as such, and thus equally salient today. Being structural, invariant and constitutive, these same qualities are found in all instances of professionalism, whether inadvertent or purposeful, because all are asymptotic approximations. None are ever so fully institutionalized as to become somehow invulnerable to (rather sudden) displacement on the ground. Thus, the same structural qualities are found in all instances of inadvertent professionalism, both today and historically, and in all instances of purposeful professionalism, again whether today or since the early nineteenth century. Because the content of visual narrations was acknowledged universally during the ancien régime to be at once epistemological, didactic and emblematic, this shared cultural understanding constrained everyone involved with visual narrations, both structurally and socioculturally. Across Europe, everyone involved in the commissioning and execution, assembling and display of ambitious visual representations was constrained from acting strictly commercially, or idiosyncratically, or otherwise narrowly self-interestedly – let alone opportunistically or one-sidedly. When it came to ambitious visual narrations, no one of established station or social aspiration was free to disregard the weightiness of these paintings and sculptures, to indulge the sorts of vanity and decorative tastes frequently flaunted unabashedly in portraiture, genre and other visual commissions. Everyone instead bore fiducial responsibilities.

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Correlatively, ambitious painters and sculptors, on one side, and ambitious patrons, collectors and “lovers,” on the other, were inclined socio-culturally as well as obliged structurally to advance identifiable, immediate positional (occupational or amateur) interests and corporate (Académie or household) interests.3 At times these interests diverge unambiguously from these participants’ self-interests as individuals, which would otherwise countenance vanity (idiosyncrasy), opportunism, or one-sidedness. Putting all of this differently, everyone during the ancien régime appreciated that the commissioning and executing, assembling and displaying of ambitious visual representations unfolds in a structured situation, not at a more fluid site. One notable exception aside, namely the Low Countries,4 everyone was certain that ambitious visual activities are not strictly commercial enterprises or simply diverting affectations; no one denigrated these activities by considering them inconsequential socio-culturally. Everyone instead appreciated fully, and universally so, that these activities have both immediate consequences for participants and longer-term consequences for households and kingdoms. Everyone appreciated that within and around ambitious visual narrations identifiable positional and corporate interests prevail over vanity and self interests. The commissioning of visual narrations was never treated more casually during the ancien régime, including during the brief rococo period of the 1720s and 1730s.5

3 Our distinction between immediate corporate and positional interests, on one side, and self interests, on the other, is consistent with an earlier distinction (in Sciulli 1992) between normative orientation (and unit integrity) and normative motivation (and individual socialization). Immediate corporate and positional interests orient behavior in common. By contrast, the motivations for (and self-interests inducing) behavioral consistency with this orientation may vary widely. 4 Related exceptions, of course, are dispersed municipalities which lack a culturally competitive sovereign court or, alternatively, lack a culturally ambitious patriciate (Grijzenhout and Van Veen 1999). 5 Crow 1985. When Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) entered the Académie, in 1717, he was not inducted as a peintre d’historie but rather under an entirely new category, peintre des fêtes galantes. Where the works of the Lebrun generation inscribed royal authority, Watteau’s works inscribed resistance by a rising wealthy and gentle elite to Versailles and royal precedent. As a result, Watteau operated within an entirely oral signifying system which differed substantially from that in which the Lebrun generation had operated. For this reason the meanings of Watteau’s fêtes galantes are typically lost to art historians. When the latter observe Watteau’s paintings today, their overriding impression is that something important is missing. Art historians lack the signifiers to divine the meanings his works had for their patrons and original owners (Duro 1997:231–42).

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This fundamental understanding of the place and purpose of visual narrations at court and in civil society is reflected, and unambiguously so, in the everyday behavior of Paris visual academiciens. All of the latter without exception bear fiducial responsibilities – to patrons, to fellow academiciens and to informed amateurs – to represent visually an unchanging (human) Nature. They bear fiducial responsibilities to incarnate visually unchanging principles of Truth, Morality and Beauty. Many visual academiciens (and patrons) bear these fiducial responsibilities quite consciously and purposefully. Here Lebrun is an exemplar. Others do so more unreflectively, simply as pride of craft, which some maitrisie also share. Here the case of Pierre Mignard stands out, as had the pre-Académie case of Simon Vouet. In either case, no one knowingly disregards these fiducial responsibilities; painters and sculptors entirely oblivious to them cannot possibly qualify as narrative painters in the first place. The visual Académie’s very presence in Paris as a major intermediary association in civil society steadily institutionalizes this shared sense of fiducial responsibility. Because the place and purpose of visual narrations in the socio-cultural competition of gentle households, aristocratic societies and dynastic states is more structured than fluid, narrative painters and sculptors are always constrained structurally and socio-culturally to conduct themselves – occupationally, instructionally and socially – in ways other artisans are not. Constrained always by broad socio-cultural and structural sanctioning (both positive and negative), narrative painters and sculptors in Paris are never free simply to value commercial cupidity over the considered visual discernment of academicien-practitioners and amateur-observers in gentle society. Likewise, the positional and corporate interests of academiciens routinely depart unambiguously from the more self-interested actions typical of guild masters (maitrisie) and other commercial practitioners (the bamboccianti in Rome and guild masters in the Low Countries). Visual academiciens are certainly never free, as are bombaccianti and Netherlandish painters to indulge unfettered their own vanity in visual design or visual composition. Their immediate positional and corporate interest is instead to “imitate” an unchanging (human) Nature. In addition, visual narrations are also expected simultaneously to be designed and composed consistently with verisimilitudinous impressions of decorum and demeanor in the milieu mondain. A patron may well select the general subject or even general scene of a visual narration.

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But the academicien bears ultimate responsibility for incarnating this subject or scene visually. He does so through an “imitation” which in design and composition represents “heroic actions of the past in the service of the here and now.” Such a prototypically professional service does not, conversely, portray the here and now in an illusionistic or imaginary way, as a modern painter might.6 Again, the epistemological, didactic and emblematic weightiness of ambitious commissions during the ancien régime constrain every patron and painter in ways which are utterly alien to modern artistic “creation.” More important for present purposes, Paris is unique in all of Europe in that only its visual academicians occupy an entrenched position of power in the structured situation demarcated universally by ambitious visual representations. And, correlatively, only in Paris do gentle patrons, as well as collectors and amateurs, occupy an entrenched position of dependence. The structured situation in Paris in this area of socio-culturally consequential ceremony and decoration is unique in all of Europe precisely because Paris is such a visual-cultural backwater, as compared to Italy (and the Low Countries), when the visual Académie is founded. Thus, even though major patrons, collectors and amateurs in Paris are as prominent socially as their Italian counterparts, they are nonetheless acknowledged across Europe to be visually uninformed, undiscerning and unversed. This is reflected in the deficiency of any quotidian visual lexicon in Parisian gentle society and then also in the relative absence of commentaries on visual matters written in French. Visual academiciens initiate their claim to an independent visualcultural authority within the structured situation of visual narrations by essentially adopting Italianate taste and practices. They use the Académie de France à Rome to situate themselves physically in the Eternal City. With this, the parent Académie in Paris enters situationally an arena of visual-cultural competition quite different from that still prevailing in Paris, a competition whose point of entry is demonstrable familiarity with the visual-cultural achievements of antiquity, the Renaissance and now the Baroque. Quite purposefully, visual academiciens in Paris do not perpetuate more directly or build upon the visual-cultural legacy of their own kingdom, whether that of

6

Duro 1997:68.

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medieval France or that of Marie de’ Medici’s Palais du Luxembourg, decorated in the 1610s and 1620s. Having entered this more competitive situational arena, visual academiciens then initiate their claim to an even broader visualcultural authority. They do so by first matching and then exceeding anything accomplished instructionally or organizationally by any visual Accademia in Italy. Upon the baseline of these achievements, the Académie in Paris opens the possibility of France developing for the first time in its history a “national” standard of visual discernment and taste which simultaneously can credibly claim universality and immutability. In all of these ways, visual academiciens in Paris create for themselves rather suddenly an entrenched position of power, first in Paris, which steadily takes hold across Europe as France wrests from Italy visual-cultural leadership for Europe. Thus, immediate positional interests and corporate interests of Paris visual academiciens are readily distinguishable, both analytically and empirically, from their self-interests and personal idiosyncrasies as individuals. In addition, across the entire history of the Académie, the overt behavior of academiciens rarely strays noticeably from that which advances, or endeavors to advance, these distinguishable positional interests and corporate interests. Notable behavioral exceptions to this general rule will not arise until the months running up to the Revolution, and they will be short-lived, entirely anomalous. Consider the following line from Tocqueville written in the 1830s, referring to the privileged craftsman as opposed to the commercial artisan: “Corporate interests count for more with him than either his own self-interest or even the purchaser’s needs.”7 However, visual academiciens envisage and anticipate only two types of consequences of acting on their immediate positional and corporate interests. They envisage and anticipate immediate consequences for participants and longer-term cultural and social consequences for elites and the kingdom. The same is true of their royal sponsors, gentle patrons and supporting amateurs. Everyone who is visually informed, discerning and conversant anticipates (and then later acknowledges) the immediate consequences for individual painters, patrons and collectors and then also the longer-term cultural and social consequences for Crown and kingdom (in terms of domestic tranquility and diplomatic advantages). 7

Tocqueville 1835–40:465.

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Moreover, this has not changed today. Only these two types of consequences of advancing positional and corporate interests are acknowledged today by professionals, corporate officers and the judges overseeing their behavior. No one during the ancien régime – and no one today – envisages or anticipates any longer-term institutional consequences of visual academiciens – and of professionals and corporate officers – advancing their immediate positional and corporate interests. During the ancien régime, no one appreciates the institutional consequences of the visual Académie displacing nepotism, patronage and venality structurally with meritocracy in Académie entry and advancement. Today, no one appreciates the institutional consequences of professions and corporate governance structures displacing marketmimicking behavior (or clientelism, hierarchy or leveling) structurally with collegial deliberation and disinterestedness and fiducial responsibility in exercising positional power. Art historian Thomas Crow begins to bring such consequences into view as they apply to the Académie by pointing to a fundamental difference structurally between the mandate Colbert imposed on it, consistent with the aspirations of Lebrun and other ambitious academiciens, and the positional interests of gentilshomme, the high nobility. Implicitly, this fundamental structural difference brings into view institutional externalities intrinsic to any inadvertent professionalism project during the ancien régime, but only the Paris visual Académie approximates professionalism. On the one hand, the theory and practice of narrative painting which the Académie is endeavoring to identify, codify and institutionalize are at once in principle: universal epistemologically and didactically, inclusive socially (but selective culturally), and quintessentially national (kingdom-wide) in purpose. But, on the other, the essence of any aristocratic culture – visual, literary or discursive – recapitulates numerous quotidian obstacles to cognitive universality, social inclusiveness and national unity. It institutionalizes cognitive and social opaqueness, norms of discourse and sociability which casually yet decisively deny entry to the uninitiated or insufficiently cultivated. In addition, where France’s visual Académie endeavors positionally to upgrade an aristocratic society and dynastic state to the gloire of European visual-cultural leadership, the milieu mondain on the ground in Paris instead operates with a quite different positional interest. It prizes “a studied effect of artlessness.” As a result, it remains obstinate,

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inhospitable both structurally and socio-culturally to embracing, let alone sustaining over time, any manifestation of concerted cultural striving.8 The Paris visual Académie’s meritocratic standards of recruitment, advancement and occupational accomplishment are altogether unprecedented structurally within the ancien régime. In addition, there are four other marks of structural inconsistency with institutional design. One mark is that only the visual Académie, not the literary Académie francaise or the later experimentalist Académie des Sciences, is compelled to confront directly an established and respected artisanal guild, the Maitrise. A second mark is that only the visual Académie, not Francaise or Sciences, inherits the seemingly insurmountable task of upgrading to the status of a liberal art an occupation which demands a manual component and which stems from a retail-workshop tradition. A third mark of the visual Académie’s structural inconsistency with institutional design follows from the fact that only visual académies, not any other académies, offer instruction. As a result of this privilege and responsibility, visual academiciens are also compelled to overcome opposition from an established and respected university (studium generale), the Sorbonne, as well as from the latter’s clerical allies in the Parlement of Paris. The final mark follows from the visual Académie’s royal sponsorship. In order to be taken seriously by the noblesse and milieu mondaine, visual academiciens must resist as much as possible all overt manifestations of pedantry, which are nearly as disdained in gentle society as manual labor and retail trade. This is particularly tricky for the visual Académie, however, because its instructional program and new conference series also cannot avoid becoming increasingly specialized lexically. Worse, the program and series also cannot avoid becoming increasingly dedicated to advancing a particular occupational activity, let alone one with qualities which are defiling seemingly ontologically in the eyes of the milieu mondain. Lebrun’s relationship to royal patrons reflects well the Académie’s structural uniqueness as an intermediary association. Altogether inadvertently, Lebrun exhibits the role behavior, positional authority, fiducial responsibility and resulting socio-cultural status of a professional practitioner. He provides an expert service within a structured situation

8

Crow 1985:70; also see note 4 above.

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for which he bears ultimate positional authority over and fiducial responsibility for patron wellbeing (gloire). As a result, even when dealing with gentle patrons of the loftiest social status (gentilshomme), Lebrun interjects an independent authority, at once positional and socio-cultural, into these bilateral relationships despite clearly being, outside of them, a social inferior. He occupies within these structured situations an entrenched position of power, discretionary judgment and impersonal trust. The immediate positional and corporate interests of Lebrun and all other ambitious narrative painters are respectfully to resist the uninformed vanity, fashion and taste of patrons wherever they impinge on their occupational position of power. It is not to behave more selfinterestedly, to indulge patron vanity diffidently because this can be ingratiating interpersonally or, worse, because similar commissions can be lucrative. When commissions veer away from the immediate positional and corporate interests of visual academiciens, because patron vanity is being indulged instead, this not only enervates the socio-cultural significance of visual narrations in the long run. More immediately, it exposes both painter and patron to criticism from the visually informed, the amateur in France and, certainly, the amatori in Italy. In extreme cases, a pattern of visually deficient narrative commissions can result in outright derision, then ignominy, for both painter and patron. Both parties are quite aware of this. Our point is that a gentle or wealthy patron in Paris, including any gentilhomme, has become a client of a prototypical professional service, whereas this had not been the case earlier, when this same patron brought brevetaires serially into his household with pensions. With brevetaires, a patron, including the king, remained equally – or more – responsible for a major commission’s ultimate success or failure (in terms of patron gloire). The patron alone attracted public praise for success and public ridicule for failure. All of this changed with the Académie’s instructional, organizational and occupational advances. Now the same patron occupies an entrenched position of dependence, whether he subjectively senses vulnerability and anxiety or not. He is simply no longer in a position to demand that his vanity be indulged without simultaneously inviting derision from the visually informed. Put differently, particular academiciens now have a positional stake in, and corresponding fiducial responsibility for, the success (gloire) of all major commissions. The Académie, in turn, assumes a corporate fiducial responsibility for the trajectory of change of French (and then

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European) visual-cultural activity, understanding and discernment over time, across cohorts and generations. What, however, does this actually mean in practice, in major commissions on the ground, rather than in the abstract, as some grand principle? It means on the ground that anyone occupying the patron position, on one side, and anyone providing an ambitious visual service, on the other, is now capable at any time of invoking the Académie’s independent visual and socio-cultural authority to support his reasoned or responsible visual preferences and tastes in particular commissions. Gentle patrons can do so in order to stimulate particular academiciens to compose epistemologically and didactically compelling designs, and thus to bear fully their positional authority and fiducial responsibility for the gloire that major commissions can attract. In turn, academiciens can invoke the same authority in resisting patron vanity, all obvious excesses and idiosyncrasies in decorative schemes. In the absence of such an independent visual and socio-cultural authority, patrons of gentle birth are otherwise free not only to disregard as impudent any such resistance by painters and sculptors of common birth in matters of ambitious decoration and ceremony. Far more perilous, they can consider commoner resistance of any kind a personal affront to their person and household, literally an aggression against their seemingly ontological superiority. Many commoners literally lose their lives over such slights. This is how a grand, seemingly abstract principle metamorphoses seamlessly into a quotidian practice on the ground, readily familiar to everyone involved and observing. Our point is that the sheer presence in Paris of the reorganized visual Académie rather suddenly alters, both structurally and institutionally, the patron-painter relationship as such. For the first time in French history – and European history – a corporate body appears on the scene “possessing both a legislative and judicial function, the ultimate repository of a body of rules governing artistic seriousness, decorum, and moral values, whose continual vigilance is required for [the rules’] maintenance.”9 2.2 Structural Qualities of Académie Professionalism The path breaking contributions made by visual académies in general and the Paris visual Académie in particular have until now eluded 9

Crow 1985:22.

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sociologists, even as they appear in plain sight in the historiographic record. Now that we appreciate that this Académie was a major intermediary association of the ancien régime which provided expert services within a structured situation, we can review the structural qualities of prototype professionalism which it introduced into Western civil society. 1. Expert occupational services are provided within a structured situation, in this case of ambitious ceremony and decoration, identified and legitimated as such by a literal cultural truism of a society and era. 2. Paris visual academiciens occupy entrenched positions of power in this structured situation, despite their status inferiority in the milieu mondain (and in learned society). Correlatively, their patrons occupy entrenched positions of dependence, despite their status superiority. 3. The positional power of academiciens is legitimated by an independent visual (and then socio-cultural) authority which, given the cultural truism noted above, is recognized universally; this authority interjects itself as an ever-present third party into all academicien-patron relationships. 4. As a result of providing expert services within structured situations on the basis of an independent authority, the immediate positional and corporate interests of academiciens are readily distinguishable from their self-interests as individuals. They are equally distinguishable, of course, from any idiosyncrasies of personality or condition. 5. Instructional entry and advancement as well as occupational distinction within the Académie are ultimately meritocratic. They are based on identifiable, intersubjectively cognizable standards which are at once epistemological, didactic and technical or specialized (dessein). Instruction is open (by rotating professeurs), unlike that in guilds, and students are subjected to ceaseless testing and anonymously submitted and scored competitions. 6. Because academiciens endeavor openly and consistently to identify and reward merit on the basis of publicly articulated standards, collegial formations institutionalize a bright-line threshold standard of rule clarity and consistency. Collegial formations also institutionalize academicien deliberation and

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disinterestedness in instruction (open instruction by rotating professeurs) and in their collective quest to identify and codify abstract principles and practicable precepts of instruction and occupational practice (the conference series). The Académie is clearly not organized as a patron-client network, for it does not instead openly reward nepotism, patronage or venality more one-sidedly. Of course, it is also not organized as a formal bureaucracy or, certainly, as a formal democracy. 7. Academiciens participate in sustained learned presentations and open discussions dedicated to weighty matters which advance their immediate instructional and occupational ends, as opposed to being pedantic or strictly exegetical. 8. Academiciens, in short, exhibit learnedness, but short of pedantry, and exhibit cultivation and probity, but short of gentility. Both of these behavioral characteristics, moreover, are overarched and mediated by structural (positional) and fiducial demands for delivering expert services with reliability, consistency and confidence (sprezzatura). 9. Academiciens bear fiducial responsibilities structurally or positionally, and thus consistently with their independent visual (and then socio-cultural) authority. They bear fiducial responsibilities for: – the collegial form and ongoing behavioral fidelity to the bright-line threshold standard of rule understandability and interpretability; – instructional and occupational governance; – epistemological and didactic occupational content; – patron or client (visual-cultural) wellbeing (gloire); – socio-cultural upgrading of the larger society (in the Académie’s own immediate corporate and positional interests); and – (more implicitly, that is structurally) the institutional design of the larger social order (which they are enervating structurally during the ancien régime, but which thereafter they are supporting structurally).

10. Meritocratic entry and advancement runs counter structurally to the institutional design of an aristocratic society and dynastic state. The same is true of the collegial form of the Académie’s instructional program and conference series. 11. Yet, as Paris visual academiciens advance their own immediate positional and corporate interests in ways which enervate institutional design structurally, their instructional and occupational activities nonetheless perform simultaneously in

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chapter five substance a pattern maintenance function for the larger sociocultural order. They adopt Italianate visual-cultural tradition with probity and in statesmanlike (honnêteté) ways. 12. They also serve a public law interest, even as their emphases on meritocracy and collegial deliberation are simultaneously enervating institutional design structurally, and thus inadvertently. – The Académie undertakes a broader project of socio-cultural upgrading: it creates a constituency in gentle (and learned) society for ambitious visual instruction and occupational practice by upgrading more generally within civil society understanding and discernment in a particular occupational activity, that of visual narration. – To this end, the Académie overcomes obstacles of received cultural understandings and social-psychological beliefs. During the ancien régime, such obstacles include: academicien habitus, their artisanal and workshop socialization; academicien condition, the manual labor demanded by their livelihood; the disdain of the milieu mondain for anything resembling formal instruction, specialized lexicons and, most generally, occupational livelihoods; and the undisciplined enthusiasm and cupidity of curieux, the most numerous collectors in Paris.

13. Given the obstacles posed by academicien habitus and condition (as well as related academicien self- interests in goldbricking), the surintendant des bâtiments (Colbert) of an absolute monarchy finds it necessary initially to advance the immediate positional and corporate interests of academiciens for them. As succeeding cohorts and generations of eleves and agréés matriculate through the visual Académie, however, this habitus becomes more isomorphic with academiciens’ positional and corporate interests. Of course, even with this academicien selfinterests and idiosyncrasies of personality and condition nonetheless remain distinct, both analytically and empirically, from their positional and corporate interests. 14. Even as diffusion of visual-cultural understanding and discernment ramifies throughout gentle society and then within a larger public, such that Paris patrons, collectors and amateurs become more conversant visual-culturally, academiciens nonetheless retain for three reasons their entrenched positions of power, authority and responsibility in a structured situation. – First, their instruction remains the most rigorous and meritocratic of any occupation in Europe.

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– Second, their visual-based lexicon remains the most sophisticated in all of Europe both in its internal logic and in its practical instructional and occupational application. – Third, only visual academiciens, not their patrons or amateurs, are capable of translating intellection gleaned from literary sources into visual images in ways which are at once weighty epistemologically and didactically and isomorphic with evolving substantive-normative standards of comportment in the milieu mondain.

15. The visual Académie’s epistemological and didactic standards, being directly substantive-normative, became noticeably anachronistic during the 1870s. As the Académie loses any credible epistemological and didactic standards of pedagogical and occupational success, its professionalism project gives way, and not only to aesthetics. It also gives way to commercialism, diversion and vanity, and clientelism. Thus, the world of “fine art” has been marked since the mid-nineteenth century by all four of the characteristics just noted.10 The Paris visual Académie pioneers a collegial form of organization precisely because it has no alternative, as it exceeds the accomplishments of all Italian visual Accademia, except to institutionalize ongoing deliberation over weighty occupational matters. Academiciens deliberate over identifying and codifying: the publicly articulated standards of achievement noted above, the talents and expertise of students and occupational practitioners, and the epistemological, didactic and emblematic qualities of major visual commissions. These matters are not decided unilaterally by anyone, in a strict chain of command; they are also not left to simple majoritarian votes, in the absence of deliberation and reason-giving. Thus, hierarchy and majoritarianism do not displace ongoing deliberation either in the teaching rotation or in the conference series. Our point is that any professionalism project, whether prototypical and inadvertent or modern and purposeful, becomes institutionalized only by the presence of collegial formations and thereby by venues of deliberation and relative disinterestedness. If any occupation fails to introduce and then maintain collegial formations anywhere in its governance and instructional and occupational activities, it cannot credibly claim an independent socio-cultural authority in its respective

10

See Haden-Guest 1996.

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occupational field.11 It becomes incapable structurally of serving, either in principle or in practice, as a disinterested third party in dispersed practitioner-client relationships. It is vitally important, therefore, to call particular attention to the essentially collegial practice of the Paris visual Académie, even as its membership is subdivided hierarchically (unlike the case with Francaise, but like Sciences). Without using any of our terminology, Yale art historian Thomas Crow cites four ways in which the early Académie established and maintained collegial formations on its premises rather than operating as a bureaucracy, a patron-client network or a formal democracy.12 First, Académie founding officers, the twelve anciens, introduced into the drawing sequence open, serially supervised instruction. Such instruction is quintessentially collegial on its face, and entirely pioneering during the mid-seventeenth century. It is certainly not clientelistic. It is also not bureaucratic, nor formally democratic, for only narrative painters and sculptors are eligible to become anciens (and then, later, professeurs). Being open and collegial, this instructional format is utterly alien to the pedagogy of the day, and not only to that in guild workshops. It is equally alien to received practices in all learned corporations, whether Jesuit colleges des plein exercise or more ancient universities (studia generale) and their advanced Faculties of Divinity, Law and Physic.13 At all of these venues instructional formats are

11

Moreover, at that point in history – the mid-nineteenth century – when painting is no longer thought to occupy a structured situation in civil society, when painting becomes “aesthetic” and diverting rather than believed any longer to perform epistemological and didactic functions, the authority of collegial formations here declines regardless. 12 Crow 1985:25. 13 Susan Shapiro documents as well as anyone how far an open format of instruction has eroded within the American university today. She explores at length contemporary “dual relationships” between students and teachers in universities, whereby the basic student-teacher relationship is frequently “overlaid” by those between mentor and advisee, and employer and employee (2003:219). The result is conflicts of interest for fiduciaries, for professors. “Over time, students often become dependent on a limited number of faculty for their education,” such that a “multiple matrix of dependencies exacerbates the imbalance of power between students and teachers.” It becomes “too costly for students to extricate themselves when their professors’ conflicts of interest cause them to ignore or betray their obligations to their students” (2003:220). Today’s dual relationships also threaten other students, those lacking multiple ties with professors. Such outsiders may be evaluated differently as well as receive less attention, mentoring and support. All of this then likely impairs professor objectivity, and thus their exercises of positional power as gatekeepers. This is precisely why Académie

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marked by: internal hierarchy, not collegiality; serial readings and disputations, not open deliberation by qualified equals; and clientelist favoritism, not meritocracy. Second, the Académie also identifies, refines and standardizes collegiately rules of ambitious painting, “in a setting perpetually open to outside scrutiny.” A “distinctive characteristic” of the Académie is its explicit privileging of merit and reason over birth and connections, which is reflected in “the untrammeled discussion which was practiced … and the high estimate of intellect.”14 It does not withhold findings and methods from competitors, as does every guild and workshop without exception. For that matter, it does not conceal its ongoing inquiries from commentary and criticism by interested outsiders. In addition, it also does not somehow dictate its rules of art from the top down even on Académie premises, let alone more generally. The early Académie is utterly incapable structurally of acting in these ways. Even on its own premises, it can only advance its fledgling corporate ideal of visual invention and composition deliberatively, collegiately. More generally, it can only, at best, contribute to a visual-cultural upgrading, which then may in time alter patron taste, including received understandings of verisimilitude in ambitious visual representations. It cannot command any such upgrading. Third, visual academiciens are no longer dispersed brevetaires offering visual services serially to particular gentle households, within embedded exchanges controlled more or less unilaterally by these patrons. Rather, they provide visual services within structured situations, now bearing fiducial responsibilities to “third parties” present virtually within each and every major commission. They continue to enter particular household worksites, of course, but now they do so within and through a different warrant, one provided by an intermediary association, the visual Académie. This corporate body is now asserting itself openly and collectively – collegiately – into every major commission as an independent authority, underpinned by its own internal processes of deliberation and meritocracy. Each and every visual academicien as well as each and rotation of professeurs and open instruction was so important: it lent structural support to the integrity of gate keeping and it reduced the costs of student – or instructor – exit from any given relationship. 14 Stranahan 1888:30.

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every patron can now cite Académie principles and precepts when these serve his own positional interests. Visual academiciens cite them, for instance, to stimulate greater visual ambition on the part of patrons. Patrons cite them to stimulate greater intellection and dedication on the part of visual academiciens. In our terminology this means Académie collegiality introduces substantive-normative institutional consequences of professionalism into the milieu mondain, directly cultural and social psychological, and thus beyond the procedural–normative institutional consequences of professionalism. Fourth, because of the openness of Académie instruction and conference deliberations, this particular intermediary association in Paris is a liberal (as opposed to mechanical) learned corporation which operates with relative disinterestedness as compared to the normal practices of any artisanal guild or workshop. In addition, the immediate positional and corporate interests of Académie officers compel them always to resist excessive self-interestedness from any quarter, whether from individual academiciens or from individual patrons. These same interests also compel them to resist or modify: commercial pressures, decorative fads, and patron vanity.15 3. Corporate Governance Professionalism 3.1 Corporations as Intermediary Associations Turning next to our case of inadvertent professionalism today, we also fast-forward to a dramatically different institutional design spanning the state and major intermediary associations in civil society. The institutional design of the United States, of a democratic, commercially competitive society, differs fundamentally from that of seventeenth century France, an aristocratic, culturally competitive society. The former revolves first and foremost around procedural norms of rule clarity and consistency, norms which were utterly alien to the ancien régime. Ongoing behavioral fidelity to procedural-normative thresholds by individuals who occupy entrenched positions of power in structured situations is reflected organizationally in the presence of

15 This way of characterizing disinterest may hold a key finally to bringing the concept of disinterest forcefully into sociological analyses of contemporary societies. It is above and beyond self-interest and yet it can accommodate positional interest rather than invariably resist or modify it.

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collegial formations within professions, publicly traded corporations and other major intermediary associations. Unlike substantive-normative standards of behavior, which proscribe certain types of activities as such (such as fraud and theft), procedural-normative thresholds mediate how otherwise lawful activities are undertaken, including within structured situations. When such thresholds are applied only to state agencies and officials, this is constitutive of the institutional designs of limited governments, including some Rechtsstaats and Sozialstaats on the continent. When the same thresholds are also applied to structured situations within major intermediary associations in civil society, this is constitutive uniquely of the institutional designs of democratic, commercially competitive societies. Procedural-normative mediations of positional one-sidedness uniquely support these institutional designs structurally by simultaneously (a) accommodating robust commercial competition and corporate growth in a global economy and yet (b) discouraging one-sided exercises of positional power within and around professions, corporations and other major intermediary associations in civil society. Institutional designs of aristocratic, culturally competitive societies were fundamentally different. Lacking due process or any other procedural-normative mediations of positional one-sidedness, they instead revolved around substantive-normative prescriptions of civility (honnêteté) and proscriptions of derogation (derogeance), which encouraged socio-cultural distinction and refinement. In addition, they also revolved around dense vertical and horizontal patron-client networks, which encouraged open nepotism, patronage and venality. The unrelenting socio-cultural competitiveness of aristocratic institutional designs explains the huge expenditures dedicated to ceremony and decoration during the ancien régime. These institutional designs did not instead promote market-mimicking behavior structurally. Grand fêtes were more valued and esteemed socio-culturally than innovative or clever commercial undertakings or other utilitarian pursuits. To the contrary, once individuals and households of common birth but social ambition attained sufficient discretionary wealth, they immediately abandoned commercial activities in favor of attaining titles of noblesse through venality and patronage. In turn, the patron-client networks of aristocratic institutional designs explain why, on structural grounds alone, aristocratic societies took scant notice of one-sidedness in structured situations. Rather than endeavoring to reduce the frequency or scope of positional

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one-sidedness, aristocratic societies instead sought “symmetry,” directly in substance, across its various cliques of personal loyalty and favoritism. As this symmetry informed the proceedings and rulings of “the king’s” judicial tribunals, this was considered “fair justice” (droite justice). Thus, “fair justice” structurally accommodated and encouraged open venality, patronage and nepotism in securing judicial offices (the magistracy), and then also financial offices and all other offices of the royal administration as well as those in the various municipal administrations, the patriciate.16 In short, positional one-sidedness everywhere supported institutional design structurally, as opposed to enervating it at any point. Turning in this light to American society today, existing corporate law doctrine explicitly and unambiguously treats corporate governance as a structured situation in civil society, not as a fluid site of arm’slength commercial contracting. Equally explicitly and unambiguously, it assumes that positional power within corporate governance can be exercised one-sidedly, to a point of abuse, and that – somehow – this can “harm” the larger society. This explains why the core of corporate law doctrine revolves around mandatory, extra-economic norms of behavior, not around laissez-faire and caveat emptor, the marketmimicking norms idealized by neoclassical economics. At the very center of this doctrinal core are fiducial duties of care and loyalty. The corporate judiciary, led by Delaware courts, enforces these duties independently of the substance of legislative statutes and contractual terms. Delaware courts hold anyone who occupies a position of power in corporate governance structures to fiducial duties which, aside from being normative, thus extra-economic by definition, also exceed in their scope of application all other legal obligations borne by sitting management teams and controlling shareholders. Thus, fiducial duties place a “value-added normative capsule” around managerial and shareholder control. Our point is that existing corporate law doctrine and ongoing judicial decisions consistent with it continue to impose this valueadded normative capsule around one type of team activity which the corporate judiciary considers to be more structured than fluid. More generally, the principles being codified and articulated by Delaware courts are hardly confined to this water’s edge. Rather, the same normative capsule applies by analogy with equal force to 16

Karpik 1995:18.

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any comparable team activity in a structured situation in civil society, and thus to the governance of professional associations and then to professional instruction and dispersed professional-client relationships. This is why “conflicts of interest” are so readily identified at all of these venues and activities. 17 As such, corporate law doctrine and ongoing judicial decisions in major governance disputes provide us with evolving, contemporaneous standards by which to describe and evaluate how positional power is being exercised within professional associations, instructional facilities and major sites of practice. Equally analogically, the same standard also applies to how courts (or in Europe and the Pacific Rim, administrative agencies) oversee any and all private governance structures in civil society. 3.2 Structural Qualities of Governance Professionalism Corporate law doctrine is instructive for the sociology of professions because it deals ultimately with mandatory rules of behavior which today, being procedural-normative rather than substantive-normative are applicable to all private governance structures in all intermediary associations in civil society. After all, this doctrine originated within a medieval fiduciary law tradition which applied equally generally (and until the nineteenth century, directly in substance) to all structured situations of impersonal trust and equitable behavior. From the fourteenth century forward, English Chancellors held that barons’ private behavior on their own manors could have public consequences, could carry externalities for the institutional design of the kingdom. On this basis they intervened into barons’ “household” affairs on a public law ground by imposing substantive-normative restrictions on their behavior. For centuries thereafter the English fiduciary law tradition, interpreted and enforced by Chancery, remained distinctive institutionally from a parallel common law tradition, which held sway over property contracts. Thus, today’s mandatory rules of corporate governance, like this tradition, apply to any venue which contemporaries or courts believe to be more structured than either simply embedded or altogether fluid, arm’s length. Our point is that this same core of mandatory rules, as updated over the centuries by a corporate judiciary which quintessentially sits in 17

See Shapiro 2003 and Dzienkowski 1993.

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equity, not at common law, is literally constitutive of positional power being exercised short of abuse in any structured situation, including any private governance structure. Thus, it is constitutive structurally of dispersed professional-client relationships and then, of course, of how professional associations oversee these relationships. It is not constitutive structurally of other expert occupations and their umbrella organizations, whether peak associations (in continental neo-corporatism) or trade associations (in Anglo-American pluralism). This means that when providers of expert services exhibit behavioral fidelity to these core norms, and when their leaders articulate publicly these same core norms, they are in fact embarking on a professionalism project – or they are feigning doing so. This holds true irrespective of whether participants undertake professionalism self-consciously or inadvertently. Indeed, it holds true whether or not they are aware social psychologically that professionalism is an occupational and organizational option. Our point is that the behavior and publicly articulated standards noted above reflect an acknowledgement on the part of certain experts, whether purposeful or implied, that they are providing expert services and exercising positional power within structured situations. These experts are either acknowledging or proclaiming publicly that their activities are subject structurally to fiducial duties of care and loyalty. After all, why exhibit such behavior or assert such standards if experts are operating at fluid sites, at which they are expected and permitted to act strictly self-interestedly?18 In this light, we can review the structural qualities of professionalism which corporate governance today is introducing inadvertently into American civil society. 1. As the phrase corporate governance structure suggests, the governance of publicly traded corporations represents one major set of structured situations into civil society. 2. Yet, even though corporate positions are entrenched and even though corporations are consequential intermediary 18 Of course, the reverse holds equally true. When providers of expert services fail to acknowledge or proclaim publicly the standards noted above, and then, of course, fail to exhibit behavioral fidelity to them, they are participating in expert occupations which are not professionalizing. Their own statements and behaviors indicate, again whether purposefully or implicitly, that they are providing expert services at more fluid sites of contracting and diversion which, by definition, lack entrenched positions.

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associations in civil society, corporate governance is not acknowledged universally today to be a structured situation. This understanding is not a cultural truism of a society and era. Such an understanding is nonetheless consistent with the distinction between self-interested opportunism and positional one-sidedness, and this distinction is what brings into play the fiduciary law tradition and some major Delaware court rulings in corporate governance disputes. Because positional interests are structural, not personal or conditional, they are invariant, unlike self interests. This is precisely why the positional interests of stakeholders and corporate officers are readily distinguishable from the self interests of the individuals occupying these positions. Self interests vary with personal attributes, social-psychological beliefs and cultural understandings, and particular conditions. Traditional fiducial duties of care and loyalty proscribe positional one-sidedness in corporate governance (and to a lesser extent self-interested opportunism). They compel corporate officers to exhibit some degree of independence, of disinterestedness and deliberation, even as they exercise positional power over dependents, corporate constituents. By analogy, these same fiducial duties apply more generally to all structured situations in civil society, and thus to professions. They lose salience within embedded exchanges, whereas emergent substantive norms of probity may (or may not) enter the picture. Fiducial duties are altogether irrelevant at fluid sites, where market-mimicking behavior is both expected and permitted. When corporate governance structures fail to identify, mediate and thereby marginalize positional one-sidedness, an otherwise healthy competition for positional power within corporations can degenerate into trench warfare. Derivate lawsuits bring some positional conflicts to state courts as full-blown corporate governance disputes. American corporate law doctrine applies to these disputes a core of mandatory rules (as well as enabling rules and suppletory rules which are, respectively, optional and negotiable). This core is fiducial and, as such, speaks generally to corporate governance and corporate purpose. It speaks to the legitimate

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place and purpose of publicly traded corporations in American civil society. It does not speak more narrowly to corporate production, to everyday managerial business judgment regarding either profitability or growth. 9. Delaware courts, sitting in equity, assume as an institution that positional one-sidedness in corporate governance can introduce both immediate and longer-term harms into civil society. They endeavor to reduce or ameliorate these harms by applying qualitative analyses stemming from the fiduciary law tradition. They do not rely alone on quantitative analyses of growth or profitability. 10. Sitting in equity, Delaware judges uphold the fiduciary law tradition for two reasons which are mutually reinforcing rather than paradoxical. Keeping their rulings affiliated with this tradition does advance Delaware judges’ own immediate positional and corporate interests, as judges sitting in equity. But such rulings simultaneously advance a public law interest for the larger society. Delaware courts in equity perform a pattern maintenance function for the larger social order which other state courts, at common law, are simply incapable of performing at an institutional level.19 11. However, Delaware court rulings lack consistency. They tack back and forth across three distinct doctrinal options and across two interpretations of mandatory rules. The three doctrinal options are: – Nexus of contracts, at which the fiduciary law tradition is irrelevant; – Long-term economic enterprise (or embedded exchanges), at which stakeholder balancing can displace the core of mandatory rules on directly substantive-normative grounds; and – Major intermediary association, at which fiducial responsibility becomes salient within private governance structures. 19 That these two reasons are mutually reinforcing rather than paradoxical is reflected in the fact that most observers consider Delaware rulings to be more statesmanlike than craven, and yet not abnegating. Should this ever change, should the pattern or trajectory of Delaware decisions ever be seen as more self-serving – whether as advancing particular interests of some corporate constituent, whether top management or major shareholders, or as advancing particular interests of Delaware judges and courts – Delaware courts will lose influence across the corporate judiciary and bar. They will then, as a result, lose new business incorporations as well as reincorporations from other states.

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The two interpretations of mandatory rules are: – As substantive-normative proscriptions of corporate purpose and managerial business judgment, consistent with traditionalism and balancing; and – As procedural-normative mediations of positional one-sidedness, consistent with a procedural turn in interpreting and applying the fiduciary law tradition.

12. Regardless of this inconsistency, Delaware judges frequently act on a broad social vision. They identify and then correct or prevent positional one-sidedness with an eye to evolving social norms. At times, they also do so with an eye to whether and how the trajectory of change of corporate governance structures affects the larger society. 13. Corporate law doctrine’s core of mandatory rules provides windows to social norms, and its scope of application can hardly be confined to corporate governance. After all, the same social norms extend analogically to all structured situations in civil society. In addition, how positional power is exercised within structured situations, including in professions, bears equally structurally, thus equally invariantly, on the institutional design of the larger society. 14. Correlatively, major changes in corporate law doctrine or in the trajectory of change of corporate governance structures either reflect or anticipate broader changes in social norms. At the limiting case, they also reflect or anticipate identifiable changes in institutional design (from democratic society to limited government). 15. Delaware courts have evolved in the qualitative analyses of fiduciary law tradition they apply to corporate governance disputes. They have added to their “intrinsic fairness” standard, which is case-specific and costly to apply, an “enhanced scrutiny” standard, which is more abstract and thus less costly to apply generally. 16. This evolution in qualitative analysis is consistent with the procedural turn noted earlier: Delaware courts are transforming substantive-normative proscriptions on corporate purpose bequeathed by fiduciary law tradition into a threshold of procedural normative mediations on positional one-sidedness in private governance structures.

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chapter five 17. Delaware judges treat publicly traded corporations at times as major intermediary associations in civil society, which contain structured situations. They do not treat them more simply as either long-term commercial enterprises, which contain embedded interactions, or as fluid sites, which contain only arm’s-length exchanges. Rather than relying on selfregulating economic markets to monitor these intermediary associations, Delaware judges identify and reduce positional one-sidedness independently. They do so because positional one-sidedness within structured situations contradicts evolving social norms and at the limiting case enervates institutional design. 18. By analogy, this central point of Delaware adjudication extends equally forcefully to all structured situations in civil society, including professions. After all, at a structural and institutional level, positional one-sidedness in professions is hardly any more acceptable than that in corporations. Indeed, because professions are putatively less commercial service providers than corporations, positional one-sidedness here is manifestly less excusable or tolerable, even as it is eminently understandable (given relentless systemic pressures of self-regulating markets toward maximizing either profitability or growth). 19. Along with Delaware court rulings, “professional” instruction in major business schools is helping to bring the socialpsychological beliefs and cultural understandings of corporate directors and managers into greater isomorphism with the latter’s positional interests. The divide between positional interests and self- interests within corporate settings today, therefore, is likely less severe than it had been in earlier eras, through the 1970s. This may prepare the way for a cultural truism eventually to popularize the understanding that corporate governance is a structured situation.

SECTION III a structural and institutional approach

CHAPTER SIX

PROFESSIONS AND STRUCTURED SITUATIONS Given our historical case, sociologists can no longer assume blithely, as they have until now, that professionalism originated in law, in London, sometime during the nineteenth century. Our case strips away this underpinning of the sociology of professions because it reveals an unambiguous instance of inadvertent professionalism in painting, on the continent, centuries earlier – at the zenith of the ancien régime. By challenging received wisdom so dramatically, our case not only advances our understanding of professionalism descriptively, or simply anecdotally. It also provides us with notable advantages over received wisdom in advancing the sociology of professions at conceptual and theoretical levels. After all, our case casts in sharper relief than does any modern case of purposeful professionalism in the English-speaking world the structural qualities truly constitutive of professionalism as such. It accomplishes this by removing from view, as if in thought experiment, all extraneous accompanying variables of professionalism which are particular to English liberalism, to Anglo-American democratization or, for that matter, to Western modernity and then to industrialization more generally. Indeed, our point in tracing invariant structural qualities of professionalism to the Paris visual Académie rather than taking our bearings from English law or any other occupation during the nineteenth century is to mine at conceptual and theoretical levels the many advantages of backdrop dissonance. It is far easier to discern invariant structures of professionalism when the socio-cultural and institutional backdrop cannot possibly be accommodated by received wisdom. Not only is a socio-cultural awareness of professions by contemporaries entirely absent from our backdrop – to say nothing of any ideology of purposeful professionalism. More generally, our backdrop is at once pre-industrial, socio-culturally aristocratic, institutionally clientelistic and politically autocratic. In addition, because our case of professionalism unfolded on the continent, not in England, it simultaneously removes from play all

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influences, let alone putatively causal factors, stemming from AngloSaxon conditions: English language usage, common law tradition, and ideologies of economic laissez-faire and political liberalism. All of these influences or factors can now be seen more plainly for what they are. They are extraneous variables which simply happened to accompany the professionalization of English law. They are not qualities constitutive of professionalism as such. When backdrop dissonance is not working to our favor, when the socio-cultural and institutional backdrop of professionalism is instead consonant with received wisdom, the landscape visible at conceptual and theoretical levels blurs entirely. The structural qualities constitutive of professionalism literally dissolve. They merge seamlessly into a gestalt of accompanying variables, many parts of which are in fact Anglophile. The invariant becomes undetectable amongst the extraneous. This is precisely what happens once industrialization and then laissez-faire and political liberalism enter the picture. Professionalism then becomes purposeful, admixed with ideologies of occupational striving, and undeniably Anglophile. Backdrops are now socio-culturally middle-class (Bürgerlichkeit) as well as institutionally liberal rather than autocratic. The predictable result of backdrop consonance is conceptual obscurantism, and one manifestation of this spanned the sociology of professions from its founding in the 1930s to the late 1970s. We find multiple, often incommensurable, listings of professional qualities, which are every bit akin to Ptolemaic epicycles. Another manifestation is current today, namely a new willingness to allow colloquial usages of the terms “profession” and “professional” literally to orient both theory and research in the sociology of professions.1 Received wisdom based on backdrop consonance, in short, is precisely what has been hampering the sociology of professions at conceptual and theoretical levels from the 1930s to today. Only by breaking out of this bind, by using the Paris visual Académie as our lodestar and then considering only in this light the significance of any subsequent modern occupational developments (including in law and medicine, science and engineering), can we possibly advance. Indeed, with our

1 For example, Evetts 2006. See Raz (1979:41) for a pointed criticism of adopting a similar strategy in law, namely relying on ordinary language usage to identify “the existence and identity of law” or of a legal system.

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advantages of backdrop dissonance we are able to isolate six structural qualities constitutive of professionalism as such. Being constitutive of professionalism, these structural qualities are invariant in all instances of professionalism – whether historically or cross-nationally today, whether in inadvertent professionalism projects on the continent or in purposeful professionalism projects in Englishspeaking lands. Being invariant, these six structural qualities provide the keys to advancing the sociology of professions conceptually and theoretically beyond earlier list-making exercises as well as beyond the revisionist reaction to them which has prevailed from the late 1970s to today. By far, the first quality is the most critical. Always and everywhere professional practitioners or researchers, their associations, and their instructional facilities: – Provide expert occupational services within structured situations on the basis of an independent socio-cultural authority.

In addition, always and everywhere professions: – Are held accountable structurally (or positionally) to two fiducial responsibilities, one immediate and the other institutional. – Are also held accountable structurally to two occupational orientations, one epistemological and the other didactic. – Establish and maintain their independent socio-cultural authority through ongoing deliberation and relative disinterestedness, not through unwarranted social closure or occupational monopoly. – Privilege merit structurally in both instructional entry and then occupational placement and advancement, as opposed to permitting open nepotism, patronage or venality to displace or subordinate demonstrable merit. – Establish and maintain identifiable jurisdictions or fields (if not monopolies) in the labor market for expert services which are relatively well-patrolled. Effective patrolling is only possible, however, because these jurisdictions span structured situations. As a result, the jurisdictions are warranted both structurally and culturally, never gratuitous.

Precisely because these structural qualities are constitutive of professionalism, professions always and everywhere also introduce three invariant institutional consequences into the civil societies and states in which they appear. Professions: – Establish and maintain an independent socio-cultural authority in a particular occupational jurisdiction or field.

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chapter six – Upgrade discourse (and, where applicable, sociability) within civil society and the state, as their specialized understandings and lexicons diffuse in part into popular consciousness and general cultural understandings. – Support structurally one and only one set of institutional designs in particular, that of democratic, commercially competitive societies. Professional meritocracy otherwise challenges structurally all other institutional designs. It (typically inadvertently) enervates all autocracies and, in addition, it exposes (often more purposefully) structural limitations in both formal democracies and limited governments.

This third institutional consequence of professionalism indicates why continental sociologists have long considered professions to be Trojan horses. They see professionalism insidiously challenging traditional practices and, worse, spearheading an ongoing, ultimately sinister diffusion of “Anglo-Saxon cultural imperialism.”2 1. Structured Situations One analytical and empirical quality distinguishes professions and their associations at the very outset from all other occupations and their organizations. This quality is decisive in that it distinguishes professions first structurally, as we will see now, and then institutionally, as we will see in the next chapter. Being structural, this quality’s presence within professionalism projects is invariant because it is literally constitutive of professionalism as such. Only professionals, whether practitioners or researchers, earn their livelihoods by providing expert services within what contemporaries believe universally, as a literal cultural truism of their society and era, to be structured situations in civil society or the state. All other expert practitioners, including as examples those engaged in haute couture and haute cuisine (discussed momentarily) provide expert services at one or more of three sites or venues which are quite different:3 2 For recent continental references to professions in this light see: Bourdieu and Wacquant 1998, Fournier 1999, Dezalay and Garth 2002, and Sousa Santos 2005. Of course, some English and American sociologists are similar, beginning with Abel 1981 and most notably represented today by Evetts (2006:140; 2003a:405–7; 2003b:27). 3 See Borgatti and Foster 2003 on the first two sites. There is also a fourth site or venue, that of patron-client networks. For present purposes we need not directly contrast structured situations to this. However, clientelism is the literal structural antonym of professionalism, and as such will enter our discussion below frequently in this light. In other writings, moreover, we contrast structured situations to clientelist

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– Sites of embedded commercial exchanges, the repetitive market relations idealized by network analysts and economic sociologists. These exchanges typically yield social relationships and thus emergent norms of behavior, but they never contain entrenched positions. – Sites of simple commercial transacting and contracting, the arm’slength market relations idealized by neoclassical economists. – Sites of elective diversion, of socio-culturally discretionary leisure and entertainment.

The relationship between structured situations and professionalism holds true in all instances of professionalism without exception, whether historically or cross-nationally today. It is present unambiguously, for instance, in the major instance of prototype professionalism during the ancien régime, the Paris visual Académie. It remains present in all subsequent instances of professionalism from the nineteenth century forward, whether those of purposeful professionalism in the Anglo-American world or those of inadvertent professionalism on the continent and in the Pacific Rim and Southern Hemisphere. On the other hand, not all structured situations necessarily yield successful professionalism projects. We saw failure during the ancien régime in Italian visual Accademia and, more generally, in ambitious literature. Today we see uncertain success in American corporate governance. Moreover, professionalism is typically unsuccessful even in law and medicine, science and engineering, both today and historically, when civil societies are riddled with patron-client networks. Such networks prevailed during the ancien régime and today are prominent across the East, Middle East and Southern Hemisphere. We explore later why clientelism and professionalism are literal structural antonyms.4 Our point at the moment is that all complex societies, from antiquity and the late Middle Ages forward, distinguish structured situations from all other sites and venues of exchange and interaction. Of course, societies differ both historically and cross-nationally in the substance networks more methodically, in the context of discussing transitions from autocracy to democracy today and presenting a typology of contemporary institutional designs. 4 Kritzer’s distress over what he calls “post-professionalism” is largely misplaced because he associates professional autonomy and control with clientelistic entry, a complete misreading of history in both Paris and London (1999:726). Clientelism certainly did linger in all early professionalism projects, as culturally aristocratic societies gave way to culturally Bürgerlichkeit societies. But a more anonymous and universalistic meritocracy is certainly the more significant factor in the rise of professionalism, not personalism and particularism. Parsons appreciated this across his career as does Gunther Teubner today (2003) in his more general analysis of how bilateral “expertise contracts” bear on third parties.

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of occupational (or avocational) activities undertaken respectively in structured situations and at other sites and venues. Moreover, only under certain conditions does professionalism unfold within structured situations, and the first time this happened, as we saw, was in the Paris visual Académie during the mid-seventeenth century. Today this same analytical and empirical quality happens also to be present in the governance structures of publicly traded corporations and yet professionalism here has not reached a tipping point. This quality nonetheless explains (in part) why Delaware judges are encouraging professionalism in corporate governance, at times purposefully but at others inadvertently. We will see that the future success or failure of professionalism by corporate officers carries with it the same longerterm – institutional – consequences for the larger social order today as have past successes or failures of professionalism in other occupations, at other times. Our point now is that the relationship between structured situations and professionalism is invariant precisely because it is structural, not social psychological or ideological, socio-economic or cultural. Not being social psychological, the relationship between structured situations and professionalism does not depend upon, nor vary with, occupational practitioners’ or occupational researchers’ particular definitions of their situations, with their particular social constructions of meaning. Being structural rather than social psychological, this relationship remains in place irrespective of whether these practitioners and researchers are aware subjectively that they are professionalizing. It also remains in place, for that matter, irrespective of whether they desire to professionalize, whether they believe subjectively it is in their selfinterests to professionalize. As the Paris visual Académie demonstrates, the relationship between structured situations and professionalism holds true even when an awareness of “profession” is unavailable culturally and lexically, let alone an ideology of professionalism. Today cultural understandings, lexicons and ideologies of professionalism are frequently unavailable outside the English-speaking world and yet some occupations on the continent and in the Pacific Rim and Southern Hemisphere have nonetheless professionalized, at least in part.5 5 Teubner’s analysis of “expertise contracts” exemplifies the continuing difficulties European sociologists have in identifying professionalism projects on the continent, whether within the state or within civil society.

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Not being narrowly socio-economic, the relationship between structured situations and professionalism also does not depend upon, nor vary with, such factors as a capitalist mode of production or, in modern societies, the path-dependence of any particular occupational order and stratification system. Being structural rather than socio-economic, the relationship between structured situations and professionalism holds true in the complete absence of capitalism. Thus, it appears prior to the consolidation of capitalism, such as in mid-seventeenth century Paris, and, we propose, it will remain equally evident in the future should capitalism ever be displaced by some alternative mode of production.6 In addition, the relationship between structured situations and professionalism remains invariant even as the truism underlying contemporaries’ distinction between structured situations and other sites and venues is itself a variable, because it is cultural. This cultural truism of a society and era does indeed evolve historically, and it differs crossnationally today much as it did in the past. This is why the substance of the occupational activities undertaken within structured situations is always and everywhere also a variable. It evolves historically and varies cross-nationally, along with cultural truisms. Thus, this substance once revolved, during the ancien régime, around occupational activities dedicated to ambitious ceremony and decoration, for these activities were assumed universally to incarnate weighty epistemological meanings, didactic principles and emblematic associations. From the mid-nineteenth century forward, it has revolved around more middle-class occupational activities, including law and medicine, science and engineering; the locus of weighty epistemological meanings and didactic principles has shifted (and emblematic associations have disappeared). We address in Chapter 9 how – and why – the cultural truisms which identify structured situations evolved historically and vary cross-nationally. Irrespective of all such substantive, occupational and cultural variations, the relationship between structured situations and professionalism remains invariant. Always and everywhere the demarcation between structured situations in civil society (or in the state) and both 6

This is why our analysis of professionalism here can accommodate and supplement general suggestions in Cohen and Arato (1992) regarding the likely structural contours of post-capitalist civil societies (without, however, sharing their lingering utopianism).

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embedded exchanges and fluid sites seems to contemporaries brightline, literally ontological. It seems more grounded than any social construction precisely because this demarcation rests so securely upon literal cultural truisms of a society and era. Always and everywhere this demarcation resists credible dispute, let alone open defiance or cavalier disregard. This remains the case even when contemporaries fully appreciate, such as is the case today that the substantive occupational activities affected by this demarcation vary cross-nationally and evolve historically. During the ancien régime, ambitious decoration and ceremony were considered so compelling socially and consequential culturally that contemporaries believed universally that these occupational (and avocational) activities were retained and provided within a structured situation. But only in Paris were these activities not only demarcated from fluid sites of (retail) commerce but also from earlier embedded exchanges (the brevetaire system). By contrast, such exchanges continued to prevail in Italian painting and sculpture irrespective of the presence of visual Accademia. Regardless, the cultural truism of the ancien régime noted above remained in place across Europe for generations, well after the French Revolution; it eventually did collapse, but not until the 1870s. The Impressionist challenge to the visual-cultural authority of the Académie des beaux-arts, as well as the challenge Baudelaire and Flaubert posed earlier to the literary authority of the Académie francaise, reflected and helped stimulate further a broad, ongoing altering of cultural truisms bequeathed by an aristocratic society.7 Simultaneously, these same challenges also transformed a received structured situation into embedded exchanges, at best, and then steadily into fluid sites of arm’s-length retail commerce and elective diversion. With this, painting and sculpture became indistinguishable structurally from various newer uppermiddle-class occupational activities of the early and mid-nineteenth century, including haute cuisine and haute couture (as we will see). As another example, from the late nineteenth century forward a quite different cultural truism gains salience and demonstrable potency across Western civil societies. Contemporaries increasingly believe universally that legal advocacy and medical delivery and research unfold within structured situations, no longer in embedded exchanges or at

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King 2006, Bourdieu 1992.

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fluid sites. Moreover, universities, led by those in Germany, are increasingly privileging specialized research in both faculty recruitment and faculty advancement over liberal or classical exegesis and pedagogy. Structured situations are entering universities for the first time and are being recognized universally as such, consistent with the new cultural truism just noted. But not all faculties will professionalize within these structured situations, and here Germany and the rest of the continent will increasingly lag behind the United States, as will Great Britain.8 Our point is that in these and all other instances, historical and contemporary, the cultural understandings contemporaries share universally resist credible challenge, until quite major cultural shifts are well underway. At the zenith of these cultural understandings literally no one of repute or influence defies them openly – personally or socialpsychologically – including, for instance, Edouard Manet (1832–1883) in painting and Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) in literature. These understandings are literal cultural truisms. Indeed, at the moment anyone of repute and influence openly questions a prevailing cultural understanding on the bases of what others of repute and influence consider to be credible grounds, this signals its impending collapse as a truism.9 It also signals that a received structured situation is undergoing transformation into embedded exchanges and fluid sites. Accordingly, professionalism cannot continue or succeed under these conditions within the substantive occupational activities that had earlier been provided in a structured situation. De-professionalization becomes inevitable, and irreversible. This is what happened in the fine arts from the 1870s forward, and we can imagine in thought experiment how the same process could eventually unfold in medicine today. For instance, should individuals of repute and influence openly characterize healing and health care as commercial services or elective diversions, medical delivery will no longer be provided within structured situations. These same critics,

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Compare Bledstein 1978 to Ringer 1969, Jarausch 1990b and McClelland 1990. Bourdieu sees this, without employing our terms structured situation and cultural truism: “We may thus venture that the production of a good or service is the more likely to be controlled by the state the more indispensable that good or service is to what may be called mobilized or active opinion (as opposed to the ordinary idea of ‘public opinion’) and the less able the market is to deliver it” (2000:93). What Bourdieu does not see is whether and how an Anglo-American sociology of professions speaks directly to these very goods or services whereas the Bürgertum approach of the continent fails to do so. 9

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after all, would simultaneously deconstruct the significance of death and, correlatively, denigrate the importance of the relationship between laboratory science or clinical findings and good health as a (seemingly ontological) foundation. That this thought experiment seems improbable now simply reflects a prevailing cultural truism of our day. Nonetheless, a cultural development such as the one just sketched could well unfold in the future, led by nutritionists and homeopathics. We can also imagine in thought experiment an opposite process unfolding in various occupations of “first responders,” practitioners who provide expert services during disasters, natural or man-made. Should major terrorist incidents in the West increase in frequency and lethality, to say nothing of major natural disasters, all sorts of first responders will enter a new structured situation in civil society. They will occupy entrenched positions of power, discretionary judgment and impersonal trust. Moreover, a new cultural truism will readily take hold which legitimizes this new understanding, and it will indeed become literally universal in a society and era. Some, but not all, of these first responder occupations will likely attain an independent socio-cultural authority in civil society. And, as a result, they will initiate a professionalism project. Among these first responder occupations, older occupations such as police and firefighting will finally professionalize, after nearly two centuries of failing to do so (for various reasons which need not detain us here).10 Newer occupations such as emergency medical services (EMS) and hazardous materials units (Hazmat) will undertake professionalism projects much more forcefully and purposefully than heretofore. Advanced instructional institutions will become dedicated to advancing theory and practice in these particular occupational activities, as opposed to continuing to leave this to cognate university disciplines. Our general point, again, is that only on the basis of a bright-line demarcation between structured situations and all other sites and venues of exchange and interaction is it possible for sociologists to 10 One reason is that police and fire have traditionally served as avenues of upward vertical mobility into the middle class for sons (and some daughters) of the working class. Were these occupations to professionalize, only college-educated or similarly credentialed candidates would be eligible for entry, thereby closing these avenues. In the absence of terrorism, many societies will choose not to go this far; in an age of terrorism, however, they will have little or no choice. In either case, firefighters in large metropolitan or high-rise areas are more likely to professionalize than their counterparts in rural or otherwise low-rise areas. The complexity and risks to life and property are exponentially higher in the first case.

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bring into view first at a conceptual level and then in empirical inquiry all other qualities constitutive of professionalism as such. Like the bright-line demarcation just discussed, these other constitutive qualities are also first and foremost structural and institutional, and then only secondarily cultural, social psychological, socio-economic or ideological. They include: – All norms of behavior and occupational orientations to which professionals publicly are held accountable and to which they openly hold themselves accountable; – All characteristics of professional instruction and training, including the continuing importance of theory or abstraction seemingly removed from occupational application; and most important – All consequences of professionalism, including those for the larger social order and its direction of change.

We will see in the next chapter that certain invariant consequences of professionalism exceed unambiguously those affecting clients and patrons directly. They also exceed, equally unambiguously, those affecting the occupational order and stratification system. 2. Dual Structuring of Professional-Client Relationships In addition to proposing that professions and their associations always and everywhere provide expert occupational services within structured situations, we also propose more specifically that every ongoing professional-client relationship constitutes a structured situation in civil society. The same is true of the governance structure of every association (in the Anglo-American world) or state agency (on the continent and elsewhere) responsible for overseeing and regulating these ongoing relationships. Unlike the fluid sites and embedded exchanges within which other experts provide services, ongoing professional-client relationships are structured in that always and everywhere contemporaries – practitioners, clients and patrons, and interested observers – consider them compelling socially or consequential culturally or both. Contemporaries do not consider these relationships to be merely embedded exchanges and they certainly never confuse them with arm’s-length commercial transactions or elective diversions. Reflecting their structuredness, professional-client relationships are never strictly contractual. Always and everywhere they are first and foremost relationships of impersonal trust and thus fiducial, and then

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only secondarily relationships of commerce and thus contractual.11 This is why professionals are never bound solely by contractual terms, explicit or implicit. Always and everywhere they are also bound by fiducial norms of impersonal trust which exceed unambiguously all contractual obligations of commercial exchange. 2.1 Entrenched Positions, Not Shared Social Psychology In two important respects ongoing professional-client relationships are quintessentially structured situations, the first more important both theoretically and empirically. First and foremost, structured situations revolve around two sets of positions, each of which is entrenched rather than simply embedded. On one side, structured situations contain positions of power, discretionary judgment and trust. These are the entrenched positions professionals occupy in any ongoing professional-client relationship, whether applied or academic. These also happen to be the entrenched positions corporate officers occupy in any corporate governance structure. On the other side, structured situations also contain equally entrenched positions of dependence, vulnerability and apprehension. These are the positions clients and patrons of professional services occupy, and which stakeholders occupy in corporate governance structures. Being structural and invariant in any structured situation, entrenched positions of dependence were in evidence in the Paris visual Académie during the ancien régime despite the fact that the patrons of visual academiciens occupying these positions were typically men of gentle birth and lofty status. Outside the occupational field of ambitious painting and sculpture, gentilshomme would rarely entertain, let alone defer to, the ceremonial and decorative judgment or taste of commoners.12 Indeed, such deference was not as evident even within this occupational field in Italy. In Paris, however, even the king and court nobility (noblesse d’epee), to say nothing of royal administrators (noblesse de robe) and provincial

11 This distinction, between the fiducial impulsion of structured situations and the simple contractual constraints typical at other venues and sites of commerce and interaction, would resolve many of the antinomies Gunther Teubner identifies in contemporary contracts (2007, 2003, 2000, 1998). More particularly, it speaks directly to what he calls “expertise contracts,” which at times compromise the integrity of experts and harm third parties. 12 Shapin 1994:chap 3.

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gentry (noblesse d’ancienne extraction), had no alternative structurally other than to occupy entrenched positions of dependence upon successfully retaining academicien visual services. Irrespective of their superior status and putatively innate reason and taste, they could not avoid trusting socially lowly visual academiciens to advance their honor, their socio-cultural wellbeing (gloire), in one area of ambitious decoration and ceremony. Of course, this relationship of impersonal trust simultaneously confirmed academiciens’ reputations as liberallytrained practitioners, as prototype professionals. This same relationship of impersonal trust reappears today, albeit in quite different occupational fields. Upon successfully securing vital legal or medical services, even the wealthiest clients, individual or corporate, have no alternative structurally other than to trust their freedom and physical wellbeing to the discretionary judgment of these liberallytrained practitioners. Our point is that both sets of entrenched positions – that of power and that of dependence – are found only in situations which are structured, and both positions are indeed fixed in two respects. First, neither position is contingent upon quotidian social constructions of meaning; thus, neither is available for substantial renegotiation by participants or for salient “deconstruction” by interested observers. Power and dependence accrue to these positions irrespective of what individual participants or observers happen to believe social-psychologically or happen to understand culturally. In addition, the relationship between these positions is equally fixed, equally beyond social construction and renegotiation. Always and everywhere incumbents of the first set of positions exercise positional power over dependents. This remains the case even when these incumbents are visual academiciens and their clients or patrons are gentilshomme, otherwise superior seemingly ontologically, more prominent socially as well as wealthier and more powerful. Related, always and everywhere incumbents of entrenched positions of power are oriented structurally by readily identifiable positional interests. They are typically not motivated more directly by narrower self-interests (for instance in goldbricking), to say nothing of by vanity or personal idiosyncrasy. 2.1.1 Conceptual Obscurantism and Dead End Because professionals typically act on positional interests, many postwar Anglo-American sociologists confused this invariant structural

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quality of professionalism with an extraneous variable, a shared socialpsychological motivation of altruism. Or, alternatively, they confused it with another extraneous variable, a shared cultural (and directly substantive-normative) orientation of service or selflessness.13 This confusion at a conceptual level then skewed their case studies of professional practice and, in turn, the many empirical generalizations that seemed logically to follow from them. This is the conceptual confusion that led Talcott Parsons and then all of the social theorists and researchers influenced by him to assume or assert that individual professionals somehow share in common social-psychological beliefs and cultural understandings of abnegation despite being geographically dispersed, socially heterogeneous and occupationally specialized. To this end, Parsons and other sociologists proposed the following conjecture: individual professionals must come to share the same abnegating beliefs and understandings through socialization and acculturation of one kind or another. But then this compelled them to go even further. They needed to identify the source of this quite remarkable serial achievement and collective outcome. By default, they tended initially to trace it to a putative homogeneity of social-psychological and substantive-normative beliefs and cultural understandings among the individuals entering professions. This led them to propose that these individuals must have (somehow) undergone similar or commensurable experiences of primary socialization and acculturation, despite obviously having been raised in geographically dispersed households.14 Regardless, as this initial seeming social-psychological and cultural homogeneity among professionals gave way over time to self-evidently greater heterogeneity – as women, minorities and working-class individuals entered professions in growing numbers – this first explanation for professionals’ putatively shared social psychological and substantive-norm beliefs and cultural understandings crumbled on its face. Sociologists nonetheless persisted with this line of theorizing and inquiry. They endeavored to account in a somewhat different way for the same seemingly remarkable collective outcome of belief and understanding sharing. Parsons and other sociologists proposed that this outcome is a product of secondary socialization and acculturation, namely during 13

See the end of Chapter 9 on substantive norms and procedural norms. See Sciulli (1986; 1992:chap.7; 2001:155–160) for why this entire line of reasoning by Parsons and other functionalists cannot be sustained. 14

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advanced professional instruction and training itself. Here they pointed to the many hurdles to student recruitment into professional schools and then to the length, pressures and demands of their advanced training and matriculation. Sociologists thereby characterized professional schools as literal hothouses of homogenization, as highly unusual sites of laudatory indoctrination and thought control. Professional schools somehow inculcate into otherwise heterogeneous aspirants not only shared social-psychological beliefs but also shared cultural understandings of their occupational activities and shared substantive-normative standards of acceptable occupational behavior. Taken together, these shared beliefs, understandings and standards are capable of both motivating and orienting dispersed and specialized professionals in common during any and all future occupational challenges and opportunities. Even more remarkably, these same sociologists also asserted or assumed that the same motivations and orientations are already shared, and will continue to be shared, by colleagues – whether practitioners or researchers – at geographically dispersed worksites. Thus, these sociologists proposed that practicing professionals have (somehow) internalized and will continue to internalize a shared motivation of altruism. Or alternatively, but equally misleadingly, they held that practicing professionals instead (somehow) acknowledge and will continue to acknowledge a shared service orientation more cognitively or disinterestedly. This accommodates the empirical likelihood that they will have internalized different motivations and yet behave similarly. It also accommodates the self-evident fact that they earn their livelihoods by providing different specialized services at geographically dispersed worksites. With both lines of argument, first about primary socialization and then about secondary acculturation, sociologists confused a structural quality of professionalism, which is indeed invariant, with a social-psychological quality or cultural understanding, which is fundamentally variable. Even if an altruistic motivation or a service orientation is typically in evidence amongst some sets of professionals at particular times and places, these are variables, not invariant constituents of professionalism as such. They are hardly reliable indicators of either successful or failed professionalism as such. They are simply not capable of informing historical study and cross-national inquiry in ways which possibly can yield commensurable, generalizable or cumulative findings. Yet it is understandable even today why sociologists succumbed to such obscurantism at a conceptual level, why they confused the

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extraneous with the invariant, the social psychological and cultural with the structural (and institutional). Professionals in fact do not typically behave narrowly self-interestedly, let alone opportunistically or idiosyncratically.15 On its face, such a counterintuitive fact on the ground warrants explanation on the merits. In explaining what seems to be a universal, or altogether common rather than rare, pattern of collective behavioral abnegation, it can appear self-evident to sociologists that professionals must be sharing social-psychological motivations as individuals or sharing substantive-normative orientations or standards of occupational behavior as practitioners or researchers. But this appearance rests on a master decision at a conceptual level, whether made explicitly or simply presupposed, namely that professional services can be provided at any and all manner of venues in civil society and the state, including in embedded exchanges and at fluid sites, not exclusively within and around structured situations alone. 2.1.2 Opportunism and One-Sidedness What earlier sociologists of professions neglected, in short, is the structural side of the coin, which only comes into view when structured situations are distinguished at the outset, at a conceptual level. Professionals are oriented structurally to advance publicly or openly readily identifiable positional interests and, as a result, they are held publicly and hold themselves publicly to readily identifiable extra-economic standards of behavior. This remains the case always and everywhere, and thus irrespective of professionals’ socialization as individuals, including the self-interests, subjective beliefs and motivations they internalize. It also remains the case irrespective of the substantive understandings of occupational challenges and opportunities with which professionals operate more cognitively or existentially. This structural orientation, stemming from an entrenched position of power, is what accounts for the behavioral evidence spanning all professions on the ground. Professionals indeed do not typically act self-interestedly, as if they are freestanding individual service-providers unencumbered positionally. However, this hardly means professionals

15 For representative examples of empirical abnegation among legal practitioners, see Karpik (1995:43–47,113,143–54) on French avocats and Shapiro (2003:130–153) on American lawyers. Shapiro finds “everywhere” examples of law firms declining new prospective business opportunities when the latter would require firms to champion legal or commercial interests adverse to those of existing clients (2003:149).

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are typically motivated social psychologically by altruism or oriented cognitively by selflessness. Professionals instead always and everywhere advance identifiable positional interests, and the latter are distinct both analytically and empirically from their self interests, internalized motivations, and cognitive understandings as individuals. In advancing these positional interests, professionals always and everywhere exercise positional power over dependents, as opposed to acting altruistically or selflessly. In light of this way of approaching professionalism at a conceptual level, the central issue cannot possibly be whether professionals harbor altruistic beliefs or selfless understandings as individuals. We can now stipulate that they typically do not, or, certainly, they do so no more often than any other set of service-providers in any society. The central issue is instead quite different, and twofold. First, when does anyone in a professional position of power act strictly self-interestedly, including to a point of opportunism and moral hazard (of harm to client or patron wellbeing), as opposed to acting positionally? Second, when does anyone in a professional position of power act positionally but, to this end, exercises positional power one-sidedly, including to a point of abuse and moral hazard (of harm to “the team” and larger social order), as opposed to exercising this power more evenhandedly or disinterestedly? When this second question is posed a bit differently, a seeming paradox comes into view which is important to ponder carefully in theorizing professions: When does anyone in a professional position typically exercise positional power evenhandedly or relatively disinterestedly, with an eye to client or patron wellbeing as well as “team” success – even as they are nonetheless acting positionally, are indeed advancing identifiable positional interests?16 16 That the paradox is only seeming, not actual, can be appreciated by considering the meaning of “disinterestedness” when it first took hold in the fine arts, from the mid-eighteenth century forward, displacing “virtue.” The same lexical change then entered more general discourse, including legal discourse (Karpik 1995:51,105–108). “Disinterest” in fine art was associated with a distinctive “interest,” namely in appreciating aesthetic details and gestalts in the absence of personal stake, passion or idiosyncrasy. By contrast, the antonym “interestedness” was associated with desiring to possess art pieces, or with personal taste or vanity (rather than serene aesthetic sensibility). Even worse, it was also associated with impassioned attraction, including surrender to any putative moral or spiritual revelation in particular works. A full century later, Tocqueville would contrast disinterestedness in the sense above, as detachment from impulse, speculation and vanity, to middle class cupidity and striving, which he found so typical in the new American democracy (Shiner 2001:144–45,313 note 3).

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We are proposing, in short, that what professionals share in common, always and everywhere, are two structural or positional qualities. They share identifiable positional interests and they share ranges of ways in which typically or openly to exercise positional power in advancing these interests. Professionals typically or openly exercise positional power in ways which are (1) not narrowly self-interested, let alone opportunistic, and (2) not narrowly one-sided, let alone abusive. They instead typically exercise positional power in ways that are (3) relatively evenhanded. Thus, they typically act relatively disinterestedly in this analytically distinguishable sense. What professionals do not share in common, and certainly not typically, are internalized social-psychological motivations of altruism. The same is true of putatively inculcated substantive-normative cognitive orientations of selflessness. Our point is that two concepts, positional interest and positional power, which stem directly from a master concept, structured situations, bring into view why on structural grounds alone professionals typically behave relatively evenhandedly rather than either self-interestedly or one-sidedly. These concepts permit sociologists of professions finally to account for the unambiguous empirical evidence before them: Professionals do not typically behave in ways which are onesided or abusive, let alone self-interested to a point of opportunism or moral hazard. Put differently, professionals do not typically take full advantage of their entrenched positions of power. They instead typically draw back from this limiting case, advancing their positional interests more adroitly than heavy-handedly, and thus in ways which are more evenhanded than one-sided in fact, empirically. It is in this particular sense that we propose at a conceptual level, and also document empirically both historically and cross-nationally, that professionals always and everywhere typically act relatively disinterestedly or independently.17 Professionals’ occupational behavior is typically disinterested, and then also deliberative (as we will see), because on structural grounds alone their occupational activities are in principle open to inspection, never in principle secreted, shielded from inquiry and challenge. Professionals are not guild masters who endeavor at all costs to preserve

17 Susan Shapiro is certainly correct (2003:248) when she says “disinterestedness comes at a price” and then adds “but so does unrestrained conflicts of interest.” She is equally correct that “there is no optimal point on the scales” between them.

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and protect workshop mysteries or trade secrets.18 They instead publish and patent and otherwise present their findings, methods and techniques openly before peers and interested outsiders. In addition, the routine occupational behavior of professionals, unlike that of guild masters, is vulnerable to associational (and then regulatory) review at any time, and certainly in response to colleague challenges or client complaints. Professionals, unlike guild masters, typically respond quite openly to any and all reputable inquiries and criticisms, whether from peers, oversight bodies or consumer advocacy groups. Sociologists cannot simply neglect describing, explaining and predicting the abnegation typical of anyone occupying a professional position, as if such empirical behavior is not manifestly and unambiguously in evidence all around them. They cannot possibly advance the scientific study of professions by sweeping this behavior under the rug or, equally duplicitously, by approaching it at a conceptual level in ways which simultaneously disregard two corollaries of it. This behavior provides clients and patrons with very real safeguards against moral hazards and simultaneously places on professionals very real demands of fiducial responsibility or impersonal trust. Sociologists’ received concepts currently disregard abnegation in these ways by treating it as rare or unusual behavior, rather than typical behavior. Or, alternatively, received concepts treat abnegation as: some conspiracy by profession officers, designed strategically to advance professional power alone; or some ideological smokescreen, designed cunningly to veil occupational cravenness alone, unwarranted closure in the labor market for expert services.19 Our point is that the disinterested behavior so typical of professionalism is entirely worthy of methodical sociological inquiry and examination on its own terms, on the merits, and thus shorn at the outset of all such dismissals and disparaging labeling. 2.2 Compelled Entry, Blocked Exit Ongoing professional-client relationships are also structured in a second respect. Entry into these relationships is compelled, whether by 18 See Goode 1957 for an early statement of the opposite view, entirely representative of received wisdom more generally. 19 Here Julia Evetts hits the mark, noting (2003a:401) that “Parsons’ work has been over-zealously criticized” by revisionists who reject his view of professionalism as a “value system” in favor of seeing professions as “elite conspiracies of powerful occupational workers” (also Evetts 1998:64).

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condition or circumstance; or, alternatively, exit from them is blocked; or both. Both states of affairs can hold true in the case of clients as well as patrons of professional services. By condition or circumstance clients or patrons can be compelled to retain professional services, whether due to rigid status hierarchy (during the ancien régime), emergency or illness, or police custody or legal obligation (such as environmental clean-up). In the case of aristocratic patrons of Paris visual academiciens, these patrons were compelled by a relatively inflexible status hierarchy to retain professional services for ambitious ceremony and decoration. The socio-cultural inducements and motivational stimuli for doing so were largely non-negotiable, stemming from their ascribed household positions of prestige. Individual noblesse were not compelled, of course, to commission paintings or sculpture in particular. But all noblesse without exception were compelled by socio-cultural circumstance to allocate discretionary resources and dedicate discretionary time to ambitious ceremony and decoration. Such activity was so compelling socially and consequential culturally that noblesse could hardly neglect it even furtively, let alone disregard it openly. Any such reaction would simultaneously disgrace themselves and their households, defiling their very ontology. In addition, noblesse were equally compelled by socio-cultural circumstance to become conversant with all emblems and symbols, images and fabrications of ceremonial and decorative significance. This included ambitious literary and visual representations of (human) Nature. As regards exit from ongoing professional-client relationships, this is not an unproblematic or cost-free option for clients and patrons, whether today or during the ancien régime. Once anyone successfully retains professional services, it becomes problematical and costly to replace any individual practitioner or specific team, particularly on short notice. The same restrictions on exit hold true, as we saw in chapter 4, for stakeholders who successfully enter a publicly traded corporation. Stakeholder exit is typically blocked, being both problematical and costly, even as entry as a corporate stakeholder is not typically as compelled by condition or circumstance as is entry to a professional-client relationship.20 20 It is intriguing that Albert Hirschman (1970) does not deal with structured situations in his influential account of exit (and then also of voice and loyalty). His discussion focuses at best on embedded exchanges within commercial businesses and

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3. Fluid Sites and Embedded Exchanges Before continuing our direct description of structured situations, and of positional interest and positional power, it is helpful to contrast structured situations to fluid sites of commerce and diversion, which are so widespread in modern societies and thus familiar. It is equally helpful to contrast them also to embedded exchanges, which are also numerous but somewhat less familiar. Our discussion of fluid sites also reveals how self-interestedness differs analytically from positional interest. It thereby reveals why, on structural grounds alone, professionals do not typically act self-interestedly even as they clearly advance identifiable positional interests. It also reveals why professionals also do not typically act altruistically or selflessly. They act positionally. 3.1 Fluid Sites: Neoclassical Exemplar Venues of commercial contracting and elective diversion are fluid sites precisely because they lack repetitive or embedded exchanges, let alone entrenched positions. No one entering such venues becomes either embedded, and thus subjected to emergent norms, or entrenched, and thus subjected to fixed positions, whether of power or dependence. And no one, certainly, is either compelled to enter these venues or blocked from exiting them at will.21 After all, prospective clients and patrons of diversions as well as of retail goods and services are hardly compelled by condition or circumstance to trust their wellbeing to the judgment and discretion of sellers and suppliers. And, of course, immediate exit from sites of commerce and diversion is hardly problematic or typically costly. political parties, not on structured situations within professions or the governance structures of publicly traded corporations. 21 Of course, retail merchants, for instance, are repeat players at otherwise fluid commercial venues, and thus are more embedded exchangers than are their typical clienteles. Repetition invariably yields advantages of experience and either foresight or anticipation, but it also introduces disadvantages of embeddedness, of having to demonstrate (or feign) obeisance to emergent norms. Our point now is that repetition does not in itself somehow convert magically into positional power. To the contrary, typical clienteles of retail commerce remain freestanding individuals; they do not somehow become entrenched dependents simply as a result of the advantages and disadvantages of merchant embeddedness. The typical client of a retail service or diverting activity is hardly compelled by condition or circumstance to trust his or her wellbeing to any proposal or judgment volunteered by particular merchants.

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Put more generally, all participants at fluid sites of commerce and diversion – merchants and providers, on one side, and clients and patrons, on the other – remain freestanding individuals. They do not shed independence upon entering fluid sites. They instead remain free structurally to act strictly self-interestedly if they wish (and this extends to embedded exchanges when participants are willing to disregard or flaunt emergent norms). Indeed, they are typically free structurally to act cavalierly if they wish, utterly opportunistically or idiosyncratically – short, of course, of violating legal statutes (whether contractual, criminal or civil) which apply to everyone in civil society. To be sure, everyone participating in retail transactions or elective diversions is also equally free structurally to act in more abnegating or diffident ways if they wish. No one is prevented, certainly, from acting altruistically or selflessly. Our general point is that irrespective of how particular participants conduct themselves at fluid sites, no one is compelled structurally to neglect or subdue his or her self-interests or enthusiasms. Indeed, precisely because all participants enter and exit fluid sites as they wish, and in any case conduct themselves as they wish, the default expectation by everyone is that participants are far more likely to act self-interestedly than otherwise. All modern societies, after all, acknowledge the adage caveat emptor. This adage is a basic tenet of neoclassical economics and then also of rational choice theory in sociology and public choice theory in political science. Fluid sites of commerce and diversion are precisely the venues in civil society idealized by all of these theoretical approaches.22

22 In aristocratic societies of the ancien régime the most familiar exemplars of fluid sites in civil society were quite different. Retail commerce is so disdained by the noblesse that merchants are as stigmatized as their clienteles. When an aristocrat wishes to purchase a retail item or service he typically dispatches a servitor for this purpose. Any corporeal contact with retail activity is not simply stigmatizing but ontologically defiling. This means that aristocratic societies generally lacked honorable or reputable fluid sites of retail commerce. Instead, the fluid sites in civil society which noblesse idealized in discourse and sociability are those of diversion, of disinterested pleasure, whether compelled by circumstance or elective. At all such venues, participants are never earning their livelihoods, never engaged in occupational activities. To the contrary, they are devoting time and energies expansively, often full-time, to their own diversion and then also to the disinterested pleasure of guests and associates. Of course, aristocratic societies also contain many more sites which are embedded or structured to varying degrees. But only painters and sculptors in Paris – not writers or architects or experimental natural philosophers – initiate and sustain a professionalism project at one of them.

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Neoclassical economics idealizes retail commerce precisely because these transactions lack “stickiness,” extraneous complications: they lack not only emergent norms or other extra-economic considerations but also complex material self-interests. At simple commercial venues even the least adept sellers and least knowledgeable buyers enter and exit as they wish. This remains the case even when buyers as well as sellers are earning their livelihoods at these venues, engaged directly in occupational activities, and thus embedded. Even then buyers and sellers are not typically compelled by condition or circumstance to initiate or complete particular transactions with particular people. Certainly, they are not typically inclined to trust their wellbeing to proposals or judgments volunteered by others. Hardly coincidently, simple commercial venues are also the sites in civil society at which contract law reigns supreme and, correlatively, where fiduciary law is utterly irrelevant, inapplicable. This is precisely why the legal scholars and economists who consider corporate governance to be a fluid site – a nexus of contracts – call themselves “contractarians.” They wish to displace fiduciary law entirely with contract law and let the chips – the immediate consequences of this legal redefinition as well as all institutional consequences – fall where they may. 3.2 Embedded Exchanges: Sociological and Network Exemplar Turning to embedded exchanges, haute couture and haute cuisine are for three reasons ideal occupations with which to illustrate how these exchanges differ from arm’s-length commercial transactions. First, these occupations provide services which are unambiguously expert and middle class (Bürgerlichkeit). Second, they also exemplify generally the types of occupational services which can be acquired and provided repetitively, in embedded exchanges, not necessarily always at arm’s length. As a result, emergent social norms frequently materialize during the acquisition and delivery of these sorts of expert services. Third, haute couture and haute cuisine nonetheless do not qualify as professions on the structural grounds we are describing. Moreover, they can never do so, irrespective of how they evolve empirically in the future. Couturiers and chefs may frequently or typically provide expert services within embedded exchanges, but they never provide expert services within structured situations. They never occupy entrenched positions of power and their clienteles never occupy entrenched positions of dependence. For this same reason, as we will see, the institutional consequences

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of the fate of “professionalism” in the fields of haute couture and haute cuisine are negligible. By contrast, the institutional consequences of professionalism within structured situations cannot be overstated. Haute couture and haute cuisine fail to qualify structurally as professions not only because, as just noted, the clients and patrons of these expert services never occupy entrenched positions of dependence. These clients and patrons are hardly compelled by condition or circumstance to acquire, let alone to retain, particular design or culinary services over time. More important, these occupations fail to qualify as professions because couturiers and chefs never occupy entrenched positions of power. They instead remain free structurally, like everyone else providing goods and services retail at either fluid sites or in embedded exchanges, to act as self-interestedly as they wish (short, again, of violating general legal statutes). Indeed, when these “artists” act utterly opportunistically or otherwise conduct themselves in aggrandizing ways it is preposterous for a client or patron to imagine accusing them of somehow abusing their power, their positions.23 The position of couturier or chef is hardly fiducial; it is strictly contractual, and then celebrated socio-culturally in middle class circles, an extraneous accompanying variable. Throughout our discussion in this chapter and the next five we repeatedly draw contrasts to professions not only by using haute couture and haute cuisine but also home entertainment installation (see pages 204–207 below). We do so because these occupations provide a useful set of archetypal models of occupations which are unambiguously expert and Bürgerlichkeit and yet fail, equally unambiguously, to qualify as professions on structural (and then institutional) grounds. 3.2.1 Haute Couture and Haute Cuisine Haute couture originated in Paris in 1858 when Charles Frederick Worth (1825–1895), an expatriate English designer who had trained in a Parisian dry-goods shop, opens his own dressmaking establishment. A pioneer, Worth is the first named practitioner in history to design, fabricate and embellish on-site garments and accessories for female patrons and clients of distinction. Prior to this even the most renowned

23 Charles Frederick Worth (see the next page in the text) was notorious in midnineteenth century Paris for his rudeness and cavalier behavior when dealing with even the most refined and renowned ladies of society.

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tailors had been servitors in gentle households, forgotten to history. All notable garments were routinely identified with their gentle wearers, not with the commoners who designed them, let alone the artisans who fabricated them.24 Haute cuisine originated two generations earlier, at the turn of the nineteenth century. It evolved from workshops of traiteurs (caterers), with the founding of the first restaurants. The “definitive” transition came in 1804 when Antoine Beauvilliers opens La Grande Taverne de Londres with an innovative table service, an a la carte menu. Prior to this, chefs also had been servitors in gentle households, no more renowned in history than tailors, cabinet-makers or bakers. Of course, food (and drink) had long been served to commoners in taverns, inns, coffeehouses and similar establishments. Such a clientele guaranteed, however, that food preparers would remain anonymous in historical documents (including correspondence) of the ancien régime. It is noteworthy, however, that French cookbooks were nonetheless circulating among households of the middling station quite early in the ancien régime, from the early seventeenth century forward.25 It is instructive for our purposes to contrast these two expert occupations, haute couture and haute cuisine, to professions proper because, according to today’s received wisdom, all of them emerge at roughly the same time, during the early and mid-nineteenth century. Law is beginning to professionalize in England at mid-century, followed closely by medicine in Germany and France and then by science and engineering in many lands. All four of these occupational activities, that is, are beginning to be redefined, amidst industrialization, as socially compelling and culturally consequential, as structured situations. Our point is that this same process of socio-cultural redefinition is not extending, and cannot extend, to cooking and apparel designing. These occupational activities, and many more like them, may well qualify as “vocations,” and prominent practitioners may well be dedicated zealously to them as “callings” (to use Weber’s terms). But they are not professions. At best, these expert services may be provided within embedded exchanges and attract considerable renown; but they are also typically accessible in arm’s-length retail transactions. In either case, they are not professions: they are strictly commercial and contractual, not more compelled and thus fiducial. 24 25

Hollander 1998. Trubeck 2000.

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The mid-nineteenth century, not coincidentally, was the very period when painters and sculptors in Paris (and elsewhere) are increasingly being redefined in an opposite way, from providers of socially compelling and culturally consequential services to providers of services more elective or discretionary and aesthetically diverting. Thus, the painterpatron relationship ceases to be confined to a structured situation, exemplified by household commissions. It instead enters embedded exchanges at best, exemplified by gallery exhibitions, and then also becomes accessible in arm’s-length commercial transactions at fluid sites, exemplified by art auctions and resale markets. As a result, painting and sculpture begin forcefully to de-professionalize, albeit as inadvertently as these occupations earlier had professionalized. Put most generally, haute couture and haute cuisine serve our purposes as convenient proxies for all occupations, both today and historically, which provide expert services to elite and middle-class clients within embedded exchanges, at which emergent norms frequently take root, but also at fluid sites, at which arm’s-length interactions prevail. These occupations include the entire entertainment and sports industries.26 Couturiers and chefs are no more professionals than are golfers or players of tennis, basketball, baseball, soccer, football or hockey. And these occupational practitioners are no different structurally than are those who earn their livelihoods pleasing other clienteles, whether more socially lowly or more specialized: practitioners who earn their livelihoods by bowling or playing billiards, tournament chess, or “nolimit Texas holdum poker.” We might note that the incomes of many of these occupational practitioners may exceed, and extravagantly so, those of any lawyer or doctor (to say nothing of any scientist or engineer). These practitioners may also attain far greater renown, notoriety or public visibility, and at times considerable prestige, including in the eyes of elites. 3.2.2 Home Entertainment Installation In this light we turn to another example of an expert occupational service which is also typical of so many others today, in being provided either within embedded exchanges or at fluid sites but never in structured situations. This occupation, however, is more technical and thus

26 On the place and purpose of sports in civil society, see Elias and Dunning (1986).

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“nerdish” than the two just discussed, and thus representative of thousands of technical vocations or callings, including most having to do with computers and cybernetics. Many middle class and elite consumers today purchase entire home entertainment centers. Such centers may be confined to one room in a house, the living room, or extend to kitchen, baths, bedrooms and outdoor or patio areas. They may include installation not only of plasma televisions, audio-video recording devices and surround-sound acoustic systems but also digital or compact disc players as well as countless accessories and gadgets. Accessories include wall cabinets or other furnishings designed to conceal components and wiring while simultaneously using space efficiently. Other accessories include lighting displays and speaker placements, ceiling projectors, motorized screens, and simplified or unified remote controls. Many individuals entering the market for such entertainment centers, it goes without saying, are not sufficiently informed mechanically or technically to select the various items best suited for their purposes, whether within budgets or when expense is irrelevant. Even more certainly, such individuals are typically neither willing nor able to install these items themselves. They also typically desire advice of all sorts, including regarding décor. Rather than going to Best Buy or other retailers to purchase these items piecemeal, at arm’s-length, and then hiring someone independently to install them, they frequently turn to boutique audio-visual dealerships. The experts at these businesses offer and provide a range of services: they consult with clients, they help select entire packages of items, and they visit residences free of charge in order better to identify or anticipate consumer needs and wishes. Indeed, ideal customers of these dealerships are those whose residences are under construction, for audio-visual specialists readily consult with construction teams about where and how to place cables and wiring. Regardless, they take full responsibility for installation and they guarantee expert service for extended periods should problems arise. Our point is that this is clearly an expert, Bürgerlichkeit occupational service, one comparable to hundreds and thousands of others.27 It and others like it are, like chef and couturier services, frequently provided 27 Florent Champy’s discussion (2006) of the training and occupational practice of French industrial designers, for instance, is entirely equivalent to that of American home entertainment installers.

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within embedded exchanges at which emergent norms typically materialize. The sales personnel, decorative advisors, installers and troubleshooters employed (or subcontracted) by the boutique dealership are keen to identify, anticipate and satisfy customer expectations. Aside from all of these service providers certainly being cognizant of their contractual obligations, their “niche” market literally revolves around their also meeting (or exceeding) emergent norms of customer satisfaction. Word-of-mouth among middle-class clienteles can be vicious, making or breaking any of these dealerships, and particularly in small or medium-sized markets. Equally clearly, audio-visual provision hardly qualifies as a professional service on structural grounds. None of the experts just noted occupy entrenched positions of power and, correlatively, none bear fiducial responsibility for consumer wellbeing, however defined. None of these experts are willing or able, for example, to bear fiducial responsibility for whether the entire package as installed will enhance customer prestige or attract disdain in the eyes of neighbors, relatives or friends. None is compelled to reveal what packages others living nearby have recently purchased, and what services may be available which a particular retailer fails to offer or is incapable of offering. In popular parlance, however, every audio-visual specialist just mentioned as well as every other occupational practitioner noted earlier, including bowlers and poker players, routinely call themselves and are called by others “professionals.”28 In itself, this indicates clearly why any sociology of professions needs to depart dramatically from colloquial usage. It is hardly sound empirically or logical at conceptual and theoretical levels for sociologists to imagine that any credible scientific study of professions can simply accommodate quotidian references to “professionals.” This is no more sound or logical than for sociologists to imagine that professionalism projects cannot emerge or succeed in practice when the term “professional” is unavailable colloquially or lexically, as during the ancien régime.

28 For an effort to account for popular usages of the term “professional” irrespective of how professionalism might be defined either analytically or ideal-typically, see Evetts (2003a). This is equivalent to hinging the sociology of family, for instance, on popular usages of the term family – e.g. organized crime family, the Manson family, etc. – or hinging the sociology of organizations on popular usages of the terms bureaucrat and bureaucracy.

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Much like gentle discourse during the ancien régime, popular parlance today in the United States (and elsewhere) is indifferent to any and all structural factors constitutive of professionalism in particular. It instead trucks in phenomenal appearances, in extraneous accompanying variables. As a result, popular parlance cannot possibly orient a scientific study of professions toward empirical findings which are sound or generalizable in any sense, which are falsifiable or replicable and thus cumulative. Also like gentle discourse, popular parlance today is equally oblivious to any and all institutional consequences of either successful or failed professionalism within structured situations. It most certainly cannot orient sociological inquiry toward cumulative empirical findings regarding the invariant institutional consequences of either successful or failed professionalism. Our point is that couturiers and chefs – as well as poker players and bowlers – cannot possibly qualify as professionals, irrespective of popular parlance. After all, when they act opportunistically or otherwise cavalierly, this rarely attracts attention; they are hardly reviled by peers, let alone reprimanded by any association or called to account by any court or regulatory agency. Rather, everyone participating in these expert occupations and the others noted above, with one exception noted momentarily, is free structurally and often expected popularly to act in ways which are more aggrandizing than abnegating. If couturiers or chefs – or poker players and bowlers – happen to conduct themselves in more decorous ways, this might be commended in some provincial quarters. But among insiders in Paris and Milan, London and New York, and most certainly Las Vegas, such behavior seems quaint, unpardonably ingenuous. Abnegation of either selfinterest or personal enthusiasm by chefs and designers, poker players and bowlers is hardly constitutive of the place and purpose in civil society of haute cuisine, haute couture, the World Poker Tour or the Professional Bowlers Association. This is as true in Paris as it is in Las Vegas. Abnegation is also hardly constitutive of the place and purpose of sports and entertainment industries in any metropolis, whether in Europe, North America or elsewhere. The irony is that opportunistic or cavalier behavior is likely far less typical or expected among audio-video specialists than among couturiers and chefs, sports and entertainment personalities. Moreover, their trade associations – including the Custom Electrical Design & Installation Association – are likely far less tolerant of member dealerships which attract frequent customer complaints or inquiries. Yet, the

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“decorum” of these occupational practitioners simply reflects the nature of the expert service they provide: Operating outside of public view, they are ever-sensitive to word-of-mouth impressions and referrals. Many other expert occupations today are similar in this respect, and this is precisely why we include audio-visual specialists in our discussion of expert, Bürgerlichkeit occupations which fail to qualify as professions. The single factor of decorum, after all, hardly upgrades this or any other expert, Burgerlickheit service provided in embedded or repetitive exchanges to a profession, provided in a structured situation. 4. Origins of Conceptual Obscurantism As self-evident as our distinction between structured situations and all other sites and venues of occupational activity may seem, and particularly in light of legal scholars’ continuing debate over corporate governance, received wisdom in the sociology of professions obscures this distinction at a conceptual level. Conflation at this level, in turn, skews how sociologists, and then historians, approach and interpret any and all particular cases of occupational upgrading both historically and cross-nationally today. Sociologists are thereby denied the concepts necessary to distinguish invariant structures constitutive of professionalism from strictly phenomenal appearances, extraneous variables which happen to accompany professionalism at particular times and places. The result is predicable: sociologists then traffic in empirical findings which are manifestly incommensurable. Different researchers assign greater or lesser weight or credence to different extraneous accompanying variables. All of this is reflected in today’s literature. Since the mid-1960s sociologists (and historians) have been characterizing the trajectory of change of expert occupations in the United States today in four quite disparate ways, namely as trending toward: professionalization,29 deprofessionalization (or deskilling or proletarianization, see Chapter 4, note 1), new professionalism,30 and “postprofessionalism.”31

29 Fournier 1999, Reed 1996, Frenkel et al 1995, Parsons 1968a, Hall 1968, Khoury 1980, Stinchcombe 1990; Wilensky 1964 is the classic statement. 30 Svensson 2006, Evetts 2006, Champy 2006, Nixon et al 2001. 31 Kritzer 1999.

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The origins of the conflation and obscurantism at a conceptual level which is yielding such self-evidently incommensurable findings, as well as incommensurable explanations and predictions of trajectories of occupational change, can be traced directly to the very first elaborate revisionist challenge to Parsons’ cultural and social-psychological approach to professions, Terence Johnson’s Professions and Power, which appeared in 1972. Literally every revisionist publication since has adopted directly Johnson’s disregard of structured situations, led most notably by Magali Larson’s The Rise of Professionalism – which appeared in 1977 and consolidated revisionist opposition to Parsons’ sociology of professions. All revisionists, that is, have replicated Johnson’s disregard of structured situations in one or more of three ways: – directly, by adopting Johnson’s lines of argument; – indirectly, by following Larson’s later disregard of structured situations (given her reading of Johnson); or – independently, by – typically unthinkingly but at times self-consciously–seeing no need to draw distinctions between sites of occupational developments.

To be sure, Parsons and other functionalists had hardly built a firewall earlier against the possibility of such a conceptual turn in the sociology of professions. They, too, did not explicitly – let alone consistently or methodically – distinguish structured situations from other sites and venues of occupational activity. At best they alluded in vague and varying ways to the putatively distinctive context of professional services. They did not appreciate explicitly at a conceptual level the significance of positional entrenchment. As a result, they did not place “structured situation” or any comparable concept at the center of their theories of professions. This earlier deficiency at a conceptual level was nonetheless less troubling than revisionists’ later outright conceptual obscurantism because Parsons and other functionalists were at least endeavoring to distinguish professions from other occupations on some conceptual grounds. Yet, we can see clearly now, in light of our two illustrations of inadvertent professionalism in earlier chapters, that one major reason they failed in this endeavor is that they lacked any concept akin to “structured situation.” Against this backdrop of functionalists’ uncertain and ultimately fated efforts, Johnson’s publication of 1972 is important precisely because one of its central theses is that the power differential between professionals and patrons is an occupational variable, not possibly an

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invariant structural quality constitutive of professionalism as such. Quite purposefully, Johnson relativizes at a conceptual level the relationship between professions and what we are now calling structured situations. Moreover, he takes this step – ironically – for a reason which our case of inadvertent professionalism during the ancien régime clearly establishes is utterly faulty. Johnson misreads, and quite casually so, the historiographic record of gentle patronage during the ancien régime. He does so for reasons which are entirely understandable given the tendency of the sociology of professions since the 1930s to treat law and medicine as exemplars of occupational upgrading. Johnson never senses in the slightest way that his seemingly passing historical references to gentle patronage in these two occupational fields are inaugurating a conceptual obscurantism that will misdirect the literature for over a generation. Nor, therefore, could he possibly sense that this turn at a conceptual level is simultaneously skewing his (and then later revisionists’) understanding of modern professionalism – his (and their) central descriptions, explanations and predictions of occupational upgrading from the midnineteenth century to today. 4.1 Mistaken Historical Generalization Johnson misreads the historiographic record because he approaches the occupational order of the ancien régime Whiggishly, by taking his conceptual bearings from centuries-later developments in modern law and medicine (and science). That is, he assumes literally without thought, let alone without argument, that any early historical manifestations of professionalism invariably had to appear first in law and medicine (or science), not possibly in any completely unrelated occupations. Given what seems to him an uncontroversial point of departure this initial casualness by Johnson yields his distorted generalization regarding gentle patronage during the ancien régime. Unthinkingly, he considers it self-evident that patron-practitioner relationships in law and medicine during the ancien régime can be generalized to the entire occupational order of aristocratic societies and dynastic states. This distorted reading of the historiographic record yields obscurantism at a conceptual level, at the very outset of Johnson’s analysis. It yields a systematic neglect of the significance of structured situations within this record. Then, once conceptual obscurantism has insinuated

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itself into Johnson’s “historical” analysis, it then orients how he (and all later revisionists to follow): reads the history of mid-nineteenth century occupational upgrading, how he describes and explains occupational developments since World War II, and finally how he predicts the trajectory of professionalism cross-nationally, anywhere in the world. Johnson misreads history because he treats gentle patronage of commoner-practitioners during the ancien régime in law and medicine (and experimental natural philosophy) as if it is representative of gentle patronage across the entire occupational order. The problem with this, which eludes Johnson, is that gentle patronage of commoner-practitioners varied greatly within occupational fields of ambitious ceremony and decoration. These latter fields were much more significant to contemporaries than any activities in law or medicine carried out by pedants, university-educated practitioners. Johnson’s thesis, nonetheless, is that the positions the aristocracy occupied in all patronage relationships across the entire occupational order were always ones of unalloyed power. By contrast to this thesis, we have seen that law, medicine and “science” were for the aristocracy elective occupational activities, both structurally and socio-culturally. The noblesse routinely undertook their own legal defense, routinely had servitors concoct their own medicinal therapies as well as participated actively in their own health care, and dabbled avocationally if they wished in “scientific” activities – just as they avocationally designed architecturally their own residences and fortifications. For these reasons, aristocratic patrons could indeed dismiss or replace legal, medical and science “experts” at will, with literally no additional jeopardy whatsoever to either their physical wellbeing or their gloire. They did, in short, exercise unalloyed socio-cultural and positional power over these commoner-practitioners, power bequeathed to them by bloodline in a rigid status hierarchy. By contrast, ambitious ceremony and decoration were structurally and socio-culturally primary, thus mandatory, in aristocratic societies. Within these occupational fields gentle patrons in Paris in particular hardly invariably occupied positions which permitted them to exercise power as unilaterally as they did in law, medicine and “science.”32 To be sure, aristocratic patrons might also engage avocationally in some of 32

Galileo famously gained renown in Florence in 1610 by convincing young Cosimo II de’ Medici, not yet Grand Duke, that a rather arcane astronomical finding, four moons around Jupiter, provided dazzling emblematic evidence of Medici power and honor writ large in the heavens. He thereby converted, and quite purposefully so, a

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these areas of occupational activity. They might write (but not publish) poems, witticisms and flowery dispatches. But they did not typically turn their literally talents to epic poetry, historiography or dramatic playwriting. Even more clearly, the noblesse were loath to dabble avocationally in “inventing” or composing ambitious visual representations, let alone in executing them. Moreover, in the area of visual patronage Parisian noblesse in particular, unlike their counterparts in Rome and Florence, occupied positions in which they had no choice except to rely upon the discretion and judgment of expert visual practitioners to advance their (socio-cultural) wellbeing, their gloire. They hardly exercised unalloyed power over painters and sculptors, as they did over lawyers and most magistrates as well as over physicians, surgeons and apothecaries. 4.2 Mistaken Contemporary Applications After arguing, wrongly, that the aristocracy invariably occupied positions of entrenched power in all patronage relationships, Johnson draws an immediate parallel to the putative power of wealthy clients of professional services today, including that of corporate patrons and consumer collectives (such as insurance companies, trade unions and benefit clubs). By Johnson’s understanding, wealthy clients of professional services today are like aristocratic patrons of yore, putatively exercising power unilaterally over occupational practitioners. The problem with Johnson’s entire line of argument here is that the parallel he is drawing is as mistaken as his reading of history. Even the wealthiest clients and largest corporations and collectives at some point or another cannot avoid trusting, respectively, their wellbeing and that of their members to the discretion and judgment of some particular professional or team of professionals. Regardless, Johnson’s central point in drawing the parallel just noted, between the putative power of aristocratic patrons and that of corporate clients and consumer collectives today, is to contrast this power to the manifest lack of power of dispersed middle-class clienteles for expert services. Johnson’s thesis is that a dispersed, thus powerless, middle class is rather whimsical natural philosophical discovery into a socio-culturally weighty contribution to gentle ceremony and decoration. His patronage then increased accordingly, from being Cosimo’s tutor to becoming the toast of Florence and then Rome. Galileo had first come to public notice in Tuscany nearly two decades earlier, in 1588, but simply as an instructor at the studium generale of Pisa, a pedant.

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the key factor which explains and predicts the rise, consolidation and continued presence of professionalism always and everywhere, whether during the nineteenth century, or today, or anytime in the foreseeable future. Johnson thereby establishes at a conceptual level what he considers a seemingly unambiguous truism of the entire sociology of professions: the power relationship between patrons or clients and professionals is a variable, not invariant. It varies historically as well as today with what he calls “forms of institutionalized control” in civil society. Johnson proceeds to document this putative variation by devoting an entire chapter to describing the “types of occupational control” which can prevail in any particular instance between producers and consumers in general and, by extension, between professional practitioners and clients more specifically.33 As he proceeds, Johnson also feels free to collapse the more general relationships between producers and consumers into his characterizations of patronage relationships (applying to professions). He does this because he insists throughout his book that the following correlation holds true: His typology of control in patronage relationships as well as the broader “typology of institutionalized orders of control” upon which it rests applies to all occupations. He does not see any part of his discussion here, in itself, possibly differentiating professions from other occupations phenomenally, let alone at a structural (and, thus, conceptual) level. Johnson further develops this line of argument by devoting a separate chapter to each of three major types of control in patronage relationships. The first type occurs when producers define the needs of consumers and how they are to be met. This characterizes, by Johnson’s account, modern professionalism in the English-speaking world, namely professionals’ power over dispersed middle class clients. The second occurs when consumers define their own needs and how they are to be met. This characterizes, by his account, aristocratic patronage as well as corporate and collectivist patronage today. The third type brings a third party into the picture, which mediates between producers and consumers to define needs and how they are to be met. This characterizes, for Johnson, the overarching role played by the state in modern professionalism on the continent.34 33

Johnson 1972:36–37, chap. 3. Tellingly, Johnson concedes at the outset that this trichotomy is not exhaustive: “There are many more possible resolutions of the basic tension in the producerconsumer relationship” (1972:45–48). 34

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This discussion by Johnson becomes most promising, actually, as he explores the first type of occupational control. He proposes that “professionalism arises where the tensions inherent in the producerconsumer relationship are controlled by means of an institutional framework based upon occupational authority.”35 The problem, however, is Johnson then develops this point by recapitulating in two ways the received wisdom which Alexander Carr-Saunders and Paul Wilson had introduced into the sociology of professions at its very founding, during the 1930s. First, he asserts that these “conditions for professionalism” originated historically in Great Britain during the second half of the nineteenth century, and thus in the field of law. With this assertion he neglects at the outset all fields of ceremony and decoration during the ancien régime even though some clearly qualify as instances of “occupational authority.” These are the fields which noblesse considered socially compelling and culturally consequential, thus structured. Not law. Second, and much like Abbott later (in 1988), Johnson sees this first set of “conditions for professionalism” undergoing a secular decline in salience as modern societies (of industrial manufacturing) give way to advanced societies (of post-industrial service and information). Under these new conditions, occupational authority is being displaced by consumer collectivism (the second type of occupational control) and by third-party intervention (the third type). Johnson is confident that consumerism of any kind is always and everywhere antagonistic to professionalism, whether during the ancien régime or today. Here Johnson is certainly correct at least in part, but for reasons he fails to grasp at a conceptual level. Consumerism is a manifestation of fluid sites of contracting or, at best, of embedded exchanges; it is not decisive or critical within structured situations. By contrast to approaching consumerism in this way, in terms of the distinction between structured situation and more malleable venues of exchange and transaction, Johnson instead sees consumer information, activism, and collectivism always and everywhere contributing to a secular decline in professionalism. It does so, he insists, by invariably encroaching upon practitioner power and authority. For instance, Johnson sees the demands and requirements of insurance companies, trade unions or governmental agencies enervating the discretion

35

Johnson 1972:49.

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otherwise enjoyed by professional practitioners. He does not see a structured situation remaining in place irrespective of this, and thus continuing entrenchment of positional power. With this overview we can isolate two problems with Johnson’s approach, one specific and one general. Both problems are important because all later revisionists without exception have either adopted them approvingly or recapitulated them independently. The specific problem is the one with which we began this discussion: Throughout his reading of occupational upgrading, pre-modern and modern, Johnson fails to appreciate at a conceptual level the invariance, both historically and cross-nationally, of the bright-line demarcation between structured situations and both fluid sites and embedded exchanges. As a result of this failure, he then fails to appreciate, of course, that this invariant demarcation rests always and everywhere on a cultural truism literally spanning a society and era. In turn, the general problem is that the antagonism between aristocratic patronage and the discretion coveted by occupational practitioners certainly held true during the ancien régime in law and medicine, science and engineering. Moreover, this antagonism may be treated as equivalent to that stemming today from consumer activism and collectivism, if one wishes to draw this parallel. But this antagonism was hardly in evidence during the ancien régime within and across all fields of ambitious ceremony and decoration. Rather, at least some of these occupational fields were acknowledged universally, as a cultural truism of a society and era, to be structured situations. Within France in particular even the highest noblesse occupied entrenched positions of dependence in the field of ambitious visual representations. In turn, commoner-practitioners of painting and sculpture could credibly claim an independent socio-cultural authority, and thereby counterbalance patron vanity and taste. They could credibly claim a basis for exercising positional power over aristocratic patrons which the French aristocracy acknowledged universally, however begrudgingly at times. As a result of adopting casually modern occupational distinctions and then simply reading them back into the history as if they are equally salient across time, rather than plumbing the historiographic record of aristocratic patronage on the basis of contemporaries’ socio-cultural understandings and social-psychological beliefs, Johnson loses any opportunity to elevate his approach to professionalism above phenomenal appearances to a more credible level of abstraction. He thereby fails to attain a defensible general theoretical approach to professionalism.

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All later revisionists without exception have suffered from this same lost opportunity and failure. Like Johnson, they fail to identify invariant structural qualities capable of explaining and predicting why phenomenal appearances vary in the ways they do, historically and cross-nationally. They instead simply elevate these appearances to a conceptual level, as putative empirical generalizations. As a result, they simultaneously distort the historiographic record while losing any possibility of explaining and predicting the trajectory of change of professionalism today. They see evidence of profession rise or decline, stability or change without being able to adjudicate particular descriptions, explanations and predictions of particular occupational developments. It also follows from this that they cannot possibly grasp at a conceptual level the full range of consequences, whether immediate or institutional, of any putative trajectory of occupational upgrading, whether historically or today. Like Johnson, all later revisionists continue to assume without reflection that occupational upgrading in nineteenth century English law provides the earliest exemplar of professionalism in history. Then, dutifully, they continue to try, and invariably fail, to find earlier evidence of professionalism in this same occupational field anywhere else, whether in France or Germany, Italy or Spain. They seek such evidence, that is, irrespective of whether contemporaries historically considered legal services to be accessible in arm’s-length transactions, in embedded or repetitive exchanges, or in structured situations – in transactions for expert services which are socially compelling and culturally consequential. Our point runs quite counter to this entire line of inquiry and theorizing. The substantive occupational activities which yield professionalism projects, whether historically or today, whether inadvertently or purposefully, are extraneous accompanying variables. They are not invariant. They are not structural qualities capable of grounding a truly generalizable sociology of professions. By contrast, what is invariant at a conceptual level – and thus vital in attaining generalizable descriptions, explanations and predictions – is that professionalism projects, whatever their substance, always and everywhere unfold within structured situations. They never unfold successfully at either fluid sites or embedded exchanges. 4.3 Johnson’s Core Thesis: Mistaken Tripartite Relationship As a result of Johnson privileging modern law (and then medicine) when generalizing about professionalism as such, two other prejudices – two

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other faulty generalizations from phenomenal appearances – find their way into his approach, because both stem from this master decision. First, because he believes gentle patronage invariably inhibited professionalism structurally, across all pre-modern occupational fields, Johnson wrongly believes that the rise of professionalism is associated intrinsically with industrialization. He wrongly believes that professionalism requires the demise of gentle patronage and the rise of dispersed middle-class clienteles. Both of these factors, however, are phenomenal appearances which simply happened to attend British legal professionalism (and then Western medical professionalism) as extraneous accompanying variables. At the same time, both factors happen also to be by definition invariant structural qualities of modernity, constitutive of modernity. Johnson thereby mistakenly treats the following tripartite relationship – professionalism, industrialization and middle class clienteles – as if it is an invariant gestalt. Here he recapitulates the basic Bürgertum approach of the continent. He becomes convinced at a conceptual level that industrialization and dispersed consumer demand are literally constitutive of professionalism as such. He considers these qualities to be invariant structurally with any appearance of professionalism, whether historically, cross-nationally today, or in any future society and era. After all, having hit upon the tripartite relationship above to explain professionalism past, it was then eminently logical for Johnson to believe it simultaneously explains professionalism present and predicts professionalism future. On two grounds, therefore, Johnson anticipates a coming demise of professionalism (which Abbott will essentially repeat, in 1988 and then 2002 and 2005). On the one hand, industrialized societies are giving way to post-industrial, information societies. More important, dispersed middle-class clienteles are everywhere today being displaced or augmented by consumer collectives and state paternalism regardless. This is evident not only in advanced Western democracies but also in newly industrializing and democratizing societies in the East and South. This second reason for professionalism’s demise is utterly central to Johnson’s (and Abbott’s) logic: Just as professionalism failed to appear historically in the absence of dispersed middle-class clienteles, there is no good reason to believe, by Johnson’s way of thinking, it can survive in any society today or in the future where dispersed demand for expert

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services gives way to consumer collectivism.36 Given that many newly industrializing societies today contain insurance companies, trade unions, benefit clubs and governmental agencies which retain expert services, Johnson sees the handwriting on the wall. Such collectivism on the consumer side, like gentle patronage historically, can only enervate professional power and discretion. Johnson sees professionalism disappearing structurally today, in short, because everywhere the tripartite relationship above is fast becoming obsolete. Yet, the explanatory and predictive power of this tripartite relationship hinges on two invariant structures of modernity actually operating simultaneously as invariant structures of professionalism. The problem for Johnson and all later revisionists is that within this latter context, that of professionalism, both factors are extraneous accompanying variables. They accompany professionalism at one particular moment in time, during Western industrialization. They are not invariant structures constitutive of professionalism as such: of professionalism past (pre-Bürgertum and pre-industrial), of professionalism today (postconsumer and post-industrial) or, certainly, of professionalism future (including in corporate governance). A second prejudice also finds its way into Johnson’s approach, and precisely because he fails at a conceptual level to associate professionalism with any invariant structures which, as such, antedate, accompany and then succeed industrialization and dispersed consumerism. He attributes successful professionalism to participants – practitioners and clients alike – sharing certain ascribed characteristics, as properly socialized middle-class individuals (rather than as aristocrats or, certainly, as blue-collar workers). Johnson also sees these participants, accordingly, sharing certain social-psychological desires and beliefs, including beliefs: in their own wisdom, in the legitimate power of dominant groups, and in “values of justice.” In addition, he sees professional practitioners also successfully employing certain “ideological” strategies of occupational upgrading.37

36 The first word of Elliott Krause’s title, Death of the Guilds (1994), and then entire subtitle, Professions, States and the Advance of Capitalism, say it all. Just as guilds declined during early capitalism, Krause sees professions declining today, amidst late capitalism. That académies were not guilds historically, and modern professions have never been analogous to guilds, never dawns on Krause. 37 Johnson 1972:49,52,56–57,89–90.

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With this, Johnson inadvertently recapitulates nearly in lockstep central parts of Parsons’ basic cultural and social-psychological approach to professionalism – even as Johnson is otherwise asserting explicitly all along the way a “need” always to avoid a “Parsonian reification of values.”38 Johnson’s prejudice, like Parsons’ earlier, is that successful professionalism becomes impossible when: – participants become heterogeneous ascriptively rather than remaining rather more uniformly middle-class (Bürgerlichkeit); – a very particular set of beliefs, desires and strategies is unavailable to participants culturally; or, when available – participants neglect this set or otherwise fail to recognize and appreciate its importance in any project of occupational upgrading.

5. Beyond Parsons and Revisionism Our point in contrasting at a conceptual level both embedded exchanges and fluid sites to structured situations is to go beyond all approaches to professionalism which are social psychological, cultural and ideological, whether Parsonian or revisionist. The same contrast simultaneously moves us beyond more narrowly socio-economic approaches, those introduced by revisionists who followed Johnson, in particular Randall Collins but also Magali Larson and Andrew Abbott. Once we appreciate at a conceptual level that the relationship between structured situations and professionalism is invariant, and thus constitutive of professionalism, we arrive at an approach which is first structural (as we are seeing) and then institutional (as we will see beginning in Chapter 8). This approach allows us finally to succeed where Parsons and functionalists had failed, namely in drawing a bright-line distinction at a conceptual level between professions and all other occupations. It also allows us to go beyond Johnson, namely by distinguishing professionalclient relationships in particular from producer-consumer relationships more generally. The centerpiece of our structural-institutional approach to professions is that anyone – of any wealth or social status, knowledge base or collective support – who successfully retains professional services

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cannot avoid occupying an entrenched position of dependence. The same holds true for corporate stakeholders within corporate governance structures. Entrenched positions of dependence are literally inescapably vulnerable to moral hazard by anyone occupying entrenched positions of power, inescapably vulnerable to the latter’s self-interested opportunism and positional one-sidedness. This same vulnerability, being structural, extends to all clients and patrons of professional services, including consumer collectives and corporate or state employers. It also carries over to any collective or corporate actor who successfully provides a stake to a publicly traded corporation. Always and everywhere professional clients as well as corporate stakeholders cannot avoid dependence and vulnerability within structured situations. This remains the case even when they are remarkably well informed about their circumstances or lived conditions. Even the most informed clients and stakeholders cannot reduce substantially the power differential accruing structurally to practicing professionals and sitting management teams, as a result of their entrenched positions. For this very reason, which runs directly counter to Johnson’s entire line of argument, any and all structured situations are more fiducial than contractual, more compelled than strictly commercial or elective. Professional clients and corporate stakeholders cannot avoid trusting their wellbeing to strangers who are oriented structurally – thus unremittingly – by identifiable positional interests. Indeed, because fiducial relationships often involve strangers, they are also called relationships of “impersonal trust” and also “precarious trust.”39 The only possible way to reduce the structural vulnerability to asymmetric power and thus the moral hazard intrinsic to structured situations is to institutionalize didactic or moral responsibility – fiducial norms of behavior–within particular structured situations. Such responsibility then exceeds any and all contractual, criminal and civil obligations. This is precisely why all corporate sites of professional practice – from contemporary hospitals and other healthcare facilities to courtrooms and law firms, universities and research institutions as well as académies of the ancien régime – are either state agencies or major intermediary associations in civil society. This is also why all of these corporate sites are subject not only to internal governance

39

Shapiro 2003:92 and note 7.

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structures but also simultaneously to external oversight or regulation, whether by courts or administrative agencies. Corporate sites of professional practice as well as corporate governance structures are never permitted to conduct their affairs as if they are, respectively, commonplace bureaucratic organizations and commonplace commercial enterprises. They are never permitted simply to perform a production function or otherwise to act in market-mimicking ways, entirely unencumbered by demands of impersonal trust, by fiducial responsibilities. In this light we can appreciate the problem at the core of Johnson’s thesis, his tripartite relationship. Johnson mistakenly believes professionalism was literally nonexistent prior to industrialization and, in turn, believes, equally mistakenly, that professionalism is declining today under post-industrial, consumer-collectivist conditions. Both beliefs are mistaken because, whether historically or today, even elites – aristocratic or contemporary, individual or corporate – cannot avoid structural dependency within professional-client relationships, just as stakeholders cannot avoid structural dependency within corporate governance. This means that even elites – to say nothing of dispersed or collective middle-class consumers – never truly “control” professional services, including professional inquiry and research. Elite (and collectivist) control is not possible unless and until elites (or the state) first displace structured situations with either embedded exchanges or fluid sites. This displacement simultaneously terminates all professionalism projects, thereby relieving occupational practitioners of all demands of impersonal trust, all fiducial responsibilities. Practitioners are held solely to contractual, criminal and civil obligations, which elites (or the state) can indeed define and control, at least at times. Carried to its logical conclusion, should this process of displacement span all or most sectors of civil society, it would leave in place only one readily identifiable set of sites or venues which contemporaries acknowledge universally to be socially compelling and culturally consequential: those at which elites engage in discourse and sociability informally, like the court fêtes, neo-Platonist académies and gentle salons of the ancien régime. We have just presented, of course, a preliminary, operational sketch, at once structural, socio-cultural and institutional, of either autocracy in civil society or, somewhat more benignly, of clientelism. Short of thoroughgoing displacement, at the limiting case, we typically find far greater site and venue variation in civil societies. We

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also find islands of meritocracy within seas of nepotism, patronage and venality. Even with this very broad, preliminary sketch alone we are already adding nuance to narrower ways of characterizing civil societies, in strictly socio-economic terms or political terms. Cast in narrowly socio-economic terms, civil societies are simply capitalist modes of production, neo-liberal exchange networks, or welfare-state groundfloors below which no one is permitted to fall. Cast in narrowly political or governmental terms, they are simply democratic or autocratic regimes, pluralist or corporatist patterns of intermediation (between state agencies and trade associations). Our greater nuance in charactering civil society means that the central question in a scientific, thus conceptually grounded and critical, sociology of professions cannot be whether or how professionals become altruistic or service-oriented at dispersed worksites, as properly socialized or inculcated individuals. Such motivations or orientations would require individual professionals – somehow – to disregard their positional interests and, as a result of this, to relinquish or abnegate their positional power. Our point is that such abiding self-control is simply not an available option structurally, irrespective of what professionals’ motivations and orientations as individuals happen to be. It cannot become an available option unless and until fluid sites or embedded exchanges displace structured situations. As a result of this displacement at a structural level, professionalism then gives way to de-professionalization; and simple contractual relationships displace impersonal trust demands and fiducial responsibilities. The central question, given our nuanced characterization of civil society, is instead whether and how professionals, as well as corporate officers and others who occupy entrenched positions of power in structured situations in civil society, are typically governed and regulated as they invariably exercise positional power in advancing their clearly identifiable positional interests. How do they typically conduct themselves in open view of peers, association or agency officers, and interested observers, including reporters for trade publications? Do professionals exercise positional power one-sidedly, in ways that advance their positional interests to a point of arbitrariness and abuse? Or do they more typically exercise positional power more evenhandedly, that is, consistently with their positional interests but short of

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one-sidedness and thus, in this sense, relatively disinterestedly and deliberatively? Do they typically conduct themselves in ways that peers, association leaders and interested outsiders are both willing and able to defend openly and publicly as acceptable, legitimate and, indeed, exemplary? Or do they typically conduct themselves in ways that, when made public, these parties are compelled to acknowledge are problematic or indefensible, on both structural and fiducial grounds?

CHAPTER SEVEN

INDEPENDENT SOCIO-CULTURAL AUTHORITY OF PROFESSIONALISM We argued in the previous chapter that professionalism always and everywhere unfolds within structured situations but, on the other hand, not all structured situations yield professionalism projects, let alone successful – ongoing – ones. What is invariant is that professionals always and everywhere exercise positional power over clients and patrons as they advance clearly identifiable positional interests. In turn, clients and patrons of professional services always and everywhere occupy entrenched positions of dependence, vulnerability and apprehension. They are exposed structurally to positional one-sidedness as well as to self-interestedness and opportunism. We also proposed in passing that all other qualities constitutive of professions, including all consequences of professionalism, stem from this first invariant structural characteristic of professionalism. Now in this chapter we use this baseline to identify one general consequence of structured situations and then an additional quality constitutive of professionalism, an independent socio-cultural authority. In the next chapter we use it to identify more specifically all consequences of professionalism. 1. Organizational Context: Intermediary Associations and State Agencies Invariant structural characteristics of professionalism reveal the place and purpose of professions in civil society. This is obscured by treating professions simply as a status category in the occupational order, which revisionists have been doing since the late 1970s. During the 1980s this perfunctory understanding became received wisdom in the sociology of professions and remains so today. However, always and everywhere professions are much more than a mere status category. Professions are unique instances of occupational upgrading within structured situations. In turn, these structured situations are constituents of either major intermediary associations in civil society (in the

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Anglo-American world) or, alternatively, of state agencies or other state instruments (on the continent and elsewhere). There is no third option of organizational context or setting for professions. As a result of this, professions always and everywhere introduce into institutional design a governance structure, either private or public.1 They either introduce into civil society distinct venues of private governance (in the case of intermediary associations) or they introduce into the state distinct venues of public governance (in the case of state agencies). This consequence of professionalism for the larger social order is invariant, both historically and cross-nationally today. Social elites never entrust structured situations to informal assemblies or, certainly, to strictly commercial enterprises, whether of embedded exchange or of arm’s-length transaction. They never entrust structured situations to occupations (or avocations) whose practitioners are permitted structurally to act in ways which are irresponsible (cavalier or idiosyncratic), opportunistic (strictly self-interested) or market-mimicking (strictly commercial). Always and everywhere social elites instead entrust structured situations either to officially recognized private governance structures or to public governance structures. In either case they also insist upon state (judicial or administrative) oversight and regulation of these governance structures, rather than permitting the latter to be entirely self-regulating. Social elites take these steps in their own positional interests, as current or prospective patrons or clients of certain expert services. They fully appreciate, that is, that within structured situations even they invariably occupy positions of dependence. In their own positional interests (of dependence), therefore, they demand oversight of, and responsibility for, the provision and delivery of the occupational services provided within structured situations. In turn, the occupations providing these services then either professionalize fully or not. They either go this far epistemologically and didactically in their projects of occupational and instructional upgrading or they fail to go this far. 2. Independent Socio-Cultural Authority Because professionalism always and everywhere unfolds within structured situations, and the latter always and everywhere are constituents 1

For elaboration, see Chapter 8, pages 249–255; and Chapter 12, pages 405–407.

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of either intermediary associations or state agencies, this brings into view a third quality of professionalism, of the place and purpose of professions in civil society. Whether initiated purposefully or taking root inadvertently, every ongoing – successful – professionalism project always and everywhere first claims and then establishes and consolidates in civil society, never simply in the state, an independent sociocultural authority spanning an area or field of occupational activity. Consistently with the cultural truism of a society and era that is already distinguishing structured situations from embedded exchanges and fluid sites, the independent authority constitutive of professionalism is also acknowledged universally. After all, expert services being provided within structured situations are by definition already acknowledged universally to be compelling socially and consequential culturally.2 Always and everywhere, including when professionalism is unfolding inadvertently, as in seventeenth-century Paris, the attaining of an independent socio-cultural authority is accomplished quite purposefully. This project, unlike professionalism itself, is always initiated, sustained and then realized by participants self-consciously and methodically. That is, participants endeavor to secure an independent socio-cultural authority for their occupational activities irrespective of whether they are aware of what professionalism is or that they are professionalizing. Entirely separately from this, they are aware always and everywhere that they are providing expert services within a structured situation of an intermediary association or state agency. That is, they are aware they are not providing expert services strictly commercially or in moments of passing entertainment or leisure. Thus, the independent socio-cultural authority of professionalism is as constitutive of professionalism as is a structured situation, and then as is the latter’s presence within an intermediary association or state agency. During the ancien régime, for instance, Paris visual academiciens introduced into an aristocratic society quite self-consciously and 2 Niklas Luhmann would characterize an independent socio-cultural authority as an “autopoietic” system, at once self-perpetuating and self-regulating. However, his term autopoiesis also conveys that such an authority is largely insulated from open inspection by individuals in the larger society. We are insisting, by contrast, that any such independent socio-cultural authority is in principle open to inspection. Always and everywhere it is established and maintained on the basis of intersubjectively cognizable standards, at once epistemological and didactic, instructional and occupational.

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methodically an independent socio-cultural authority over ambitious painting and sculpture. They did so, of course, under duress, in response to Colbert’s continuing encouragement and escalating threats. But our point is that irrespective of why they acted purposefully, they did so in the utter absence of any awareness of professionalism, this awareness being unavailable to them lexically, culturally and social-psychologically. By comparison, practitioners and instructors in law and medicine during the ancien régime, to say nothing of those in science and engineering, were utterly incapable of claiming credibly, let alone establishing convincingly, a comparably independent socio-cultural authority. They did not provide expert services within what elites then considered structured situations. Considering each of these occupations in turn, it was unclear to everyone during the ancien régime what the epistemological (or didactic) standards of accomplishment in experimental natural philosophy were, thus what its bases of socio-cultural authority might possibly be. The notion of “scientific method” is anachronistic back then (other than Descartes’ philosophical proposals of 1637 in Discours de la Methode), not something acknowledged, let alone understood, universally. It was unclear to contemporaries, in short, that experimentalism was either compelling socially or consequential culturally. For many contemporaries, experimentalism was simply diverting, pleasurable. As for law and medicine, aristocratic patrons typically refused to acknowledge any independent socio-cultural authority in either occupation. They instead routinely took direct responsibility for their own legal affairs and medical treatments. After all, law lacked not only procedural integrity, one basis of socio-cultural independence. It also lacked consistent statutory application in substance, another – albeit more precarious – basis. As a result, prominent outsiders routinely manipulated the law through open nepotism, patronage and venality, not only particular rulings but also the substantive-normative standards by which all judicial tribunals operated. This was particularly true of civil law on the continent but English common law was not much different during the seventeenth century. Everywhere law Faculties, teaching in Latin, restricted instruction to exegesis of classical texts, often those of canon law; they never addressed methodically how civil or criminal law was actually being applied locally by particular tribunals. Medicine, in turn, also lacked procedural integrity and substantive cumulativeness. It lacked any epistemological grounding, and this was reflected in the absence of any openly available standards of clinical

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vouching or falsification. No one could credibly claim any consistently replicable relationship between exegetical principles, taught in studia generale, and either instructional precepts or clinical outcomes being, respectively, employed and discovered within workshops and client households. This is why family and friends routinely provided medical delivery as they saw fit: folklore, local wisdom, household remedies, and eccentric hunches by laymen were no less likely to yield desired or acceptable “clinical” results than the “learned” prescriptions of university-trained physicians. In addition, even physicians, the most renowned medical practitioners of the day, were typically servitors in gentle households. Their patrons routinely advised them about how to proceed with their medicinal regimens, as opposed to deferring to their advice and judgment. As for medical instruction and practice, both were either strictly exegetical (in the case of physicians) or strictly mechanical (in the cases of apothecaries, surgeons and others). Nowhere in the ancien régime was applied medical practice linked to liberal arts instruction, let alone upgraded steadily or cumulatively to theoretically-informed clinical principles and precepts. Given the fledgling state of experimental natural philosophy, clinical medical delivery was simply incapable of being taught with consistency across student cohorts. Moreover, many clinical applications were craft “mysteries.” Guilds and workshops zealously concealed them from competitors and, of course, withheld them from publication. Faculties of Physic only reinforced this compulsiveness. They, too, resisted rather than encouraged open forums of instruction and practice, let alone codification, standardization and dissemination of clinical findings.3 A profession, whether established inadvertently or purposefully, is only capable of providing expert services within a structured situation

3 One partial exception was provided by anatomical theaters, attended not only by surgeons and trainees but also by noblesse wishing to witness dissections of cadavers and animals. These gentle observers frequently wore decorative masks when attending these demonstrations, in order simultaneously to shield their identities from the stigma of such vulgar (manual) activities while conveying that these spectacles were, for them, diverting and pleasurable, entertaining. The noblesse in attendance were hardly seeking formal instruction, let alone cumulative learning. In turn, the anatomists performing dissections, fully aware that gentle men and women were in attendance, were as interested in displaying their own dexterity and nonchalance (sprezzatura) as in codifying “research” findings. The natural philosophical demonstrations performed in open view at the Royal Society in London and the Académie des Sciences in Paris were similar, seamlessly intermixing experimental inquiry with gentle diversion.

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on the basis of an independent socio-cultural authority which is acknowledged universally and then also widely understood. This holds true because the same cultural truism of a society and era which is distinguishing structured situations from embedded exchanges and fluid sites is already conferring distinction on the expert services being provided within structured situations. In addition, and equally important, a profession’s independent socio-cultural authority always and everywhere rests ultimately upon it successfully codifying, standardizing and disseminating standards of accomplishment – epistemological and didactic, instructional and occupational – which are intersubjectively cognizable and, therefore, in principle open to inspection. Always and everywhere profession leaders purposefully establish and maintain these standards, and thus this authority. This holds, again, even when they happen otherwise to be professionalizing inadvertently, as did the Paris visual Académie. 2.1 Meanings of “Independence” The socio-cultural authority of professionalism is “independent” in at least four respects.4 First, this authority eludes exclusionary control by profession leaders, to say nothing of exclusionary control by patrons and sponsors, including any royal administration or modern state. Even profession leaders and state sponsors lack structurally the ability to control a profession’s socio-cultural authority one-sidedly, to the exclusionary benefit of their own or practitioners’ respective positional interests. Likewise, they cannot control how this socio-cultural authority will evolve in substance over time. Second, a profession’s socio-cultural authority is also independent in that its consequences or externalities cannot possibly be kept confined narrowly to a particular occupational field. Its socio-cultural authority also cannot be kept confined to the occupational order and stratification system. To the contrary, a profession’s socio-cultural authority always and everywhere diffuses into civil society and the larger culture, for it invariably upgrades general learning, discourse and commentary. Always and everywhere it not only upgrades the understanding, 4 We discussed in chapter 6 the substance and form of any profession’s independent socio-cultural authority. In substance, it is always and everywhere at once epistemological and didactic (fiducial). In form, this substance can only be preserved and advanced within and through one particular form of organization, a collegial form.

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discernment and taste of particular clients and patrons, those who enter particular structured situations. It also simultaneously upgrades the understanding, discernment and taste of interested outsiders (whether amateurs during the ancien régime or informed publics today) and then of even wider circles of learning, discourse and commentary. This general cultural consequence of professionalism is reflected most basically in linguistic usage. Always and everywhere professions formulate, standardize and disseminate specialized lexicons. To be sure, professional terminologies are intended first and foremost to advance instruction as well as the proficiency and standardization of both practice and research. However, any professional lexicon invariably diffuses in some part, as adapted by amateurs and other interested observers, into the broader, more popular discourse of informed literate publics. One way in which this lexicon diffuses is through analogies, allusions and emblems, those which amateurs employed in gentle society during the ancien régime and those which popularizers employ today in print and speech. These first two respects in which the socio-cultural authority of professionalism remains independent are mutually supportive. Unlike a guild or workshop “mystery,” a profession’s social-cultural authority is always and everywhere developed, articulated and standardized openly, completely overtly. It is always and everywhere entirely accessible in principle, available to be cited, adapted and criticized by literally anyone of influence (or their agents). It is accessible in principle not only to all current and aspirant practitioners or researchers within particular occupational fields as well as to all current and prospective clients and patrons of professional services. It is equally accessible in principle to any and all interested observers, including journalists and whistleblowers. All sociological accounts which argue to the contrary are mistaken and, unfortunately, such accounts are legion. Too many sociologists (and other scholars), taking at face value Terence Johnson’s faulty historiography and thereby facile confusing of professions with guilds, either argue or assume that when professions lose control over occupational (or instructional) techniques and practices they are invariably in decline, suffering de-professionalization or “post-professionalization.” This misreads the entire history of professionalism, including the central difference historically between guilds, on one side, and, first, specialized académies and, then, professions, on the other.

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Indeed, sociologists who traffic in this misreading typically cite quite casually Anthony Black or Elliott Krause (as well as others) on guilds.5 They do so even though neither of these works addresses how and why académies differed historically from guilds both structurally and institutionally.6 They nonetheless then transfer this faulty historiography to descriptions and analyses of contemporary professions by citing, for instance, recent changes in information technology, including the Worldwide Web. Making matters worse, they also typically take too literally revisionists’ emphases on the importance to successful professionalism of expertise “monopoly” and “closure.” These terms may well apply to control over entry to professional practice, but they have never applied historically and do not apply today to control over the information and knowledge attending professional activities. After all, professions routinely not only divulge but endeavor to circulate as widely as possible findings and outcomes as well as instructional methods, occupational techniques and applications, and even preliminary and ongoing research inquiries. Always and everywhere, a profession’s most basic information and knowledge have been and remain today in principle open to inspection by anyone. From the Paris visual Académie to today, all professions routinely divulge publicly literally everything they do, and how and why they are doing it. The only thing that has changed of late is the extraordinary quickening of inspection-capability of interested outsiders as well as the extraordinary broadening and deepening of the pool of individuals with access to this capability. That such public information becomes more readily accessible at any point in time, however, is a matter of indifference to the success or failure of professionalism projects. A monopoly or arbitrary closure over information and knowledge has never been constitutive of professionalism as such. A profession’s socio-cultural authority is independent, therefore, in a third sense: profession leaders and members are simply not capable of controlling how clients, patrons and others will ultimately employ or cite this authority, including in their dealings with particular professional practitioners and researchers. Always and everywhere

5

Black 1984; Krause 1994. As examples, see Kritzer 1999:723–24, Collins 1990a:26–29 and Siegrist 1990a:193. 6

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professional authority remains available not only to support and advance the positional interests of profession leaders and members. Simultaneously, it remains equally available in principle to support and advance the positional interests or self interests of anyone else, whether clients, patrons or interested observers. Such observers include amateurs and curieux during the ancien régime and regulators, litigators and reporters for trade publications today – as well as revisionist sociologists of professions with an axe to grind. In turn, responsible interlocutors – which include not only peers and colleagues but also clients, patrons and interested outsiders willing to pursue their concerns in formal grievances or litigation rather than simply voicing them in passing – are those which criticize or challenge a professional’s actions on the merits. This means ultimately that they can find support for their criticisms and challenges in the publicly accessible principles and precepts upon which a profession is basing its independent socio-cultural authority. The only reasons and rationales capable of rebutting such criticisms or challenges, in turn, are those which can be framed consistently with the same principles and precepts.7 Fourth, because the socio-cultural authority of professions is dedicated first and foremost to occupational or research activities undertaken within structured situations, it is also independent in yet another, seemingly ironic way. By being developed, articulated and standardized openly, a profession’s standards of acceptable instruction, practice and research insulate even the lowliest members of any profession from undue influence, let alone interference, by even the wealthiest or most socially prominent client and patron. The independence of a profession’s socio-cultural authority, that is, insulates any and all individual professionals from undue, invasive, demands or challenges from outside the occupational field, and thus from heteronomy. It does not matter if outside demands or challenges originate with lay individuals, organized groups, or systemic pressures such as bureaucratization, democratization or clientelism. 7 Basic principles of Bourdieu’s structural model are consistent with our analysis of positional power and the potential for successfully challenging it. He notes that certain positions have “the greatest structural weight” in important matters, but each interaction is a site of power plays and important stakes (2000:136–140). However, Bourdieu fails to distinguish professionals from bureaucrats and, as a result, fails to appreciate the invariant, structural relationship between professionalism and the institutional design of the larger social order.

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This is what the sociologists mentioned above either neglect entirely or wrongly disregard or, equally wrongly, treat as some lingering manifestation of unwarranted closure or monopoly. Again, influential clients and patrons of professional services include any office of a royal administration during the ancien régime or any state agency, insurance company or consumer collective today. A profession’s publicly accessible standards of research and practice help everyone to identify overreaching by a state, whether modern or dynastic, as well as overreaching by any insurance company or consumer collective. 2.2 Why Usurpation is Not Possible All four meanings and manifestations of independence – eluding exclusionary control, upgrading understanding and discourse in civil society, assisting legitimate challenges to professionals, and yet insulating professionals from heteronomy – follow from professions establishing and maintaining an independent socio-cultural authority within structured situations. Unlike other expert occupations, professions do not, more simply, assert control at fluid sites or embedded exchanges, with varying degrees of success. When clients and patrons, whether individual or corporate, successfully retain professional services and thereby enter structured situations, they become incapable of rivaling, disregarding or usurping this independent socio-cultural authority distinctive to professionalism. They are capable only of rivaling, usurping or disregarding the advice of particular professionals, and particularly prior to entry. Once they successfully retain professional services, however, they simultaneously lose this option. They nonetheless retain the other option, namely to employ a profession’s independent authority against particular practitioners or researchers. In either case, they can no longer disregard, on short notice or at little cost, the socio-cultural authority intrinsic to professionalism within structured situations. The only decisive option available to prospective clients or patrons of professional services comes a full step earlier, namely the option to elude this authority altogether, to avoid scrupulously these structured situations and instead to keep their solicitations of expert advice and services confined to embedded exchanges or fluid sites. Here clients and patrons are free structurally to challenge, openly disregard and ultimately usurp the putative authority of any and all experts. Café society is free structurally to believe haute cuisine is neither delectable nor aesthetically pleasing. Jet-setters are free structurally to

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believe haute couture is either more immoderate or more staid than trendsetting. Indeed, undue deference to clients or patrons, that which disregards, subordinates or compromises a profession’s independent socio-cultural authority, exposes particular professionals to greater positional jeopardy and vulnerability than it typically does client or patron wellbeing. Professionals simply cannot permit outsiders to dictate, even if serially and informally, the details of professional services without simultaneously compromising their own positional power and subordinating or abandoning their own positional interests. After all, given the openness of professional instruction, practice and research, professionals are compelled structurally to provide any responsible interlocutor with their reasons for taking particular actions. And the only reasons which are credible in any open or public forum are those consistent with a profession’s independent socio-cultural authority. It is never sufficient for a practicing or research professional to cite instead commercial considerations alone for acting, or simple compliance with bureaucratic commands or, certainly, favoritism of any kind. All such reasons for acting are extraneous, manifestly inconsistent with a profession’s independent socio-cultural authority. They thereby potentially attract not only more wide-ranging criticisms but also formal challenges, including litigation. Any such trajectory of reaction can only lead ultimately to questioning a profession’s place and purpose in civil society, to questioning whether it truly provides expert services in structured situations. As this happens, de-professionalization is underway: what was once a profession is now simply an expert occupation, claiming control within embedded exchanges or at fluid sites shorn of fiducial responsibility for its own independent socio-cultural authority.8 What all of this means more generally is that neither the market (commercialism) nor the state (decree) nor any insurance company or consumer collective (heteronomous interference) can wrest a profession’s independent socio-cultural authority from profession leaders without first redefining the profession’s place and purpose in civil society or in the state. Any such redefinition entails consigning an expert service to embedded exchanges or fluid sites of commerce or diversion. It entails no longer acknowledging universally that an expert service is being provided within structured situations which are constituents 8

Much more is said about fiducial responsibility in chapter 9.

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of either major intermediary associations in civil society or major agencies in the state. Thus, whenever commercial interests, bureaucratic decrees, or interest group interference – any variation of balancing – displace the independent socio-cultural authority of any profession, such a redefinition is on the table, an actionable policy option. This is manifested empirically in unambiguous commercial, state or interest group encroachments into corporate sites of professional instruction and practice. Should such encroachments occur and this redefinition succeed, professionalism ends simultaneously; deprofessionalization becomes unavoidable structurally, and likely irreversible. 2.3 Resolving a Seeming Paradox: Insulation and Oversight The independent socio-cultural authority constitutive of professionalism does more than rebut the mistaken views identified above which confuse professions with guilds. It resolves the seeming paradox also noted above, that the independent socio-cultural authority of professionalism simultaneously insulates professionals from heteronomy or undue interference even as it invites credible challenges, oversight and regulation, including by outsiders. In the first place, a focus on the independent socio-cultural authority constitutive of professionalism brings greater specificity to classic statements about the independence of professions and professionals by Everett Hughes and Robert Merton. Hughes proposed in 1965 that a professional is never fully under any outsider’s employ, whether that of an individual client or patron or that of a state agency or private corporation. This is not true of other experts.9 Related, Merton distinguished even earlier, in 1949, between (a) service providers’ cosmopolitan loyalties to professional peers and (b) service providers’ local loyalties to immediate work units or employing organizations. By 1963 Anselm Strauss used this distinction to great effect in his accounts of interaction within hospitals, thereby preparing the way for Hughes’ generalization. We convert Hughes’ proposition and Merton’s distinction into the following observation. When experts undertake a sustained professionalism project, and thereby resist systemic pressures of 9 This is precisely the concern Teubner raises repeatedly about “expert contracts” (e.g. 1998,2003,2007): When experts are hired as agents of a principal, they become employees. Their loyalty to the principal can compromise the integrity of their reporting of findings or outcomes, and thus harm third parties.

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de-professionalization, their typical behavior exhibits fidelity to the independent socio-cultural authority we have been discussing. Their typical behavior remains consistent, that is, with openly articulated principles and precepts which are as readily available for inspection, citation and commentary by outsiders as by peers, colleagues and profession leaders. Such typical behavior reflects the unique place and purpose of professions in civil society: professional practitioners and researchers, unlike other experts, provide expert services in structured situations on the basis of an independent socio-cultural authority. We may now add that such typical behavior also overcomes systemic obstacles which any professionalism project invariably faces, whether those during the ancien régime when such projects were inadvertent or those coming into play under modern conditions when professionalism is frequently purposeful. Systemic obstacles to inadvertent professionalism during the ancien régime included the nepotism, patronage and venality constitutive of the institutional designs of culturally aristocratic societies and autocratic dynastic states. They also included the milieu mondain’s disdain for pedantry, formal instruction, specialized lexicons and any sort of occupational livelihood. In addition, visual academiciens had to overcome the undisciplined enthusiasm and cupidity of early collectors, the curieux. Modern systemic obstacles to professionalism, whether purposeful or inadvertent, include workplace and associational factionalism, interest group competition for state support (whether pluralist or neo-corporatist), social movement populism and leveling as well as public opinion majoritarianism, and systemic pressures of drift. Weber described these pressures as rationalization and bureaucratization, Marxists describe them as commodification or commercialism and alienation, and Parsons referred to them as functional differentiation and subfield specialization. Another manifestation of systemic drift, however, eluded all of these social theorists, including Parsons: lingering systemic pressures toward clientelism and thus favoritism. Clientelist favoritism can augment or accompany commercialism, functional differentiation and even formal democracy (majoritarianism). But always and everywhere it subdues or counteracts structurally not only Weberian rationalization but also professionalism. In addition, we find more recent obstacles in universities and in corporate governance structures. In universities these include the disdain of postmodernists and deconstructionists for epistemological and

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didactic standards in research and instruction. In corporate governance they include the disdain of contractarians and neoclassical economists for any state-enforced normative constraints on market-mimicking behavior. A profession’s independent socio-cultural authority overcomes all of these systemic obstacles, historical and contemporary. It does so by providing profession leaders and members with an open, publicly accessible rationale for resisting on the merits certain pecuniary incentives of commercialism (in the case of intermediary associations), certain bureaucratic decrees from officials (in the case of state agencies), and more generally the many self-interested attractions of nepotism, patronage and venality (clientelism in the state and civil society). Whether or not any particular professional exhibits behavioral fidelity to this rationale at any given point in time is, of course, a variable. But an open, publicly accessible rationale for resisting these systemic pressures is invariant, constitutive structurally of professionalism as such. This is precisely why Parsons sensed at least that professionalism is not only non-bureaucratic and non-market-mimicking but also nondemocratic. Professional independence is not only capable, on the merits, of resisting majoritarianism or leveling, whether as manifested in mobilized social movements, formal electoral results, or public opinion polling. It is also capable of resisting on the merits any and all intrusions or undue influences stemming from patronage connections or, more grandly and harmfully, from patron-client networks. Critics of professions may challenge our insistence that professionalism and clientelism are literal antonyms, and thus our unapologetic affiliating of professionalism with meritocracy. To this end, many critics will readily cite Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus or equivalent notions in the literatures of small groups, networks and symbolic interaction. Bourdieu demonstrates compellingly that individuals’ entry to particular fields, and even more their advancement (distinction) within particular fields, typically hinges on their “cultural capital” and social-psychological “dispositions,” both inculcated into them during primary socialization. Are individuals capable culturally and social-psychologically of operating comfortably within certain occupational environments? Or are they instead personally alienated from or otherwise uneasy within these environments, and thus prone to anxiety or agitation? Bourdieu’s point is that individuals’ “comfort levels” are ultimately flections of their habitus, of the mannerisms, discourses and

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interactions to which they were exposed during their formative years. Individuals’ habitus, in short, is their “second skin,” akin to the clothes (habits) they don every morning as an afterthought, without noticing let alone pondering the meaning and symbolism their clothing is conveying. Our point about professionalism and meritocracy hardly refutes these findings by Bourdieu, but it does put them into their proper structural context. Ironically, this is a tack which Bourdieu typically adopts when he challenges any received wisdom in any area of sociological inquiry. That is, we may grant to Bourdieu without hesitation or reservation his general thesis about the importance of habitus, and then how this is reflected in the stratification system internal to any “field” of social activity. Indeed, we may stipulate for the sake of argument that habitus bears even more strongly than Bourdieu believes on individuals’ entry into any occupation and then their success or “distinction” within it. A salient point of structural context nonetheless still stands. Whether historically or today professions do not openly and unapologetically privilege nepotism, patronage and venality over relatively clear thresholds of meritocratic entry and advancement. Inexpert lawyers and doctors, engineers and scientists, today no more succeed in their respective livelihoods than did inexpert visual academiciens during the ancien régime. It may certainly be true, of course, that certain individuals bring to professional positions greater competitive advantages than others, including privileged upbringings and then credentials from exclusive graduate schools and professional schools. But these individuals nonetheless employ the fruits of their upbringings to attain these credentials on the merits, and then they compete for professional positions and distinctions on the merits. These individuals do not typically, let alone frequently, move through these stages exclusively – or primarily and openly – on the basis of birthright or familial connections. They certainly do not do so on the basis of outright venality. Indeed, the same source or grounding of professional independence and meritocracy we are identifying here also explains the other part of the paradox, namely how credible critics (or overseers and regulators) of professional behavior can so readily attract the press or the state to take seriously their charges against particular practitioners or researchers. These critics attract attention by simply citing the same rationale for behavioral fidelity to a profession’s independent socio-cultural

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authority which profession leaders employ to insulate themselves and rank-and-file members from undue interference. Critics simply identify particular instances of deviance from this rationale, particular instances of self-interestedness, opportunism or one-sidedness. Citing this rationale, they can then allege credibly that particular professionals are failing to remain oriented cognitively by positional interests legitimated by a profession’s independent sociocultural authority, those which benefit anyone in entrenched positions of power in structured situations. The same thing can happen, of course, when professionals exercise positional power one-sidedly in advancing these positional interests. The independent socio-cultural authority of professional practice and research provides the basis for peers as well as interested outsiders to demonstrate that positional power is indeed being exercised one-sidedly, to a point of abuse or arbitrariness. Literally anyone involved in or affected by any particular professional service can at any time effectively identify and challenge selfinterestedness or one-sidedness. They need simply allege credibly that certain practitioner or researcher behaviors manifestly contradict established principles and precepts of professional practice or research. Such allegations can be initiated not only by peers and colleagues but also by outsiders of all sorts, including, as examples, reporters for trade publications, attorneys litigating on behalf of aggrieved clients or patrons, state regulators or judicial overseers, and sociologists of professions. In addition, such lines of questioning, when successful, hardly stop at this water’s edge, with revelations regarding the activities of particular professionals. They can potentially stimulate more expansive challenges, those calling into question on the merits a particular profession’s very place and purpose within an intermediary association or state agency. After all, if profession leaders are permitting self-interestedness or one-sidedness within structured situations, rather than endeavoring forcefully to identify and sanction such behavior consistently with their own independent socio-cultural authority, this sort of inaction entails far more than equanimity on their part, a simple tolerance of deviance and abuse. It reveals to informed laymen that profession leaders are no longer inclined to exhibit behavioral fidelity to their own independent socio-cultural authority, to the very bases of their profession’s place and purpose in civil society. They are instead inclined to compromise this authority, whether in succumbing to commercial incentives, or in

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deferring to bureaucratic decrees, or in acceding to open nepotism, patronage or venality. They are inclined, in short, to conduct themselves as if the practitioners and researchers under their formal supervision are providing expert services within embedded exchanges or at fluid sites, not within structured situations.

CHAPTER EIGHT

CONSEQUENCES OF PROFESSIONALISM, IMMEDIATE AND INSTITUTIONAL We have finally reached the point in our discussion regarding the place and purpose of professions in civil society and the state where we can identify the consequences or externalities professionalism introduces structurally into the larger social order. Before doing so, however, it is instructive to recall how radically dissonant any such line of inquiry strikes proponents of received wisdom today in the sociology of professions on both sides of the Atlantic. 1. Disregarding Professionalism’s Social Consequences Received wisdom belittles professions by portraying them as simply a type of status category in the occupational order and stratification system. By this understanding professions are no more significant socially or institutionally than thousands of other expert occupations and middle-class occupations. Professions are not distinctive socioeconomically, and then, certainly, are hardly distinctive culturally and social psychologically or structurally. As a result, all consequences or externalities of professions, whatever these happen to be, are confined strictly to the occupational order and stratification system. After all, as a mere status category, professions are hardly capable of contributing more grandly in any way to “social order,” let alone of doing so uniquely among all other expert occupations and middle-class occupations. Anglo-American revisionists initiated this disparaging reading of professionalism and its consequences during the late 1970s in direct reaction to Parsons’ expansive characterizations of professionalism’s cultural and social-psychological consequences. Such revisionism had been adumbrated earlier, by Terence Johnson in 1972, but, to recall, he nonetheless retained something of Parsons’ cultural and socialpsychological reading. Unlike Johnson, however, Parsons had gone much further. He also grandly attributed “social order” in the postwar United States in some large part to the prominence of professions in American civil society.

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Parsons saw professions literally accounting for why the American social order was becoming more integrative (rather than controlling) and in addition more archetypal cross-nationally, as the most “advanced” democracy in the world. He went this far because he was convinced that dispersed professionals (somehow) typically share social psychologically a service orientation and also typically acknowledge in common more cognitively or dispassionately what he called “valued cultural patterns.” This way of thinking about professionalism and its consequences is what led Parsons, as we reviewed briefly in chapter 6, to emphasize the importance of professionals’ secondary socialization during lengthy periods of instruction and training. Today, leading American revisionists are uncompromising in rejecting any attribution of social order, let alone of social integration, to professions. Randall Collins and Andrew Abbott in particular take particular umbrage at the attributions made by Parsons.1 They are convinced Parsons was utterly mistaken in approaching professions so expansively, with an eye to whether and how they contribute to social order. They disparage all such suggestions and lines of inquiry by asserting that Parsons’ very point of departure is anachronistic, an “Old World” fear of social breakdown which is dourly pre-war or, at best, a relic of the 1950s and early 1960s. Advanced, post-industrial societies, they say, are hardly likely to suffer the sorts of social dislocations characteristic of smokestack, industrializing societies, let alone breakdowns so severe as to yield the “mass society” feared by Marx, Weber and Durkheim and then also the first generation of the Frankfurt school (along with William Kornhauser in the United States). Accordingly, they ridicule Parsons’ characterizations of the significance socially or institutionally of professionals (or any other large groupings in civil society) putatively sharing “value orientations.” Such solidarity within the occupational order is hardly necessary, let alone capable somehow of stemming “contradictions of capitalism” which the theorists just noted had feared were systemic, thus fated. Given this dismissal of the “problem of social order” as a credible orientation for theory and research in any sociology of professions, revisionists instead see a superior logic in approaching professions more narrowly. As Collins puts the matter, professions bear strictly and 1 Collins 1990b; Abbott 1988,2002,2005. It is noteworthy that Magali Larson no longer goes this far, even as she similarly rejects Parsons’ particular approach to professionalism (Larson 1989,1990,1993).

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simply on the “structure of privilege” in the stratification system, not more expansively on the direction of change of the larger society.2 As Abbott puts it, the sociology of professions is “a branch of the sociology of work” concerned exclusively with analyses of expert service delivery within the occupational order.3 It is not a branch of the sociology of intermediary associations (or of state agencies), concerned with explaining and predicting shifts in the direction of social change, let alone either social integration or social breakdown – leveling or “massification.” Once revisionists reject as a point of departure any possible connection between professions and social order, let alone any connection which is structural and thus invariant, they then reject quite logically the other basic tenet of Parsons’ sociology of professions, as we saw in Chapter 1. After all, if the consequences of professions’ presence in civil society or the state – whether cultural, social psychological or socioeconomic – are at once variable and negligible, then why bother to define “profession” with rigor or precision in the first place? If all consequences of professionalism are variables confined to the occupational order and stratification system, and if these consequences are indeed indistinguishable from those attributable to thousands of other occupations, why bother to distinguish professions in any way from expert occupations or middle-class occupations more generally? Thus, the revisionist critique of Parsons’ thesis regarding professions and social order is what led quite logically to revisionists disregarding the importance of identifying professions either analytically or idealtypically, let alone empirically. This is the front which Johnson opened up even earlier, in 1972. By the 1980s and 1990s revisionists went so far as literally to ridicule any lingering effort by other sociologists, including Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist,4 to list traits putatively distinctive to professions. Having dismissed out of hand Parsons’ concerns about social order, they concluded, again quite logically, that any “trait” approach is ultimately apologetic or, worse, ideological. Any such effort can only lend unwarranted legitimacy to profession leaders’ self-serving accounts of how and why they surpassed occupational competitors in prestige, perquisites and labor market closure or monopoly. Such first-person 2 3 4

Collins 1990b:13–14. Abbott 2002; also Prest 1984. Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist 1990.

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narratives draw overly dramatic distinctions between occupations, as opposed to advancing social theory. They cannot possibly advance disinterested inquiry, a scientific sociology of professions. However, even as Anglo-American revisionists became ever more strident about the necessity of conflating professions with all other expert or middle-class occupations, as one seamless “system of professions” (to use Abbott’s phrase), they nonetheless left an opening for second thoughts. This opening thereby exposed them to today’s postParsonian reactions on both sides of the Atlantic against their narrowly socio-economic reading of professionalism. Revisionists inadvertently left a door open to reintroducing cultural and social-psychological factors into the sociology of professions. This what Johnson adumbrated in 1972. Revisionists left this door open by inadvertently affiliating the entire Anglo-American sociology of professions at a conceptual level with the continent’s more explicitly class-based – Bürgertum – approach to work and occupations more generally. This approach, after all, emphasizes the cultural and socialpsychological distinctiveness of Bürgertumlichkeit (middle class) sentiments and lifestyles. We reviewed this recent convergence spanning the Atlantic in Chapter 2. continental sociologists distinguish solidly middle-class occupations from both lower middle-class and working-class occupations. Then, much like Parsons, they attribute to the practitioners of each occupational type quite different social psychological desires, beliefs and motivations as well as quite different cultural understandings and orientations. By their accounts, the loftiest parts of the state bureaucracy provide the clearest exemplars of the lifestyles, sentiments and orientations distinctive to properly socialized middle-class occupational practitioners. However, like Parsons as well as his revisionist critics, continental sociologists today thereby neglect entirely the structural distinctiveness of professions in particular. As a result, they join revisionists independently. They, too, disregard any possibility that professions uniquely introduce salient institutional consequences or externalities into the larger society. In turn, the continent’s Bürgertum reading of the occupational order returns the favor, equally inadvertently complimenting AngloAmerican revisionism. Like continental sociologists earlier (before the 1980s), Anglo-American revisionists today agree that the very concept of “profession” is either idiosyncratic to the English-speaking world or ideological. As such, any use of this term intrinsically elevates artificially

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to the level of social theory first-person narratives of occupational upgrading by profession leaders. Revisionists insist that all such portrayals of professionalism are invariably aggrandizing, and thus intrinsically misleading or distorting when brought even in part into the conceptual frameworks of any sociology of professions. These portrayals either cast professionalism self-servingly but innocently as an unusually “heroic” enterprise. Or, worse, they are insidious, purposefully cynical and calculating. They acclaim and endorse Anglo-American professionalism for strategic, ultimately imperialistic or geopolitical purposes.5 With this, Anglo-American revisionists join continental critics such as Pierre Bourdieu in casting the putative “empirical” study of professionalism as intrinsically ideological or otherwise skewed at its core by English-language usage.6 This entire line of theorizing and empirical inquiry, they insist, stems at the outset from a lexicon which in itself incarnates a manifestly ethnocentric reading of the occupational order and stratification system. In addition, profession leaders’ first-person narratives of occupational upgrading quite purposefully manipulate elite and public opinion (in the Anglo-American world) to accept unwarranted closure or monopoly in the labor market for expert services. Thus, whether ingenuous or insidious, these narratives cannot possibly qualify as disinterested accounts, as theory- or researchadvancing documentary evidence.7 They cannot possibly provide sociologists or historians with a sound historiographic or empirical basis

5 This is Bourdieu’s thesis (with Wacquant) in passing in “The Cunning of Imperialist Reason” (1998:197–98 note 40). Bourdieu’s primary focus across this article and chapter is the race and ethnic literature of the United States, which he considers ideological. His thesis is that this literature, transferred unalloyed abroad, distorts both policymaking and research, including in Brazil and France. In all respects Bourdieu’s points about this literature are well-taken, soundly reasoned and merit attention. He is likely correct. However, along the way he rather casually dismisses the notion of “profession” as being equally an “Anglo-Saxon” contrivance, and thus equally ideological and distorting. He finds the very term “profession” to be entirely unworthy of serious theoretical analyses, let alone worthy of orienting continuing empirical inquiry. 6 Others who do the same include Dezalay and Garth (1996, 2002), Fournier (1999) and Sousa Santos (2005). 7 By the mid-1990s, Dezalay and Garth (1996:15) simply presuppose this, quoting Bourdieu in support (that is, Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:243, where they call professions a “folk concept uncritically smuggled into scientific language”). Dezalay and Garth’s wording follows closely: “As Bourdieu observes, a term like profession is ‘the social product of a historical work of construction of a group and a representation of groups that has surreptitiously slipped into the science of this very group.’ ”

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upon which to distinguish professions at a conceptual level and then to direct historical or cross-national inquiry. Our structural and institutional approach to professions and professionalism runs directly counter to this received wisdom of revisionists, and then equally to the more recent convergence just noted around a Bürgertum approach. It runs directly counter to both narrowly socioeconomic as well as broadly culturalist readings of the place and purpose of middle-class occupations in civil society, the two readings of “professions” which currently prevail respectively on both sides of the Atlantic. Moreover, our approach also runs counter to another, entirely related prevailing belief, namely the received wisdom that all consequences of professionalism are modest, confined to the occupational order and stratification system. Our structural and institutional approach to professionalism instead proposes that professions are never simply a type of status category in the occupational order and stratification system. Moreover, it manifestly confounds Bourdieu’s flippant dismissal of the term “profession” as a folk concept of English-language usage and thus intrinsically ideological. It confounds any such dismissal by challenging at its core the more general Bürgertum approach of the continent which underlies it. After all, our approach stems first and foremost from the historical experience of the Paris visual Académie, Bourdieu’s literal backyard. It is not oriented more primarily, let alone exclusively, by any instance of occupational upgrading in the “Anglo-Saxon” world. It stems from an historical case, moreover, in which the terms “profession” and “professionalism” were utterly unavailable culturally and lexically. Thus, this term could not possibly have been used ideologically or strategically by any contemporary, whether Lebrun, Colbert, Louis XIV or anyone else.8 2. Reconsidering the Issue Our general alternative to revisionism, to say nothing of Bourdieu, is to reconsider in an entirely new light the more ambitious project of

8

Whether it is being used ideologically here in describing the Paris visual Académie is something readers can decide, and then report (preferably) with reasons. But here consult the much longer accounting of the Académie in Sciulli and Halley (forthcoming).

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Parsons and other functionalists, namely the effort to identify the connection between professionalism and social order. We do so, however, by amending this project in two significant ways. First, we bring to this project our structural and institutional approach to professions, jettisoning entirely Parsons’ cultural and social-psychological approach. Second, we replace any and all general references to “social order” with a typology of institutional designs. Parsons’ references to social order were invariably vague on their face. This vagueness then carried over to his references to the putative “integrative” consequences of professionalism. 2.1 Excursus: On Institutional Design In political sociology and comparative politics the term closest to our use of institutional design is “regime,” as opposed to “state.”9 The problem with “regime,” however, is that this term is vague. Even worse, its central focus tends to be rather narrow, namely on “the choice of procedures that regulate access to state power.”10 By contrast, the term institutional design draws our attention to relationships or patterns of connection between state agencies and major institutions in civil society. Thus, it is more descriptive of “regime” when this term is cast much more broadly to encompass not only state power but also bases of power in the larger society.11 Some social scientists do use the term institutional design, instead of regime, but they tend to do so in order to emphasize the design – purposeful origin – of many of the narrowly focused procedures in the quotation from Gerardo Munck. That is, they use the term institutional design to grasp the purposeful constitution of institutional rules or patterns of public governance exclusively, not of the state-civil society connection.12 In substance, these social scientists tend to focus on three issues of public governance: the purposeful design of electoral systems, the purposeful design of relations between executive and legislative 9 Examples of the use of “regime” in this sense are rife, and some influential, recent examples include Schmitter and Karl 1991; O’Donnell 1996, 2004; Diamond 2002; and Diamond and Morlino 2004. 10 Munck 2001:123. 11 Institutional design is akin to what Etzioni calls “meta-stability,” an ongoing “basic pattern” which remains in place even as a society otherwise evolves economically, politically, socially or culturally, for instance by becoming either more communitarian or more individualistic (1996:34,45). 12 Two prominent examples are Lijphart and Waisman 1996 and Goodin 1996.

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branches of government, and the purposeful design of institutions spanning the (welfare) state and a market economy. With this, however, they face two problems. One problem is ironic: the first two issues are focused narrowly on the state, not really extending more broadly to “regime” at all. The other problem is that the third issue, while broader and so seemingly appositely labeled “regime,” turns attention to institutions spanning the state and economy which in fact are rarely crafted purposefully. Being more structural than purposefully initiated, they typically surface and then evolve inadvertently. As examples, no one designed purposefully American interest group pluralism. The same is true of European neo-corporatism, Latin American clientelism, African and Caribbean plural sections (rigid race and ethnic divisions), or Middle-Eastern confessionalism (rigid sectarian divisions). Likewise, institutional design, as we employ the term here, is typically inadvertent. This is the case precisely because the origins and underlying foundations of any institutional design are structural, not purposefully initiated. This ongoing patterning is not “designed” actively by any identifiable individuals or groups. Yet, we show that it is quite possible for elites, or mobilized social movements, or agitated electorates to take purposeful steps to alter a given institutional design, even as its underlying foundations are structural and thus typically difficult to change very dramatically in the short term. They may take steps to push a formal democracy toward a limited government and then, further, to a democratic society.13 And, of course, they may take steps which reverse this trajectory. What we are interested in identifying here is how professions bear, structurally, on any given institutional design, and our thesis is that these structural effects are invariant – even as institutional designs evolve historically and vary cross-nationally. 2.2 From Social Order to Institutional Design Here is where our structural and institutional approach overcomes the vagueness of Parsons’ references to how professions contribute to “social order.” It is difficult for social scientists to discern either analytically or empirically the degree or extent of “social order” at any moment 13 A more detailed discussion of all three types is provided shortly, starting at page 269.

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historically or in any instance cross-nationally.14 But we will see that social scientists can identify unambiguously the institutional design spanning any society and state, whether historically or today. Given the specificity that is possible here, the concept of institutional design also puts us in a position to overcome revisionists’ objections to the salience or prominence Parsons had attributed to professions. Our thesis is that always and everywhere professionalism within structured situations, whether successful or failed, affects in invariant, thus predictable, ways the institutional design of the larger social order. In elaboration we begin with a point we made at the outset of the previous chapter, namely that social elites never entrust structured situations to commercial enterprises or informal assemblies. This was as true in mid-seventeenth century Paris as it is today in American corporate governance. This means that elites never entrust structured situations to a simple status category in the occupational order. They never leave the leaders and practitioners of occupations within structured situations free to act as self-interestedly as others in the occupational order and, as a result, to act irresponsibly, opportunistically or one-sidedly if they wish. To the contrary, social elites always and everywhere entrust structured situations to intermediary associations with private governance structures. Or, alternatively, they place them within state agencies, which either incarnate or contain public governance structures. In addition, they typically insist on an additional layer of oversight and regulation, whether administrative or judicial, of any such governance structure, whether private or public. Putting this differently, when social elites charge any occupation with the privilege and impersonal trust of establishing and maintaining an independent socio-cultural authority in a structured situation, an occupation establishes and maintains a governance structure. It does so either as a jurisdiction of an intermediary association or as a jurisdiction of the state. Whether it then successfully professionalizes is a separate issue, namely whether it establishes and maintains open, observable and intersubjectively cognizable standards of practice or research: epistemological and didactic, instructional and occupational. Irrespective of how this issue works out on the ground, the invariant structural backdrop of professionalism is now already in place.

14

The reasons for this are presented at length in Sciulli 1992:23–39.

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Our point is that because all professions without exception are found within structured situations they are also invariably affiliated with either intermediary associations or state agencies; again, there is no third option of organizational context for professions. In addition, and as a result of this same invariant structural backdrop, the longer-term consequences of any profession’s presence in civil society or the state exceed in two respects those attributed to professions by received wisdom. First, these consequences are structural in origin, and thus invariant, not socio-economic (or cultural) in origin, and thus variable. In addition, these consequences are never confined to the occupational order and stratification system. The longer-term consequences of professionalism always and everywhere impinge in invariant, thus predictable, ways on the institutional design of the larger social order. This is why Parsons was correct that the success or failure of professionalism always and everywhere affects the direction of social change in identifiable, predictable ways. He simply failed to identify either specifically or correctly why this is the case, and why it can never be otherwise. 2.3 Restating Parsons’ Error We are proposing, in short, that Parsons’ error was decidedly not to attribute grand social consequences to professionalism. His error was instead to characterize these social consequences first in directly cultural terms and then secondarily in social psychological terms. Any effort to identify and describe these consequences in these ways is incapable of overcoming the vagueness intrinsic to cultural and socialpsychological approaches. Vagueness is intrinsic to these approaches because any putative cultural or social-psychological consequences of professionalism (or of any other formation in civil society or in the state) can only be identified and described in directly substantivenormative terms. And any substantive-normative lexicon is intrinsically vulnerable to confusion, first, to competing social constructions of meaning by participants, and then to incommensurable interpretations by social scientists and other outside observers. Such a lexicon cannot readily establish intersubjective cognition and understanding, and it certainly cannot yield cumulative social scientific findings over time. All of these problems intrinsic to Parsons’ approach to professions are reflected well in his many references to “social order.” All of these references were vague, directly substantive-normative, and suffered

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from a lack of intersubjective cognition – and then possible falsification or replicable application. Given this, it was literally impossible for Parsons to identify specifically, in intersubjectively cognizable ways, the putative connection between professions and social order. Indeed, this was impossible for the reasons just noted: the phrase social order is vague on its face, and then any characterizations of professions’ consequences which are first and foremost cultural and socialpsychological are invariably cast directly in substantive-normative terms and, therefore, intrinsically confusing. Any and all such descriptions and analyses are prone to both competing social constructions and incommensurable descriptions and interpretations. This is why Parsons’ cultural and social-psychological approach to professionalism failed to steer cross-national and historical empirical inquiries and case studies toward either falsification or replicable cumulative findings. Only in Parsons’ general references to collegial formations – including in sections of his discussion of the American university – do we find an exception, a somewhat improved situation. Only here does Parsons allude at least in part to any social consequences of professionalism which are possibly structural and then institutional. This is an improvement because structural and institutional consequences can potentially be cast primarily in procedural-normative terms, and thus secure intersubjective cognition and understanding – whether by observers or by participants. Yet, even when Parsons describes consequences of professionalism in these ways, including how professions subdue or mediate market-mediating behavior, he nonetheless persists in reverting to more directly substantive-normative characterizations. He does not rely primarily, let alone exclusively, on procedural-normative characterizations. Again, it was difficult for Parsons to take a fulsome procedural turn because a substantive-normative lexicon follows logically from his basic cultural and social-psychological approach not only to professionalism but to all other major sociological issues. He could not abandon a substantive-normative lexicon of professions’ consequences, therefore, without simultaneously abandoning his general approach – a step which no major social theorist is inclined to take. Here, then, was the Achilles’ heel of Parsons’ sociology of professions: It is intrinsically difficult for participants – or observing sociologists and historians – to employ in common across disparate case studies and empirical inquiries any lexicon of occupational upgrading which is directly substantive normative. When anyone attributes to

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occupational practitioners in any particular study or analysis putatively shared substantive-normative cultural understandings and orientations or putatively shared substantive-normative social-psychological beliefs and motivations, such descriptions of behavior are impossible to falsify in the study or analysis at hand. They are also impossible to replicate elsewhere, in other studies or inquiries. 2.4 Our Alternative in Brief We are proposing that sociologists and historians steer clear of this dead-end, of adopting any directly cultural and social-psychological reading of professionalism and its consequences, whether Parsons’ or any other. We propose that they instead adopt an explicitly articulated structural and institutional reading. This alternative simultaneously replaces vague, substantive-normative characterizations of professional socialization and behavior with a bright line procedural-normative threshold of behavior which applies always and everywhere to anyone exercising positional power, to anyone occupying entrenched positions of power within structured situations. Where historical or cross-national applications of substantive-normative characterizations of professionalism resist intersubjectivity, the same applications of a proceduralnormative threshold, being bright-line, attract intersubjectivity. A procedural-normative turn opens the way to identifying with specificity the invariant consequences of professionalism, both immediate and longer-term. In the first place, as we noted above, every ongoing professionalism project unfolds within an identifiable organizational context, an intermediary association or state agency. In addition, it is always coupled with an additional layer of administrative or judicial oversight and regulation. Now we are proposing that the governance, regulation and activities of every ongoing professionalism project, whether within intermediary associations or state agencies, always and everywhere bears on the larger social order first structurally and then institutionally. Whatever cultural and social psychological consequences happen also to attend professionalism are strictly phenomenal. They are extraneous accompanying variables, not invariant, and thus not constitutive of professionalism as such. Being invariant and constitutive of professionalism, all structural qualities and institutional consequences of professionalism are in evidence irrespective of whether participants are aware of what an

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intermediary association, a state agency, or a profession is. Such awareness, after all, was decidedly absent in Paris during the ancien régime. The structural and institutional manifestations of professionalism are equally in evidence irrespective of whether participants wish to professionalize or, for that matter, are aware that this type of occupational upgrading is an available option. However, the reverse relationship does not hold true. Not all intermediary associations or state agencies invariably host professionalism projects. This point of caution is consistent with one of our central propositions in chapter 6: All professions provide expert services within structured situations, but not all structured situations yield professionalism projects, let alone successful ones. After all, during the ancien régime all major académies qualified as intermediary associations. Indeed, because many of them were sponsored by sovereigns, they also qualified as agencies of royal (or princely or papal) administration. Writers and rhetoricians belonged to the most prestigious of all académies, both in Italy and Paris. Musicians, dancers and experimentalists, in turn, belonged at times to more informal, fledgling académies. But only painters and sculptors professionalized, and only in Paris; writers, musicians and experimentalists did not, anywhere in Europe. In addition, we can now also appreciate as a corollary that professionalism may well unfold within an intermediary association or state agency inadvertently rather than purposefully. Aside from this holding true in Paris during the ancien régime, it also held true in all cases of professionalism on the continent up to the 1980s or so. In certain cases this continues today. 3. Invariant Consequences of Professionalism The place and purpose of professions structurally in any society – as occupations which provide expert services within structured situations within intermediary associations or state agencies on the basis of an independent socio-cultural authority – helps us to visualize all consequences which professionalism introduces into civil society structurally, thus always and everywhere. Our structural approach to professionalism reveals that the governance, regulation and activities of professions and their associations introduce structurally into civil society two distinct sets of consequences simultaneously.

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One set are the immediate consequences of professionalism, those for particular professionals or for particular clients, patrons and local communities. These consequences are self-evident and they are frequently noted and debated – in both scholarship and popularly, in specialized literatures devoted to professions and in general journalistic accounts. Moreover, with one exception, these consequences are variables, evolving historically as well as varying cross-nationally today. In addition, with the same exception, they are also typically confined to the stratification system and occupational order, as received wisdom would anticipate. The exception, as we saw in the previous chapter, is one immediate cultural and social-psychological consequence of professions’ independent social-cultural authority, namely the latter’s diffusion into the larger society as a lexical and discursive upgrading. The other set of consequences of professionalism are not only longer term but expansive in scope and invariant, and thus more important for present purposes. These are the consequences of either successful or failed professionalism for the institutional design of the larger social order. These consequences of the governance, regulation and activities of professions and their associations, unlike the immediate ones, are invariant even as the institutional designs being affected by professionalism evolve historically and vary cross-nationally today. Despite being invariant, however, these consequences of professionalism have proven nonetheless to be more elusive than the immediate consequences, and precisely because they are longer term. Being elusive, these consequences have been overlooked and neglected heretofore in the sociology of professions despite the earlier efforts of Parsons and other functionalists to draw attention to the putative relationship between professionalism and social order. 3.1 Two Sets of Consequences 3.1.1 Immediate Consequences The immediate consequences of professionalism are self-evident in that they are the consequences of the governance, regulation and activities of professions which either harm or benefit professional reputations and livelihoods, on the one hand, and client and patron wellbeing and condition or lived situation, on the other. Aside from being familiar in the social science literature and in news media, many of these consequences are indeed also confined to the occupational order and stratification system. Revisionists rightly point to such consequences,

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therefore, in support of their thesis that profession is simply a status category. The problem is that they wrongly believe this quite delimited empirical generalization somehow exhausts the consequences intrinsic to professionalism. The immediate consequences of professionalism include, on the one hand, the relative status of professions in the occupational order as compared to that of other expert occupations and middle class occupations. They also include, on the other, the remuneration and perquisites professionals receive in the stratification system as compared to those of other experts. All of these socio-economic consequences of professionalism are variables, not invariant. Thus, particular trends in these outcomes are hardly constitutive of professionalism as such. Professions, for instance, do not always and everywhere confer greater renown and prestige on their members in the occupational order than do other expert occupations. They also do not invariably yield members greater remuneration and social influence. For example, during the ancien régime, the visual Académie was widely renowned but clearly had less prestige in Paris than the Académie francaise or, for that matter, the Sorbonne. In turn, the commissions awarded to visual academiciens might well result in less income per month than that earned by instructors of riding, fencing and dance or by many tutors and servitors in gentle households. For that matter, the contemporary renown of particular bakers or cabinetmakers might be greater than that of particular visual academiciens. The same sorts of relative differentials in income, status and renown are hardly unknown today or are at all unusual. Lawyers, doctors and scientists frequently have lower incomes – far lower – than entertainers and even journeymen athletes (let alone the stars). They certainly lack the latter’s renown and public visibility. The annual salaries of academic professionals, in turn, including those of Nobel Laureates, are routinely less – far less – than those of football or basketball coaches. Moreover, the prestige rankings of professional associations and graduate schools can vary widely in comparison to that of other occupational organizations and instructional programs. Beyond the socio-economic consequences of professionalism, the cultural and social-psychological consequences of professions’ independent social-cultural authority can also be immediate. We have already seen, however, that these immediate consequences are exceptional in that they are never confined to the occupational order and stratification system. They instead diffuse more generally into civil

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society (and the state). Moreover, in one general respect they are invariant: Always and everywhere professional authority diffuses into the larger society and culture, and in this way stimulates a general lexical and discursive upgrading beyond the occupational order and stratification system. This diffusion not only can upgrade the condition or lived situation of experts and middle-class practitioners who are not professionals, who instead provide services within embedded exchanges and at fluid sites of commerce and diversion. In addition, and invariably, it also upgrades the discernment and taste of current and prospective clients and patrons, and then also of any and all interested outsiders, and then even further for reading publics more generally. Regardless, if the immediate consequences of professionalism did in fact exhaust all structural consequences attending professions’ sheer presence in civil society, the revisionist reaction to Parsonian functionalism would remain credible. It would remain credible as received wisdom in the sociology of professions even if frayed somewhat by the more expansive scope of the immediate consequences of professions’ independent socio-cultural authority. Our point, however, is that there are additional structural consequences of professionalism, and these consequences are: never immediate, never confined to the occupational order and stratification system, and never variable. They are longer term, either benefit or harm institutional design, and are invariant. 3.1.2 Institutional Consequences The second set of consequences of professionalism is longer-term and institutional, and thus in its impact clearly exceeds the occupational order and stratification system. These consequences are also more important analytically and empirically precisely because they are invariant, even as their impact varies with the type of institutional design in place. These consequences are constitutive of professionalism as such because always and everywhere professions introduce these consequences structurally into the larger social order. This is precisely why professions always and everywhere affect the direction of social change. The institutional consequences of professionalism stem structurally from the fact that professionals, and their associations, always and everywhere exercise positional power over dependents in structured situations on the basis of an independent socio-cultural authority within

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intermediary associations or state agencies. How professionals, and their associations, typically and openly exercise positional power over dependents always and everywhere supports structurally, enervates structurally or exposes structural limitations in whatever institutional design is in place. We propose, that is, that the institutional consequences of professionalism are invariant because they are structural. However, the institutional designs being affected are variables, evolving historically and varying cross-nationally today, and thus the specific impacts of these consequences likewise evolve and vary. One example of the structural invariance to which we are pointing comes into view when professionals act with integrity, consistently with their independent socio-cultural authority. They then always and everywhere exercise positional power short of one-sidedness or abuse. It goes without saying that they also do not typically – and openly – act self-interestedly to a point of opportunism or irresponsibility. But we can now add to this basic proposition examples of variation in institutional design, to see how the impact of integrity thereby varies with this. Integrity in professional practice and professional research always and everywhere supports structurally only one set of institutional designs, that of lawful, democratic, commercially competitive societies. The same behavioral integrity by professionals always and everywhere either enervates structurally, or at minimum introduces a structural irritant into, all other institutional designs without exception. On the one hand, always and everywhere, historically and today, ongoing professionalism enervates structurally all societies and regimes which are manifestly autocratic in institutional design. These societies and regimes include, of course, the aristocratic societies, dynastic states and absolute monarchies of the ancien régime. They also include all authoritarian societies and despotic regimes of the modern world, including those today. Ongoing professionalism, including that which unfolded inadvertently in the visual Académie, never supports structurally any of these institutional designs. On the other hand, ongoing professionalism also always and everywhere introduces a structural irritant into the institutional designs that remain, neither fully democratic nor autocratic. Being both wideranging in scope and internally variegated, this intermediate category spans all institutional designs, historically and today, which resist outright autocracy and yet fail to democratize sufficiently to qualify unambiguously as democratic, commercially competitive societies. Ongoing

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professionalism exposes severe structural limitations within or introduces salient structural tensions into this entire intermediate category of institutional designs. The institutional designs we have in mind include not only those which Larry Diamond categorizes generally as “pseudo-democracies,” those which fall short even of formal or electoral democracy. They also include regimes which institutionalize fair and free elections but otherwise fall short of liberal-democracy (or social-democracy) structurally and institutionally (and then also socio-culturally). Such regimes span those which Guillermo O’Donnell calls “delegative democracy,” others call “illiberal democracy,” and Diamond categorizes generally as “intermediate democracy.” For present purposes, we restrict our discussion to two major examples of intermediate democracy, of institutional designs which are clearly formally democratic but also, equally clearly, fall short structurally of a lawful democratic society.15 One example is that noted above in passing, formal or electoral democracy. It includes prewar continental Rechtsstaats as well as American democracy prior to Progressive reforms at the turn of the twentieth century. Today it also includes most new democracies in the South and East. The other example goes a step further, limited government. It includes post-Progressive reform American democracy as well as postwar continental Rechtsstaats and, today, most contemporary established democracies more generally, including continental Sozialstaats. Our point is that all relationships between professions and institutional design, being structural and invariant, hold true not only crossnationally today but historically as well. They hold true during the ancien régime, when notions of profession and democratic society were utterly anachronistic. They hold equally true cross-nationally today, when the institutional designs of most social orders are at once not manifestly autocratic but at the same time self-evidently fall short structurally even of liberal or social democracy, let alone of fully democratic, commercially competitive society. 15 How and why a liberal democracy or social democracy can also fall short of lawful democratic society structurally and institutionally is beyond the scope of this paper, as is our elaborated typology of institutional designs. For more discussion and elaboration, see Sciulli 2009,2010.

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3.2 Trojan Horses on the Continent The negative longer-term consequences which professionalism introduces into most institutional designs today, and into all institutional designs until the turn of the twentieth century or so, explains why policy makers as well as social theorists on the continent have long considered expert occupations in general and professions in particular to be Trojan Horses. We have seen already that Bourdieu accepts this understanding today, as if the reasoning behind it is self-evident. The same understanding pervaded postwar Germany and remains in place today. “[S]omehow the notion that a professional association is a dangerous Trojan horse let loose on society unless it is controlled by its Basis has crept into the thinking of many German scholars since the late 1960s. They may indeed be correct, but their argument is based on implicit assumptions rather than explicit evidence.”16 We can help them gather evidence. The German scholars just noted by McClelland, as well as many other social scientists today on both sides of the Atlantic, see middle class employees being literally forced to choose between “professionalizing” (Professionalisierung) and “unionizing” (gewerkschaftlich organisierend). Then, more particularly, they see the middle-class employees who participate in professionalism projects invariably entering Trojan horses. These middle-class employees, the reasoning continues, invariably adopt an elitist, exclusionary ethos which, in turn, intrinsically supports capitalism (neo-liberalism). For instance, professionalizing middle-class employees typically encourage state-administration conciliation (Harmonisierung) with corporations. Correlatively, when the same sorts of middle-class employees forsake professionalism and instead adopt a unionization project, German scholars see all of this as intrinsically more benign. Their activities are more communal internally even though a union may be more confrontational externally, in its workplace and policy implications. A unionization project, presumably, resists capitalism, including, for instance, by typically discouraging the Harmonisierung just noted. Unionized middle-class employees instead presumably share culturally and social-psychologically the convictions and sentiments of 16

McClelland 1990:99–100.

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rank-and-file working classes, which of course include a more confrontational approach to labor-management negotiations and issues.17 The roots of this postwar characterization of the consequences of Professionalisierung can be traced a full century earlier, well before this bastardized term entered postwar German usage along with the Allied occupation. This general view first emerged during the middle-third of the nineteenth century, as the cultural hegemony of the Bürgertum in civil society was being consolidated. Of course, the rise of occupations with learned, middle-class personnel was evident in Germany even earlier, a full generation before this consolidation. Beginning at the turn of the nineteenth century, these occupations advanced their interests through large and powerful associations which were autonomous from the state. As such, they were already mistrusted by the state administration. Indeed, from this period through the 1860s and 1870s, and Bürgertum consolidation, these occupations and associations were opposed officially. German state administrations understood full well that any such independent (or “free”) social formations in civil society could potentially rival state authority, irrespective of whether or not occupation leaders directly challenged official policies, or officials’ authority or social status.18 This tension between state administrations and independent social formations in civil society was also being articulated repeatedly in Germany at philosophical levels. At the onset of the nineteenth century, for instance, Hegel had identified the state administration as the “universal class” or “general estate,” as the only identifiable corporate body capable of embodying objectively and articulating subjectively the public interest or general will. By mid-century, however, a rising, more amorphous Bürgertum was implicitly claiming this lofty standing for itself, at least on a broad cultural plane. Simultaneously, Karl Marx was proposing the definitive alternative to such hubris: the proletariat, not the Bürgertum, occupies this privileged position. Of course, Marx quickly added that the proletariat occupies this privileged position only structurally, as a class “in itself,” not yet and not necessarily selfconsciously as a class “for itself,” with shared, suitably “class-conscious,” social-psychological convictions and cultural understandings. 17

For similar views by French and American co-authors, see Dezalay and Garth (1996, 2002). In Britain, Evetts and Dingwall (2002:166) pose this issue when discussing how professions interrelate with European Union governance. 18 Ledford 1997:236.

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No one was yet arguing, or implying, whether in Germany or anywhere else on the continent, that any subset of occupations in civil society is somehow similarly privileged, and thereby legitimately rivals and restrains state authority, whether structurally (and passively) or culturally (and more actively). However, this idea would soon be broached in France, albeit in far more general terms. Durkheim argued at the end of century, in both The Division of Labor in Society and Suicide, that occupational solidarity of one kind or another is the only possible response capable of counteracting systemic trends toward anomie and drift, as reflected in rising suicide rates. Regardless, within Germany earlier, at mid-century, liberal reformers were, at best, simply more sanguine than were state administrators about the likely consequences, at once cultural and political, of the presence of independent occupational associations in civil society. Moreover, from the 1870s forward a now unified German Reich relaxed its official opposition, permitting the rise of “free” – as opposed to civil service – learned occupations and associations.19 Of course, at times the state administration retreated from this policy of accommodation and acceptance, reverting instead to intimidation, if not repression. When it did revert, some liberal reformers came to believe that the occupations resisting the state were, by this very behavior, demonstrating that occupationally-specific standardbearers of the “universal interest” existed within the more amorphous Bürgertum. But many liberal reformers pointed to the judiciary, a part of the state administration, and not to other occupations; they complimented this stance with separation-of-powers arguments. Others pointed to lawyers, arguing that their resistance to state intimidation in particular was capable of instructing all Germans by example in the skills of citizenship. A focus on lawyers, however, raised anew the old playoff between professionalization and unionization; because judges were (and remain) civil servants, they stood above this tension. Over time most liberal reformers steadily concurred with state administrators, as opposed to remaining antagonistic or otherwise defiant. They agreed that independent occupational associations introduce into civil society not only elitism and an exclusionary ethos but also cupidity, a values- or community-corroding commercialism and acquisitiveness. They also agreed that such a trajectory of social

19

McClelland 1990:100.

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change can only potentially jeopardize social order, at first culturally (by enervating shared understandings), then socio-economically (by skewing the occupational order and stratification system), and finally social-psychologically (by heightening street-level interestantagonisms and interpersonal misunderstandings of once shared beliefs and convictions). It is easy to see why this entire way of thinking about institutional design – about the structured relationship between civil society and the state – associates anything akin to Anglo-American professionalism with malevolence, with social disorder, not beneficence – integration or benign social order. By contrast, Parsons would see postwar professionalism, on the very same cultural and social-psychological grounds, contributing invariably to benevolent social integration, what Etzioni today would call communitarianism, but of course within a quite different institutional design, that of the United States. For their part, German and other continental practitioners of learned occupations – a distinct subset of members of a larger Bildungsbürgertum – could not imagine organizing themselves legitimately, and thus successfully, in any way other than in close association with state administrations or, at minimum, by quite purposefully mimicking the latter’s occupational practices, including state administrative standards for entry and advancement. The civil service, in short, provided the leaders of learned occupations, indeed, all leaders in the occupational order, with the exemplar of occupational success, of both status distinction and moral (or communal) respectability – as Hegel would have anticipated. Thus, the ultimate legitimacy and success of any learned occupation’s claim to lofty social status and fiducial responsibility in Germany, and elsewhere on the continent, hinged on whether the state recognized or otherwise supported its governance structure and occupational activities.20 Of course, by the turn of the twentieth century the civil service developed its own lobbying organizations, thereby complicating matters considerably. Civil service lobbyists, after all, promoted unambiguously particular occupational interests. Yet, they persisted in doing so in the name of advancing the universal interest, an ideological stance which could only stimulate their zeal in protecting and aggressively

20 McClelland 1990:108–9. See Dyson 1980 on how “ ‘state’ societies” of the continent differ from the less state-centric societies of the Anglo-American world.

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advancing state authority while, on the other side, seemingly delegitimating any efforts by leaders of independent learned occupations (and others) to resist their lobbyists. The problem with this entire continental approach to professionalism is that the policy makers, social theorists and philosophers noted above roundly misunderstood and mischaracterized the source and nature of the structural insidiousness of professionalism as regards institutional design, what they called the value-order or communal order. Professionalism does not directly challenge structurally, let alone harm, the cultural hegemony of the Bildungsbürgertum, of cultivated or educated middle classes and their occupations. Nor, for that matter, does it directly challenge structurally the exemplary social status and putative moral respectability which higher state officials have attained so unambiguously in Germany and (to lesser extents) in other continental societies (such as Italy, France and Scandinavia). Professionalism does, however, enervate structurally all institutional designs of autocracy. Nearly as insidiously, it also exposes severe structural limitations in all formal democracies and all limited governments, and thus in all Rechtsstaats and Sozialstaats.21 This holds true, then, not only for the Weimar Republic and Third Republic but also for the machine politics (or patron-client networks) of the same era in Chicago and New York. It also holds true today for all postwar continental Rechtsstaats and Sozialstaats. Professions are indeed Trojan horses in this particular, analytically and empirically identifiable respect. Professionalism introduces insidious long-term consequences into all of these institutional designs – civil societies, regimes and states – by always and everywhere anticipating structurally one and only one set of institutional designs, that of democratic, commercially competitive societies. Professionalism anticipates this single set of institutional designs structurally even when these institutional designs are completely anachronistic to contemporaries, unavailable culturally or lexically either to occupational practitioners and researchers or to state (or royal) administrators. This held true during the ancien régime and it continued to hold true on the continent well into the twentieth century (as professionalism remained unknown lexically to non-English speakers). On the other hand, if the Bildungsbürgertum or state administrations suffer from this structural tension or strain which professionalism

21

Again, these types are discussed in greater detail beginning at page 269.

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introduces uniquely and intrinsically into institutional design, this suffering – this immediate consequence – is both inadvertent and also variable. It is neither purposeful nor invariant. Any particular substantive affects on the social-psychological beliefs or cultural understandings or socio-economic perquisites of particular groups and individuals are extraneous accompanying variables of professionalism, not invariant consequences of professionalism as such. 3.3 Democratic Society as Baseline of Institutional Design Before elaborating further on the invariant institutional consequences of professionalism we may note briefly our basis for distinguishing institutional designs. Again, institutional design is a variable; it evolves historically and today it varies cross-nationally. But our thesis is that the structural relationship between professionalism and institutional design is invariant. It holds true immutably across history and holds equally true cross-nationally today even as institutional designs continue to evolve and vary. We turn first to the institutional designs of advanced societies, of civil societies – not simply states and regimes – which are both representative and responsive politically and competitive commercially in increasingly global markets. These institutional designs are distinct analytically from all other institutional designs today, to say nothing of all institutional designs historically. Only in democratic, commercially competitive societies do courts (or, in civil law countries, administrative agencies) endeavor to identify and then negatively to sanction not only one-sidedness within public governance, one-sided exercises of positional power within and by state administrations. They also endeavor to identify and then sanction one-sidedness within private governance, one-sided exercises of positional power within and by intermediary associations of a certain kind. These are the intermediary associations – led today by professions and publicly traded corporations – whose governance, typical occupational activities, or both either unfold within received structured situations in civil society or introduce structured situations into civil society. By contrast, limited governments, as we will see, are a quite different institutional design because they endeavor only to stem public onesidedness. In turn, formal democracies are yet another institutional design because they fail even to take this step. Only democratic, commercially competitive societies endeavor to stem not only public

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one-sidedness but also private one-sidedness. They take this additional step beyond limited government by extending institutionally the procedural norms of clear and consistent rule making and rule enforcement discussed in Chapter 4 from the public governance structures of state agencies to the private governance structures of the major intermediary associations in civil society noted above. Democratic, commercially competitive societies in this sense, therefore, are not necessarily more democratizing (leveling) governmentally or politically than limited government, more robustly representative and responsive. Nor, certainly, are they necessarily more egalitarian or leveling socially or culturally than limited government. Of course, either or both of these outcomes can turn out to be the case in particular instances, if elites, mobilized social movements, or mass electorates either demand or permit such outcomes. Our point is that democratic, commercially competitive societies are instead incarnations of a “societal constitutionalism,”22 for the key factor distinguishing them institutionally from all alternatives is that the rule of law is extending from public governance structures, within and around state agencies, to private governance structures, within and around professions and publicly traded corporations. The courts (or agencies) of democratic societies, in short, go far beyond their counterparts in limited governments, to say nothing of those in formal democracies. By endeavoring to identify and then discourage one-sidedness within and by major intermediary associations, they take note, even more particularly, of any and all instances of one-sidedness by individuals who occupy entrenched positions of power in structured situations in civil society. After all, by endeavoring to extend clear and consistent rule making and rule enforcement to major intermediary associations in civil society, the effectiveness of private governance structures in identifying and negatively sanctioning positional onesidedness becomes uniquely a focus of judicial or administrative attention. We saw in Chapter 4 that this ongoing effort, to extend the jurisdiction of readily identifiable procedural norms of positional power from the state to civil society, is a central concern today of the American corporate judiciary’s fiduciary law tradition. This effort was not at all central to this same judiciary earlier, during the 1950s and 1960s.

22

See Sciulli 1992 and 2010.

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Indeed, we can say more generally that the institutional design of democratic, commercially competitive societies did not begin to unfold anywhere in the world, including in the United States and Europe, until the late 1960s and early 1970s. Until then the central concern of courts in common law countries as well as of administrative agencies in civil law countries was much more confined. At best, they endeavored to impose procedural-normative standards of behavior on state officials and agencies.23 The central concern, in short, was to consolidate limited government, after generations of autocracy and corporatism (in Europe) and machine politics or patron-client networks (in the United States). However, structural pressure was building in civil society during the 1960s to extend at least in part into the occupational order the jurisdiction of a procedurally redefined fiduciary law tradition.24 Our point is that this pressure originated uniquely within professionalism. It is today diffusing to other major intermediary associations in civil society as a result of a literal culture of professionalism. This culture of professionalism did indeed originate uniquely in the United States, at the turn of the twentieth century.25 But today it, too, is extending ever more rapidly elsewhere, not only to occupational groups in other established democracies in the West but also even more generally, to occupational groups in new democracies and even authoritarian regimes of the South and East. This culture of professionalism gained new impetus in the United States during the 1960s by diffusing, quite inadvertently, from professions proper into the governance structures of publicly traded corporations. This diffusion proceeded apace even as professionalism was being resisted in other areas of these same intermediary associations, including in traditional (industrial) corporate production functions. Today, Delaware courts impose procedurally defined fiducial duties of care and loyalty on corporate officers as mandatory rules, at least at 23

In discussing the “juridical field as a social space,” Bourdieu does not distinguish the procedural-normative integrity of law from its substantive-normative content, and he fails to distinguish legal professionals from judicial bureaucrats (e.g. 1987:818– 19,833–34). But here and elsewhere he nonetheless appreciates the importance of laws or rules mediating “magically” what we are calling positional power (e.g. 1987:830,848– 50). “Not everything in the bureaucratic contract is contractual: the regulations that define the duties of the subordinate part also define the limits of the arbitrary rule of the dominant” (Bourdieu 2000:131). 24 See the end of Chapter 9 on substantive norms and procedural norms. 25 See Bledstein 1978.

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times. Such judicial decisions encourage clear and consistent rule making and rule enforcement in the governance structures of publicly traded corporations. These corporations, in turn, constitute one major set of intermediary associations in civil society, with professions being the other. The Delaware courts are treating the governance structures of publicly traded corporations as structured situations in civil society. Our point is that this is what is making these corporations more and more amenable to professionalization, not the social-psychological beliefs, cultural understandings, or self-interested strivings of corporate officers – whatever these happen to be. The general point institutionally of Delaware courts extending procedural-normative restraints from state agencies to a major set of intermediary associations is that Delaware judges are discouraging positional one-sidedness in principle. They are discouraging onesidedness by anyone occupying entrenched positions of power in any structured situation. This judicial vigilance both reflects and helps to activate or bring to practice a structural pressure on institutional design, a pressure which originated in and ultimately remains driven by how positional power is exercised within structured situations found within and around professions proper. 4. In Brief: Historical Evolution of Institutional Designs 4.1 Autocracy The institutional designs of democratic, commercially competitive societies differ analytically in the specific respect just discussed from those of limited governments, and then more fulsomely still from those of formal democracies. It goes without saying that they differ most fundamentally from the institutional designs of all autocracies past and present, from the ancien régime to today. During the ancien régime societies were aristocratic, culturally (not commercially) competitive and most states were dynastic and absolutist (an exception being the United Republics of the Low Countries). Institutionally, social order in aristocratic societies of the ancien régime revolved around substantive-normative prescriptions of honnêteté (urbanity) and proscriptions of derogeance (derogation) and around dense vertical and horizontal networks of patron-client relationships. These networks not only tolerated but encouraged open nepotism, patronage and venality. With one exception, all advantageous

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occupational positions, from those in the loftiest learned corporation to those in the lowliest artisanal or merchant guild, were accessible only through these pathways. The exception structurally to this pervasive practice was the major court-sponsored académies: literary, visual and experimentalist. Here alone meritocracy entered the picture, not displacing nepotism and patronage entirely but nonetheless interjecting into the mix non-negotiable thresholds of demonstrable expertise. Among académies, the most dramatic manifestations of meritocracy by far were found within visual académies. But only the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris truly institutionalized this structural innovation of the academic movement. Visual académies were the only intermediary associations or state agencies during the ancien régime that were accessible first and foremost only by crossing clear thresholds of merit and expertise. Only with this could nepotism and patronage then enter the picture, always secondarily or additionally. Open venality, by contrast, was rarely if ever in evidence within any académies, and particularly visual académies. From the late eighteenth century through the 1870s (and beyond in many instances), culturally competitive aristocratic societies gave way steadily to commercially competitive middle-class societies.26 As this transition in the bases of social distinction and diplomatic leverage unfolded, structured situations and institutional designs evolved accordingly. Occupations dedicated to ceremony and decoration became redefined as diverting and commercial, and became accessible both in embedded exchanges and at fluid sites. Practitioners of these occupations voluntarily abandoned the earlier, inadvertent professionalism projects of their predecessors – even when the very notion of profession remains unknown to them. On the one hand, writers, painters and sculptors steadily challenged rather than embraced received standards of epistemological and didactic weightiness; on the other, they also quite openly disregarded any pretense of fiducial responsibility.27 At best, they were now held simply 26 Even into the early decades of the twentieth century the highest-status members of the Bürgertum (such as in Vienna) frequently continued, or aspired to continue, the aristocracy’s legacy of cultural competition – as a manifestation of path-dependence – even as commercial competitiveness was quickening. 27 In Paris we can see the transition within ambitious painting in the careers of Ernest Meissonier (1815–1891), the most renowned academicien of his generation, and Edouard Manet (1832–1882), the inadvertent founder of Impressionism (King 2006). Not surprisingly, Meissonier continued the professionalism project of the

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to any sanctions of contract law, commercial law and civil law applied to everyone in civil society, including retailers. By contrast, occupations dedicated to legal and medical services (and research), and then to science and engineering, became redefined as structured situations, not diversions or simple commercial changes. They became foci of fiduciary law concerns (in Great Britain) or, alternatively, of state oversight, regulation and intervention (on the continent). Most modernizing societies in Europe nonetheless remained autocratic governmentally or otherwise took authoritarian turns even as they jettisoned strictly dynastic rulership. The history of France from the Napoleonic era into the early twentieth century, to say nothing of the histories of Germany, Italy and Spain, illustrate this well. What typically happens in modernizing societies which fail to democratize sufficiently to stabilize liberal-democratic regimes – that is, either established formal democracy or limited government coupled with relatively free markets – is that elites or social movements react quite logically to the structural irritation stemming from ongoing professionalism. They do so irrespective of whether professionalism is purposeful or inadvertent. They endeavor to reduce or remove this structural irritation by compromising the integrity of professionalism. They either wrest positional power from professionals, as best they can, through detailed regulations. Or, alternatively, they permit, induce or compel professionals to act opportunistically (consistently with clientelist favoritism) and, at the limiting case, one-sidedly (consistently with state decree). In either case, elites or social movements endeavor to bring professionals into line, to get them to provide services or undertake research consistently with the institutional design prevailing in autocratic regimes and imposed societies. They either want to subject professions to tight, intrusive state controls or, alternatively, they simply permit Académie, upholding scrupulously received epistemological and didactic standards of success. More surprising, given our post-Impressionist view of art today, Manet never really challenged these standards directly. His paintings did indeed flaunt them, and yet he personally wished to have his work displayed in official Salons. That is, he endeavored to affiliate his very different canvases – less precise in depicting historical or contemporary events and less finished in painterly execution – with received epistemological and didactic standards of success even as he was violating these standards. He never, however, challenged these standards directly or the Académie’s independent socio-cultural authority. By contrast, his younger contemporaries – Monet, Renoir, Cezanne and Degas – certainly challenged both, as did, for that matter, the slightly older Courbet.

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them to provide services consistently with patron-client networks. In either case, such actions simultaneously compromise and erode the independence of professionals’ socio-cultural authority. As professionals provide expert services in heteronomous (externally controlled) ways or in opportunistic and one-sided ways, their occupational activities become increasingly consistent with prevailing institutional design rather than any longer enervating it structurally (and then potentially challenging it openly, culturally). The problem, of course, is that any sustained conformity with this sort of institutional design simultaneously terminates professionalism projects, along several fronts. All of these fronts reflect a structured situation being redefined as an embedded exchange (dominated by the state) or a fluid site (dominated by either favoritism or anonymous retail commercialism). First, the epistemological and didactic bases of a profession’s independent socio-cultural authority are disregarded or slighted, as is the fiducial responsibility intrinsic to structured situations. Second, expert services are no longer provided relatively disinterestedly and deliberatively. They are instead provided on the basis of favoritism or in response to state decree. Third, entry to occupational instruction and then recruitment to occupational practice are no longer exclusively or primarily meritocratic. Patronage becomes much more vital, indeed decisive. Taking all three developments (and likely others) together, because an independent socio-cultural authority no longer subdues and discourages open nepotism and patronage (and, at the limiting case, venality), these pathways increasingly dominate professional entry, recruitment and service delivery. 4.2 Modernizing Formal Democracy (including Rechtsstaat) A few modernizing societies, most notably England but also the Low Countries, took a more classically liberal turn as early as the late seventeenth century, and subsequently consolidated first formal democracy and then limited government. And yet even under conditions of transition in England, from an aristocratic, culturally competitive past, the new state institutions first of formal democracy and then of limited government typically glittered atop civil societies still dominated, as before, by nepotism and patronage, if no longer by open venality. Evolving civil societies in England were increasingly accommodating middle-class sensibilities, to be sure. But aristocratic cultural understandings lingered through path-dependence. In addition, the new

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structured situations of these transitional civil societies failed – both substantive normatively and procedural normatively – to subdue lingering opportunism and one-sidedness by power-holders. The problem that increasingly came into view is that self-interestedness and opportunism were increasing dramatically within embedded exchanges and at fluid sites of commerce and diversion. New ideologies of laissezfaire, which first gained popular currency in England during the 1820s and 1830s, reflect this well. In short, early formal democracy in England in particular rested upon rather precarious socio-cultural foundations. After all, social order continued to wax or wane directly with directly substantivenormative standards of acceptable behavior and social control. These standards included lingering practices of nepotism and patronage as well as lingering aristocratic cultural understandings of discernment and taste. Social order did not yet rest primarily on proceduralnormative standards of disinterestedness and impersonal trust. This is why the social order underlying early formal democracy in England (and then on the continent) could still resemble structurally and thus in institutional design the social order of earlier aristocratic societies, those typical at the zenith of the ancien régime. Formal democracy introduces into the institutional design of autocracy only procedures and norms of public representation: elections, competing political parties and rights of citizenship (including of political participation). Otherwise, it can continue to fill through open nepotism and patronage all major appointed positions in the state and all enviable openings in major intermediary associations in civil society, even if it typically proscribes open venality. This is precisely the situation which prevailed in England, including in the vaunted British civil service until 1870. Only then were entrance examinations finally introduced, finally interjecting demonstrable thresholds of meritocracy or expertise into the mix of public governance. This precarious situation was even more evident on the continent across the middle third of the nineteenth century, during the transition noted above from societies that had been socio-culturally aristocratic to societies that were becoming socio-culturally middle class, Bürgerlichkeit. The social order of a modernizing formal democracy on the continent, an early Rechtsstaat, typically combined in institutional design, on the one hand, appointment nepotism and patronage with, on the other, bureaucratic chains of command originating in the state administration. This institutional design then diffused culturally,

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seemingly ontologically, into the private governance structures of intermediary associations in civil society. That is, the most basic cultural understandings and socio-cultural ethos of administrative elites, those which contemporaries considered literally ontological, increasingly diffused deeply within civil society, in tandem with lingering aristocratic cultural understandings. As a result of this, all other Bürgertum positions in civil society striving for official recognition and status distinction, including all “free” expert occupations, took their bearings socio-culturally from the characteristics of higher administrative officials. They endeavored strenuously: to recruit personnel whose backgrounds, formal instruction and training mimicked those of personnel entering the civil service; to mimic the entry requirements of the civil service; and, where they could, to mimic the occupational activities and criteria for advancement of the civil service. As any such administrative state becomes more modernizing, it subdues its received “substantive rational” standards and practices – including open favoritism based on nepotism and patronage – in favor of instituting “formal rational” thresholds of meritocracy and expertise for entry into and then advancement within state positions. Again, we see this in the rise of entrance examinations for the British civil service, but Germany (Prussia) led the way here. It introduced examinations for senior civil service positions a full century earlier, during the 1770s.28 With this, contemporaries finally acknowledged universally that higher state offices contain structured situations. They acknowledged that positional power can be exercised one-sidedly here if constraints, at first substantive-normative, are not firmly institutionalized. Contemporaries thereby shared a universal expectation that state administrators are rightly constrained by (substantive-normative) fiducial responsibilities or, at minimum, by (substantive-normative) statutory proscriptions, including constitutional provisions for rights of citizenship. Accordingly higher state offices were no longer seen as household property. More generally, they were also no longer seen simply as embedded exchanges, at which official discretion or exercises of positional power can be constrained sufficiently effectively by laws – contract law, criminal law and civil law – applied generally to everyone in civil society.

28

Blanning 2002:199.

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Once this institutional design of a nineteenth century Rechtsstaat is consolidated, which is typical historically on the continent and particularly in Germany, a socio-cultural ethos of deference to administrative officials, and to the meritocratic standards – formally rational and substantive rational – by which they enter and advance in office diffuses deeply into civil society. It diffuses into all major intermediary associations, and particularly those contemporaries believe also contain structured situations. This diffusion means, however, that within this institutional design leaders of Bürgertum occupations which seemingly could professionalize typically fail to go this far, whether inadvertently or purposefully, even as they are undertaking projects of occupational upgrading. They typically fail truly to establish and maintain an independent sociocultural authority in civil society. Instead, the socio-cultural authority of the state administration is literally hegemonic, at once unremittingly intimidating and splendidly appealing. Related, leaders of Bürgertum occupations also do not typically bear fiducial responsibility truly directly, and thus truly establish and maintain private governance structures. They instead look to statutory law and state administration regulation and discretion for guidance regarding what their possible extra-contractual and extrastatutory responsibilities are. As a result of this general, society-wide deference to state administration, professional-client relationships, to the extent they are present in civil society, are not acknowledged universally to be structured situations. This is not part of any cultural truism of a society and era. Any such relationships are instead considered either embedded exchanges, ultimately governed by the state administration, or fluid sites of Bürgerlichkeit favoritism and commercialism, ultimately prone to caprice – opportunism and one-sidedness. In either case, state administrators properly regulate these relationships directly substantive-normatively and thus consistently – isomorphically – with their own independent socio-cultural authority and fiducial responsibility in public governance. In turn, leaders of “free” expert occupations adhere more or less unthinkingly to this prevailing, seemingly ontological, socio-cultural ethos of the state administration. They do so by typically deferring unquestioningly to state decrees. They thereby attribute their own fiducial responsibility and independent socio-cultural authority to the state. State administrators, in turn, govern themselves accordingly, consistently with the formal-rational

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and substantive-rational norms of bureaucratic organization, namely typically hierarchically but at times collegially and deliberatively. Such society-wide deference to the socio-cultural ethos of state administration is not only supported structurally by institutional design. It is also promoted actively by widely shared cultural understandings and orientations and social-psychological beliefs and convictions. All of this is then reflected directly and unambiguously in basic, prevailing Bürgertlichkeit sensibilities: in middle-class cognitive understandings and orientations as well as internalized beliefs, desires and motivations. A putatively “universalistic” and disinterested civil service – a Hegelian “estate” capable in common of embodying, identifying and advancing the “general interest” – can become, as in Germany, the occupational exemplar of the entire Bürgertum culturally and social psychologically, and thus on directly substantive-normative grounds. It can set the quotidian, substantive-normative standards of behavior by which all Bürgertum occupations in civil society gauge their relative standing and status: their instructional facilities and requirements, then their standards of occupational entry, advancement and perquisites, and finally their social status and perquisites. Thus, research scientists, unlike practicing professionals, can credibly claim within this institutional design that they are acting disinterestedly, and thus can thereby credibly claim an independent socio-cultural authority. But they can do so only to the extent that they conduct themselves like state administrators – instructionally, occupationally and socially. Like state administrators, they can treat their occupational activities as a vocation, a calling, not simply as a means to a livelihood. But they cannot, as do state administrators, bear ultimate fiducial responsibility for the delivery of their expert services; the state administration literally monopolizes this. There is yet a third institutional alternative, in addition to despotic constraint of professionalism and then early Rechtsstaat subordination of professionalism to state authority and fiducial responsibility. It is possible in formal democracy for institutional design to revolve around a more unalloyed commercialism (and clientelist favoritism). Within such an institutional design, which is more typical in the Anglo-American world and particularly in the United States, the prevailing socio-cultural ethos is captured well by the adage caveat emptor. Self-interestedness, favoritism and, at the limiting case, one-sidedness are tolerated, indeed encouraged, generally across civil

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society. At times, such behavior diffuses or encroaches into structured situations. This diffusion, like that in early Rechtsstaats, also means, however, that leaders of Bürgertum occupations within this very different institutional design also typically fail to professionalize, whether inadvertently or purposefully, even as they otherwise undertake projects of occupational upgrading. They typically fail to establish and maintain an independent socio-cultural authority in civil society because they are instead preoccupied by commercial success and other forms of selfinterestedness. Continental Europe today at times combines this last institutional design with that of the Rechtsstaat, namely in the relationship between corporatist peak associations in civil society, on one side, and state agencies, on the other. Here commercialism and decree become mutually supportive. Together they can permit or tolerate one-sided exercises of positional power in civil society, as long as substantive-normative standards of behavior appear to be met. 5. Typology of Institutional Designs Today Our general point in reviewing the three historical institutional designs above, which span the state (or regime) and civil society, is that all three clearly fall short structurally of the institutional designs of democratic, economically competitive societies which we described first, as our baseline. Standing back from this admittedly schematic historical overview, we can now draw sharper analytical distinctions between three of the most prominent institutional designs today: formal democracy, limited government, and democratic society. This trichotomy is particularly salient in contemporary cross-national research because these three general sets of institutional designs literally exhaust those currently available to advanced societies.29 5.1 Formal Democracy We begin by identifying the specific respects in which the first set of institutional designs, that of formal democracy, differs analytically 29 We present elsewhere a somewhat more elaborate typology of contemporary institutional designs, in manuscripts which address directly the available types of democracy and authoritarianism today. See Sciulli 2009 for a brief statement in print.

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from the institutional designs of both despotism historically and autocracy since the mid-nineteenth century.30 Unlike these societies, regimes, and states, formal democracy institutionalizes regularly held elections, competing political parties, and general citizenship rights, including First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly and conscience. These rights and freedoms are reflected in capsule in whether a relatively independent press is present or not. As Mexico well illustrated under the PRI and as the Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon governments continue to illustrate today, the institutional design of formal democracy is quite compatible structurally with both of two distinct types of onesidedness in exercises of positional power, that by state agencies and that by professions, corporations and other major intermediary associations in civil society. Bright-line procedural-normative thresholds are literally non-existent, and thus do not restrain the behavior of Mexican state officials short of one-sidedness, to say nothing of opportunism, including clientelist favoritism. Such thresholds certainly do not restrain from one-sidedness, or opportunism, Mexican occupational experts and corporate officers. To the contrary, substantive-normative standards of behavior prevail both structurally and institutionally which unambiguously tolerate if not openly encourage nepotism, patronage and venality. These standards orient both agencies of the state at all levels and major intermediary associations in Mexican civil society. They not only subdue and distort but utterly displace procedural norms of meritocratic entry and advancement, both instructional and occupational. Social order in formal democracy, in short, can be and typically is maintained through some combination of official decree and substantive-normative standards of social control which are open to competing, incommensurable understandings and interpretations. The same combination was found, as we just reviewed, in Western formal democracy when Europe and North America were modernizing. In all such cases, social order is not maintained on the basis of bright line procedural-normative thresholds of clear and consistent lawmaking and law enforcement which, at the very least, restrain one-sidedness by state officials. To the contrary, the institutional design of formal 30

Lijphart and Waisman (1996:4) focus on three types of postwar autocracies: the Leninist party authoritarianism of the former Eastern bloc, the military authoritarianism of the Southern Cone of Latin America prior to 1990, and the hegemonic party authoritarianism of Mexico, prior to the election of Vicente Fox in 2000.

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democracy is entirely compatible structurally with one-sidedness by the state administration. Then, by extension, it is equally compatible structurally with one-sided exercises of positional power within any and all structured situations in civil society. After all, within civil society, patron-client networks prevail structurally, not bureaucratic hierarchy – and not meritocratic entry and advancement, let alone disinterestedness and deliberation. One-sidedness in the state and in intermediary associations is entirely compatible structurally with formal democracy. After all, voting majorities (as well as mobilized social movements) may acclaim state agencies which effectively maintain social order by relying increasingly on force, intimidation and manipulation rather than exhibiting fidelity to bright-line procedural-normative thresholds of clear and consistent rule making and rule enforcement. Moreover, issues of private conduct within civil society typically do not rise to the level of salient electoral or policy issues. The same is true of the governance, regulation and activities of intermediary associations. In short, quotidian workings of nepotism, patronage and venality in expert occupations, corporations and major intermediary associations elude both official reaction and public consciousness. All of this explains why the issue of one-sided exercises of positional power in structured situations in civil society is hardly salient in Mexico today, a formal democracy which fails to institutionalize limited government – let alone a democratic society. 5.2 Limited Government Unlike formal democracy, both limited government and democratic society address structurally and institutionally the problem of how positional power is exercised. But their institutional designs differ notably in the scope of one-sidedness which is salient politically and socio-culturally. Limited government stops at the water’s edge of public one-sidedness by the state whereas democratic society moves beyond this to address in addition private one-sidedness in civil society. Limited government advances beyond formal democracy institutionally by taking one additional step away from autocracy, beyond institutionalizing regular elections, competing political parties and rights of citizenship. This additional step, therefore, is constitutive of the institutional designs of limited government, distinguishing them from the institutional designs of formal democracy.

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Limited government institutionalizes clear and consistent rule making in and rule enforcement by state agencies. It thereby addresses centrally – structurally – how positional power is exercised within and by the state administration. Accusations of one-sidedness (let alone of opportunism) within and by state agencies and officials routinely gain a hearing, whether in the press or before the judiciary or some administrative body. The latter routinely issue rulings and decrees sanctioning such one-sidedness in their own corporate and positional interests. After all, at minimum, all such judicial rulings and administrative decrees confirm the place and purpose in this institutional design of public – governmental – oversight and regulation. While this constitutes a clear advance institutionally beyond formal democracy, such procedural-normative upgrading of public governance, and of judicial or regulatory monitoring of it, nonetheless remains compatible structurally with the types of private governance found within formal democracy. And these types, to recall, are found also within autocracies. Like all of these institutional designs, limited government too remains compatible structurally with one-sided exercises of positional power in structured situations in civil society. Structurally, it too tolerates, if not openly encourages, one-sidedness within and by expert occupations, corporations and other major intermediary associations. It also remains compatible structurally with social control in civil society based first and foremost on cultural and social-psychological cues, on directly substantive-normative standards of behavior – whether those of abnegation or those of nepotism, patronage and, at the limiting case, open venality. As Japan and many European democracies illustrate (in the eyes of many area specialists), limited government restrains only the state procedural-normatively. This is what allows limited government to identify and sanction public one-sidedness with some considerable measure of consistency over time. But limited government does not institutionalize anything approaching this consistency in identifying, let alone sanctioning, private one-sidedness. To the contrary, here all restraints and controls are directly substantive-normative, thus often vague and ambiguous, not complemented or reinforced effectively by procedural-normative thresholds which are bright line. Limited government treats all situations in civil society structurally and institutionally as matters of “private law,” whether embedded and controlled directly by the state or arm’s-length and left to anonymous commercialism and personal favoritism. None are structured, and thereby

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fiducial, independent of explicit proscriptions by state statute and then judicial or administrative oversight of them. 5.3 Again, Democratic Society Democratic, economically competitive societies differ institutionally from limited governments by taking another step. These societies maintain the advances already made structurally and institutionally by formal democracy and limited government, but then go further. They endeavor structurally and institutionally – albeit always asymptotically, never with definitiveness or conclusiveness – to extend clear and consistent rule making and rule enforcement to professions, to corporations, and to other major intermediary associations in civil society which contain structured situations. In every existing and possible democratic, economically competitive society an effort is made to extend bright-line procedural-normative thresholds of behavior into civil society. An effort is made to identify and mediate with consistency one-sidedness in major structured situations of civil society. But always and everywhere this effort is both asymptotic and inherently contingent. It is never completed (nor should be) and whatever advances or gains are made remain evervulnerable to reversal, at times to sudden reversal. In embarking on this project, therefore, each and every step taken within any democratic society is incremental by necessity. As these steps unfold, either specialized courts or specialized regulatory agencies are increasingly institutionalized – in common law countries and in civil law countries, respectively – to oversee how positional power is being exercised within civil society. Under modern conditions, such extensions of official oversight and regulation from the state to civil society implicates the private governance structures and selected occupational activities of professions and publicly traded corporations in particular. These are the two major intermediary associations in advanced societies. But even when specialized courts or agencies are in place, the institutional designs of a democratic society are never truly consolidated fully or conclusively – irreversibly. In this respect these institutional designs are quite unlike those of formal democracy and limited government. Indeed, the institutional designs of democratic society never unfold piecemeal across generations without reversals occurring or the possibility of reversals looming in the background. We see this starkly

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in the heated debate between corporate law traditionalists and corporate law contractarians. For three reasons, the institutional designs of a democratic society are never default outcomes systemically, never outcomes Niklas Luhmann would attribute to autopoietic processes devoid of sustained, purposeful efforts by elites, whether administrative, professional or corporate elites. In the first place, this trajectory of institutional change is never carried through conclusively even in any particular sector of an economy or in any particular structured situation in a civil society. One-sidedness (and self-interestedness) can occur at any time in any sector or any structured situation, and everyone involved and affected is quite aware of this. In the second place, this trajectory also never extends even in part to all structured situations or intermediary associations in a civil society. Finally, any gains specialized courts or administrative agencies make in extending this characteristic of private governance and occupational activity unique to the institutional designs of democratic, economically competitive societies remains always vulnerable systemically to reversal. Delaware’s Chancery is quite aware of this, for instance. Even as its unfolding decisions in derivative suits continue to steer the evolution of corporate governance structures in the United States, this hardly guarantees that any particular trajectory will continue to unfold with consistency across generations. More generally, just as we do not assume that leaders of state agencies automatically discipline themselves short of one-sidedness or caprice as they carry out official duties, we likewise have no greater reason to assume that either corporate officers or profession leaders and practitioners are any more selfdisciplining. To the contrary, we have every reason to assume that if the vigilance of specialized courts or regulatory agencies in monitoring the governance and occupational activities of publicly traded corporations and professions falters or lapses, one-sidedness (as well as opportunism) will increase in frequency and broaden in scope across civil society. At some tipping point in this devolution, structured situations will simply be redefined by prevailing cultural understandings as embedded exchanges or fluid sites of commerce or of diversion, as venues shorn of fiducial responsibility. This is the default outcome of systemic or autopoietic processes today, not ongoing professionalism. As examples, clear and consistent rule making and rule enforcement in corporate governance structures is not an automatic or “default”

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outcome of self-interested behavior by dispersed shareholders in a market for corporate control – legal contractarians’ occasional intimations to the contrary notwithstanding. Nor is it a default outcome of stakeholder competition for representation and influence in particular corporate governance structures – legal balancers’ more frequent presumptions to the contrary notwithstanding. Clearly, it is not a default outcome of managerial control, and thus of the business judgment rule which both legal contractarians and economists often trumpet. Looking more generally, the benefits of clear and consistent rule making and rule enforcement in corporate governance structures and other structured situations in civil society, including in professions, are at once significant institutionally and yet elusive culturally. They hardly present themselves self-evidently, including to corporate officers and professional practitioners. They are elusive because these benefits are qualitative and simultaneously structural and institutional. For instance, the benefits of the institutional design of democratic, economically competitive societies are not readily priced, as paradoxical as this may seem. The benefits of this institutional design commercially or occupationally, therefore, are not readily appreciated by anyone, or acknowledged culturally by middle-classes, and thus can be utterly disregarded by many mobilized social movements and, certainly, by shifting public opinion. Making matters worse, keeping rules clear and possible to perform in private governance structures is not necessarily economizing. Such fiducial behavior can in some cases compromise the commercial profitability or growth not only of publicly traded corporations but also of professions. After all, such self-discipline is ultimately normative behavior, and thus extra-economic. As such, this behavior can contradict the self-interests of participants rather than advance them. Such normative behavior, in short, is neither market-mimicking nor intrinsically self-interested. Worse still, when corporate officers exercise positional power onesidedly, these contraventions of the institutional design of democratic, economically competitive societies might well maximize shareholder wealth or corporate growth. The same behavior by practicing professionals might well benefit partnerships or corporate sites of professional practice. Behavior which is “deviant” institutionally, in short, can be at once market-mimicking and self-interested. All of these examples illustrate well why norm-based behavior within private governance structures is not somehow institutionalized

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systemically or autopoietically, by default, within any sector of any advanced economy, let alone across all sectors. On the one hand, such norm-based behavior is not institutionalized firmly in any profession without profession leaders purposefully and methodically encouraging it over time, as one vital behavioral manifestation of a profession’s independent socio-cultural authority and fiducial responsibility within structured situations. On the other, such norm-based behavior is not institutionalized firmly in any economic sector independently of unrelenting, increasingly purposeful efforts by courts (or administrative agencies) to identify and support it within corporate governance structures. These courts (or agencies) have to operate purposefully and methodically over time with some shared appreciation that how positional power is being exercised in certain structured situations in civil society bears – somehow – on the direction of change of the larger social order. Our point is that all such efforts by profession leaders, economic actors and courts (or agencies) are irreducibly contingent, and they remain so at each step along the way. As such, failures anywhere to identify and reduce one-sidedness in structured situations in civil society expose uniquely to empirical study the institutional externalities of failed professionalism projects in democratic societies. Correlatively, they also expose cognate failures in corporate governance structures, in other major structured situations, and in the courts or agencies overseeing them. Whenever these externalities reach a tipping point, democratic societies uniquely experience two related institutional consequences simultaneously. On the one hand, profession and corporate governance lose integrity, as determined by principles central to their retaining any independent socio-cultural authority in structured situations. On the other, democratic society loses a vital infrastructure in civil society – private governance within major intermediary associations – uniquely supporting its institutional design. 6. Professionalism’s Invariant Institutional Consequences We can now focus this general discussion more specifically on professionalism and its consequences. Always and everywhere, professions are “arbitrating institutions” in the state or in civil society which operate more or less independently of more familiar arbitrating institutions,

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namely the state administration and judiciary.31 Indeed, professions bring with them, independently of both economic liberalism and political democratization, effective horizontal restraints on arbitrary power, and they do so irrespective of the latter’s source. They restrain arbitrary power which originates in state agencies as well as that which originates in structured situations in civil society, whether in private commercial enterprises, in occupational associations or in dispersed workplaces. This means that citizens’ everyday experiences with professions can bear directly on how elites as well as the mass public perceive the “representativeness” or “responsiveness” of an entire regime. Here is a good illustration of how “regime” extends beyond the “state.” It also illustrates, moreover, why “institutional design” is more descriptive than “regime” and, as a result, more helpful both empirically and theoretically.32 As long as professionalism projects continue to unfold with integrity, consistently with their own independent socio-cultural authority, this supports structurally one and only one set of institutional designs, that of democratic societies. Thus, the same trajectory of professionalism inexorably irritates all institutional designs structurally which are antagonistic to or fall short of the institutional designs of democratic societies, a rather lofty baseline. Both of these consequences of successful professionalism hold true always and everywhere, and thus irrespective of whether professionalism unfolds inadvertently, as during the ancien régime and later on the continent, or purposefully, as in Anglo-American societies from the late nineteenth century forward. Thus, particular formal democracies or limited governments may prove too brittle institutionally to accommodate over time the structural irritation introduced by professionalism. Whether this proves to be the case in any particular instance is an open empirical question. But this is an eminently researchable issue, not a matter relegated to speculation, incommensurable studies, or competing interpretations.

31 See Robert Rohrschneider (2005) for the phrase, absent any reference to, let alone discussion of, professions. 32 Gunther Teubner draws attention in various publications to what he calls the “horizontal effect of fundamental rights,” which extends beyond the state to private “centers of economic power” (2004:7; also 2002, 2000, 1998; Fischer-Lescano and Teubner 2004; Paterson and Teubner 1998). We are proposing that substantivenormative rights attached to persons are today increasingly less effective horizontally in identifying and restraining arbitrary power. Much more effective are proceduralnormative duties attached to positions, both public and private.

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Indeed, the issue for institutional design is not whether structural pressures of support or irritation are introduced into civil society purposefully or inadvertently. The issue is also not whether contemporaries label one-sided exercises of positional power in structured situations “public,” as in civil law countries, or “private,” as in common law countries. The issue for institutional design is whether specialized courts or regulatory agencies (a) are capable of identifying one-sidedness with consistency as it occurs in structured situations, whether in the state or in civil society. Then the issue becomes whether they (b) endeavor to mediate one-sidedness with consistency on either public law grounds (in civil law countries) or fiducial law grounds (in common law countries). If they do so exclusively regarding one-sidedness within and by public governance, state agencies, then the institutional design in place is that of limited government. If they extend this to one-sidedness within and by private governance, including professions and publicly traded corporations, then the institutional design in place is that of democratic society. In either case, consistency here hinges first and foremost on judges or administrators applying bright-line procedural-normative threshold standards of behavior as mandatory rules, respectively, on state officials, corporate officers, and profession leaders. Such consistency is not possible if instead they endeavor to apply more directly any substantive-normative standards of behavior, whether administrative, statutory or constitutional. All such social controls are applied independently of the collective guidance, the shared cognition and understanding, which only procedural-normative thresholds provide and, certainly, can institutionalize. Only on the basis of such bright line thresholds can dispersed, specialized courts or regulatory agencies support institutional designs spanning the state and civil society which distinguish limited government from formal democracy, and then democratic society from limited government. Seemingly paradoxically, the institutional consequences and responsibilities of professionalism are always and everywhere fully in evidence empirically, even as they are typically illusive culturally. These institutional consequences remain invariant irrespective of whether professionalism unfolds successfully within certain structured situations, is stillborn, or is never initiated. Always and everywhere the governance and occupational activities of certain structured situations in intermediary associations of civil society affect institutional design. This affect is invariant historically and cross-nationally because it is structural. What varies historically and cross-nationally is the

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institutional design affected and, of course, the substance of the cultural truism distinguishing in each era and society which situations are structured and which are embedded or fluid. In all cases of professionalism, in short, the same institutional consequences are in evidence irrespective of what individual professionals happen to believe social psychologically or happen to understand culturally about their own activities. The same institutional consequences are in evidence irrespective of whether any “ideology” of professionalism happens to be available to occupation leaders or their patrons and sponsors. They are also in evidence irrespective of the (substantivenormative) “valued cultural patterns” which professionals happen to acknowledge implicitly or recognize openly and then endeavor to implement purposefully. All of this holds true irrespective of the particular society and particular era in which professionals are providing expert services, as long as a prevailing cultural truism holds fast which is distinguishing structured situations from embedded exchanges and fluid sites. Consider, by contrast, that no one, including in France, believes that haute cuisine and haute couture unfold within structured situations whose private governance and occupational activities bear on the institutional design of society and state. Of course, many French officials and citizens may believe social psychologically and understand culturally that haute cuisine and haute couture contribute mightily to institutionalizing in French civil society substantive-normative “valued cultural patterns.” Such beliefs and understandings are entirely consistent with Parsons’ approach to both social order and the sociology of professions. Regardless, such beliefs and understandings hardly advance sociological inquiry. Renowned chefs and apparel designers are not somehow held structurally or positionally to bear fiducial responsibilities for client wellbeing, let alone for the direction of change of the institutional design of France.

7. Institutional Design’s Invariant Consequences for Professionalism How institutional design affects professionalism is a mirror image of how professionalism affects institutional design, and we alluded to these effects earlier (at pages 272–273). All societies today and since the

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mid-nineteenth century which fall short structurally and institutionally of a democratic society delimit, discourage and distort professionalism in one way or another. Antagonism to professionalism is particularly unambiguous in autocracies. From the French Revolution through the mid-twentieth century such regimes and societies not only governed professions (and all other intermediary associations) through decree but also typically permitted nepotism and patronage to compromise the integrity of professionalism. Today we find in both formal democracies (such as Mexico) and limited governments (such as Japan and continental Rechtsstaats and Socialstaats) lesser degrees of antagonism to professionalism, and thus lesser degrees of structural delimitation, discouragement and distortion. These societies and states typically permit some combination of commercialism, patronage and bureaucratic decrees to compromise the integrity of professionalism, to encroach into profession governance and occupational activities. After all, the ideal animating the occupational order on the continent and elsewhere in civil law countries is disinterested, self-disciplined and fiducial state administration, not “free” professions exercising positional power short of one-sidedness independently of the state. In common law countries of the Anglo-American world professions and corporate governance structures are more likely to lose integrity in a different way, namely as a result of general diffusion of market-mimicking behavior (commercialism) from fluid sites and embedded exchanges into structured situations. Professional leaders and corporate officers are less likely within these institutional designs to defer unduly to bureaucratic decrees. They are also less likely to permit open nepotism and patronage, let alone venality, to displace entirely clear procedural-normative thresholds of meritocracy for entry and advancement. Commercialism can diffuse not only into dispersed professional-client relationships. It can also insinuate itself into corporate sites of professional practice such as universities, hospitals and research centers. At all such venues professionals can be permitted, if not encouraged, to act in self-interested ways, and then opportunistically and one-sidedly. It goes without saying that commercialism can intrude even more readily into the governance structures of publicly traded corporations. Encroachments of commercialism are more likely to be exacerbated by stakeholder balancing – or any other seemingly democratizing

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governance reforms – than counteracted. Likewise, balancing does not somehow automatically or systemically mediate encroachments of contractarianism, of shareholder cupidity, as legal balancers often wrongly suppose or imply. When corporate sites of professional practice and the governance structures of publicly traded corporations endeavor simply to broaden representation by stakeholders, this trajectory of change is strictly substantive-normative in its mediating power, not procedural-normative. Whether it is stemming or exacerbating commercialism is a matter open to incommensurable interpretations, not a matter that readily secures intersubjective cognition and understanding. Indeed, balancing can reach a point where not only publicly traded corporations but also professional associations become indistinguishable structurally from logrolling legislative bodies. In itself this already represents a regression in the institutional design of a democratic society, even as it seemingly democratizes or levels governance representativeness and responsiveness. It moves this institutional design closer to that of simple formal democracy, rather than even shoring up that of limited government. Stakeholder balancing and other democratizing reforms do not intrinsically support the institutional designs distinctive to either limited government or democratic society. Indeed, we propose that ongoing extensions of balancing into the state and into civil society are structurally not unlike extensions of commercialism. Always and everywhere either type of extension can enervate the institutional designs of both limited government and democratic society. Somewhat ironically, they can enervate in particular structural support for the parts of both institutional designs which bear on governance, rather than the parts which bear on either political representativeness and responsiveness or economic competitiveness. After all, the integrity of governance in limited government and democratic society does not stand or fall on whether stakeholder representation is broadening rather than remaining relatively confined. Rather, it stands or falls on whether one-sided exercises of positional power are being identified and sanctioned, first in the state, in limited governments, and then in major structured situations in civil society, in democratic societies. Any decline in the integrity of profession governance or corporate governance uniquely enervates the institutional design of democratic societies. Because this remains the case structurally, it does not matter whether the source of this decline is commercialism, balancing or

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both – or clientelist favoritism. Any such decline from any source not only renders democratic societies less distinguishable institutionally from limited governments. It goes further: it increases structurally any democracy’s vulnerability to autocratic regressions. Increasing one-sidedness in the structured situations of intermediary associations, in private governance, can only help to legitimate, in citizens’ everyday cultural understandings and then their cumulative collective memory, instances of one-sidedness by the state, in public governance. We can identify these encroachments, and these structural consequences, by monitoring whether and when the corporate judiciary or related regulatory agencies falter in extending a bright-line procedural-normative threshold of behavior from the state to major structured situations in civil society. In civil law countries of the continent and elsewhere professions are more likely to lose integrity as a result of encroachments by substantivenormative bureaucratic decrees, state statutes and constitutional provisions. Alternatively, professions can also lose integrity as a result of encroachments by patronage networks. Like commercialism and balancing in common law countries, such decrees and networks can encroach into professional-client relationships, into corporate sites of professional practice, and into the governance structures of publicly traded corporations. More distinctive to civil law countries than common law countries, these encroachments may stem, respectively, from Rechtsstaat traditions and an even more deeply ingrained pathdependence in accommodating and tolerating patron-client networks (particularly in southern Europe).33 Or, as another option, these encroachments may stem from contemporary efforts to maximize stakeholder balancing in private governance structures, in the name of some absolutist notion of “fair justice” (a substantive-normative concept). Irrespective of their sources, encroachments by administrative decree, by patronage network, or by balancing extension can reduce professional integrity. They can thereby introduce structural consequences into the institutional design of democratic societies in the civil law world. Like encroachments of commercialism and balancing in the common law world, encroachments of decree, patronage and balancing enervate in particular structural support for the parts of this 33 Encroachments of patronage (and nepotism) are hardly restricted to southern Europe; they are common across the Third World as well as typical in small towns everywhere. Indeed, nepotism is hardly absent from Hollywood, or academe.

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institutional design that bear on governance. They do so by displacing procedural-normative thresholds of behavior in favor of either directly instrumental behavior (market-mimicking behavior) or directly substantive-normative behavior (consistent with bureaucratic decree or clientelist network). But in civil law countries these encroachments, unlike those of commercialism and balancing alone, can also simultaneously enervate the other parts of these institutional designs, those supporting political representativeness and responsiveness as well as economic competitiveness. They do so by undermining the deliberation and disinterestedness necessary in public governance to support and sustain reasoned consensus and in corporate and commercial activities to support and sustain global competitiveness. In short, the significance for both research and theory of identifying consequences of professionalism which are institutional and invariant cannot be overstated. We are now seeing conclusively, for the first time since the founding of the sociology of professions in the 1930s, that certain consequences of professionalism are never confined, either empirically or analytically, to the occupational order and stratification system. With this, we not only advance the empirical study of professions into virgin territory, both cross-national and historical.34 We also advance the theory of professions, by effectively shattering today’s received wisdom in sociology and history which stems from revisionists’ most basic early criticisms of Parsonian functionalism. We expose two crippling deficiencies in today’s received wisdom: first, conceptual deficiencies at its theoretical core, and then also either a naiveté or a more calculating ideological posturing in its reading of cross-national and historical cases of both successful and failed professionalism. In addition, we also bring precision to Parsons’ earlier, vague references to the putative relationship between professionalism and social order.

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It is very rare to find in scholarly journals devoted to comparative politics and comparative sociology in general and to democratization more particularly even passing references to professions, let alone methodical discussions of the relationship between professionalism and democratization.

CHAPTER NINE

FIDUCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF PROFESSIONALISM We have seen in previous chapters that one invariant structural characteristic of professionalism is that positional power is exercised over dependents. We have also seen that variable immediate consequences as well as invariant institutional and immediate consequences stem from how positional power is exercised within any structured situation and thus within professions. In addition we have seen that both sets of consequences can only be identified intersubjectively – by profession practitioners and researchers, profession leaders or interested outsiders, including judicial overseers and administrative regulators – against a backdrop of bright-line, procedural-normative thresholds of behavior. They cannot be identified in common by attributing to professionals (or any other grouping) shared substantive-normative motivations or orientations (altruism or selfless service). Now we show in this chapter and the next that the consequences of structured situations and professionalism bring into view two other sets of characteristics of professionalism which are equally structural, thus invariant, like the ones already discussed. One set is comprised of two fiducial responsibilities to which professionals are held structurally, positionally. The other set is comprised of two occupational orientations to which professionals are also held equally structurally, equally positionally. Taken together, these two additional sets of characteristics further distinguish professions at a structural level from all other expert and middle-class occupations, including haute couture and haute cuisine. Both sets of fiducial responsibilities and both sets of occupational orientations build on the two other structural qualities unique to professionalism discussed earlier, in particular on our distinction between the vagueness of substantive-normative standards of behavior and the bright line clarity of a procedural-normative threshold. That is, both sets can only be identified intersubjectively – again, by profession practitioners and researchers, profession leaders or interested outsiders – against the bright-line, procedural-normative threshold of behavior which brings into view the consequences of professionalism.

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However, the two occupational orientations, unlike the two fiducial responsibilities, nonetheless blur the professions/expert occupations distinction we have been drawing. They complicate matters somewhat because many occupations other than professions may well acknowledge, adopt or feign adopting one or both of the occupational orientations of professionalism. The same is true of all of the additional structural qualities of professionalism, which we present in Chapter 11 after discussing these occupational orientations. Indeed, overlap in these respects at a strictly phenomenal level largely accounts for why received wisdom since the late 1970s holds that professions cannot be distinguished either analytically or empirically from other occupations. It also accounts for why the structural (and institutional) distinctiveness of professions has eluded sociologists and historians until now. However, where other occupations may well, in their own commercial interests, voluntarily acknowledge, adopt or feign adopting the occupational orientations and additional structural qualities yet to be discussed, they are not held structurally or positionally to the fiducial responsibilities of professionalism identified in this chapter. Here, then, is an analytical and empirical “dividing line” within the occupational order. At this dividing line many other expert occupations and middle class occupations begin to enter the picture. But only professions uniquely cross this dividing line already possessing the invariant, constituent structural properties identified from Chapter 6 through this chapter, whereas all of these other occupations lack these structural properties. Unlike all other expert occupations and middle-class occupations, in short, only professions proper are held to two fiducial responsibilities structurally or positionally, and thus always and everywhere. Stemming from their entrenched positions of power and independent socio-cultural authority within structured situations, these norm-based or extra-economic behaviors are equally constitutive of professionalism as such. They are in evidence empirically irrespective of: any putatively requisite cultural understandings acknowledged by professionals (and their patrons), any putatively requisite socialpsychological beliefs, desires or motivations internalized by professionals, and any ideology of professionalism available to practitioners and researchers either domestically or from occupational developments abroad.

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Professions are held structurally or positionally to both sets of fiducial responsibilities even when professionals and their patrons and clients have no idea what a profession is, as was the case with the visual Académie during the ancien régime and then subsequently on the continent up to the 1980s. Thus, wherever sociologists and historians fail to find empirical evidence of ongoing fiducial behavior in any instance of occupational upgrading, such as haute couture and haute cuisine historically and today, they are witnessing: extraneous Bürgerlichkeit variables in the absence of professionalism; or a failed professionalism project; or a regression in a once successful professionalism project, a decided turn toward de-professionalization. We are proposing that two sets of fiducial responsibilities track in tandem the two structural consequences of professionalism, the variable immediate consequences and the invariant institutional and immediate consequences. This tracking is itself invariant. It follows both logically and empirically because both the consequences and the responsibilities are structural in source. Moreover, it is also hardly coincidental that the consequences and responsibilities also parallel each other even more specifically in two additional respects. They parallel each other in how they are manifested in civil society phenomenally or at an empirical level, and they also parallel each other in how they enter the sociology of professions at a conceptual level. The phenomenal manifestations of one set of fiducial responsibilities are self-evident and then are readily acknowledged in the literature. The same is true of the variable immediate consequences of professionalism. Correlatively, the phenomenal manifestations of the other set of fiducial responsibilities are more elusive, and until now have been largely absent from the literature. The same is true of the invariant institutional and immediate consequences of professionalism. Our general thesis in this chapter follows from our specific comparison of professions to other expert occupations in Chapter 6. Manifestly norm-based, extra-economic behavior is as constitutive of any ongoing professionalism project as is providing expert services within structured situations. By contrast, all other expert occupations and middle-class occupations may well exhibit market-mimicking behavior alone. We demonstrate why norm-based behavior is constitutive of professionalism by first bringing fiducial responsibilities into our discussion. Then in the next chapter we complicate matters a bit by adding

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extra-economic occupational orientations that other occupations may exhibit or feign exhibiting. 1. Parallel Tracks: Consequences and Responsibilities The parallel tracks between the consequences and responsibilities of professionalism unfold simultaneously and in tandem because, on both sides, they are equally structural. On one side, professionalism always and everywhere yields both immediate and institutional consequences structurally, and thus irrespective of contemporaries’ awareness of what a profession is or whether professionalization is underway. On the other side, professionalism projects always and everywhere are held accountable structurally or positionally to both sets of fiducial responsibilities, and thus again irrespective of contemporaries’ awareness. Both tracks stem simultaneously from professionals and their associations and disciplines occupying entrenched positions of power in structured situations in civil society. Professionals are constrained by their own immediate positional and corporate interests alone to bear both sets of fiducial responsibilities. However, this structural constraint on professional behavior manifests itself somewhat differently in each set. On the one hand, when professionals simply act openly in ways which advance their own positional and corporate interests with integrity, consistently with their own independent socio-cultural authority, they simultaneously exhibit behavioral fidelity to the first set of fiducial responsibilities, whether purposefully or unawares. They bear structurally fiducial responsibilities for the wellbeing of patrons, clients and any third parties affected by their services, including local communities. The reverse holds equally true. Professionals simultaneously neglect or subordinate their own positional and corporate interests whenever they fail behaviorally to bear this first set of fiducial responsibilities, whether purposefully or unawares. Such behavioral shortcomings mean professionals either are acting self-interestedly to a point of opportunism or, alternatively, they are advancing their positional interests one-sidedly, to a point of abusing their positions of power. In either case such shortcomings invite challenges to the place and purpose in civil society or in the state of anyone in these entrenched positions. Such behavior does not affirm or advance the independent sociocultural authority of professionals in these positions.

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On the other hand, professionals also bear, equally structurally or positionally, a second set of fiducial responsibilities, and even more fulsomely – that is, irrespective of whether they act with integrity or not. Always and everywhere, professionals bear structurally fiducial responsibilities for institutional design and its direction of change. This is obviously a more complicated matter than professionals’ fiducial responsibilities for immediate harms. Yet we show momentarily that this second set of fiducial responsibilities attending professionalism is as invariant as the first. For this reason, it is readily identifiable both historically and cross-nationally. 2. Immediate Responsibilities and Consequences As we noted in the previous chapter, most immediate consequences of professionalism are self-evident and, as a result, are familiar in the literature. They appear prominently in theories of professionalism which functionalists, led by Parsons, developed during the 1950s and 1960s. However, from the late 1970s to today revisionists have tended to dwell on the immediate harms caused by professionalism and, as a result, to belittle or neglect entirely the other side of the structural coin. Today received wisdom literally disregards any and all fiducial responsibilities professionals bear typically, quite routinely, for client, patron and community wellbeing – as if such extra-economic behavior is unimportant empirically and irrelevant analytically or conceptually. Early revisionists did not go this far, did not deny outright that professionals typically exhibit fiducial behavior. Absolutist denials of empirical evidence self-evidently before them would hardly have advanced their initial theoretical challenges to Parsons and other functionalists. They did, however, vigorously massage the empirical evidence, at times dramatically mischaracterizing it. Equally troubling, they downplayed, neglected or disregarded altogether the possibility that fiducial behavior may be structural in source and, as a result, constitutive of professionalism as such. They instead treated all such behavior at a conceptual level as strictly phenomenal or extraneous, and thus intrinsically variable. In addition, they insisted that such behavior cannot possibly be confined to professionalism but instead must be in evidence, to some greater or lesser degree, across the entire occupational order.

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Early revisionists, in short, relativized fiducial behavior, just as they followed Johnson in relativizing the power imbalance between occupational practitioners and patrons or clients. Their thesis was that when Parsons (and other functionalists) associated fiducial behavior more intrinsically with professionalism, he was essentially using mere phenomenal appearances of abnegation or self-discipline for either “ideological” or “strategic” purposes. Any imputation of intrinsic association here, revisionists insisted, can only help to bolster, whether naively or insidiously, professions’ ultimately unwarranted monopolies in the labor market for expert services. Moreover, it seemed self-evident to revisionists that many other occupations can simulate seemingly equivalent abnegating behavior, with the same ideological or strategic end in view. This way of accounting for professions’ fiducial behavior, by simultaneously derogating and relativizing it, may seem petty on its face. But it was an altogether necessary tack for revisionists to take at a conceptual level in challenging Parsons’ sociology of professions, and they took it irrespective of all empirical evidence to the contrary before them. After all, any self-disciplining or abnegating behavior by professionals cannot square with revisionists’ narrowly socio-economic reading of either the sources or consequences of expert service monopolies within a private occupational order.1 By dwelling in a rather onedimensional way on the issue of occupational monopoly, a quite particular, extraneous accompanying variable of professionalism, they once again essentially confuse professions (as well as specialized académies) with medieval guilds. That is, they neglect entirely that professions (as well as académies) in principle provide instruction, perform occupational services and undertake research in open view. In addition, professions typically publish or otherwise widely disseminate any and all findings and outcomes, methods (or precepts) and theories (or principles) as well as, for that matter, ongoing inquiries. These are quite curious corporate policies for occupations literally to institutionalize when they are presumably committed ideologically and strategically to establishing and maintaining unwarranted monopolies.

1 The very same occupational monopolies by civil servants or public employees, or university academics or working-class trade unions, however, strikes social scientists working within the same revisionist conceptual frameworks as somehow intrinsically legitimate and laudable, not at all strategic or ideological. For two extreme examples of such inconsistency, see Burrage 1997 and Gleeson and Knights 2006.

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Regardless, having emphasized the putative harms of putatively unwarranted monopoly, revisionists proceeded to buttress their case against professionalism by drawing attention to all of its other putative immediate harms. As superficial as this entire line of analysis may seem now, particularly in light of how the Paris visual Académie differed from the Maitrise, it was sufficiently compelling during the late 1970s and early 1980s for revisionists successfully to marginalize Parsons’ sociology of professions. It cast as disingenuously “normative” and “ideological” any references by Parsons or other functionalists to professionals’ manifestly abnegating behavior. Susan Shapiro, a critic of this received wisdom, describes the latter as well as anyone. Many sociologists today view professions “as strategic devices to achieve monopoly, not self-regulated institutions structured to deliver and shore up trust.” These sociologists see professional codes of ethics, for instance, as mere window dressing or, worse, as “linguistic Trojan horses” designed to deflect attention and criticism from professions’ ever-broadening power.2 Still, Parsons in particular did not help matters here, in either preempting or rebutting this dismissal of professional abnegation. Quite unnecessarily, he instead exposed his sociology of professions to these superficial counterarguments by the way he accounted for professionals’ fiducial behavior. As we saw in chapter 8, he traced all instances of “service orientation” and “disinterestedness” to professionals putatively acknowledging in common, across cohorts and dispersed workplaces, particular “valued cultural patterns” and also substantivenormative standards of behavior. In addition, he also attributed to professionals shared or commensurable social-psychological desires, beliefs and convictions. Parsons did not trace professionals’ fiducial behavior first and foremost to their entrenched positions of power in structured situations, and he certainly did not see the parallel here to corporate officers’ positions within corporate governance structures. Given, in short, all of the problems intrinsic to Parsons’ essentially cultural and social-psychological to professions, and then also to any substantive-normative characterizations of the profession-social order relationship which invariably follow from it, it was remarkably easy for revisionists to portray any such line of analysis as more idealized or ideological – or insidious – than neutrally descriptive. Indeed, their

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most profound criticism of Parsons was correct on its face: There is scant evidence, let alone compelling evidence, to support any assumption that dispersed professionals somehow acknowledge in common, and then somehow remain oriented behaviorally by, particular values and norms, beliefs and motivations in substance across workplaces, cohorts and generations. For that matter, there is also scant evidence to support a related proposition, namely that professional schools somehow effectively inculcate into succeeding cohorts and generations of students shared understandings and beliefs regarding what professional integrity demands in substance in everyday practice and research. 2.1 Immediate Fiducial Responsibilities of Professionalism This entire dispute between functionalists and revisionists over the nature of instructional socialization and source of professional orientations and motivations becomes irrelevant at the moment we adopt our alternative line of inquiry, a structural and institutional approach to professions and then procedural-normative characterizations of the profession-institutional design relationship. With this we already jettison any and all directly cultural, social-psychological and substantivenormative characterizations of professionalism. Moreover, our structural and institutional approach reveals that one set of fiducial responsibilities is as constitutive of professionalism structurally – and is as self-evidently in evidence phenomenally – as the immediate consequences of professionalism. Being constitutive of professionalism as such, this first type of fiducial behavior applies with equal force to both professional practitioners and professional researchers. The immediate fiducial responsibilities practicing professionals and their associations bear structurally are those for client or patron wellbeing, and, related, for their own reputations among colleagues, peers and outside observers. In turn, the comparable fiducial responsibilities borne structurally by research professionals and their disciplines are those for investigative and instructional integrity, and thus again for their own reputations among colleagues, peers and outside observers. Our point is that irrespective of the diversity – indeed, incommensurability – of the substance of professional practice and research, and then of the substantive-normative understandings, beliefs and convictions of dispersed practitioners and researchers, all professionals as well as all of their associations and disciplines always and everywhere

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bear an identifiable fiducial responsibility structurally or positionally. Always and everywhere they are responsible for any immediate harm – whether avoidable or unavoidable, purposeful or inadvertent – which their exercises of positional power (including discretionary judgment) cause, respectively, to clients or patrons and to research and instructional integrity. The same is true, by extension, for any immediate harm the same behavior causes to local communities, for this generic term includes not only client and patron families, friends and acquaintances. It also includes the reputations of colleagues in the same or related fields of practice as well as the reputations of universities, institutes, publications and scholarly disciplines.3 Hardly coincidentally, professionals as well as association and discipline leaders typically acknowledge these immediate fiducial responsibilities subjectively, social psychologically. This was true of visual academiciens and Académie officers during the ancien régime. Such awareness by professional practitioners and researchers is typical, and thus remains in evidence irrespective of behavioral variation by particular professionals at particular moments in time. Such awareness remains in place irrespective of whether particular professionals actually exhibit behavioral fidelity to these fiducial responsibilities or not: by either acting with integrity in their own positional interests or disregarding these fiducial responsibilities by acting either opportunistically or one-sidedly in contravention of their positional interests. More than this, our point holds true even in situations when the subjective awareness just noted is entirely absent. Professionals as well as association and discipline leaders always and everywhere are held accountable regardless for immediate harms, and thus irrespective of whether they acknowledge fiducial responsibilities subjectively or wish personally to be held to them. They cannot escape these extra-economic responsibilities as long as they occupy entrenched positions of power within structured situations.

3 Consider the effect on sociology as a discipline if it were revealed that any of the major refereed journals – led by American Journal of Sociology and American Sociological Review – were found to disregard behavioral fidelity to procedural norms of double-blind submission and review. Not only would the reputations of particular journal editors suffer, and then that of these two journals. The discipline of American sociology as a whole would lose prestige cross-nationally as well as in the eyes of domestic colleagues in related disciplines, such as political science, psychology and economics.

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Thus, whenever particular professionals shirk the immediate fiducial responsibilities intrinsic to their entrenched position of power, whether purposefully or inadvertently, such behavioral shortcomings simultaneously jeopardize rather than advance the interests – and independent socio-cultural authority – of anyone in their position. Such shortcomings, after all, affront unambiguously the cultural truism of a society and era which is distinguishing structured situations from embedded exchanges and fluid sites. This cultural truism, and the occupational distinctions based on it, is what ultimately underpins professions’ very place and purpose in civil society. To challenge it outright, openly, is simultaneously for professionals: to deny the distinctiveness of their own positions in civil society; to act contrary to the positional and corporate interests of anyone in these positions; to disregard basic principles and precepts which support their own independent socio-cultural authority; and thus to place their positional power in jeopardy. 2.2 Comparison to Haute Couture and Haute Cuisine Professionals do not typically act openly and unapologetically in opportunistic or one-sided ways whereas, by contrast, self-interestedness is hardly rare among couturiers and chefs. More generally, the burden of fiducial behavior to which professionals are held structurally or positionally, and thus always and everywhere, hardly extends to any other expert occupations and middle class occupations. It certainly fails to extend to haute couture and haute cuisine. Couturiers and chefs typically fail to acknowledge subjectively even this first set of fiducial responsibilities, and for good reason: everyone appreciates that their occupational activities do not introduce comparable immediate harms into civil society. Haute couture and haute cuisine hardly affect client or patron wellbeing, and the occupational activities of particular couturiers and chefs hardly redound as directly to the reputations of colleagues. These practitioners do not share positional interests because they do not provide expert services within structured situations. They also do not exercise positional power over anyone, let alone with an eye to advancing identifiable positional interests. Indeed, this explains why particular couturiers and chefs do not typically concern themselves subjectively with immediate harms. It also explains why peers do not typically endeavor interpersonally to

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identify and reduce or rectify these harms. No one has a stake in doing any of this. As with all other expert and middle class occupational services provided within embedded exchanges or at fluid sites of commerce or diversion, haute couture and haute cuisine are subject only to sanctions of the marketplace (customer dissatisfaction) and, at the margins, violations of contract law, criminal law and civil law which apply to everyone (e.g. food poisoning, fraud etc.). Larger cultural cues hardly induce the state or trade press or public opinion even to take notice of any putative extra-legal harm caused by fashion design or fine dining. They certainly do not induce, let alone compel, colleagues or anyone else to hold particular couturiers and chefs accountable for such harms. No one today (or historically), in short, considers even this first set of fiducial responsibilities to be constitutive structurally of the place and purpose of haute couture or haute cuisine in civil society. Rather, everyone associated with these two expert occupations, and with many others which provide services within embedded exchanges and at fluid sites, fully expect practitioners typically to act self-interestedly. Indeed, they expect them at times to act utterly cavalierly. When renowned couturiers or chefs instead conduct themselves in strictly conventional ways, this hardly recommends them to peers or trendsetting customers and observers. Abnegation hardly serves their self-interests or upgrades their position. By contrast, the typical behavior of professionals as well as of association and discipline leaders is unambiguously fiducial. It is normbased, extra-economic, rather than strictly self-interested, marketmimicking. Ongoing norm-based behavior by professionals and their leaders reflects the fact that when they provide expert services with integrity, they do so consistently with identifiable positional and corporate interests, including an independent socio-cultural authority. Such typical behavior, that is, advances the interests and augments the power of anyone in their position. To be sure, particular professionals at particular times are always free to act opportunistically or to exercise their positional power in abusive or opportunistic ways. But this is precisely what makes the place and purpose of professions in civil society not only structurally distinctive but also institutionally consequential. Neither quality holds true for other expert occupations and other middle-class occupations.

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Whenever and wherever professionals and their association or discipline leaders conduct themselves atypically, in ways that are more selfinterested or market-mimicking than norm-based or fiducial, such behavior simultaneously jeopardizes the place and purpose of anyone in their position in civil society. Such behavioral shortcomings not only compromise their own distinctiveness structurally or positionally. They also simultaneously introduce into the larger social order quite different institutional and interpersonal consequences than does professionals’ behavioral fidelity to immediate fiducial responsibilities. Market-mimicking behavior shorn of fiducial responsibility always and everywhere enervates professionalism in three distinct tiers, the first tier being structural and institutional. Such behavior enervates the structural and institutional bases upon which association and discipline leaders can possibly legitimate practitioners’ and researchers’ entrenched positions of power and independent socio-cultural authority in civil society. The second tier of enervation is cultural, for marketmimicking behavior simultaneously challenges the truism or ethos of a society and era which is distinguishing structured situations from embedded exchanges and fluid sites. Finally, the third tier of enervation is social psychological. As this cultural truism is successfully challenged, dispersed professionals steadily lose any subjective awareness of responsibility. After all, they are no longer providing expert services within universally acknowledged structured situations. These three-tiers of enervation follow upon each other even when professionals or their leaders neglect or disregard the immediate fiducial responsibilities just discussed inadvertently. They certainly follow when professionals and their leaders disregard them purposefully, to some putative strategic or opportunistic advantage. The same holds true for the occupational orientations discussed in the next chapter, as we will see. 3. Institutional Responsibilities and Consequences Professionals and their leaders also bear structurally or positionally a second set of fiducial responsibilities, a set that tracks in parallel the institutional consequences of professionalism. Consistent with this track, this second set of responsibilities is more elusive than the first, just as the institutional consequences of professionalism are more

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elusive. Being imposed upon professionals structurally or positionally, professionals always and everywhere bear this second set of fiducial responsibilities regardless. They bear this second set, moreover, without professionals somehow sharing particular cultural understandings, social-psychological beliefs and inclinations, or substantive-normative standards of behavior. Professionals cannot escape or disregard these extra-economic responsibilities unless, again, they steer clear of structured situations and instead provide expert services exclusively within embedded exchanges or at fluid sites – as which point they cease being professionals. Always and everywhere professionals are responsible structurally or positionally for any harm – whether avoidable or unavoidable, purposeful or inadvertent – which the governance, regulation and activities of their structured situations cause to the institutional design of the larger social order. This second set of fiducial responsibilities is equally as important as the first in distinguishing professions and their associations and disciplines at a conceptual level from all other expert occupations and their organizations and training facilities. It applies with equal force to all historical instances of professionalism as well as to all cross-national manifestations of professionalism today. However, even as this second set of fiducial responsibilities is as constitutive of professionalism as the first, it has not heretofore found its way into the sociology of professions. Revisionists and today’s received wisdom in the sociology of professions disparage this entire line of inquiry. After all, they dismiss out of hand the possibility that professionalism introduces any consequences into civil society beyond those confined narrowly to the occupational order and stratification system. More surprising, even the two sociologists who endeavored most methodically to theorize the larger social and cultural consequences of professionalism, Talcott Parsons and Terrence Johnson, also overlooked the type of extra-economic behavior we are now identifying, albeit for quite different reasons. 3.1 Why Institutional Responsibilities Have Been Elusive Parsons labored across his fifty-year career to identify the relationship between professions and social order, and yet he failed to appreciate that professionals bear structurally or positionally fiducial responsibilities for institutional design and its direction of change. We can trace this failure to a wrong turn Parsons took at the very outset at a

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conceptual level, namely his effort to define and analyze the profession-social order relationship directly in essentially cultural and then substantive-normative terms. With this conceptual decision Parsons simultaneously committed himself to characterizing professionals’ longer-term fiducial responsibilities accordingly, in terms of putatively shared internalized motivations or putatively shared cognitive orientations, the latter reflected in their putative behavioral fidelity to “valued cultural patterns.” Any such wording of the profession-social order relationship is needlessly ethereal. It is also utterly incapable of steering detailed historical and cross-national inquiry to cumulative, falsifiable findings. Parsons is essentially proposing that dispersed professionals are somehow responsible collectively for either introducing into civil society or preserving in civil society particular “patterns” of substantivenormative “cultural values,” and thereby contributing uniquely to “social order.” He is also proposing that, to this grand end, professionals are uniquely capable somehow of identifying in common, and then sharing in common at dispersed workplaces, particular social-psychological beliefs and convictions, particular cultural understandings and particular substantive-normative occupational orientations. Parsons then compliments these rather grand propositions by pointing to two possible sources of dispersed professionals’ unusual insights, responsibilities and capabilities. Professionals either internalize these during advanced instruction and occupational training or, more likely, they otherwise somehow acknowledge them in common more cognitively and dispassionately. Here Parsons is proposing that certain substantive-normative standards of acceptable occupational behavior are (somehow) capable of orienting dispersed professionals in common irrespective of the heterogeneity of their beliefs, convictions and understandings. This way of characterizing professionals’ fiducial behavior and then of identifying its putative sources led Parsons, wrongly but quite logically given his conceptual framework, to idealize the workings and outcomes of professional instruction and training far more than empirical evidence allows or supports. Parsons’ ethereal characterizations of the putative relationship between professions and social order also led Johnson astray, as he initiated a revisionist response to Parsons and functionalism. Given the vagueness intrinsic to Parsons’ conceptual approach to the professions-social order relationship – at once cultural, social-psychological and substantive-normative – Johnson

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challenged Parsons simply by relativizing the relationship on these very grounds. Moreover, this tack is entirely consistent with Johnson’s relativizing of the power differential between professionals and clients or patrons. Johnson points out that just as social scientists cannot expect this power differential to remain invariant historically and cross-nationally, the same is true of any and all substantive-normative workings and outcomes of professionalism, whatever these happen to be. Social scientists cannot expect invariance here, or even broad commensurability, across historical time and then across cultural and national, regional and local differences today. More important, it then became an easy matter for the revisionists who followed Johnson to find here the soft underbelly of Parsons’ sociology of professions and then of his functionalism more generally. Larson, Collins, Abbott and many others simply point out, and quite legitimately so, that Parsons never really identifies how exactly professionalism contributes to social order, let alone uniquely so – whether culturally, social-psychologically or otherwise substantive-normatively. And yet, for all of the problems intrinsic to Parsons’ ethereal characterizations of the profession-social order relationship, recent theoretical contributions to the sociology of professions on both sides of the Atlantic recapitulate them (see chapter 2).4 The irony is that this otherwise unfortunate turn of events makes indirectly one positive contribution to the literature: it reveals undeniable limitations in the revisionist response to Parsons and thus in today’s received wisdom in the sociology of professions. After all, sociologists everywhere seemingly find it necessary today to recapitulate unawares Parsons’ vagueness. In itself this indicates that norm-based behavior of some kind is indeed likely constitutive of professionalism as such. That is, now that sociologists’ collective memories have faded of Parsons’ approach and its failings, a new generation of sociologists is again finding it necessary to account in one way or another for professionals’ typically abnegating behavior. They find this necessary irrespective of whether they then endeavor to draw any connection between professionalism and social order. 4 For instance, Siegrist (1990a; see chapter 2, page 16) characterizes in directly social-psychological terms the “shrewd bargaining” which he believes is capable of yielding interpersonal trust between experts, their clients, and the larger lay public. This cannot possibly be invariant historically and cross-nationally.

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By necessity, therefore, and largely unaware of Parsons’ deadend as well as its conceptual bases they recapitulate both of Parsons’ earlier mistakes. They again characterize professionals as – somehow – preserving cultural values in civil society, sharing social-psychological beliefs and convictions, and otherwise exhibiting behavioral fidelity to shared substantive-normative standards of behavior. And, like Parsons earlier, they again remain at a loss to account for the source of such robust collectivism. They cannot account for how dispersed and heterogeneous professionals manage to continue internalizing the same beliefs and convictions or to continue acknowledging more cognitively the same cultural understandings and substantive-normative standards of behavior across generational cohorts, dispersed work sites and occupational specialties. 3.2 Conundrums: Abstraction and Professional Instruction Here precisely is where a structural and institutional approach to professionalism and its consequences can finally resolve the conundrum just noted as well as others bequeathed by Parsons which today are being recapitulated blithely on both sides of the Atlantic. A second conundrum, for instance, is simply to account at a conceptual level for the length, difficulty and, seemingly most problematic, the abstraction of advanced professional instruction and training. We saw how vital professional instruction and training had been in Parsons’ cultural and social-psychological accounting of professionalism and the profession-social order relationship. One problem revisionists faced from the outset, during the 1970s and 1980s, is that once they dismissed out of hand any such relationship they were still left with a great mystery. They had to account in some way at a conceptual level for the peculiarities of advanced professional instruction and training, for empirical evidence in clear view before them. From the late 1970s to today, revisionists have had particular difficulty accounting, within this conundrum, for the levels of abstraction which continue to typify the curricula and instructional programs of the most elite professional schools. Indeed, this issue has so exasperated them that it has pushed them to propose and explore rather outlandish lines of argument. On the one hand, given their narrowly socio-economic approach to professionalism and their absolutist critique of professional monopoly which follows from it, they cannot acknowledge at a conceptual level

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any possible reasoned rationale for such curricula. After all, any reasoned rationale would lend legitimacy to what they believe are unwarranted occupational monopolies. It would render revisionism as “ideological” as Parsons’ functionalism. On the other hand, this dead-end then requires revisionists to find manifestly unreasoned bases for the length, difficulty and abstraction of professional curricula. Here is where they frequently resort to rather inelegant lines of explanation, at best immodestly cynical, at worst preposterously conspiratorial. Moreover, these explanations ironically cast revisionists in a rather unappealing light personally, as being either duplicitous or disingenuous. After all, they are products of such curricula and today perpetuate such curricula at their own academic worksites. Randall Collins’ lines of explanation here are representative.5 He insists that the level of abstraction demanded in professional instruction is entirely unnecessary – altogether extraneous and thus utterly dispensable. At best, instructional abstraction is strictly symbolic; at worst, it is insidious, at once insensitively discriminatory and artificially stratifying. Instructional abstraction provides profession leaders with a faux rationale for both delimiting entry to professional instruction as well as for drawing – first instructionally and then occupationally – fanciful distinctions within cohorts of practitioners and researchers. Instructional abstraction thereby provides ideological cover or “legitimacy” for practices of professional instructional closure and then occupational monopoly which are altogether indefensible, unwarranted first pedagogically and then in practice. By Collins’s reckoning, in short, it is simply not possible that instructional abstraction as well as other restrictions on occupational entry might be both necessary and warranted on structural and institutional grounds. Indeed, he does not consider any particular characteristics of professional instruction and training to be constitutive structurally of professionalism as such. Collins fails to consider this possibility because he rejects, rightly, Parsons’ supposition that the success or failure of professional instruction and training is gauged ultimately by substantive-normative outcomes of collectivist socialization and acculturation.

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However, Collins, like other revisionists since Johnson, is entirely unaware that simultaneously he is failing to account at a conceptual level for professionals uniquely providing expert services within structured situations in civil society. As a result of this alone professionals always and everywhere occupy entrenched positions of power, irrespective of occupational specialization and workplace dispersal. Instead, Collins assumes, consistently with revisionists’ more narrowly socio-economic approach to professionalism, that professionals are in all respects akin to all other experts and middle-class practitioners: they, too, provide services either within embedded exchanges or at fluid sites of commerce and diversion. The only thing “structured” within professionalism is unwarranted monopoly. As a result of this point of departure at a conceptual level, coupled with Collins’ correct rejection of Parsons’ ethereal descriptions of professional socialization and acculturation, Collins insists that elite professional instruction and training is in all respects an extraneous accompanying variable of professionalism. It cannot possibly be constitutive of professionalism as such. It is instead ultimately “ritualistic,” an institutionalized “mythology.” This is reflected in particular, in Collins’ view, by the levels of abstraction still being demanded. Going further still, Collins is equally certain that there is also not even any particular core of technical proficiency which is constitutive of professionalism as such. Quite remarkably, Collins thereby ends up with an accounting of professional instruction and training which is more narrowly social-psychological than any ever proposed by Parsons. The curricula of elite professional schools, as Collins sees them, are designed with a single, quite simple goal in mind, namely to stimulate heterogeneous students to identify personally – social-psychologically – with the subject matter.6 These curricula are not designed to prepare, nor are they capable of preparing, students to bear any identifiable fiducial responsibilities imposed structurally upon anyone in dispersed positions of entrenched power. It goes without saying that Collins and other revisionists fail to see any possible connection, let alone an invariant structural one, between professional instruction and a rather grand fiducial responsibility, namely for institutional design and its direction of change. 6

Collins 1990a:38–39.

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3.3 Abstraction, Fiducial Responsibilities and Institutional Design Our structural and institutional approach begins with a point of departure which every revisionist since Johnson has disregarded, namely that professionals always and everywhere provide expert services within structured situations. This structural quality unique to professionalism accounts, we propose, for why instruction and training in elite professional schools in particular typically combines theoretical and abstract (or liberal) components with more practical, strictly technical and vocational components. Instructional abstraction is necessary, we propose, for reasons which are directly occupational and then also, even more important, for reasons which are at once institutional and structural. 3.3.1 Institutional Reasons for Instructional Abstraction Institutionally, and irrespective of whether instructors ponder this self-consciously or not, professional schools are teaching future dispersed professionals how to provide expert services within structured situations. They are teaching them, that is, how openly to undertake either practice or research consistently with the independent sociocultural authority they will claim publicly, consistently with the positional and corporate interests of anyone in their position. Equally publicly and consistently, future dispersed professionals will endeavor to protect and advance these positional and corporate interests. Instructional abstraction of any kind, within any discipline, prepares future professionals for the conceptual sophistication they will need in practice or in research to distinguish invariant thresholds (principles and precepts) from variable standards (techniques and routines). Drawing any such distinction is difficult always and everywhere because of the flux of occupational and social change as well as systemic resistance to professionalism (stemming generically from what Weber called rationalization and then more particularly from commercialism, clientelist favoritism and bureaucratization). We discussed in Chapter 8 how a distinction between thresholds (procedural normative) and standards (substantive normative) bears on identifying the consequences of professionalism. In the next chapter we will discuss how the same distinction bears on identifying the fiducial responsibilities we are describing here and then also identifying the occupational orientations of professionalism we describe there. For now we simply repeat a point made at the outset of this chapter. The

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consequences, the fiducial responsibilities and (as we will soon see) the occupational orientations of professionalism can only be identified in common on the basis of bright-light, procedural-normative thresholds of professional behavior which are invariant. They cannot be identified in common on the basis of substantive-normative standards of professional behavior precisely because all such standards are indeed variables. They evolve historically and differ cross-nationally today. 3.3.2 Occupational Reasons for Instructional Abstraction Occupationally, professional workplaces, aside from being structured situations, typically remain in principle venues of ongoing learning and study, if rarely of formal instruction. Professionals cannot openly and publicly attribute any unusual occupational successes to “trade secrets” or “guild mysteries.” Rather, they are compelled structurally or positionally to account openly and publicly for any unusual occupational outcomes, whether successes or failures. Literally any peer or colleague can compel such an accounting, as can, of course, association leaders, outside regulators, and litigious clients or patrons. Professionals cannot avoid presenting their findings and discoveries, techniques and methods either in peer-reviewed journals, or at association meetings, or before colleagues, accrediting committees or overseeing tribunals. Moreover, part of any credible accounting will invariably be presented in, or converted by others into, theoretical or generalizable statements and propositions, into a conceptual lexicon sufficiently abstract to be capable of informing future research, of formulating instructional principles and precepts, or of advancing future occupational applications. Any accounting will only truly qualify as credible, as registering unambiguously with skeptical colleagues, when unusual outcomes are cast as potentially generalizable descriptions and explanations of empirical evidence, those which place empirical evidence within an existing or otherwise theoretically credible research agenda or instructional discipline. This is precisely why elite venues of professional instruction and training insist that their students become conversant with the theoretical or conceptual bases of occupational practice and academic research. Any accountings by their students later, as dispersed professionals, will never be truly credible, truly “registered” within the profession, if unusual occupational outcomes (or, certainly, research outcomes) are presented or cast simply anecdotally. Simple descriptions

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of craft know-how or vocational practices shorn of any and all scientific analyses or epistemological rationales lack plausibility on their face, and redound poorly to their authors. This last point will soon bring us to one of two occupational orientations constitutive of professionalism which professions nonetheless share with other expert and middle-class occupations. But we propose now that none of the qualities of professional instruction just described holds true for practitioners of other expect or middle-class occupations, whether couturiers and chefs or boutique providers of home entertainment systems. None of these practitioners are required structurally or positionally to provide any open accounting of unusual occupational outcomes (short of those violating criminal law, contract law or civil law). They are hardly compelled structurally or positionally to do so in terms sufficiently theoretical or conceptual to advance either controlled research or formal instruction. 3.3.3 Structural Reasons for Instructional Abstraction Structurally, there are two other reasons why the length, difficulty and abstraction of elite professional instruction and training are warranted and indeed constitutive of professionalism as such. First, professionals bear structurally the two sets of fiducial responsibilities discussed above, not simply the one set familiar in the functionalist literature which revisionists belittle and then neglect. Professionals are responsible structurally not only for the immediate consequences of professionalclient or professional-patron relationships. They are also responsible structurally for how the trajectory of the governance, regulation and activities of their structured situations in civil society or in the state affects the institutional design of the larger social order. Instructional abstraction of any kind, within any discipline, prepares practitioners and researchers to undertake everyday occupational or research duties and, when necessary, to review such activities with sufficient disinterestedness to anticipate where problematic decisions and actions are likely to come into play. After all, these are the areas of practice and research which elude theoretically credible or generalizable ways of presenting or casting the empirical evidence, or the decisions about to be made, or the actions about to be taken.7 7 As Susan Shapiro puts the matter, a “rule of disinterestedness” cannot possibly prescribe in detail how individuals or groups are to negotiate among the diverse interests they might be serving or endeavoring to advance simultaneously (2003:93).

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Second, and even more grandly, we already argued in Chapter 8 when presenting our structural and institutional approach that an invariant structural relationship holds between professionalism and institutional design. This relationship holds across all historical periods and within all societies, including the aristocratic societies of the ancien régime. When ongoing professionalism projects establish and maintain the integrity of their governance, regulation and activities within structured situations, such occupational behavior anticipates structurally one and only one set of institutional designs, that of democratic, commercially competitive societies. This means that even when this institutional design is anachronistic, as during the ancien régime, and thus not envisaged by anyone – let alone theorized or otherwise available culturally – the presence of ongoing professionalism projects in civil society nonetheless enervates structurally all other institutional designs. Unlike a democratic, commercially competitive society in particular, all alternative institutional designs permit – are unable structurally to identify and sanction with consistency – opportunism as well as one-sided exercises of positional power in structured situations in civil society. As we saw in Chapter 8, this is as true of formal democracies and limited governments as it is of autocracies. Because successful professionalism introduces into civil society structural or positional restraints on both opportunism and one-sidedness, it uniquely supports a quite different institutional design. This institutional consequence intrinsic to professionalism means that professional practitioners and researchers may frequently be required to persevere in the face of considerable and sustained social and systemic resistance. Even in democratic, commercially competitive societies, structural or positional restraints on opportunism and one-sidedness may be resisted, whether popularly and informally or officially. After all, such restraints can jeopardize commercial success and friendship networks. Or they can contradict bureaucratic decrees from state agencies or contradict formally democratic laws warranted by voting majorities. 4. Again, How and Why Professions are Distinct Practitioners of all other expert occupations – including haute couture, haute cuisine and home entertainment installation – do not provide expert services within structured situations. As a result, they do not occupy entrenched positions of power and, thus, do not bear structurally

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or positionally either set of fiducial responsibilities discussed in this chapter. Again, we are not drawing sociologists’ attention to the cultural understandings or social-psychological beliefs and convictions of professional practitioners, and proposing that they are somehow unique among all other experts. Functionalists repeatedly pursued this line of argument in error. Rather, we are drawing sociologists’ attention to structural qualities which are constitutive of professionalism alone, not of other expert occupations. Just as the longer-term, institutional consequences of professionalism are elusive, so too, for quite understandable reasons, the parallel track fiducial responsibilities of professional practice and research are equally elusive. In the first place, profession leaders and members are typically as unaware subjectively of the institutional consequences of professionalism as are sociologists of professions. It is hardly coincidental (or surprising), therefore, that they are typically equally unaware subjectively that they cannot escape bearing corresponding fiducial responsibilities structurally. That they typically fail to acknowledge either these consequences or these responsibilities is beside the point, however. This is irrelevant both analytically and empirically in studying instances of professionalism both historically and cross-nationally today. In the second place, as just noted in passing, the longer-term, institutional responsibilities of professionalism have heretofore eluded sociologists and historians. Yet, because these fiducial responsibilities are structural, not cultural or social-psychological (or socio-economic), they are equally constitutive of professionalism as such. More generally, because both sets of fiducial responsibilities of professionalism, immediate and institutional, are imposed structurally, professionals and their leaders never bear either set simply purposefully or social psychologically. They never exhibit behavioral fidelity to either set of fiducial responsibilities simply as a result of internalizing in common altruistic motivations or of acknowledging cognitively in common service or selfless orientations. Nor, for that matter, do professionals and their leaders bear either set of fiducial responsibilities simply interpersonally, as a result of clients and patrons somehow sharing directly in common some putative expectation that such motivations or orientations are more likely to prevail when they retain professional services than either self-interestedness or one-sidedness. Nor, finally, do professionals and their leaders bear either set of fiducial responsibilities simply culturally, as a result of

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a socio-cultural orientation or ethos putatively spanning a society and era. They do not share some putative value-commitment ethereally and abstractly which, at the same time, somehow inclines them in common to establish methodically in civil society and then preserve unwearyingly what Parsons called “valued cultural patterns.” Rather, because the two sets of consequences of professionalism and then, in parallel track, the two sets of fiducial responsibilities to which professionals are held are first and foremost structural or positional, the two sets are equally invariant analytically and empirically. They are equally constitutive of professionalism as such and, therefore, in evidence empirically in all ongoing professionalism projects. Thus, where professionalism is fully underway, as in the visual Académie during the ancien régime, both sets of consequences and responsibilities are fully in evidence. In turn, where professionalism is uneven or halting, as in corporate governance today, the immediate consequences and responsibilities are in evidence only in part. Yet, the institutional consequences and responsibilities continue to be imposed structurally or positionally on corporate officers, irrespective of their cultural understandings and social-psychological beliefs, desires and motivations.

CHAPTER TEN

OCCUPATIONAL ORIENTATIONS OF PROFESSIONALISM: “DIVIDING LINE” IN THE OCCUPATIONAL ORDER Professionals not only provide expert services in structured situations consistently with two sets of fiducial responsibilities. They also do so consistently with two occupational orientations. However, here precisely is where complications enter the picture. Here is where the distinction between professions and other expert occupations begins blurring both analytically and empirically. Many other experts and practitioners may well adopt one or both occupational orientations, even as other experts and practitioners openly disregard one or both. Indeed, it is the manifest empirical variability here which in large part accounts for why sociologists have experienced so much difficulty in distinguishing professions from other expert and middle class occupations analytically, at a conceptual level. The same empirical variability, moreover, attends all additional structural characteristics of professionalism discussed in the next chapter, for many other occupational experts and practitioners voluntarily adopt – or feign adopting – these characteristics as well. Our point in introducing variability into our discussion at this point rather than earlier is to draw attention to a “dividing line” within the occupational order. All qualities of occupational upgrading identified up to this dividing line, from Chapter 6 through Chapter 9, are constitutive of professionalism exclusively. In turn, all qualities identified from this point forward, beyond the dividing line, are still constitutive structurally of professionalism but they are not exclusive to professions empirically, in practice. This dividing line, in short, serves two purposes in our sociology of professions. One purpose is that it indeed accounts, at least in part, for why the term “professional” is applied so broadly colloquially (which Julia Evetts is now exploring). The dividing line thereby reveals one major source of confusion in the scholarly literature. The other purpose is that the same dividing line reemphasizes the importance of the structural and institutional qualities of professionalism identified earlier, for these are indeed uniquely constitutive of

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professions exclusively. The dividing line thereby reveals why professions and, equally important, the consequences of professionalism are indeed distinctive, irrespective of scholarly confusion and quotidian usage. Our thesis is that in distinguishing professions from other occupations both analytically and empirically it is vital, first, to identify the structural qualities distinctive to professionalism exclusively. Then, in addition, it is equally vital to identify the immediate and institutional consequences and immediate and longer-term fiducial responsibilities which follow intrinsically from these structural characteristics. These qualities, consequences and responsibilities are all distinctive to professionalism exclusively. Only professions, not any other expert occupations or middle class occupations, provide expert services within structured situations on the basis of an independent sociocultural authority. As a result of this, only professions introduce into the larger society structurally both immediate consequences and institutional consequences. Likewise, only professionals, not other experts, are held structurally to two distinguishable sets of fiducial responsibilities. Now we add complications which aptly reflect the flux and complexity of social life itself. Professionals can share, and typically do share, with many other experts and practitioners the two occupational orientations discussed in this chapter. They can also share, and typically do share, additional structural characteristics of occupational upgrading discussed in the next chapter. Some nonprofessional experts and practitioners may exhibit both occupational orientations, others only one, and then still others may disregard both; the same is true of the additional structural characteristics. The central point for our purposes is that only professionals are compelled structurally – as they simply advance their own immediate positional and corporate interests – to exhibit behavioral fidelity to both occupational orientations discussed in this chapter and then also to all additional structural characteristics discussed in the next chapter. When professionals fail openly to exhibit such behavior as a piece this is literally suicidal for professionalism projects. This remains the case even if particular failures serve the self-interests of particular profession leaders or particular professional practitioners or researchers. Any open pattern of failures: – Jeopardizes the positional power and compromises the positional interests of anyone in a professional position;

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– Compromises the place and purpose of professions’ occupational activities and literally invites challenges to professions’ independent socio-cultural authority; and, at the limiting case – Calls into question the cultural truism which heretofore had distinguished structured situations from embedded exchanges and fluid sites. Other experts and practitioners, therefore, may well exhibit behaviorally one or both of the same occupational orientations which animate professional behavior always and everywhere. But these same experts and practitioners routinely and openly neglect or disregard both fiducial responsibilities constitutive of professionalism. Fiducial behavior comes into play exclusively within ongoing professionalism projects (and within other structured situations). Most important, when nonprofessional experts and practitioners fail to exhibit fiducial behavior they never suffer any comparable loss of positional power or socio-cultural authority because they lack this power and this authority in the first place. They provide expert services within embedded exchanges or at fluid sites of commerce or diversion, not in structured situations. Thus, nonprofessional experts and practitioners never exercise positional power over clients and patrons and never claim credibly an independent socio-cultural authority, let alone consolidate this authority across cohorts and generations. 1. Epistemological and Didactic Orientations of Professionalism All professionals provide expert services consistently with an epistemological occupational orientation and then, typically also, where applicable, with a didactic occupational orientation. This is as true of the behavior of professional practitioners as it is of the behavior of professional researchers. The epistemological orientation is structurally universal and thus invariant across all fields of professional practice. By contrast, the didactic orientation varies somewhat across professional fields, depending on the nature of the expert services being provided or research being undertaken. 1.1 Epistemological Orientation Epistemologically, professionals as well as their associations and disciplines are compelled structurally or positionally to provide expert

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services consistently with prevailing standards of (scientific) truth, whatever these standards happen to be. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century such standards tended to be ontological or otherwise directly substantive-normative, consistent first with emblematic worldviews and then with positivism and copy theories of truth. From the midnineteenth century forward prevailing standards of scientific truth became increasingly epistemological and procedural-normative, including standards of theorizing and methodology. This transition was adumbrated during the 1860s and 1870s by the ordinary-language pragmatism of American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Then it was advanced during the 1930s by the critical rationalism (fallibilism) of Austrian philosopher Karl Popper. Finally, in the face of mounting post-positivist challenges to Popper (by Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend and others), it was consolidated during the 1960s and 1970s on explicitly procedural-normative grounds by discourse theories of truth, including those presented by Jürgen Habermas and KarlOtto Apel which are directly indebted to Peirce’s earlier approach.1 Not coincidentally, the mid-nineteenth century is precisely the period when artists voluntarily abandoned the inadvertent professionalism project bequeathed to them by the Paris visual Académie. The emblematic, ontological and substantive-normative standards of truth, morality and beauty which for two centuries had oriented narrative painting and sculpture were by now withering away. This is also the period, again not coincidentally, when medicine and engineering, along with science, increasingly forcefully initiated their professionalism projects, following that by British law. Increasingly, they proceeded consistently with quite different, epistemological and increasingly procedural-normative, standards of truth (and, where applicable, morality), as noted above. One manifestation of an epistemological occupational orientation is that professionals and their associations are compelled structurally or positionally to provide their services relatively disinterestedly and dispassionately. This does not mean, nor require, that they do so oblivious to, or unconcerned about, their remuneration, their social status or, certainly, their positional and corporate interests and positional power. What it does mean is that professionals are constrained structurally or

1 See Radnitzky 1968 for a remarkable overview of and commentary on developments on both sides of the Atlantic.

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positionally from advancing these interests and exercising this power beyond limitations set by prevailing theories, scientific findings, scientific methods and then also fiducial responsibilities. Whenever professionals exercise positional power in ways that exceed these limitations this simultaneously increases their own vulnerability to credible challenges, from peers and colleagues or from state regulators and litigious clients, patrons and outsiders. We have seen already that professionals invite challenges more generally whenever they act one-sidedly within structured situations, whenever they exercise positional power to a point of abuse or caprice. One way of identifying such excesses is precisely to establish that particular professional practices or instructions lack any credible epistemological foundation, for instance by contradicting prevailing theories, scientific findings and methods. Other ways are to establish that professionals have acted self-interestedly or in market-mimicking ways to a point of opportunism, or cavalierly to a point of irresponsibility or idiosyncrasy. Like their exercises of power, professionals’ cupidity and idiosyncrasy (quirks of personality) cannot exceed limitations set by prevailing theories, scientific findings and scientific methods. Professionals, for instance, cannot make claims for the curative, remedial, figurative or other powers of their expert services which exceed these limitations. By contrast, retailers and hucksters of all sorts, including chefs and couturiers, have far greater latitude here (short of fraud or other activities proscribed by contract law). Epistemological occupational demands reveal why Abbott errs when he asserts casually that “psychological mediums” – such as astrologers and palm-readers – were professionalizing at the turn of the twentieth century.2 By contrast, the same demands explain why nutritionists or homoepaths today, as examples, are in principle more likely to embark successfully on professionalism projects than are chefs. They also explain why designers of aerodynamic uniforms and sportswear are in principle more likely to professionalize than are couturiers. However, nutritionists, homeopaths and aerodynamicists nonetheless face a formidable structural obstacle to successful or ongoing professionalism. Even as they are oriented epistemologically, they do not

2 Abbott 1988:29–30. Abbott’s systems approach to professions is discussed at length in Chapter 12.

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provide expert services in what are yet recognized universally, as a cultural truism of a society and an era, to be structured situations. The same was true, of course, of Abbott’s psychological mediums. All of these practitioners instead provide expert services within embedded exchanges or at fluid sites. The only possible exception in one of these occupational fields today might be designers, say, of high-technology military uniforms. The behavioral limitations bearing on practicing professionals structurally or positionally, in short, are broadly consistent with those applicable to learned inquiry, both historically and today. It is simply not possible to professionalize without occupation leaders credibly affiliating their occupational research and practice with contemporary norms and standards of truthfulness, verisimilitude and appropriateness – even if such norms and standards of the past differ dramatically in substance and in form from those prevailing in science today. In this light we may recall that the Paris visual Académie from its founding in 1648 to its consolidation in 1680 operated within an era that was pre-scientific, thus pre-positivist, a literal “ontologist era.” The Académie was oriented occupationally by what academiciens, as well as everyone else, believed were universal and timeless visualcultural standards of Truth, Morality and Beauty-as-Goodness. This is an ontological occupational orientation, not simply an epistemological one. It revolves directly around substantive-normative standards of occupational success and failure which are assumed literally to be immutable. One irony, however, is that academiciens identified and codified the theoretical principles and instructional and occupational precepts of this received ontology discursively, not through any monological copy theory by Lebrun or any one else. Putting this into the terminology of Habermas, Apel and others, academiciens arrived at what they believed was an ontological occupational orientation by, ironically, operating consistently with a discourse theory of truth. They proceeded in this way even as they believed they were simply employing intersubjectively and then applying collectively a pre-positivist (that is, ontological) copy theory of Truth. Whether based on a copy theory or a discursive theory, and whether ontological, positivist or post-positivist, any epistemological occupational orientation can, of course, be neglected, disregarded or flaunted by individual professionals, as by individual scientists. Particular scientists may plagiarize, concoct data, pander to employers,

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seek publicity or otherwise fail to conduct themselves strictly disinterestedly. Likewise, particular professional practitioners or researchers may mislead colleagues, misinform clients or patrons, curry elite favor, or pander to popular taste or disciplinary political correctness. However, just as such behavior by individual scientists hardly means that an epistemological occupational orientation has somehow been suspended from the entire field of science, is no longer constitutive structurally of science as an institution, so similar behavior by individual professionals does not mean this occupational orientation has somehow become elective, no longer constitutive structurally of ongoing professionalism. It is not possible, anywhere or at any time, to initiate, let alone sustain, an ongoing professionalism project in the absence of some openly articulated and collectively acknowledged epistemological occupational orientation. However, a credible epistemology alone does not distinguish professions from other expert and middle-class occupations. What is equally clear is that professions today cannot possibly follow the Académie in basing their instruction or delivery of expert services on epistemological standards which appear to contemporaries to be culturally universal in substance. Being directly substantivenormative, we appreciate today that any and all cultural standards of behavior are ultimately relative to time and place. Any directly substantive-normative epistemological standards today, therefore, render professions vulnerable structurally to de-professionalization, for the sands of socio-cultural understanding and discourse invariably shift over time. Bourdieu fails to see this distinction, between the universalism of procedural-normative grounds of epistemological standards and the relativism of any and all substantive-normative grounds. This failure on Bourdieu’s part explains why he wrongly sees professionalism as a primitive “folk concept” of “Anglo-Saxon” ordinary language usage and, ultimately, as ideological, a manifestation of “cultural imperialism.” This same failure also explains why critics of legal professionalism in particular (such as Dezalay and Garth) equally wrongly see Anglo-American notions of legal integrity as absolutist in substance, and thereby disrespectful of local customs and practices. Susan Shapiro is closer to the mark in appreciating that the proceduralnormative integrity of Anglo-American legal professionalism is likely to become increasingly appealing worldwide, and thus to redound favorably to U.S.-based multinational law firms.

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Regardless, our general point is that some credibly universalist epistemology or standards of behavior is what separates not only law but also medicine, engineering, science and all other professions today from fine art as well as from haute couture, haute cuisine and all other occupations which provide expert services within embedded exchanges or at fluid states rather than in structured situations. Professional instruction and expertise must be based either on universally recognized substantive-normative standards (cultural truisms of a society and era, such as those regarding Truth, Morality and Beauty), in the case of the Paris Académie, or on universally recognized proceduralnormative standards (cognitive thresholds, including those regarding falsification or tentative verification), in all cases of professionalism today. Bourdieu as well as Dezalay and Garth fail to appreciate that these two pathways to epistemological grounding are quite distinct. Professionalism is no more culturally imperialistic than is science-based medical research and delivery. Likewise, procedural integrity in law is no more culturally imperialistic than is procedural integrity in scientific theorizing and research. In this light we can appreciate where the visual Académie of the ancien régime overshot the mark of professionalism projects today. It did so by grounding its epistemology directly on an ontology and thus, equally directly, on substantive-normative standards of immutable Truth, Morality and Beauty bequeathed from classical antiquity and the Renaissance. Thus, as artists from the mid-eighteenth century forward increasingly abandoned voluntarily their received (from the Renaissance and antiquity) ontology, they simultaneously initiated a century-long process of subordinating epistemological (and also didactic) standards of occupational success to “aesthetic” standards altogether independent of any putatively universal standards of truth (and morality). That is, they increasingly associated beauty exclusively with verisimilitude (in the eye of informed beholders), an intrinsically moving target. At first, as the eighteenth century unfolded, artists identified verisimilitude in received ways, associating it with visual narrations which appealed to, rather than affronted, the putatively innate taste of gentle patrons and amateurs, and particularly those in Italy. Then, by the turn of the nineteenth century, they associated it with meeting more accessible, yet more rigorous standards of visual cultivation, the putatively advanced aesthetic sensibility of specialized connoisseurs. Finally, from the 1870s and the Impressionist Revolution forward, succeeding

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waves of artistic movements in Paris redefined visual aesthetics in various ways, at times confirming connoisseurs, at others disregarding their taste. Equally important, modern artists openly challenged, then disparaged, and finally purposefully flaunted – disregarded altogether – any and all epistemological or didactic standards of visual narration. In the face of this groundswell, a now sclerotic Académie could not possibly continue to base its visual authority on any available substantivenormative-based epistemology.3 Today, any effort to divine “epistemology” in the fine arts is literally a fool’s errand. With visual installations and performances having displaced painting and sculpture, artists everywhere literally bridle when outsiders (provincials, rubes) imagine that their works incarnate any “meaning” whatsoever, let alone a “truth” (to say nothing of a moral principle). Indeed, they bridle equally fervidly when outsiders find their works aesthetic or visually beguiling in any received or commonly understood sense. Artists associate beauty with “cutesy-poo,” and even self-taught artists, at the lowest rung of the art-world status hierarchy, consider this quality condemnable, not praiseworthy.4 Unfortunately, this sort of collapse in epistemological (and didactic) standards is hardly confined to the fine arts. We see it unfolding today among academic pseudo-professionals in the humanities and, even worse, in the social sciences. Deconstructionists and post-modernists in these disciplines reject any and all epistemological standards of scientific or learned inquiry. They do not consider their occupational activities – their theorizing, research and teaching – to be part of any scientific (or professional) project at all. They instead see themselves engaged in some artistic or aesthetic exercise beyond epistemological warranting. They strike this pose, however, as they typically misunderstand or misread entirely how far contemporary art has evolved since Picasso’s cubism in Paris, then Marcel Duchamp’s installations which facilitated the transition of fine art from Paris to New York, and finally Jackson Pollard’s Abstract Expressionism. Artists today, worldwide, have literally abandoned any and all independent standards of aesthetics, just as they earlier had abandoned any and all independent standards of truth and morality. Artists today instead associate success or failure in completely relativist, indeed

3 4

Mainardi, 1993, Boime, 1971. Fine 2004:45–46.

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transitory ways, as verisimilitude with trendsetting galleries and collectors (whose rise and fall is ever-quickening). When this sort of verisimilitude in the fine arts is transferred unalloyed to the humanities and social sciences, it hardly results in some independent “aesthetic sensibility,” a lodestar capable of orienting any possible professionalism project in the absence of epistemological foundations. Rather, verisimilitude in this sense cannot possibly be distinguished analytically or empirically – by deconstructionists, postmodernists or anyone else – from a rather unappealing cleverness, a readiness to pander to ever-quickening disciplinary fads, whether whimsically or strategically. Such fads include manifestations of political correctness (in admissions and hiring as in interpretations of empirical findings) which are so manifestly indefensible on epistemological (and didactic) grounds that proponents are literally loathe to articulate them openly, let alone to defend them on the merits. Our point in noting this parallel in the humanities and social sciences to fine art installations and performances is that at the moment academic professionals propose openly that no existing or possible standard of truth can be defended with reasons they cease voluntarily to be professionals. However, they do not then become “aestheticists” or iconoclastic artists, as they wrongly imagine. Rather, they become pseudo-professionals devoid of aesthetic sensibility; they become maladroit indulgents, poseurs. Consider the following defense of particular descriptions of the “internal symbolic structure of ‘irrational’ cultural forces:” “If my hermeneutical reconstructions are powerful, my presentation of these culture structures will ring true; they will crystallize and call out the felt social experience of my readers, in the aesthetic manner of art.”5 Appeals such as these to collective aesthetic insights might well be the way novelists or journalists endeavor to describe, explain and, yes, predict events and activities in social life. But such appeals are not the way social scientists can credibly do so. Worse, these sorts of appeals misread entirely how verisimilitude currently operates within fine art. There is today no “aesthetic manner of art” which artists themselves find appealing, let alone embrace; they instead embrace a literal nonaesthetics or anti-aesthetics, and do so quite openly.6

5 6

Alexander 2005:23. See Haden-Guest 1996.

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1.2 Didactic Orientation 1.2.1 Behavioral Proscriptions and Claims Modesty The didactic commitment or mission imposed structurally or positionally on professions is reflected behaviorally in practitioners’ typical or quotidian prudence, comportment and decorum. Considering only one contemporary example of such behavior, psychotherapeutic ethics in the United States include proscriptions against any and all social interaction with patients, what are called “dual relationships.” These proscriptions are expansive in their behavioral demands. Psychotherapists are expected not only to refrain from sexual relationships with current or former patients. They are also advised to avoid: living in same neighborhood, attending the same church, supervising patients’ graduate studies or employing them as research assistants, exchanging gifts or entering business partnerships.7 Of course, the particulars of similar behavioral proscriptions in other professions, being substantive-normative rather than strictly procedural-normative, vary across occupational fields, the nature of the expert service being provided. They also vary, of course, across time and across societies. Moreover, many other expert occupations, not professions exclusively, may well encourage practitioners to adopt or feign adopting in part similar proscriptions. We saw this in particular with home entertainment specialists, but far less so with chefs and couturiers.8 In professions, a didactic occupational orientation revolves first and foremost around the epistemological demands and delimitations discussed earlier. In other expert occupations this is not the case. This difference explains why chefs and couturiers may knowingly, openly and cavalierly deceive clients or patrons. They may exaggerate commercial or symbolic claims for their services or products and yet, at most, suffer only harms to their personal reputations. For this very reason, clients, patrons and the public are understandably wary of claims of commercial or symbolic breakthroughs in most occupational fields. By contrast, when professionals knowingly, openly and cavalierly deceive clients or patrons with exaggerated commercial (or other) claims about their services (or research) they become vulnerable

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Shapiro 2003:169. Gary Alan Fine (1993) discusses candidly whether similar proscriptions apply to sociologist-ethnographers. 8

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structurally or positionally to formal sanctions of all sorts – associational, regulatory, legal and other. This is not true of other expert occupations, including haute couture and haute cuisine. 1.2.2 Upgrading Civil Society Looking more expansively, professionals also initiate and sustain structurally or positionally a broader, longer-term didactic project, namely that of upgrading the larger civil society culturally (and, thus, lexically and discursively). This ambitious project follows from professions’ independent socio-cultural authority within structured situations. It has nothing to do with professionals putatively acknowledging in common a “service orientation” or, certainly, from their putatively internalizing in common motivations of altruism. When professionals simply advance their own positional and corporate interests within their particular occupational field consistently with their independent socio-cultural authority, what seems at first to be a strictly delimited, localized or technical upgrading invariably diffuses into the larger culture and civil society. Structurally and institutionally, that is, professionals literally cannot avoid upgrading the discernment, understanding and discourse of current and prospective patrons and clients. Through them, this upgrading then invariably diffuses far more generally, far beyond the occupational field. After all, because professional instruction always and everywhere is offered in principle in open view, and because professionals always and everywhere publish or otherwise present openly their findings and methods, they and their associations and disciplines cannot possibly keep confined, at the water’s edge of any particular occupational field, a more general cultural (and lexical and discursive) diffusion of knowledge, understanding and erudition. Nor, certainly, can they possibly control how this diffusion unfolds, including whether and when it redounds negatively on profession leaders and members. They cannot control lay commentators and observers, for instance, from hopelessly distorting professional findings and activities.9 This project of cultural upgrading begins with professionals refining, standardizing and disseminating first among themselves a new lexicon

9 Classic cases, of course, range from mischaracterizations of Galileo’s astronomical findings to mischaracterizations of Einstein’s theory of relativity (on the latter, see Isaacson 2007).

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of expertise, for their own purposes of research, instruction and occupational advancement. This lexicon then invariably diffuses in some part to current and prospective patrons and clients, and then even more broadly (and even more partially) into the culture and civil society. Yet, even as this corporate and positional interest of professionalism is invariant, and even as it differs unambiguously from any comparable interests of guilds historically or of commercial enterprises today, proponents of received wisdom in the sociology of professions are at a loss to describe and explain this empirical behavior before them. After all, received wisdom portrays professional closure or monopoly in the labor market for expert services as ultimately unwarranted and thus illegitimate. This portrayal, however, presents proponents of received wisdom with a quite troubling paradox: Why would professions literally institutionalize practices of utter openness, which can only jeopardize a monopoly that is, by their accounting, truly lacking any warrant, any legitimacy? Indeed, proponents of received wisdom are literally compelled, given the latter’s narrowly socio-economic framework of concepts, to address this paradox by derogating the diffusion of professional knowledge and lexicons into civil society. They cannot simply describe and explain this cultural upgrading neutrally, or at least more provisionally. At best, proponents of received wisdom label this diffusion strictly symbolic, ephemeral. Or, worse, they label it strategic and ideological, designed more or less purposefully by profession leaders to manipulate elite or mass opinion. Or, alternatively, they otherwise criticize any such cultural diffusion, whether historically or today, for putatively being “elitist.” Levelers have always favored these sorts of interpretations of cultivation. Irrespective of which of these three tacks proponents of received wisdom take, all are more conspiratorial than descriptive and explanatory, and the level of sophistication of these conspiracy theories is hardly lofty, or at all laudatory to the sociologists who truck in them. All such received labels of cultural upgrading by professions are themselves more ideological or otherwise mischaracterizing than at all neutrally descriptive of the unambiguous empirical evidence in clear view. The use of these labels instead presupposes approaching any project of cultural upgrading by professions with literal blinders. These labels simply perpetuate a tunnel-vision inaugurated by a narrowly economistic reading of professionalism, irrespective of all evidence to the contrary which is unambiguously and clearly in view.

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The use of these labels also presupposes – and here is where conspiracies need to enter the accounts of received wisdom – that professional leaders are somehow capable of controlling collectively, across cohorts and generations, the trajectory of cultural diffusion as well as the range of possible uses to which lay understandings and characterizations of professions can be put. This is hardly within these individuals’ capability, however, and, worse, such control at a cultural level is hardly somehow guaranteed by any degree of putative labor market closure or monopoly at a socio-economic level. What received wisdom in the sociology of professions is mischaracterizing, what it is labeling ideologically or addressing conspiratorially, is an invariant structural quality constitutive of professionalism as such. Only amidst a broader project of cultural upgrading can professionals hope eventually to convince on the merits current and prospective patrons and clients, to say nothing of state regulatory agencies and the general public that their expert services indeed differ qualitatively from those provided by their artisanal and craft, vocational and retail competitors and predecessors. Only against a backdrop of greater understanding and discursive erudition by at least some prominent laymen can professionals truly establish the distinctiveness of the place and purpose of their occupational activities in civil society, can demonstrate unambiguously the independence of their socio-cultural authority within a structured situation. A project of cultural upgrading, in short, invariably either establishes – or, alternatively, very readily reveals why it cannot be established – that an occupation is indeed a profession, is indeed providing expert services consistently with an independent socio-cultural authority in a structured situation. This project either establishes or reveals why it cannot be established that some degree of closure or monopoly (in entry to instruction and then to practice) is indeed unwarranted, on both epistemological and fiducial grounds, and thus is legitimate, eminently defensible publicly. Likewise, a project of cultural upgrading simultaneously demonstrates unambiguously that professionals truly are operating openly, both instructionally and occupationally. It demonstrates that professionals are not claiming the sorts of trade or commercial “secrets” which are common within embedded exchanges and at fluid sites of commerce or diversion. By contrast to all such claims, professionals instead assert and consolidate the independence of their socio-cultural authority on the basis of open inspection, whether literal or virtual. Short of this, short

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of having their socio-cultural authority confirmed in their instructional programs and occupational activities through an ongoing process of deliberation and truth-seeking which simultaneously upgrades the larger culture and civil society, a profession cannot otherwise possibly consolidate its place and purpose in civil society. It certainly cannot possibly accomplish this simply in the ways imagined by received wisdom: by establishing in strictly strategic, thus insidious, ways an unnecessary, unwarranted monopoly, absent any independent socio-cultural authority intrinsically open to inspection by all and for use by all.

2. Three Manifestations of Didactic Orientation Reflecting the long-term didactic mission of cultural upgrading which is at once constitutive of professionalism and antithetical to trade or commercial confidentiality, practicing professionals provide expert services consistently not only with prevailing epistemological standards of learning and science. They also do so consistently with prevailing didactic standards of disinterest, deliberation and appropriateness, whether substantive-normative standards (during the ancien régime) or procedural-normative standards (from the mid-nineteenth century forward). There are at least three ways, among others, in which the didactic occupational orientation of professionalism manifests itself empirically, in the behavior of practitioners and researchers. One manifestation is a lengthy workday and workweek. Of course, this is hardly exclusive to professionals. Our point now is that this is a decidedly modern contribution to the most elite or prestigious levels of the occupational order more generally, one which was spearheaded historically by modern professionalism in particular. During the ancien régime, by contrast, this sort of occupational behavior was universally marginalized, as pedantic or striving rather than diverting. It was utterly anomalous within gentle circles, for it was universally disdained by elites (the milieu mondain). Gentilshomme as well as the noblesse more generally endeavored instead to maximize the time devoted to “disinterested pleasure,” to ceremony, decoration and diversion. They scrupulously refused to devote precious discretionary time to earning a livelihood, let alone to intellection or learned activities. Notable exceptions to the universal disdain for

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“interestedness” were made, however, for anyone, whether of gentle birth or common birth, who dedicated long hours to official, direct service to Crown or Church. Among those holding such positions in Paris, both Colbert and Lebrun were notorious among contemporaries for being workaholics. Even given the indulgence just noted, colleagues and peers took note and commented upon how unusual the work habits of Colbert and Lebrun were. Aside from such notable exceptions and indulgences, gentle society otherwise disdained anyone whose occupational commitment stemmed strictly from cupidity, such as artisans and merchants who accumulated wealth and yet continued to reinvest and toil, as opposed to purchasing estates and living as gentlemen. Learned society was exempted from this type of disdain, but largely because of its affiliation with the clerisy. Yet, the substance of learned activities, whether undertaken by clerics or laymen, was nonetheless disdained universally for other reasons. For instance, intellection was believed to induce melancholy, not to encourage or augment sociability. A second manifestation of a didactic occupational orientation is that professional services are typically not offered retail or strictly commercially, as are other expert services, including haute couture, haute cuisine and boutique home entertainment services. Professionals are typically remunerated for their services by salary and fee schedule, not quid pro quo, in fee-for-service exchanges. Indeed, their remuneration is frequently cast as honoraria or commissions. On the other hand, an absence of retail commercialism is hardly a sine quo non of professionalism as such. Our point is that sociologists must nonetheless account at a conceptual level for the unusual indirectness characteristic of professional remuneration. Yet a third manifestation of didacticism is that new entrants to professions typically expect and intend to embark on life-long careers. They do not typically treat entry-level professional positions as stepping stones to more socially esteemed or lucrative positions entirely outside the occupational field. This was precisely how lesser noblesse, by contrast, viewed the magistracy during the ancien régime and also how many physicians and lawyers of common birth viewed their occupational positions in gentle households. They viewed these positions as way-stations, as instruments or strategies of social striving, because direct routes to more distinguished or lucrative opportunities were otherwise denied to anyone of their social rank or practicing their occupations.

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More than this, students competing for entry to advanced professional instruction do not typically envisage entering careers which require them first and foremost to jockey for workplace “jurisdiction” in competition with practitioners of neighboring occupations. This, however, is the most central tenet of Andrew Abbott’s entire “system of professions.” Some tyros do embark on professional careers, of course, as pathways to vertical social mobility: they seek financial security or covet social prestige. But even these entrants typically undertook professional instruction in order to embark on career paths which structurally or positionally hardly encourage cupidity or, certainly, the diversions and idle pleasures of trust fund children. Even plastic surgeons in Los Angeles or San Francisco cannot shirk their fiducial responsibilities for client wellbeing, or disregard the epistemological foundations of their independent socio-cultural authority. Ambitious students striving for wealth or renown in professional practice are well aware that structural or positional constraints stand in their way. They are well aware that practitioners in many other expert occupations, including haute cuisine and haute couture (to say nothing of golf or poker), are far more likely to reap these sorts of rewards than are typical professional practitioners. Indeed, graduate and professional students typically recognize that the epistemological and didactic occupational orientations to which they will be held structurally will severely limit their prospects for wealth and renown in the short run. A professional livelihood typically presupposes and perpetuates deferred gratification, as opposed to misleading tyros with prospects for “overnight” success.10 Here then is one manifestation of ongoing self-discipline, of abnegating behavior, which spans all fields of professionalism. Yet this, too, hardly provides evidence that professionals either share social-psychologically an “altruistic motivation” or share cognitively a “service orientation.” In addition, those tyros intending to attain great wealth or renown short-term are less likely to survive advanced professional instruction than the rest of their cohort, fellow students who are more realistic, more cognizant of the many structural or positional limitations within which they are destined to operate. They are also less likely, if

10 See Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990 more generally on the significance of self discipline and the many pitfalls of insufficient self control.

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they happen to survive lengthy advanced instruction, to undertake successfully early years of practice, when the material and status rewards are at best distant prospects, and hardly preordained. Thus, newly minted lawyers or doctors, scientists or engineers seeking wealth or renown short-term are likely to exit the field entirely: to enter politics, or the news media, or some corporate position, or an affiliation even more unrelated or only marginally related to their professional training. 3. Again, Why Professionalism is Unique The manifestations of a didactic occupational orientation just discussed also characterize many other expert and middle-class occupations, as we noted at the outset of this chapter. We are not claiming that all of them, or any of them in isolation, are constitutive of professionalism exclusively. This cannot be said of a didactic occupational orientation in general, nor can it be said, more particularly, of disinterestedness or a longer-term project of cultural upgrading. However, in the case of professional instruction and practice in particular, these (and other) manifestations of a didactic occupational orientation are not extraneous, accompanying variables. They are instead as constitutive structurally of professionalism as is an epistemological occupational orientation and the two sets of fiducial responsibilities discussed in Chapter 9. But, unlike the fiducial responsibilities, neither of the two sets of occupational orientations – epistemological or didactic – is exclusive to professionalism. Considered in isolation, therefore, they certainly do not and cannot distinguish professions structurally and institutionally from other expert occupations and middle class occupations. 3.1 Positional Disinterestedness v. Service Orientation and Altruistic Motivation Norms of disinterest, consistent with an openly articulated epistemological orientation as well as fiducial responsibilities, remain vital components structurally and institutionally of any and all professionalism projects. Aside from reflecting these responsibilities and orientations, norms of disinterest also reflect an ongoing behavioral fidelity to fundamental principles and precepts of professional instruction and practice. Always and everywhere professions articulate openly these

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principles and precepts, along with the epistemological and didactic rationales for them. This remains the case irrespective of the cynicism which all such standards of behavior frequently attract today. It also holds true irrespective of all instances of shortcomings in the behavior of particular professionals (or instructors) in actually meeting these standards.11 Disinterest is at once an idealized standard of behavior and yet eminently practicable. It is not ethereal, particularly difficult to meet in everyday professional activities, including research and instruction. Disinterestedness is practicable because behavioral standards of compliance with it or deviance from it can be identified first and foremost using procedural-normative thresholds of acceptability. We elaborate on this at length in the next chapter. For now we simply assert that behavioral standards of disinterestedness need not be left to competing definitions of the situation, social constructions of meaning, or incommensurable interpretations. All of this is otherwise inevitable and unavoidable whenever efforts are made to identify such standards primarily in directly substantive-normative terms. Irrespective of whether procedural-normative thresholds of acceptable disinterestedness are contradicted or violated purposefully or inadvertently, any and all shortcomings here reveal qualities structurally fundamental to the integrity of professional practice and research, qualities literally constitutive of professionalism as such. This is also why procedural-normative thresholds of disinterestedness are capable of orienting in common not only all professional practitioners and researchers. They are also capable of orienting all clients, patrons and observers of professional practice and research, including all commentators and critics of professions in specialized and general news media. Being at once idealized and yet bright-line, observers certainly cannot expert every single practitioner or researcher in every single structured situation to act consistently – fulsomely or unambiguously – with procedural-normative thresholds of disinterested behavior. But, being constitutive of professionalism structurally or positionally, such thresholds nonetheless distinguish professions analytically from many – but not all – other expert occupations. Observers do not expect 11 See Warnke (1985:166–67) on the ideal’s continuing salience even in the public’s (mistaken) perception of the “artist’s profession,” let alone in its (correct) perception of the professions of law and medicine, science and engineering.

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disinterested behavior from many other experts, including couturiers and chefs. In turn, these practitioners, unlike professionals proper, do not typically affiliate themselves openly with such an occupational orientation, either in their training or at worksites. On the other hand, home entertainment specialists (and other expert technicians) may adopt or feign disinterestedness voluntarily, in their own commercial interests. Being constitutive of professionalism structurally or positionally, we must distinguish disinterestedness and other manifestations of a didactic occupational orientation from related, cultural qualities accompanying professionalism, for these are extraneous variables, not constitutive of professionalism. We must certainly distinguish them from related, social-psychological qualities. Put more concretely, we must distinguish disinterestedness and other manifestations of a didactic occupational orientation analytically and empirically from a “service orientation,” which Parsons and others wrongly believed is typically shared by professional associations and disciplines. We must also distinguish them from “altruistic motivations,” which Parsons and others equally wrongly believed are typically internalized in common by dispersed professionals. Disinterestedness and other manifestations of a didactic occupational orientation point to a self-discipline or abnegation which is demanded structurally or positionally of anyone occupying a professional position and, more generally, of anyone occupying a position of power in a structured situation. Thus, this didactic occupational orientation is constitutive of professionalism as such. This is why such behavior is typically in evidence from the earliest days of professional instruction to the last days of professional career. Indeed, professionals exhibit disinterestedness and self-discipline simultaneously in four distinct ways: – They exhibit behaviorally abnegation of opportunism and one-sidedness: they typically advance positional interests short of one-sidedness and typically act self-interestedly short of opportunism. This abnegation is reflected, more positively, in their behavioral fidelity to the two fiducial responsibilities constitutive structurally of professionalism: immediate responsibilities to clients or patrons and institutional responsibilities to the design of a democratic society. – They exhibit behaviorally self-impulsion or “transcendence,” a ceaseless striving to provide best-practice in each and every undertaking

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with consistency and alacrity as a reflection of their own identities.12 Professionals strive ceaselessly to meet standards which are at once self-defined and self-imposed and yet reflecting, and capable of being defended openly or publicly in terms of, current best practices. Consistent with these standards, they dedicate their thinking, experience and talents to each case or occupational undertaking. – In meeting these standards with alacrity and consistency, they exhibit nonchalance, what Castiglione called sprezzatura: an adroitness which combines dispatch (as opposed to hastiness) with reliability, and thus predictability. Related, professionals are ever-vulnerable to being compelled to account in generalizable (or scientific) terms for any unusual outcomes, whether successes or failures. – Finally, they exhibit disinterestedness by largely disregarding as inconsequential the personalities, idiosyncrasies and subjective impressions of particular clients and patrons. Such disinterestedness insulates professional practitioners and researchers, on one side, from undue interference or influence; it insulates them most generally from lay social constructions of meaning in their occupational or research activities. On the other side, this same disinterestedness simultaneously protects clients or patrons from practitioner and researcher opportunism and abuse; it protects them most generally by removing any expectation that special pleading or, worse, baksheesh could somehow better secure best practices in their particular cases.13 Each of these manifestations of self-discipline on the part of professionals, historically and today, can trace its lineage to quite disparate occupations and activities of the Renaissance and early modern Europe. The lineage of professionals’ abnegation can be traced to the pedantry of Scholastics, as opposed to the discourse and sociability of men of gentle birth. Pedantry was assumed universally in early modern Europe to encourage isolation and thus to result in melancholy. This is

12 Jack Katz 1988 is rightly renowned for identifying the “transcendence” criminals experience when breaking the law, and for noting that this feeling or sensation on their part is quite literally constitutive of many criminal identities. As for professionals, the sociological issue is not why they work – for everyone has bills to pay. The sociological issue is why they work so hard. 13 Shapiro’s sharpest criticisms of professional behavior today are directed to professor-student relations, and precisely because they most starkly violate this fourth type of professional self-discipline.

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precisely why gentle society disdained strictly scholarly pursuits. Narrative painters and sculptors provided an intermediation between pedantry and sociability, and then also between the manual labor of artisans and the intellection of learned society. The lineage of professionals’ self-impulsion or transcendence can be traced to academiciens (and certain royal administrators) who were intent on advancing the gloire of king and kingdom. They did so consistently with their own immediate positional interests and self interests, for advancing this gloire simultaneously displayed their own putatively innate virtue, their own gentle qualities. The lineage of professionals’ nonchalance can be traced, as the reference to Castiglione indicates, to the demeanor, manners and sociability of courtiers of gentle birth. They engaged in discourse and sociability at court seemingly effortlessly, and flawlessly. This appearance, however, belied their lengthy primary and secondary socialization, including residential tutoring which revolved around endlessly repeated practical exercises of men of action (in dance, horsemanship and fencing), not cerebral exercises of men of learning. Neo-Platonist académies, to recall, adopted exercises of erudition, but always consistently with norms of sociability prevailing in gentle society. Finally, the lineage of disinterestedness can be traced much more specifically to the formats for student examinations and competitions in the Paris visual Académie. These formats then carried over, at least in some part, to how academiciens’ Salon submissions were later accepted and then decisions made on their placement within the Louvre exhibition area. Like the other three manifestations of self-discipline, transcendence in the sense noted above can be found today, certainly, in many occupational pursuits other than professions. It can be found in the arts as well as in entertainment and sports industries and elsewhere in the occupational order. Likewise, nonchalance and disinterestedness can be found today in numerous expert occupations. Indeed, this is one reason why the term “professional” is extended so casually in common parlance to entertainers, performers and experts (but less so to artists). Being demanded or expected in various livelihoods across modern occupational orders, abnegating behavior is also frequently accompanied by any number of cultural understandings and social-psychological beliefs held by practitioners in substance which are related but variable. Thus, these understandings and beliefs are extraneous accompanying

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variables of professionalism in particular, not invariant constituents of professionalism. That is, some of these understandings and beliefs of course will be in evidence among some professionals at certain times and in certain places. They may also be in evidence among many other experts who occupy positions of power in structured situations, including officers of publicly traded corporations. But they may well extend far more broadly across the occupational order, being adopted (or feigned) voluntarily by still other experts, those who provide services within embedded exchanges (e.g. home entertainment specialists). 3.2 Orientations as Variables in Other Occupations Our larger point is that renowned designers, renowned chefs as well as more anonymous home entertainment specialists are not held structurally or positionally to either set of occupational orientations just discussed, epistemological or didactic. Yet, all of these practitioners are clearly earning their livelihoods within occupations which are expert or middle-class. They are all earning their livelihoods, moreover, from occupations which demand lengthy training, whether provided in formal instructional settings or not. In addition, entry into the upper echelons of all of these occupations may well also entail advanced study, beyond workplace apprenticeship. There are many renowned schools of design as well as culinary institutes, and there is at least one association of home entertainment specialists which offers a “university professional certification program.”14 Yet, none of these occupations – or the many thousands like them – are professions. Couturiers, chefs, home entertainment specialists and their associations and disciplines do not provide expert services within structured situations. For this reason, the governance, regulation and activities of these occupations, associations and disciplines do not bear in any way, let alone structurally and invariably, on the institutional design of the larger social order and its direction of change. It goes without saying that there are no epistemological or didactic qualities of

14 The Custom Electrical Design & Installation Association (www.cedia.net) of Indianapolis IN reports with pride that, through on-line instruction and examinations, it is capable of inculcating into installers “the highest standards of knowledge and professionalism.” Its slogan, however, is strictly commercial: “raise the bar and your profits will follow.” Where might we find a profession anywhere in the world – or historically – with such an openly displayed slogan?

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elite clothing design, or cuisine preparation and presentation, or home entertainment installation which bear in any other way on the larger social order – except, of course, in eyes of fanatical levelers beguiled by a (substantive-normative) ideal of strictly horizontal stratification. What is even clearer is that practitioners who do not provide expert services within structured situations are not compelled structurally or positionally to exhibit behaviorally either type of occupational orientation, epistemological or didactic. Renowned fashion designers, renowned chefs and expert installers may well be aware, respectively, of the physical properties of fabrics, the chemical properties, nutrient qualities and flavor synergisms of ingesta, and principles of electronics. But they do not typically earn their livelihoods scientifically. Moreover, they are hardly required structurally or positionally to act disinterestedly, or otherwise to conduct themselves with discretion and decorum. Peers, officials and outside observers do not seriously challenge the place and purpose of these and other nonprofessional occupations in civil society when practitioners openly or routinely fall short of both occupational orientations discussed in this chapter. At best, shortcomings here are sanctioned by laws – criminal, contractual and civil – which apply literally to everyone in civil society, whether at worksites, in leisure activities or in everyday social interactions. Otherwise, the occupational orientations of nonprofessional expert occupations, whatever these happen to be, are altogether extraneous: they can be directly commercial or aesthetic, noticeably affected, vainglorious or, for that matter, altogether whimsical. In addition, and related, practitioners of nonprofessional expert occupations are not held structurally to any fiducial responsibilities, whether to clients or, certainly, to institutional design. They are not expected universally to exhibit any such abnegating, norm-based behavior, and this is reflected in the fact that rarely do they bother even to feign doing so. Again, Charles Frederick Worth was notorious for being capricious even to aristocratic female clients as well as for his commercial zeal. Such combinations of interpersonal and market-mimicking behavior are tolerated, indeed considered emblematical of “stars,” when flaunted openly by couturiers, chefs, entertainment and sports figures, and many other nonprofessional experts.

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4. Institutional Consequences in Light of Professional Orientations Tocqueville noted during the 1830s the importance of corps intermediaries in maintaining social order within a still fledgling American democracy, the importance of intermediary associations situated in civil society “below” formal agencies of state administration but “above” primary groups (families and ethnic groups, congregations and neighborhoods, and other ascribed or local affiliations). At the turn of the century Durkheim and other classical social theorists recapitulated this line of analysis. They were seeking sources of “social order” in France, Germany and elsewhere in Europe amidst the seemingly endless disruptions and dislocations attending industrialization and urbanization. A full generation after this, a young Talcott Parsons had this rich tradition of sociological theorizing in mind, this concern with accounting for social order, when he began grappling with how best to describe and explain the place and purpose in the United States of now maturing professions. He also appreciated that this was a development in the occupational order and amongst corps intermediaries which Tocqueville, Durkheim and other classics had failed to anticipate, and thus to accommodate at a conceptual level. Like these illustrious predecessors, Parsons, too, was endeavoring to identify empirically, and then to incorporate into this theorizing, those intermediary associations which best account for social order. Unlike his predecessors, however, Parsons also sought more secure analytical foundations for historical and cross-national comparison, an epistemic “grounding” at a conceptual level that could resist empirical and type relativism. Parsons did not want his sociology of professions, or grander functionalist theory, to be compromised by actors’ competing social constructions of meaning on the ground, in everyday life, or by scholars’ incommensurable interpretations of case studies and empirical data and then simple empirical generalizations from them. Today, building on Parsons’ promising but ultimately vague references to the relationship between professions (and other intermediary associations) and social order, we are now appreciating that the presence and fate of professionalism, including in corporate governance, introduce two sets of consequences into any civil society. They introduce not only immediate consequences for identifiable individuals and

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groups, all but one of which are indeed confined to the occupational order and stratification system. They also introduce longer-term consequences for the institutional design of the larger social order. We propose that it is these longer-term consequences which account in large part for shifts in the direction of social change both historically, during the ancien régime, and ever since, from the mid-nineteenth century to today. This is our way of updating, and contributing greater specificity to, Parsons’ general thesis that professionalism – somehow – contributes uniquely to social order in the United States. We also update Parsons’ prediction that this would become the case in other advanced societies worldwide. Parsons was vague about the profession-social order relationship not only because the extent and scope of “social order” is difficult to identify with much precision either analytically or empirically. He was also vague because he saw the affects of professionalism much as Colbert had had seen the effects of the monarchy’s various Académie. He saw these affects first and foremost in cultural and social psychological terms, not in institutional and structural terms. By contrast to these two defects at the core of Parsons’ sociology of professions, we propose that always and everywhere the presence and fate of professionalism, including in corporate governance, affects structurally not social order as such. It instead affects the received institutional design spanning the state and civil society, a state of affairs in the world which social scientists can identify with considerable specificity. With this, social scientists can then predict and explain these affects cross-nationally today as well as also describe them historically. Successful professionalism supports structurally only the institutional designs democratic, commercially competitive societies; correlatively, failed professionalism or de-professionalization enervates this particular set of institutional designs alone. As regards all other sets of institutional designs, successful professionalism at minimum exposes structural limitations in two, limited government and formal democracy, and it enervates all others, those of autocracy. Correlatively, failed professionalism or de-professionalization within limited government and formal democracy reflects the latter’s shortcomings at an institutional level, as compared to democratic society. Such failures, moreover, complement and encourage clientelism and other forms of caprice or arbitrariness in civil society. These trends of social change reveal a structural vulnerability to autocratic turns,

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including those which find their way into official agencies of state administration. The occupational orientations constitutive of professionalism shed light on why these profession-social order relationships hold true. When professional governance, regulation and activities endeavor to ensure that dispersed practitioners and researchers provide expert services in structured situations consistently with epistemological and didactic occupational orientations, this simultaneously helps to hold these practitioners and researchers to their fiducial responsibilities, both immediate and institutional. That is, this simultaneously benefits clients and patrons while supporting structurally the institutional design of a democratic society. Moreover, many other expert occupations and middle class occupations may well adopt voluntarily, or feign adopting, the same occupational orientations, independently of any such fiducial responsibilities. In this way norms of “professionalism” diffuse far more broadly across the occupational order, raising expectations about the sorts of commercial conduct which are acceptable or laudable in the absence of formal or explicit legal prescriptions.15 Correlatively, when professional governance, regulation and activities fail to ensure fidelity to epistemological and didactic occupational orientations, the harms or externalities that result are likewise both immediate and institutional. Client wellbeing is placed in jeopardy. More uniquely, professionals’ shortcomings, unlike those of other experts, enervate structurally, thus inadvertently, the institutional design of democratic society. Indeed, the professionals and associations and disciplines which fail to provide expert services consistently with both occupational orientations are likely eventually to challenge democratic society outright, purposefully, consistently with new social-psychological beliefs and cultural understandings which countenance such failures. By contrast, when professions are present in all other societies – from autocracies to formal democracies and limited governments – ongoing efforts by profession leaders simply to uphold the same epistemological and didactic occupational orientations are intrinsically unsettling institutionally. Here European social theorists are certainly correct: professionalism does introduce a Trojan Horse into

15

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these civil societies, one potentially disruptive not only of communal bonds but of Rechtsstaat and Sozialstaat substantive norms. After all, when private governance structures within civil society champion these occupational orientations of professionalism, they are anticipating structurally a quite different institutional design, that of a democratic society. They are not supporting structurally the institutional design currently in place. Putting this differently, any default regime of private governance and regulation which upholds the occupational orientations of professionalism is, at the very least, restraining professionals and their associations and disciplines from accommodating directly in structured situations in civil society any and all undue intrusions of bureaucratic decrees, patronage networks and commercial pressures. By restraining or mediating such heteronomous intrusions, professional governance and regulation is by definition already enervating structurally, not supporting, all institutional designs of autocracy, of otherwise unalloyed bureaucratic decree. Ultimately, this trajectory of structural incompatibility with institutional design can only eventually evolve beyond inadvertent enervation to purposeful (social- psychological- and cultural-based) challenges to existing regimes. Alternatively, and more typically, autocracies either induce or compel all occupational practitioners, including “professionals,” to adopt modes of private governance and regulation which recapitulate institutional design within major intermediary associations. They induce or compel all occupational practitioners and their associations and disciplines to compromise the epistemological and didactic occupational orientations constitutive of professionalism. The invariant, structural outcome of this sort of governance and regulatory diffusion into civil society is, of course, for any nascent professionalism projects to be stillborn. Even more typically, professionalism is simply never initiated within such institutional designs. All intermediary associations are exposed fully and directly to unalloyed bureaucratic decrees or, alternatively, to the favoritism of patronage networks or the cupidity of commercial pressures. Most typically of all, they are subjected unremittingly to the more or less open corruption characteristic of clientelism. This is why “professions” in autocracies are indeed typically indistinguishable on the ground from all other expert and middle class occupations. This is also why any evidence of independent epistemological and didactic orientations in any occupations seems subversive,

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seditious. After all, any such evidence anywhere in the occupational order can potentially stimulate similar orientations within structured situations, and thus underpin an independent socio-cultural authority which is intrinsically enervating structurally of the institutional designs of autocracies. As a result of the invariant structural relationship between professionalism and institutional design, and the utter precariousness of the institutional designs of democratic society in particular, professionals and their associations and disciplines are subjected always and everywhere to unrelenting systemic pressures to lose integrity, to compromise their epistemological and didactic occupational orientations. Weber labeled these systemic pressures rationalization. Marx had earlier attributed them more broadly to alienation (and also more narrowly to commercialism). Robert Michels, a contemporary of Weber, held that one result of systemic pressures is oligarchy. A generation later Parsons added another result: functional differentiation and then ever more finely-grained occupational specialization. Because any professionalism project which retains integrity defies all such systemic pressures except the last identified by Parsons, it thereby always seems both anomalous and paradoxical on its face on the ground. This is also why professionalism poses so many problems of description and explanation, to say nothing of prediction, for all major schools of thought and theoretical approaches in the social sciences. Professionalism poses problems for Marxists in that professional practitioners and researchers do not fit readily into class analyses. Are professionals members of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat? They typically fail to own and control the means of production. But they nonetheless exercise positional power, and not simply over clients but also over patrons, including “bourgeois” employers. Professionalism also poses problems for Weberians in that professions, like all groups and organizations, are invariably ruled by oligarchies, and yet they institutionalize a non-bureaucratic form of organization. Their governance structures at both associational and workplace levels are more horizontal than vertical, plus they institutionalize ongoing deliberation within dispersed collegial formations. At the same time, professions are simultaneously stratified internally, rather than being egalitarian, and yet ultimately meritocratic. In addition, because profession governance, regulation and activities are reason-based rather than traditional, ascribed or capricious, professionalism disrupts received communal bonds and simultaneously

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resists state decrees. For these reasons and others, professions elude more generally the entire Bürgertum approach of the continent. Professionalism poses problems, too, for American sociologists, Parsons included. It poses problems for American conflict theorists in that professions are at once non-democratic, which these theorists can address only critically; they are also fiducial, non-market-mimicking, which they cannot explain except in sophomorically conspiratorial ways. Parsons’ great insight was repeatedly to draw attention to professions’ fiducial behavior. But he neglected to see that the systemic pressures threatening professionalism today include not only commercialism but also clientelism. Commercialism, to say nothing of functional differentiation, does not pose the greatest obstacle to professionalism in either advanced or industrializing societies; clientelism does. This is a major oversight in Parsons’ efforts to identify the relationship between professionalism and social order.16 When profession leaders succumb for any reason to any of the systemic pressures above, other than those of functional differentiation, they simultaneously lose epistemological or didactic integrity or both, on one side. Simultaneously, they also initiate structurally, on the other side, processes of de-professionalization. They are no longer resisting these pressures, even in their own positional and corporate interests. Moreover, profession leaders’ succumbing to these pressures and initiating of de-professionalization can be either purposeful or entirely inadvertent. They proceed purposefully when they voluntarily abandon professionalism (whether they understand this explicitly or not), as happened in the fine arts during the mid-nineteenth century. They proceed inadvertently when they fail, for instance, to appreciate the structural and institutional consequences of clientelism, as is happening in middle-class occupations and universities in many societies today. As any trajectory of de-professionalization unfolds in the occupational order, it culminates in professionals and their associations and disciplines abandoning a collegial form of organization, whether voluntarily or under duress (from state bureaucrats or clientelist networks).

16

See Sciulli 2006 for elaboration.

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This outcome, as we will see in the next chapter, is important structurally, not simply culturally or social-psychologically. Only a collegial form of organization is capable of institutionalizing professionals’ ongoing behavioral fidelity to epistemological and didactic occupational orientations.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ADDITIONAL CONSTITUTIVE QUALITIES: PROFESSION GOVERNANCE, BEHAVIOR, SHARED COGNITION Every successful or ongoing professionalism project unfolds in a structured situation, whether in civil society or in the state. Always and everywhere professions exercise positional power over dependents consistently with an independent socio-cultural authority. For this reason, always and everywhere profession leaders and members are held structurally or positionally to two sets of fiducial responsibilities, immediate and institutional. Likewise, they are also held to two sets of occupational orientations, epistemological and didactic. All of this is invariant, constitutive of professionalism as such. However, we just saw that other occupations, those which provide services at fluid sites or in embedded exchanges, may voluntarily adopt or feign adopting occupational orientations of professionalism. We noted that this phenomenal overlap across the occupational order accounts in part for why the terms “profession” and “professional” are frequently overextended colloquially. Now we identify other areas of phenomenal overlap, and thereby accomplish two things simultaneously. We complete our description of the invariant structural qualities constitutive of professionalism while also revealing additional sources of the laxity and confusion of quotidian verbiage. After all, these additional qualities constitutive of professionalism are also not confined to professions. Like the occupational orientations of professionalism, they, too, may be adopted or feigned by any number of other expert occupations and middle-class occupations. 1. Disinterest and Deliberation, Procedure and Form We saw in the previous chapter that professionals advance their own immediate positional and corporate interests by safeguarding and, whenever possible, advancing the epistemological and didactic content of professional instruction and practice. Being structural, this behavior is invariant. It is invariant even as (a) the content being safeguarded or advanced is a variable, evolving over time and varying across specialties,

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and even as (b) profession leaders and members are incapable of controlling this content evolution and variation. Professionals are utterly incapable of controlling the uses to which the epistemological and didactic content of any of their specialties might be put, whether uses by colleagues, by clients and patrons, or by observing commentators and critics. The content of professionalism typically demands both qualitative and substantive-normative behavior from professionals (part of the didactic component) and quantitative and technical or strictly instrumental – vocational – behavior (part of the epistemological component). Still, the best general presentation of the substantive details of professional work remains that by Andrew Abbott, in his discussions of diagnosis, inference, treatment and academic work.1 Diagnosis, a term which Abbott notes was coined in 1847 by William Whewell (1794–1866), a Cambridge scientist and theologian,2 brings patron or client information into a profession’s knowledge system by way of classification. Inference matches this diagnostic information with a range of treatments which have predictable outcomes. Treatment, as well as diagnosis and inference, in turn, are guided by instructions (practicable precepts) yielded from academic work (research and theoretical principles), the profession knowledge system. Abbott calls these processes, taken together, “the cultural machinery of jurisdiction.” All of these activities, whether undertaken by professionals or other experts, convert problems or tasks which concern people in everyday life into what Abbbot calls acknowledged “professional problems.”3 Abbott fully appreciates, therefore, and correctly so, that these activities are hardly confined to professions. The problem with 1 Abbott 1988:35–58. In the next chapter, we return to these four processes in the context of discussing Abbott’s argument overall. 2 See the second edition of his The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. 2, at page 460. 3 Abbott 1988:59. There are problems at a conceptual level with Abbott’s accounting of professional work, which we identify methodically in the next chapter. One notable problem is that he neglects the form of organization which alone can establish and maintain an ongoing integrity of diagnosis, treatment, inference and academic work across dispersed professionals, worksites and instructional facilities. As a result of neglecting this, readers of Abbott’s book are led to believe implicitly that dispersed, individual professionals are somehow capable of undertaking these activities strictly monologically, rather than dialogically, and thus irrespective of how their worksites and instructional facilities are organized. See Habermas (1979) on the importance of not confusing monologic reasoning with dialogic processes, whether actual or virtual.

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Abbott’s sociology of professions, however, is that it does not identify or include any occupational, organizational or instructional qualities or activities which distinguish professions from other expert occupations (as we will see in the next chapter). 1.1 Four Areas of Overlap between Professions and Other Occupations Regardless, Abbott’s accounting of diagnosis and the other occupational activities just noted is consistent with one of the central theses in this chapter, namely the importance of relative disinterestedness and ongoing deliberation in professional activities. Here is one broad area of behavioral overlap between professions and many other occupations, about which much more is said throughout this chapter. When other experts conduct themselves disinterestedly or establish and maintain venues of deliberation, they may be said popularly to be acting “professionally.” For instance, Abbott notes that successful diagnosis actually demands that two distinct processes be undertaken simultaneously. Professionals (and other experts) can only categorize a patron or client problem correctly when they simultaneously remove from view or consideration any and all client or patron qualities which are extraneous. Abbott calls this second process “colligation,” and calls the first, correct categorization, “classification.”4 More generally, we can add to this insight into professional (and expert) behavior two others. The behavior of professionals and many other experts, including home entertainment specialists, is typically learned, but short of pedantry. It is also typically marked by probity and (to some degree) cultivation, but short of gentility. Here is a second broad area of behavioral overlap between professions and many other occupations, but we elaborate on this below only in passing. When other experts exhibit learnedness or exhibit probity, they may be said popularly to be acting “professionally.” Even as the content of professional activities evolves over time and varies by specialty, professionals’ ongoing dedication to safeguarding it and advancing it is invariant. This, after all, advances the immediate positional and corporate interests of anyone occupying a professional position. However, such dedication is also hardly confined to professions. As we noted in the previous chapter, this behavior can 4

Abbott 1988:40–41.

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be adopted or feigned voluntarily by many other expert occupations, including haute couture, haute cuisine and home entertainment installation. Still, shared dedication here is constitutive of professionalism because, here, its source is structural, and not only in one respect (just noted) but in two related respects. First, shared dedication to professional content is simply one qualitative and substantive-normative (and also quantitative and technical or instrumental) instantiation of any profession’s independent socio-cultural authority and positional power, both of which are invariant structurally. In addition, as long as content evolution and variation unfolds consistently with this authority and power, and thus in a relative absence of positional one-sidedness, it typically and predictably advances professionals’ immediate positional and corporate interests, as noted above. Now we can add that content evolution and variation under this condition not only typically and predictably augments and advances professionals’ socio-cultural authority and positional power. It also simultaneously protects and advances patron or client wellbeing, and equally typically and predictably. Rather than this dual outcome of professional content being paradoxical, this is an immediate consequence of professionalism which is in fact invariant, constitutive of professionalism as such. It is in evidence empirically always and everywhere, in the everyday activities of any ongoing professionalism project under the condition noted above. Given that all of this holds true, however, only when professionals exercise their positional power short of one-sidedness, this condition is itself constitutive of professionalism structurally. It is clearly confined to professions exclusively because all other expert occupations provide services either in embedded exchanges or at fluid sites. As a result, they do not exercise positional power at all, let alone onesidedly. The irony is that this condition, an absence of one-sidedness, nonetheless brings into view a third broad source of the laxity and confusion of colloquial usages of the terms “professional” and “profession.” Whenever other experts simply refrain from taking advantage of patrons or clients, they may be said popularly to be acting “professionally.” Why, however, do professionals typically and predictably uphold this condition in their everyday occupational activities? Profession leaders and members are like any other set of dispersed and heterogeneous individuals engaged in any complex team activity. They are only capable

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of identifying in common and then safeguarding and advancing in common an evolving and varying content of principles and precepts – which, in part, demands ongoing qualitative and substantive-normative judgments and behaviors – by conducting themselves and organizing themselves in two ways. First and foremost, they exhibit ongoing behavioral fidelity to the bright-line, procedural-normative threshold of rule clarity and consistency discussed in Chapter 4. It does not matter whether they exhibit this procedural-normative integrity purposefully, as is often the case in modern professions, or they do so entirely inadvertently, as was the case in the Paris visual Académie and as is the case today in American corporate governance. In addition, profession leaders and members can only institutionalize their own ongoing procedural-normative integrity, can only keep this type of behavior salient first amongst themselves, within and across dispersed venues as well as within and across cohorts and generations, by adopting and maintaining one and only one form of organization, a collegial form. Here, too, it does not matter whether they take this organizational step purposefully or entirely inadvertently. We noted in Chapter 4 that collegial formations are deliberative bodies, identifiable venues of decision making and discourse at which participants give and take reasons as formal equals. Such collective reasoning is reflected, at minimum, in members’ ongoing behavioral fidelity to the procedural-normative threshold of rule clarity and consistency. If members instead breach this threshold in any way, including in particular by exercising positional power one-sidedly, they simultaneously disrupt deliberation and enervate the collegial form. At the limiting case, such breaches terminate deliberation and lead invariably to a displacing of the collegial form by one of three available alternatives, or some combination of these alternatives. All of this was discussed in Chapter 4. Now we are adding more explicitly and formally that collegial formations and ongoing procedural-normative integrity are both constitutive of professionalism structurally. Yet, like the occupational orientations of professionalism discussed in the previous chapter, neither of these qualities of professionalism is confined to professions. Here, then, is a fourth and final broad area of phenomenal overlap across the occupational order, and thus a fourth source of colloquial laxity and confusion. When other experts adopt or feign adopting the procedure and form just discussed, they may be said popularly to be acting “professionally.”

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Irrespective of whether profession leaders and members establish and maintain collegial formations purposefully or entirely inadvertently, they invariably adopt this particular form of organization. Indeed, they invariably do so at all three levels of professional internal governance: the level of major workplaces, the level of elite instructional facilities, and the level of accrediting or governing associations. The Paris visual Académie of the ancien régime illustrates all of this, and American corporate governance structures today are beginning to. In addition, profession leaders and members also invariably encourage this same form of organization in any and all bodies which are overseeing or regulating their activities externally, whether courts of administrative agencies. All of this follows logically or equally consistently from professionals simply advancing their own immediate positional and corporate interests. A collegial form is constitutive of professions and professionalism in that it alone, among all other available organizational forms, uniquely institutionalizes, at the very minimum, members’ ongoing procedural-normative integrity. It accomplishes this by, again at minimum, institutionalizing two related, ongoing processes. First, it institutionalizes the process of simply keeping rules (including instructional principles and occupational precepts) broadly cognizable and understandable to practitioners and researchers, however dispersed or heterogeneous they may be. Second, it also institutionalizes the related process of endeavoring to ensure that practitioners and researchers typically and predictably exhibit behavioral fidelity to these rules over time. Our point is that it is this same ongoing procedural-normative integrity, institutionalized exclusively by collegial formations, which accounts for the reliability or predictability of professional behavior more generally, in substance. That is, this integrity and this formation is what institutionalizes the possibility of dispersed and heterogeneous practitioners and researchers first identifying in common, and then collectively and individually exhibiting fidelity to, any and all of the substantive-normative qualities constitutive of professionalism discussed in previous chapters. These qualities are: the independent socio-cultural authority of professionalism, the fiducial responsibilities of professionalism, and the occupational orientations of professionalism – including the evolving and varying content of professionalism.

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First and foremost, only through procedural-normative integrity institutionalized by a collegial form can dispersed and heterogeneous professionals: – Identify in common when particular (substantive) exercises of positional power are becoming one-sided or abusive, and thereby jeopardizing a profession’s independent socio-cultural authority. In addition, only through the same integrity and formation can professionals first identify and codify among themselves, and then possibly exhibit ongoing behavioral fidelity to the substance of: – The principles and precepts underpinning their own independent socio-cultural authority, which encapsulate a profession’s quantitative and technical or instrumental achievements as well as its current qualitative and substantive-normative understandings of best practice. – The immediate and longer-term fiducial responsibilities of professionalism, as one reflection of the qualitative and substantivenormative understandings just noted. – The epistemological and didactic occupational orientations of professionalism and, in addition, the evolving and varying content of professional instruction and occupational activities, two additional reflections of professionals’ shared qualitative and substantivenormative understandings. All of this qualitative, substantive-normative behavior constitutive of professionalism was discussed in previous chapters, but without yet bringing explicitly and formally into the mix both procedural-normative integrity and the collegial form. Now we are doing so, asserting explicitly and formally that both procedure and form are necessary conditions of professionalism, constitutive of professionalism as such but not confined to professions empirically. Given this, we can also now add other substantive-normative behaviors which follow from these conditions, and thus those which professionals typically exhibit in their everyday occupational activities. But, again, like the occupational orientations of professionalism, these additional substantive-normative behaviors are also not exclusive to professions. Only through procedural-normative integrity and a collegial form can professionals (or other experts and occupational practitioners)

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first identify and codify among themselves and then possibly exhibit ongoing behavioral fidelity to the substance of: – Those qualitative changes in commercial and social environments, beyond priced outcomes, which potentially open occupational and positional opportunities or potentially pose occupational and positional vulnerabilities. – The qualitative behavior intrinsic to any combining of relative disinterestedness with a warranting by ongoing deliberation. With this last point we return to where we opened this chapter, with the first broad area of phenomenal overlap across the occupational order which is at once constitutive of professionalism structurally but not confined to professions empirically. 1.3 A Schematic Overview The discussion above revolves around a rather large set of moving parts, but it is possible to present our general point more schematically, and thus in a way capable of orienting more clearly the discussion to follow. We are essentially identifying structural qualities of professionalism which are manifested in three distinct sets of behaviors constitutive of professionalism. All three sets safeguard and advance the evolving and varying content of professional practice or research. But, again, none of these behaviors is confined to professions empirically. In addition, these three sets of behaviors are related empirically in that each set is found, respectively, in each of three areas of professional activity which are also related empirically: – One area of activity and set of behaviors demanded structurally or positionally by professionalism is shared behavioral fidelity of a certain kind in institutionalized internal governance and external regulation, namely that which exhibits procedural-normative integrity, and thus predictability. – Another area and set is an institutionalized everyday behavior of a certain kind in professional instruction and then in professional practice and research, namely that which also exhibits proceduralnormative integrity, and predictability. – Yet a third area and set is an institutionalized everyday cognition (shared acknowledgement or identification and then shared understanding) of a certain kind at all three levels of professional activity: workplace, instructional, and associational. This institutionalized

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everyday cognition is what permits dispersed and heterogeneous professionals to identify in common when the evolving and varying content of their specialties in the first two areas and sets either remains defensible publicly, as professional, or becomes indefensible, unprofessional. Any cognition shared by or spanning dispersed and heterogeneous professionals is, of course, readily accessible even more broadly, at least in principle. It is accessible, for instance, to any and all bodies of profession oversight or regulation, whether internal or external to professions, whether associational or administrative and judicial. This accessibility is typical and predictable empirically, however, only when, and because, the conditions of professionalism, the procedure and form, are in place. After all, the procedural-normative threshold of rule clarity and consistency is the same threshold standard which is currently facilitating any shared cognition of fiducial duties by American corporate officers, Delaware judges and interested outsiders, such as legal scholars. Everyday shared cognition by professionals in the real world does not and cannot possibly revolve more directly around any qualities, norms or rules of substance. Nor, certainly, can it revolve around substantive rules which are unique to professional activities (or, of course, unique to corporate governance activities) but somehow elude or contradict the procedural-normative threshold standard. We can appreciate in two ways why uniqueness in this sense is unlikely. On the one hand, the substance of professional activities not only evolves and varies. Being in principle accessible publicly, it is also everavailable to being adopted or accommodated, in greater or lesser part, by many other occupations. This is true not only of occupations neighboring a particular profession jurisdictionally, and thereby competing with it for patrons or clients (which Abbott emphasizes). It is equally true of any number of occupations more distant jurisdictionally from a particular profession and otherwise unaffected by its activities. On the other hand, and militating also against substantive uniqueness in the sense above, literally everyone engaged in any commercial activity in civil society, or in any official activity in the state administration, is held to general legal standards – criminal, civil and contractual – which are in part substantive and also in part qualitative or normative.5 Such 5 Lon Fuller’s central point is that if the substance of criminal, civil or contractual laws is not kept consistent with the threshold of procedural legality, state officials

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legal standards include proscriptions against injury, theft, fraud and many other derelictions. However, precisely because these legal standards are general, they have literally nothing to do with any of the three sets of professional behavioral qualities discussed in this chapter. The three sets of substantive-normative behaviors explored in this chapter are constitutive of professions because they are demanded structurally by anyone occupying a professional position. But none of these behaviors is confined or can be confined to professions empirically. In addition, all three sets of behaviors revolve around ongoing procedural-normative integrity institutionalized by a collegial form. Neither of these two qualities or conditions – procedure and form – is confined to professions either, as our discussion of corporate governance in Chapter 4 has already clearly illustrated. Rather, the collegial form, procedural-normative integrity, and the evolving and varying content and substantive behaviors of professionalism all account, in additional ways, for why colloquial usage overextends the terms “professional” and “profession.” 2. Procedural Integrity and Collegial Formations 2.1 Restraining One-Sidedness: “Thin” Orderliness As professionalism unfolds within structured situations, its leaders advance their own immediate positional and corporate interests by establishing and then maintaining rule clarity and consistency at four organizational levels. Three of these are levels of internal professional governance, namely in associations, in scholarly disciplines and instructional facilities, and at major workplaces (those within major intermediary associations). The fourth organizational level is institutional, that of external oversight or regulation, whether by courts or state administrative agencies. Profession leaders cannot endure for long breakdowns in rule understanding and behavioral fidelity at any of these levels. Ongoing breakdowns anywhere obstruct, contradict and ultimately jeopardize their own immediate positional and corporate interests within structured situations. cannot possibly enforce and adjudicate these laws with any consistency over time. In addition, citizens cannot possibly predict with any confidence how to avoid legal jeopardy, other than through patronage, favoritism or baksheesh.

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This is another way of saying that profession leaders cannot accommodate within structured situations at any organizational level either positional one-sidedness – abuses of power – or noticeable instances of self-interested opportunism. One-sidedness and opportunism obstruct, contradict and ultimately jeopardize the independence of any profession’s own socio-cultural authority. Indeed, profession leaders also cannot accommodate within structured situations at any organizational level individual idiosyncrasy to a point of brazen vanity or indefensible mischief. When profession leaders simply accommodate any of these behaviors openly or publicly, they simultaneously lose the capacity more generally to identify in common and then possibly to resist concertedly countless other trends toward deprofessionalization. Thus, whenever such accommodation occurs, one of two very predictable processes is already underway. On the one hand, the structured situations bequeathed to profession leaders are already losing the backing of received cultural truisms. Thus, these structured situations are already metamorphosing – however slowly – into embedded exchanges, fluid sites, or both. Or, alternatively, when structured situations retain the backing of cultural truisms, the accommodations above are increasing profession leaders vulnerability to having their own positions, the internal governance of professions at all three levels, wrested from them by the state. After all, structured situations, whether in the state or in civil society, are too consequential to elites, both immediately and in the longer-term, for the state to tolerate for very long lax internal governance and external regulation of them. By contrast, lax internal governance and external regulation is far more acceptable – to elites, to the state as well as to occupation leaders – at fluid sites and also within embedded exchanges. This, after all, is one of the great strengths institutionally of market economies as opposed to planned economies. Correlatively, even efforts at an institutional level to encourage or support rule clarity and consistency at organizational levels can include, at the limiting case, regulatory laissez-faire. After all, the state can simply leave to local occupation leaders the regulation of professional workplaces, instructional facilities and associations, with little or no external oversight. But this hands-off option remains credible only as long as these local occupation leaders in fact establish and maintain governance structures which, in fact, rather assiduously identify and then stem one-sidedness and noticeable opportunism, at the very least.

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One irony of the Paris visual Académie is that its external regulator, Colbert, the chief domestic adviser of an absolute monarch, ultimately took this hands-off regulatory option. Recognizing that neither he nor the Crown could provide Académie officers independently with any external visual-cultural guidance, Colbert by default had to rely on Académie internal governance and the expertise of academiciens. He also had to rely on academiciens continuing individually and collectively to assume fiducial responsibility for their patrons, and also to institutionalize their own ongoing dedication to epistemological and didactic occupational orientations. In these specific respects, the Académie after 1680 was by default far more insulated from Crown interference during the ancien régime than were major guilds and learned corporations. The structural or positional demand for clear and consistent internal governance and external regulation of professions within structured situations is hardly abstract or ethereal. Professional and regulatory behavior which meets this demand is easy to identify and document empirically at all four levels, including in everyday instructional and occupational activities. Being invariant and constitutive of professionalism as such, empirical evidence of governance and regulatory integrity is revealed by professionals’ ongoing behavioral probity at all four levels. This behavioral probity is revealed first and foremost, including in the visual Académie, by profession leaders’ ongoing fidelity across all four levels to the procedural-normative threshold of rule clarity and consistency. It is also revealed by profession leaders establishing and maintaining collegial formations, deliberative bodies, across all three levels of internal governance, and then also endeavoring to have the same organizational form extended to all bodies of external oversight and regulation. Ongoing fidelity to this threshold and form marks a distinctive type of collective “orderliness,” one which is at once proscriptively “thin” but cognitively bright line.6 Breaches – that is, accusations of breaches – of the threshold and form do not typically elicit moral condemnation. But breaches are typically rather self-evident, relatively easy for participants as well as observers to identify in common, intersubjectively.

6 See Etzioni 1996 and Gregg 2003 for methodical and lively discussions of “thick” and “thin” orderliness, respectively substantive-normative and procedural-normative.

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The opposite is the case with breaches – accusations of breaches – of qualitative standards of behavior which are directly substantive normative. These standards can be “thick” proscriptively, such that breaches of them readily attract moral condemnation. But real or supposed breaches of such standards are much more difficult to prove to the satisfaction of critics or skeptics. They are highly vulnerable to competing social constructions of meaning by participants and then also to incommensurable interpretations by outside observers. One thesis of this chapter is that any qualitative, substantivenormative standards of behavior which professionals happen at any given moment in time and at any given venue either to internalize, as convictions or motivations, or otherwise to acknowledge, as socialpsychological beliefs and cultural cognitions and understandings, are ultimately extraneous to professionalism. The same is true of any forms of organization, other than the collegial, which happen also to accompany professionalism at particular times and places. None of these qualities on the ground are constitutive of professionalism as such. All of them are variables, which simply happen to accompany professionalism at particular times and places. Collegial formations uniquely institutionalize the threshold standard of procedural-normative integrity which is proscriptively “thin” but cognitively bright line, for the threshold simply allows participants and outsiders to identify and restrain positional one-sidedness. In this way collegial formations uniquely institutionalize rule clarity and consistency within any complex team activity. This is a necessary prerequisite for shared rule recognition and understanding by members of collegial formations themselves, and then their ongoing rule fidelity behaviorally. Collegial formations are deliberative bodies which institutionalize this threshold on one-sidedness by their sheer presence within any intermediary association, or any state agency, or any other rule-making and rule-enforcing body. Thus, they accomplish this entirely independently of members’ self-interests and internalized convictions or motivations as individuals. They also accomplish this equally independently of members’ more cognitive social-psychological beliefs and cultural understandings as individuals. This means, likewise, that collegial formations accomplish this entirely independently of the lexicons participants happen to be using in describing, discussing and explaining their own behavior. They accomplish this, therefore, even when the terms “deliberation,” “collegiality,” “procedural integrity” and “profession” are

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anachronistic or otherwise unavailable to participants lexically, and thus utterly alien to them social psychologically and culturally. Collegial formations are found at all three levels of professional internal governance and then also, but only within certain institutional designs, in the bodies mandated to oversee or regulate professions externally. This happens typically, rather than infrequently or rarely, because, again, only the presence of collegial formations, not the presence of any other available organizational forms, uniquely advances the immediate positional and corporate interests of profession leaders and members themselves. As long as professionalism projects remain ongoing, therefore, collegial formations typically and predictably appear. First and foremost they appear at prominent workplaces and then also at elite instructional facilities (including the visual Académie). They also appear, sooner or later, within the associations governing or certifying professions (again including the visual Académie). As long as professionalism remains ongoing, collegial formations appear always and everywhere at all three of these levels of professional internal governance in any institutional design (including that of the ancien régime). However, at the fourth level, that of external oversight or regulation of professions, collegial formations are established and then maintained only within limited governments and democratic societies, not within any other institutional designs. Rather than elaborating now on the sequence in which collegial formations typically appear, the point at the moment is that regardless of how this sequence unfolds within different institutional designs, collegial formations appear always and everywhere at all three levels of internal governance in any ongoing professionalism project. Again, the Paris visual Académie illustrates this well. 2.2 Procedural Integrity and Collegiality in Paris Our thesis is that four additional qualities (among others discussed in this chapter) are constitutive structurally of professionalism but not confined empirically to professions: – The presence of collegial formations at all three levels of internal governance, and thus unambiguous evidence of ongoing behavioral fidelity to the procedural-normative threshold of rule clarity and consistency; – Related, but more substantive-normative, ongoing deliberation at all three levels;

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– Likewise substantive-normative, relative disinterestedness and behavioral probity at all three levels; – Shared cognition of all of this, of procedural-normative integrity and of substantive-normative deliberation, disinterestedness and probity. If the presence of collegial formations and these other qualities is constitutive of professionalism, then this same combination – organizational form, procedural-normative integrity, substantive-normative deliberation, disinterestedness and probity, and shared cognition of all of this – will indeed have been in evidence even in the Paris Académie during the ancien régime. We will find this combination, that is, even within an institutional design otherwise unreservedly antagonistic to every quality above in isolation, save one, and even more hostile to all of them in combination. The institutional design of the ancien régime is particularly apposite for our purposes precisely for this reason, because it did not typically tolerate, let alone accommodate, clear and consistent rule-making and rule-enforcing within or by any independent tribunal or corporate body. Likewise, it hardly encouraged relative disinterestedness within any occupational activity, let alone ongoing deliberation by formal equals. It did, however, encourage behavioral probity – honnêteté – at any open or observable venue within and around the milieu mondain. The sort of institutional antagonism and hostility to professionalism we find during the ancien régime is instructive more generally because we find variations of it not only in many new democracies today in the South and East and, of course, in lingering autocracies but also in established democracies on the continent. We noted in Chapter 5 (at pages 166–168) that Yale art historian Thomas Crow cites four ways in which the early Académie established and maintained on its premises not only behavioral probity, consistently with its proximity to the milieu mondain. It also established and maintained ongoing deliberation and relative disinterestedness, and then an unprecedented proceduralnormative integrity.7 All of this indicates that the early Académie was organized in a collegial form, not in the patron-client form typical of the era and isomorphic with institutional design. We will see in time that all four early characteristics of collegiality in the Paris Académie are constitutive of professionalism as such, even as, again, none is confined to professions. In all four ways, the Académie 7

Crow 1985:25.

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determinedly resisted any and all manifestations of undue intrusiveness from patronage networks diffusing not only from the royal household to the milieu mondain but also from the Parlement and Sorbonne to learned society as well as from merchant and artisanal guilds to the lowliest retailer and workshop master. Aside from establishing that Académie collegiality cannot be confused with clientelism, Crow’s discussion also establishes, again without using our terminology, that it also cannot be confused with bureaucracy. The Académie was hardly a simple civil service agency of the royal administration, and its members, visual academiciens, were hardly akin, for instance, to the intendants dispatched to provinces to collect taxes in the name of the Crown. 2.3 Deliberation and Disinterestedness In light of our historical case of inadvertent professionalism, we may put somewhat differently the relationship between, on one side, professional internal governance and external regulation of it and, on the other, everyday professional behavior and shared cognition of it. Professionals are only capable of exhibiting ongoing behavioral fidelity to the two fiducial responsibilities and two occupational orientations when profession leaders institutionalize rule clarity and consistency. Moreover, clear and consistent rule-making and rule-enforcing cannot stop at the water’s edge of associational (and visual Académie) governance. It must extend to scholarly and instructional activities (the drawing sequence and conferences) and then also to major worksites (major household and church commissions). Rule clarity and consistency, whether in major intermediary associations of civil society or in agencies of the state, is important structurally because by definition it institutionalizes procedural-normative integrity, restraints on one-sidedness and opportunism. Such integrity and restraints, in turn, are a vital prerequisite structurally to advancing democratization today, for they simultaneously resist two excesses of popular rule or representation. They resist simple or absolutist majoritarianism, what Max Weber called “plebiscitarianism” and James Madison called “faction.” They also resist leveling, what William Kornhauser and others called “mass society.” Rather than being paradoxical, these simultaneous immediate consequences of proceduralnormative integrity and restraints on one-sidedness are quite common in practice in both limited governments and democratic societies. They are common precisely because integrity and restraints of these sorts

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are necessary prerequisites for relative disinterestedness and deliberation simply to be possible at any venue or in any complex team activity. However, only the first negative interrelationship above, that between procedural-normative integrity and restraints and one-sidedness, is direct and invariant. Less so is even the other equally negative interrelationship, that between this integrity and these restraints and opportunism. Moreover, the positive interrelationship also noted above, is never direct, let alone invariant, that between proceduralnormative integrity and restraints on one-sidedness and relative disinterestedness warranted by ongoing deliberation. To the contrary, this interrelationship is always indirect at best, and then also ever-contingent. It is never firmly institutionalized once and for all at any venue. Always and everywhere relative disinterestedness warranted by ongoing deliberation, to the extent that these appear at all, are vulnerable first to enervation, whether inadvertent or purposeful, and then to direct challenge or open disregard. This remains the case even when procedural-normative integrity and restraints on one-sidedness are firmly and effectively in place. The positive interrelationship at issue cannot become direct and invariant because strictly procedural-normative integrity and restraints expose to view only one-sidedness, less so opportunism. These restraints do not somehow reveal simultaneously – directly and unambiguously – whether the individuals now exercising positional power short of one-sidedness in structured situations are also acting relatively disinterestedly, or are also engaged in or responding to ongoing deliberation. This does not follow because relative disinterestedness and its warranting by ongoing deliberation are both substantive-normative qualities of interaction. An absence of one-sidedness, by contrast, is a strictly procedural-normative quality of interaction. Likewise, relative disinterestedness and ongoing deliberation, like any other behaviors which are both qualitative and substantivenormative, are prone intrinsically to competing social constructions of meaning by participants and then also to incommensurable descriptions and explanations by interested observers.8 Worse, even when 8 One of Alan Wolfe’s theses (1989) is that social scientists have difficulty grasping disinterestedness at a conceptual level and then identifying it empirically. Ronen Shamir (1995) finds the same thing when studying the activities of elite lawyers during the New Deal.

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one-sidedness is being effectively restrained procedural-normatively, the two substantive-normative qualities at issue – relative disinterestedness and deliberation – need not be in evidence at all. They simply become viable options, which participants can then pursue or fail to pursue (as any participant sees it). In turn, even when they take these options, by the accounts of at least some participants or observers, these and all other qualitative, substantive-normative behaviors remain difficult always and everywhere to sustain over time at any venue and within any complex team activity. Our point is that relative disinterestedness and ongoing deliberation are interrelated structurally in complex team activities, and thus always and everywhere appear together in substance. But, being qualities of social interaction which are qualitative and directly substantivenormative, any empirical or everyday manifestation of this interrelationship can be inscrutable. It can be difficult for particular sets of dispersed and heterogeneous participants, or interested observers, simply to discern it in common, let alone to describe and explain it in common. After all, what one set of participants (or observers) believes is a deliberative process or a disinterested activity others may hold, equally earnestly, is a strategic scheme, a power play. Because it is difficult for dispersed and heterogeneous individuals to identify deliberation or disinterestedness in common directly, strictly serially, outside of a collegial formation, it is particularly difficult for these individuals directly, outside of this formation, to initiate and then sustain such qualitative, substantive-normative behavior over time. The best they can do is, first and foremost, to acknowledge and understand in common whether one-sidedness is being restrained procedural normatively or, alternatively, whether one-sidedness is occurring or increasing in frequency. This shared cognition at a threshold, in turn, is sufficient to prepare the way for them potentially to establish and then maintain a collegial form of organization, whether purposefully or inadvertently. Moreover, in the case of professions in particular, the fiducial responsibilities attending structured situations support participants’ efforts to establish and then maintain collegial formations. This is not the case with other expert occupations, and it is not the case with other available forms of organization. Yet, even with this support, specialized associations, courts and tribunals are still typically needed as well, to oversee and encourage both fiducial and collegial behavior. The rulings of Delaware courts are demonstrating this today in corporate governance

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disputes. The same is true of rule-making by professional associations and within major professional workplaces (see Section 4 below). We propose that it is only possible for members of any complex team activity to establish and maintain an internal governance structure which keeps open the possibility of institutionalizing any thicker, substantive-normative standards of behavior – including those of disinterestedness and deliberation – when they first and foremost exhibit procedural-normative integrity at a threshold, a thin orderliness. They must first identify and restrain one-sidedness, and thereby establish and maintain rule clarity and consistency. Being thin, this sort of orderliness does not and cannot guarantee that deliberation and disinterestedness will surface and then prevail in substance over self-interestedness, or vanity, or any other sort of individual or team behavior. By contrast, however, an absence of this thin orderliness at a threshold does guarantee two outcomes. First, it guarantees that positional one-sidedness (or cumulative instances of opportunism) is not being restrained; one-sidedness is thereby displacing any possibility of relative disinterestedness and deliberation in substance. Second, it also guarantees that some alternative form of organization or combination of forms is in place; it has displaced a collegial form within internal governance. Both outcomes follow analytically, on structural grounds alone. This is self-evident regarding the first outcome. Regarding the second, exercises of positional power which are not, at minimum, being stopped short of one-sidedness are better accommodated by all available organizational forms other than the collegial. A formally democratic form institutionalizes majoritarianism and, at the limiting case, unreserved leveling. A bureaucratic form institutionalizes hierarchy and, at the limiting case, absolutist decree. A patron-client form institutionalizes favoritism and then corruption. None of these organizational alternatives identifies onesidedness, let alone stems or marginalizes it. To the contrary, voting majorities can acclaim or mandate one-sided exercise of positional power (whether by public office holders or others), and the same is true, certainly, of bureaucratic commands and clientelist favoritism. Only a collegial form is the outlier or exception. It alone among organizational forms identifies and marginalizes one-sidedness. It alone, therefore, can readily accommodate relative disinterestedness and ongoing deliberation in substance at any venue or within any governance structure, including within any of the four levels of professional governance and regulation.

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However, as noted above, because deliberation is a qualitative, substantive-normative activity, it is difficult to initiate, let alone to sustain over time. This is true even when one-sidedness is being restrained effectively and a collegial form is in place. Deliberation is never sustained for very long, in fact, in the absence of increasingly purposeful vigilance, in our case by profession leaders internally, first and foremost, and then by overseers or regulators externally. The default trajectory of change in all collegial formations, whether historically or today, is to the contrary. Deliberation – whether robust or fledgling – first withers, loses integrity, and then steadily gives way. It gives way first to increasing commercial opportunism or covert favoritism, then to increasing instances of one-sidedness, and finally to decrees, plebiscites or open corruption. As this default trajectory unfolds, a collegial form of organization invariably gives way, sooner or later, to one or another organizational alternative or combination of alternatives. All of these alternatives and combinations can better accommodate one-sidedness as well as selfinterestedness, opportunism and favoritism. Putting this point more specifically for the sociology of professions, the default trajectory of profession governance, regulation and activities in any modern society typically recapitulates in microcosm all received deficiencies in that society’s major state agencies, including its courts and tribunals. This same process of recapitulation is also typically manifested in all other major intermediary associations in civil society, from publicly traded corporations, close corporations and business partnership to mainstream social movements and nonprofit associations. We may consider briefly how this principle typically applies in the different institutional designs available and in evidence today. Where patron-client networks are central to the institutional design of a state and civil society, favoritism likely also pervades professions, publicly traded corporations and other intermediary associations. Mexico illustrates this well.9 Where bureaucratic hierarchy is central to institutional design, top-down chains of command likely pervade professions and many other intermediary associations but, ironically, possibly less so publicly traded corporations. France illustrates this well.10 Correlatively, where formal democracy is central to institutional design, majoritarianism and plebiscitarianism likely displace deliberation within 9 10

Cleaves 1987. Karpik 1995; Levy 1999.

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professions and many other intermediary associations, but, again, not necessarily within publicly traded corporations. The United States illustrates this well, and this holds true, for instance, with the internal governance of the American Sociological Association and many American sociology departments.11 In each case above, “profession” leaders tend by default to adjust their internal governance and typical behavior consistently with institutional design.12 They adjust in terms of how they make decisions and how they impose rules on members through their governance structures. They also adjust in terms of how they identify and then interpret salient opportunities and challenges in their occupational and social environments. However, leaders of ongoing professionalism projects proper, unlike corporate managers and leaders of other intermediary associations in civil society, uniquely experience structural pressures to the contrary. They experience structural pressures to resist all such adjustments, as did the leaders of all académies from the fifteenth to the early nineteenth century (see note 12).13 They experience default tendencies 11 The public policy positions taken by the ASA, including on the liberation of Iraq as well as on whether the Census Bureau should continue to request from Americans self-declarations of race and ethnicity are recent examples of either decree or plebiscite. A collegial formation would likely have simply not taken any policy position whatsoever on these issues and many more like them. It would have considered this“unprofessional.” The leftist tilt of the ASA is at once amusing and indefensible on any reputable scholarly or professional grounds, as would be any future rightist or neoliberal tilt (as difficult as this is to imagine today – but think back to Weber’s era). Regarding the two policy positions noted above, the ASA should have simply stayed out of these policy disputes rather than entering them as some lobbying collective. Individual members of ASA, of course, are free to express any position they like on these or any other policy or partisan issues – outside their classrooms. But members of a professional association are hardly akin to members of a trade union, compelled to accept whatever prejudices leaders (or plebiscites) espouse – and compelled to support these decisions financially with their annual fees or dues. 12 Thus, the ASA is hardly being “avant-garde” or “progressive” in taking collectively the positions described in note 11. It is simply recapitulating the institutional design of the larger social order and, in the process, being non-professional as well as noncollegiate. It is being at once ideological and leveling, what Weber called plebiscitarian. Likewise, medieval studia generale (universities) recapitulated institutional design by being hierarchical and nepotistic whereas all académies across Europe – neo-Platonist and specialized – tended to resist this, albeit to varying degrees. Their resistance often took extraordinary effort, and constant vigilance, effort and vigilance which is utterly absent in the ASA. 13 Gleeson and Knights 2006 misread this entirely, namely by attributing such integrity only to the civil service or public professionals. Worse, they do so on directly substantive-normative grounds rather than on either structural or procedural-normative grounds.

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stemming from immediate positional interest and positional power which countervail directly the default tendencies toward governance and behavioral adjustment to institutional design. Profession leaders experience these cross-pressures uniquely precisely because every ongoing or successful professionalism project never becomes at any point in its trajectory fully institutionalized on its own terms once and for all. No successful professionalism project ever becomes self-regulating or autopoietic in Luhmann’s sense. By contrast, this is precisely what happens with all other organizational formations – bureaucratic, formally democratic and clientelist – and also, of course, with the self-interested and market-mimicking behavior present more amorphously under modern conditions. By contrast, as long as profession leaders in fact proceed with a professionalism project over time, they invariably appreciate, whether self-consciously or inadvertently, the importance of relative disinterestedness and its warranting by ongoing deliberation. They appreciate, first and foremost, that their own everyday activities of leadership, undertaken in their own immediate positional interests, demand of them ongoing deliberation, and thus relative disinterestedness. The opportunities and challenges in their environments are too varied and complex – too qualitative – for them to identify them in common, let alone to address them concertedly, through decree, unilaterally, or through plebiscites. Profession leaders experience structural pressures, in short, to establish, maintain and support collegial formations, and not only at associations and scholarly disciplines but also at prominent worksites. They experience these structural pressures even when establishing, maintaining and supporting collegial formations runs counter to structural pressures stemming from institutional design. Under modern conditions, these efforts also typically run counter to even broader systemic pressures, those of commercialism and rationalization, stemming from economic markets and globalization. The same structural pressures encouraging collegial formations were clearly in evidence even in the Paris visual Académie, amidst an absolute monarchy with literally no models of deliberation around them (other than those in Paris’s fledgling neo-Platonist académies). Académie leaders found they had no alternative, simply in advancing their own immediate positional and corporate interests, other than to deliberate. They needed to deliberate over: the instructional program; the qualities of visual narrations in monthly conferences; and the

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principles and precepts (regles infaillibles) of visual invention and composition they were identifying and endeavoring to codify. 3. Contingency of Substantive-Normative Combinations For all of the reasons noted above, collegial formations and proceduralnormative integrity are as constitutive of professionalism as are structured situations, fiducial responsibilities and occupational orientations. Indeed, in the absence of this form and this integrity, the proscriptive power of any qualitative, substantive-normative instantiations of professional socio-cultural authority invariably wither and decline. This is certainly true of the epistemological and didactic content of professionalism, because this content invariably evolves over time and then also varies across specialties. In the absence of collegial formations and procedural-normative integrity, the content of professionalism – as well as other qualitative, substantive-normative standards of professional behavior – fails to secure shared cognition and understanding even by professionals within specialties. It thereby certainly fails truly to span these specialties and then also to be accessible in principle to patrons, clients and interested observers. In the absence of any collegial formations at workplaces, in instructional facilities and in associational governance, this content, or any other, does not somehow continue to orient (and motivate) dispersed and heterogeneous professionals directly and in common. Even more certainly, absent collegial formations, professional behavior does not somehow continue to be proscribed directly and at all effectively directly and in common by fiducial responsibilities, let alone uniquely so. The only proscriptions in play in the absence of collegial formations are those of basic criminal, civil and contractual law, which apply to everyone in civil society. Indeed, if we reverse this same interrelationship – between substance, on one hand, and form and procedure, on the other – we can appreciate in yet another way why dispersed and heterogeneous professionals are literally compelled, by their own immediate positional interests, to establish and then maintain collegial formations and procedural-normative integrity at all levels of professional activity. Only this form and this integrity are capable of institutionalizing professionals’ own ongoing shared cognition and understanding of the substance of their most basic responsibilities and orientations as dispersed

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practitioners and researchers. Even more particularly, only this form and this integrity can institutionalize, in the face of content evolution and variation: ongoing instructional consistency and reliability; then ongoing diagnostic, inference and treatment consistency and predictability; and, finally, any shared sense of personal integrity and “occupational fraternity” spanning dispersed professionals within any specialty. We return later to professional diagnosis, inference and treatment in this light (see note 1). For now we provide one example of how a collegial form and procedural-normative integrity contribute indirectly to shared senses of personal integrity and occupational fraternity. Ongoing deliberation and relative disinterestedness invariably combine “detachment” with “compassion,” all in substance. This substantive-normative combination of qualities demands from professionals “suspended identification” with any and all parties affected by their occupational decisions and activities. Such parties include not only patrons and clients but also students, colleagues and, ultimately, professionals’ own selves.14 Turned outward, the combination of detachment and compassion affects professionals’ interactions with others – clients and patrons, students and colleagues. Turned inward, the same combination affects professionals’ selves. This happens, for instance, when practitioners or researchers weigh or reassess their own occupational and personal choices. Such introspection becomes a mark of character, reflecting and bearing on their personal senses of integrity as individual practitioners or researchers. Whether turned outward or inward, the same compassion-detachment combination keeps one-sidedness – to say nothing of “ruthlessness” – within bounds. This is particularly the case when professionals are making difficult occupational decisions or taking innovative courses of action. For instance, this combination turned inward results in “suspended identification” with one’s own self, thereby tempering regret or self-condemnation with sympathy. It does not permit sublime 14 See Kronman 1993:71–73,79–84,102–105 for these phrases and those in the next two paragraphs, which he employs in the context of discussing the practical wisdom of a lawyer-statesman who exhibits “devoted citizenship.” Donald Black’s description (1993) of “social control of the self ” does not leave room at a conceptual level for how the self of a professional is affected by the detachment-compassion combination. More generally, as Alan Wolfe would predict, Black’s approach to law and morality more generally does not leave room for disinterested behavior.

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self-flattery, but it also forecloses “ruthless” self-condemnation. Within the self ’s inner-workings a compassion-detachment combination yields a sympathetic yet relatively neutral or impartial selfunderstanding. The self becomes capable of weighing the reasons why particular choices are being made now, or of pondering why particular choices had been made in the past. However, as we noted at the outset of this discussion, collegial formations and procedural-normative integrity at best prepare the way for this only indirectly. Just as they are necessary but not sufficient prerequisites for relative disinterestedness and warranting by ongoing deliberation to appear, one substantive-normative combination, so, too, they are necessary but not sufficient prerequisites for the compassion-detachment nexus to appear, another substantivenormative combination. The presence of these formations and this integrity alone never guarantees that either of these substantive-normative combinations (or any others) will in fact appear on the ground, let alone be sustained over time, at any venue of professional practice or research. Still, what is clear in any case is that in the absence of collegial formations and procedural-normative integrity, dispersed and heterogeneous professionals will behave and conduct themselves much like any other sets of dispersed and heterogeneous power holders, including corporate officers. Under these conditions, they, too, will simply not be capable, more directly, of cognizing (or acknowledging) and then understanding in common any substantive-normative prescriptions or proscriptions of behavior, including any fiducial responsibilities. Professionals’ ongoing procedural-normative integrity behaviorally, institutionalized exclusively by collegial formations, ultimately underpins the very possibility of their own relative disinterestedness and ongoing deliberation at any venue, including within centralized professional associations and at dispersed instructional facilities and workplaces. Only procedurally-mediated disinterestedness and deliberation, in turn, keeps open the possibility of – never guarantees – instructional and occupational consistency and reliability within any venue, across venues, and then also over time, across cohorts and generations. Likewise, only this same procedurally-mediated substantivenormative behavior can possibly establish and then maintain any shared sense among practitioners and researchers within venues, across venues, and over time of either personal integrity or professional fraternity.

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We saw examples of this in the Paris visual Académie’s conference series as well as in its format of open, rotating instruction. We saw additional examples of it in corporate managements’ efforts to scan, identify and act upon environmental opportunities and challenges. Again, leaders of occupations which are not professions, of occupations which provide services within embedded exchanges or at fluid sites can adopt (or feign adopting) a collegial form. They can thereby institutionalize – or feign institutionalizing – procedural-normative integrity. However, they do so for three predictable reasons, not for others equally constitutive of professionalism. First and foremost, they put collegial formations in place simply in order to improve their own intersubjective scanning of environmental opportunities and vulnerabilities.15 Or they may do so in order to advance in common some particular epistemological or didactic project. Or, third, they may simply adopt or feign adopting a collegial form by copying leading competitors through “isomorphism,” whether coercive, mimetic, or normative.16 What leaders of non-professional occupations do not do, however, is put collegial formations in place in order to identify one-sidedness, or to establish and maintain an independent socio-cultural authority beyond their control, or to keep in view any extra-contractual fiducial responsibilities. 4. Insufficient Distinctions in the Literature In this light, we may draw from the literature three examples of the difficulties anyone faces when trying to describe and explain professional behavior directly in substantive-normative terms. This is precisely what de-railed Parsons’ cultural and social-psychological approach to the sociology of professions. The alternative we are proposing is instead to describe and explain professional behavior by drawing three major distinctions: between structured situations and embedded exchanges or fluid sites; between fiducial responsibilities and legal or contractual obligations; and between trying directly to keep any substantive-normative standards of behavior in view and instead appreciating that this can only be accomplished through a mediation of form and procedure, a mediation which is readily identifiable both analytically and empirically. 15 16

See Etzioni 1968:283–305 for an important discussion of “mixed scanning.” Powell and DiMaggio 1991.

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One example of substantive-normative confusion or conflicting accounts is drawn from a critique of American legal practice and instruction (by Kronman) which is essentially moralistic and, as a result, ultimately idiosyncratic. This illustrates the problems intrinsic to using directly any positive substantive-normative standard of behavior to describe and explain professions. It is impossible to establish even among professionals any shared cognition and understanding of this behavioral standard. As a result of this, any and all seemingly specific prescriptions and proscriptions based on this standard are strictly ethereal, altogether impracticable. A second example is drawn from a methodical accounting (by Rothman) of controversies American medical researchers and practitioners faced from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s and how the situation stands today. This illustrates the problems intrinsic to trying to hold professionals directly accountable to any substantive-normative proscriptions of behavior, including those against harming patients. It is impossible to maintain shared cognition and understanding even of such seemingly basic proscriptions within particular workplaces, let alone across such venues as well as over time, across cohorts and generations, in the absence of collegial formations and proceduralnormative integrity. Finally, a third example of substantive-normative confusion or conflicting accounts is drawn from an equally methodical accounting (by Shapiro) of “conflicts of interest” within five professions, including law and medicine, and then also a non-professional occupation, journalism. This illustrates the problems intrinsic to trying to identify, independently of references to collegial formations and procedural-normative integrity, which everyday intra-occupational conflicts are enervating of professionalism in particular and which are extraneous. Conflicts of the first type need to be resolved in particular ways if professionalism is simply to continue as a project, if de-professionalization is to be avoided or staved off. All other conflicts, by contrast, are intrinsically subject to open, endless negotiation. Here it is impossible to overcome professionals’ competing social constructions of meaning, let alone incommensurable interpretations of professional behavior by outside observers. 4.1 Critique of Legal “Morality” Anthony Kronman, a Harvard legal scholar, tries and fails in 1993 to apply a substantive-normative critique of American legal instruction

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and practice independently of any mediation by collegial formations and procedural-normative integrity. His thesis in The Lost Lawyer is that contemporary American lawyers have “lost” their moral – substantive-normative – bearings. Lawyers’ material prosperity and political influence disguise a “spiritual crisis” which Kronman believes threatens the profession’s “collective soul.”17 The problem with this entire line of argument, however, is precisely that it revolves around the contemporary irrelevance of a particular substantive-normative ideal of lawyering, that bequeathed by American founders and framers, which Kronman calls the “lawyer-statesman” ideal. This standard of behavior had once been salient and compelling across the bar and bench, from the founding through the nineteenth century. Today, however, it has literally fallen out of sight and mind. As a result, Kronman’s entire analysis of legal instruction and legal practice is more wistful than truly probing, or at all challenging of the status quo. Worse, his prescriptions for instructional and occupational change are entirely impracticable, as even he appreciates. What concerns Kronman is that from the turn of the twentieth century forward, as industrialization accelerated, the substantive-normative ideal of the lawyer-statesman, heretofore shared across the bar and bench, suffered steady and irreversible decline. Beginning with the Progressive Era, it was at first amended marginally, being appended to what Kronman calls “scientific law reform,” but it otherwise remained widely respected. From around 1960 forward, however, the lawyer-statesman ideal dropped from sight. Amending gave way to discrediting. No longer resting securely on any philosophical underpinning or warrant which the typical American lawyer or judge could articulate explicitly, let alone in common, the bar and bench simply conflated the lawyer-statesmen ideal with traditionalism. The ideal thereby became associated (wrongly, in Kronman’s view) with the ascriptive discrimination being challenged contemporaneously by the Civil Rights movement. Today, more than a generation later, the ideal lacks any intersubjective acknowledgment whatsoever within the bar and bench, let alone shared cognition and understanding. The figure of the lawyerstatesman no longer retains any informal authority – to say nothing of 17

Very similar analytically is Edward Rock’s accounting (1997) of how dispersed corporate officers come to acknowledge and then bear fiducial responsibilities, even as Rock’s tone overall is a bit less moralistic than Kronman’s. Still, Rock’s title is revealing on its face: “Saints and Sinners: How Does Delaware Corporate Law Work?”

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reverence – among dispersed lawyers and judges, let alone proscriptive power across the bar and bench as institutions. The only way to resuscitate the ideal, in Kronman’s view, is to go back and try to identify its qualities explicitly, at a philosophical level. This philosophical anthropology can then readily demonstrate its independence from any segregationist association or backdrop. The problem, as Kronman acknowledges, is that even an explicitly articulated philosophical underpinning cannot possibly change in the slightest way the trajectory of legal instruction and practice today. The lawyer-statesman ideal cannot possibly regain traction at “an institutional level,” cannot possibly inform or orient the profession in common. In Kronman’s own explicit accounting of the ideal he finds three main qualities of the lawyer-statesman, all of which are directly substantive-normative and intrinsically interrelated: “devoted citizenship, character and leadership.” Devoted citizenship, for instance, presupposes a particular “trait of character,” namely an ability consistently and reliably to identify directly in substance “where the public good lies.”18 Taken together, the three qualities just noted once comprised a lived gestalt of the American bar and bench, what Germans would call a Lebenswelt of a particular Bildungsbürgertum. The problem with all of this, of course, is that any putative manifestation today of these (or any other) substantive-normative qualities invariably becomes mired in competing social constructions of meaning by participants and then also in incommensurable interpretations by outsiders (including, Kronman notes sadly, his colleagues on the Harvard law faculty). One person’s lawyer-statesman, after all, is another person’s elitist, or charmer, or romantic – or schemer. Kronman is quite aware of this. He appreciates fully that today the lawyer-statesman ideal is in utter “collapse:” law schools no longer respect it, large law firms cease to cultivate it, and judicial timeconstraints wring it from the bench. Worse, many legal scholars see its demise as a positive development. It removes lingering obstacles of traditionalism so that rational reconstructions of law can proceed apace.19 Given such widely incommensurable interpretations of the same phenomenon, Kronman becomes quixotic in his prescriptions for change, and this, too, he acknowledges openly.

18 19

Kronman 1993:14–16. Kronman 1993:354–63,67.

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Law teachers, he proposes, should convey to students some feeling for the ideal, including by using classroom time to stress the importance of dealing with individual cases in lawyer-statesmen ways, even though, he adds, this can be suicidal for their scholarly careers. Likewise, judges should assiduously write opinions, even as this, too, can be career-suicidal, for judges who write little or nothing are more likely to be appointed to higher federal levels. Practicing lawyers, finally, should avoid large law firms and instead enter smaller ones, even though the latter are more vulnerable to cutbacks and bankruptcy. Thus, this, too, is career-suicidal. Given such a skewed incentive-system at the center of his prescriptions for change, Kronman appreciates that the lawyer-statesman ideal is hardly likely ever again to orient the American bar and bench as a whole. At best, it can possibly survive in “cracks and crevices” of today’s legal profession, like dandelions in suburban pavements, among practitioners and researchers who literally sacrifice for this ideal their careers and future prospects.20 More generally, Kronman sees the same collapse of received substantive-normative ideals spanning all other professions, as opposed to being confined to law.21 David Rothman, however, demonstrates that substantive-normative ideals of the past cut both ways: some may be meritorious, even if impracticable, but others accommodate or tolerate “tragedy.” Thus, Rothman’s accounting illustrates the problems intrinsic to trying to maintain shared cognition and understanding of any substantive-normative, putatively fiducial proscriptions independently of collegial formations and procedural-normative integrity. 4.2 From Substantive Norms to Procedural Integrity in Medicine Just as Kronman in 1993 sees the American legal profession undergoing a profound transformation from around 1960 forward, Rothman in 1991 explores in Strangers at the Bedside a comparable transformation unfolding at roughly the same time in the American medical profession. The transformation began symbolically in 1966 when 20

Kronman 1993:7. Kronman 1993:370–74. This is consistent with scores of accounts of the historical evolution of professions from trusted gentlemen-practitioners of character to technician-experts, from what Brint (1994) calls “social trustee professionalism” to “expert professionalism.” 21

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Henry Beecher revealed publicly how elite medical investigators were abusing patients in the course of routine research activities. The same transformation then culminated symbolically in 1976 with revelations about how medical practitioners had been managing deaths at bedside, namely in the case of Karen Ann Quinlan in New Jersey, a comatose emergency patient.22 Prior to this transformation, from 1945 to 1965, medical researchers at the National Institutes of Health as well as at elite university hospitals had continued simply to follow wartime rules and practices. They did not secure from medical research subjects either consent or voluntary participation. Indeed, NIH investigators were not obliged, whether by formal rules or their own informal (substantive-normative) senses of probity, even to consult with colleagues, including about whether and how their own zeal to establish research priority might bias their estimates of patient risk. What few contemporaries appreciated up to the mid-1960s were three salient factors bearing structurally on the medical research enterprise, and Rothman identifies only the first. He emphasizes that the relationship between medical investigators and research subjects is hardly equivalent structurally to the relationship between bedside doctor and bedridden patient. To the contrary, the very enterprise of medical research, even under “normal” or everyday conditions, can distort systemically the ethical judgments of dispersed investigators.23 But in addition, second, and worded in our terminology, investigators and subjects hardly share the same positional interests regardless, whereas greater overlap here is much more likely between doctors and patients. Third, and irrespective of whether medical research benefits or harms subjects, the positional and corporate interests of this professional enterprise are never necessarily or automatically isomorphic with the self-interests of individual investigators. For strictly self-interested reasons alone, after all, individual investigators may be tempted to plagiarize, or to concoct or otherwise manipulate data in order to attain certain results. Or they may be tempted to exaggerate findings. Our point is that when the research enterprise revolves solely around substantive-normative standards of probity, rather than also around bright line procedural-normative thresholds of rule clarity and consistency, breakdowns in isomorphism – in voluntary affiliation to 22 23

Rothman 1991:1–3,10–11,51–63,88–89,222–23. Rothman 1991:88–89.

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shared standards – are inevitable, eminently predictable. Substantivenormative standards are prone to different, often competing social constructions of meaning by participants, all of whom may well proceed equally earnestly. The research subject (the patient), meanwhile, may be completely unaffected by particular breakdowns of meaning among researchers, or he or she may be grievously harmed. A comparable situation also prevailed at bedside, in medical treatment. Individual doctors frequently made decisions as unilaterally on directly substantive-normative grounds as did individual medical investigators. As examples, doctors: withheld antibiotics in order to permit pneumonia to take the lives of elderly patients, reported newborns with grave birth defects “stillborn” in order to spare parents the agony of choice and care, experimented on the institutionalized retarded in order to learn about hepatitis, and decided which patients gain access to iron lungs and other scarce technologies. Across the entire medical establishment until the mid-1960s, in short, it was simply assumed that every researcher and every practitioner, though operating independently, somehow nonetheless shared interpersonally the same substantive normative standards of probity, including the same social-psychological beliefs and culturally understandings regarding the priority of subject and patient wellbeing. Indeed, it was also assumed that these standards, and serial understandings and applications of them, are intrinsically benign. Even medical research, it was assumed, invariably benefits patients. Given this state of affairs, bright line procedural-normative rules and protocols of research and treatment hardly seemed relevant, let alone salient or necessary, whether to orient professionals in common or to protect vulnerable patients and subjects. Within a single decade, however, all of this changed. Yet, even early critics of medical research and bedside practice resisted displacing the received, intrinsically vague, often differently interpreted, substantive-normative standards of probity with bright-line procedural-normative thresholds designed to identify and stem onesidedness. “Left to Beecher, the reaction to the [medical research] scandals would have been an appeal to professional trust and responsibility, as though consciousness-raising could solve the problem.”24 Yet, the transformation in medicine nonetheless unfolded rather

24

Rothman 1991:84.

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rapidly – and precisely as the fruits of medical research were reaching bedsides. The transformation, that is, began amidst breakthroughs in organ transplantation and, more generally, in technologies of nursery care and intensive care. Rather suddenly, both the style and substance of medical decisionmaking changed. Simultaneously, public trust in the received substantive-normative standards of the medical establishment withered and declined. Past deference to “heroic” medical researching was replaced by peer review and collective decision-making, which increasingly revolved, at least in part, around procedural-normative thresholds of behavior. Informal bedside etiquette – do not slander other doctors, do not visit patients socially, do not contradict doctors within earshot or sight of patients – gave way to formally codified treatment protocols. The latter counterbalanced the vantage point (positional interest) of doctors by making room for that of patients.25 Overall, this transformation resulted in rejoining, now on procedural-normative grounds, the epistemological orientation of medical research and delivery with a newly codified, more publicly or openly defensible didactic orientation. The new openness and procedural integrity was reflected in the rise of collegial formations and deliberation in both internal medical governance and external medical regulation. Thus, the 1970s witnessed: the rise of hospital standing committees, greater debate and review by colleagues and laypeople, federal laws mandating institutional review boards, and requirements for greater patient instruction, input and informed consent. Even today, however, problems remain. Institutional Review Boards in different medical and hospital laboratories apply different standards (and Rothman notes the parallel to variation in state corporate law doctrines). As for hospital ethics committees, they: vary even more than IRBs, lack the latter’s authority, and typically remain dominated by physicians. In addition, both the Boards and the committees often focus on mere formalities, the language of consent forms, as opposed to trying to regularize the tenor of interactions between investigator and subject, doctor and patient. Regardless, informed consent by subjects and patients is now considered fiducial, a trust; it is no longer treated as simply contractual, a legal formality which can absolve any and all subsequent decisions or actions.26 25 26

Rothman 1991:103–6. Rothman 1991:91–95,100,250–56.

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chapter eleven 4.3 Excursus: Again, Professions versus Bürgertum

Rothman’s account of American medicine provides additional support for our thesis in Chapter 2 regarding the importance of distinguishing a professions-based analysis of contemporary advanced societies from the Bildungsbürgertum-based analyses employed on the continent. When substantive-normative linkages between community and expert authority break down, two processes are unleashed which disrupt any Bildungsbürgertum (learned middle classes). On one side, corporations and the state can dominate “the upper tiers of the professional stratum” while, on the other, populist distrust of expert authority can dominate lower levels.27 This is illustrated well by Rothman’s thesis, namely that after World War II the American (and Western) physician became a stranger. Interactions between doctor and patient became more formal, no longer intimate or communal. Doctors’ linkages to local communities – through club life and civic activities as well as economic investments – gave way to workplace isolation and social exclusiveness. By the 1960s, few patients in large American (and Western) cities had ever spoken socially to a physician. Moreover, most patients entering major medical centers tended to be more seriously ill than those in hospital earlier, before World War II. As a result of this alone, doctors on wards found themselves frequently scrambling from crisis to crisis, as is the case today. As a fifty-hour workweek became typical, pausing at bedside became an indulgence. In addition, doctors make treatment decisions based first and foremost on hospital laboratory results, not patient descriptions of symptoms. Finally, as both hospital and patient demand that physicians be recruited on merit, rules of merit fostered even greater anonymity.28 In short, where physician decisions prior to World War II had been oriented not only by professional training and experience but also by substantive-normative standards of local communities (the Bürgertum), doctors’ decisions thereafter reflect the more insulated judgments of specialists.29 Patients, in turn, are hardly likely to trust physicians to exercise discretion unilaterally on their behalf, by any substantivenormative standard. Serious illness, after all, is hardly the substance of 27 28 29

See Brint 1994:16. Rothman 1991:108–10,127–29. Rothman 1991:131–35.

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everyday discourse, and physician discourse is hardly accessible or inclusionary. As a result, external critics of the 1960s and 1970s who adopted the patient point of view demanded a change in acceptable (and defensible) standards of information sharing, from substantive normative to procedural normative. Our general point is that this trajectory toward isolation from community is systemic, and thus unstoppable and irreversible. This means that any and all received substantive-normative prescriptions and proscriptions originating in the Bildungsbürgertum, whatever these happen to be, cannot possibly secure shared cognition and understanding directly. It also means that professionalism mediated by collegial formations and procedural-normative integrity is likely the only possible alternative to unalloyed commercialism (in the AngloAmerican world) or, alternatively, unalloyed deference to state decree (on the continent), ever more intrusive state oversight, regulation and involvement. Once substantive-normative standards of Bildungsbürgertum lose their proscriptive power, for whatever reason, collegial professionalism likely becomes the only credible, publicly defensible option available to professionals. But this presupposes that professional norms successfully take a procedural turn, as opposed to remaining directly substantive normative. Professionalism may well suffer from any number of defects of its own, and it is cavalier to disregard or downplay them. But our point is that if collegial professionalism fails in practice normatively to mediate commercialism short of opportunism, decree short of one-sidedness, and clientelism short of favoritism, then professionalism is hardly likely to protect patrons and clients from what Kronman rightly calls “tragedy.” 4.4 Professional Conflicts of Interest In a book-length 2003 journal article subtitled “Conflict of Interest in the Practice of Law and Real Life,” Susan Shapiro scans a far broader horizon of occupations than Kronman and Rothman. She explores everyday conflicts of interest in six occupations she calls “professions,” five of which are indeed professions – law, public accounting, psychotherapy, medicine and academia – but one which is not, journalism. Shapiro’s discussion illustrates the problems intrinsic to trying to identify, independently of references to collegial formations and procedural-normative integrity, when conflicts of interest are

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enervating of professionalism and when they are far less significant either structurally or institutionally. Shapiro begins with some backdrop, namely that sociologists frequently disparage the significance of rules of professional ethics by treating them as strictly strategic maneuvers, smokescreens concealing otherwise indefensible “projects” of market control. Shapiro finds this approach wanting. It cannot possibly account for three of her most significant empirical findings. First, the smokescreen argument neglects the fiducial function intrinsic to rules of professional ethics, for they protect the clients and patrons of professional services. Equally important, it disregards these rules’ function of shared cognition, for they orient professionals toward identifying conflicts of interest in common. Third, and more specific, the smokescreen argument also cannot account for an empirical finding which Shapiro notes most sociologists consider both counterintuitive and supremely ironic: More than all other professionals, including academics, it is legal professionals who take conflicts of interest most seriously. Indeed, academicians routinely refuse to acknowledge that they face conflicts of interest at all, let alone address them openly and forthrightly. Shapiro’s point is that it is such feckless self-denial that permits sociologists of professions in particular to strike a pose of putative moral superiority as they describe and analyze the professionalism of others. There are two problems with Shapiro’s lengthy discussion, however. One is her failure to draw any distinction between substantive-normative standards of professional probity and procedural-normative thresholds of rule clarity and consistency. The other is her failure analytically to distinguish simple conflicts of interest, at fluid sites or in embedded exchanges, from positional conflicts within structured situations. Indeed, Shapiro largely explores interest conflicts of agents of any kind, not positional conflicts of fiduciaries more particularly. For her, conflicts of interest are equivalent to what sociologists call role conflicts, and thus are equally ubiquitous.30 She does appreciate, of course, 30 Shapiro 2003:92–93. The same is true in a seminal 1993 article in Texas Law Review by John Dzienkowski, wrongly titled “Positional Conflicts of Interest.” It is Dzienkowski who brought the issue of conflicts of interest in the legal profession into view, and thereby spawned a nice cottage industry of case studies, commentary and criticism in law journals. The problem is he uses the phrase “positional conflicts” strictly descriptively, not analytically. His focus is on law firms literally adopting “legal positions” – legal interpretations – for new clients which conflict with those the same firms had adopted previously for current or past clients (1993:460 and note 10).

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that there is a distinction between fiducial obligations and contractual terms, but like Kronman and Rothman she fails to draw it systematically. Rather, there are places where she employs fiducial language more or less purposefully. But then, within this smaller set of conflict-cases, she at times comes face to face with an even smaller subset of true positional conflicts. Here she is incapable of appreciating at an analytical level that these cases differ fundamentally from simple conflicts. Tellingly, this same category shift is nowhere in evidence in Shapiro’s discussion of journalism. The reason why, which she fails to appreciate is that journalism is simply not a profession. It does not contain structured situations or, therefore, positional conflicts. For example, journalists may well harm the reputations of people about whom they report, but they do not exercise positional power over them, or anyone else. No one involved enters a position of entrenched dependence. The dependence of “the public,” as an institution, on an “independent press,” as another institution, hardly constitutes a fiducial relationship for any particular set of readers and any particular set of journalists. For this reason, journalists are quite unlike academic scholars (or any other professionals proper with which Shapiro deals). Journalists may distort their findings (whether purposefully or not), may fail accurately to identify sources or authorities, or may take any number of other liberties with the facts before them which, if done by scholars, would increase scholars’ vulnerability to criticism structurally. The result of these oversights at a conceptual level is that Shapiro’s discussion of conflicts in the five professions proper is all over the place. It is not as methodical or systematic as it might have been, or as she had anticipated.31 This is evident in her opening and lengthiest discussion, that of “classic conflicts of interest” law firms face in multiparty litigation. In representing one client in a multiparty case, law firms may advance a legal position, an interpretation of law, inconsistent with the broader interests of other parties on the same side in the same case. In addition,

Most of what Dzienkowski describes, therefore, is not positional conflicts within structured situations at all. He instead describes simple conflicts of interest at fluid sites or within embedded exchanges. The problem law firms nonetheless face is that their clients believe, wrongly, that such conflicting “positions” or interpretations by law firms should be proscribed on fiducial grounds, irrespective of contractual terms. 31 Shapiro 2003:233–49.

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this same interpretation may also contradict the broader interests of current or past clients of the same law firm who are not parties or otherwise have no direct stake in the case at hand. Finally, the likelihood of conflicts can only increase when law firm lawyers promote legal positions or interpretations of law independently, outside the firm, as arbitrators, bankruptcy trustees, lobbyists or activists in state bar politics.32 We are seeing already that the sorts of conflicts Shapiro has in mind may well proliferate within embedded exchanges or at fluid sites of commercial contracting. The problem is they have nothing to do with structured situations. The law firm and its lawyers are hardly exercising positional power over clients or anyone else by simply advocating a particular legal interpretation, even should this interpretation prevail in court and thereby establish precedent in case law. But they are clearly creating conflicts of interest between clients. The problem law firms face (see the last sentence in note 30) is that many clients, including corporate clients and wealthy individuals, (wrongly) view conflicting legal advocacy as breaches of trust. Law firms, however, know full well that fiduciary law is hardly applicable here. This is precisely why law firms typically do not formally proscribe these “positional conflicts” outright. “As a matter of policy, most law firms neither categorically avoid positional conflicts nor do they ignore or even embrace them; they exercise discretion on a case-by-case basis.” Moreover, there are no state statutes which impose any particular internal policy on law firms; at best, courts rule in particular conflict cases.33 Turning to medicine, Shapiro finds that the interests of medical patients rarely conflict, other than when treatments, procedures or resources are scarce, such as organ transplants, rare blood types, pioneering drugs and access to clinical trials. In addition, even the financial interests of physicians, of patients and of third party insurers are rarely at odds in absolutist or black-and-white ways. Medical conflicts of interest typically stem from a rather recent development, namely physician efforts to counterbalance managed-care reductions in their primary compensation, for patient treatment, by seeking secondary sources of remuneration. Physicians frequently receive stipends, payouts, kickbacks or rebates for: dispensing drugs or medical products; 32 33

Shapiro 2003:114. Shapiro 2003:106,130–31.

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fee-splitting; referrals or ping-pong referrals; and self-referrals to medical facilities in which they have financial interests. They can also be remunerated by: medical suppliers, laboratories and pharmaceutical companies; or hospitals for admitting their patients or purchasing their practices outright.34 Given this range of funding sources, physician remuneration can conflict with patient interests in two basic ways, namely by encouraging unnecessary, more costly tests and treatments or, alternatively, by providing financial incentives for abiding lesser quality care. Shapiro notes there is no regulatory regime in place, nor any set of existing institutions, capable of enforcing ethical behavior in these substantive areas of conflict. As one example, hospital review boards hardly concern themselves with conflicts which compromise hospital fidelity to patients or the integrity of hospitals in compensating physicians. To the contrary, they focus on conflicts of interest which compromise the integrity of individual physicians and, of course, they are particularly keen to “promote physician fidelity to the hospital” (here Shapiro quotes Marc Rodwin). As another example, state licensure boards are dedicated to ensuring physician competency, whereas physician (or hospital) integrity eludes their purview. The irony, then, is that efforts to regulate the substantive conflicts internal to hospitals and between physicians and patients are most likely to come from the private sector, from large third-party insurers.35 All of this is commercial and contractual, not necessarily structural or positional and fiducial. Shapiro fails to identify where and when a collegial formation and procedural-normative integrity might help participants (and observers) to identify in common which particular conflicts are potentially enervating of professionalism structurally. Turning to psychotherapy, Shapiro finds substantive conflicts of interest between family therapy patients which are similar to those between law firm clients.36 Moreover, she appreciates that fiducial responsibility also clearly enters the picture here (as does positional power) because therapy patients are frequently less able to fend for themselves than are legal clients. They may not be able to determine whether therapy is needed in the first place, and then whether 34 35 36

Shapiro 2003:163–66. Shapiro 2003:167. Shapiro 2003:167.

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particular treatment alternatives are more efficacious than others. Precisely because the power imbalance between therapist and patient exceeds that between lawyer and client, therapist ethics proscribe literally all socializing with patients, all “dual relationships” beyond the primary relationship, the therapeutic one.37 In turning to accounting, with journalism following, Shapiro broadens substantially the meaning of “professional trust,” from obligations to clients to those to the public: “many fiduciaries have obligations to the public that trump those to their clients.”38 To illustrate, she notes that auditors’ fiducial responsibilities for the public record are assumed always to take precedence over their contractual obligations to particular clients.39 They are expected to certify public reports disinterestedly, and thus “absolutely independently” of client interests. For this reason, accountants are prohibited from undertaking commercial or monetary transactions either with clients or in competition with clients.40 The problem large accounting firms are facing today is that they are going even further than physicians in augmenting their primary compensation. Indeed, auditing services are no longer their primary source of income at all, having been superseded by a vast range of commercial, financial and corporate legal services which are more lucrative, including investment banking, strategic planning, headhunting (for business partners or acquisition prospects), and administrative law assistance (to facilitate regulatory approval). Indeed, accounting firm diversification has reached the point that they frequently use auditing services as a loss leader. Auditing services get their foot in the door, and then they use what they find within client firms to identify problems for which they can subsequently propose legal, consulting and other services. Of course, this marketing strategy calls into question the independence or disinterestedness of auditing services and, simultaneously, it multiplies occasions for conflicts of interest within and by accounting firms. As examples, accounting firm auditors may find themselves evaluating a corporate clients’ consulting work, which is being performed by other personnel in the same accounting firm. Conversely, 37

Shapiro 2003:167–69. Shapiro 2003:174. 39 Here is where much of Gunther Teubner’s publications over the past decade have been directed. Shapiro’s account would have been enriched at a conceptual level if she had cited and adopted Teubner’s approach. 40 Shapiro 2003:175–79. 38

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accounting firm consultants may actually be performing management functions for a corporate client even as their firm’s auditors are responsible for same client’s bookkeeping.41 Various legal regimes and bodies regulate accounting, from state and federal securities law to the professional association of Certified Public Accountants (the American Institute), to layers of private sector watchdogs: the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the stock exchanges, and audit committees of client company boards of directors. In addition, accounting firms themselves, keen to maintain their reputations as well as to avoid civil law liability, invest substantially in internal systems of self-regulation.42 Here in particular is where Shapiro’s discussion could have been informed by the distinction between efforts directly to enforce substantive-normative standards of probity and efforts instead to rely on collegial formations and procedural-normative thresholds of rule clarity and consistency. Turning to journalism, Shapiro reemphasizes the importance of “public trust” but then immediately acknowledges that journalists are hardly considered fiduciaries. Reflecting this, journalism is largely selfregulating, not as constrained by law as are accountants and professionals more generally. Somewhat incongruously, Shapiro then focuses on conflicts of interest stemming from newspaper and news media advertising, which is clearly a strictly commercial activity. Her thesis is that journalists routinely compromise their own integrity in order to avoid antagonizing major advertisers and their agencies. To this end, they: write puff pieces (in travel, fashion or food sections) and adopt softer editorial lines or downplay critical or embarrassing news which affect advertisers. More intriguing, Shapiro ends this discussion by noting that “journalistic objectivity” can also be compromised by editor or reporter “passions and values,” but she does not elaborate by identifying any partisan bias.43 Shapiro concludes by discussing conflicts of interest within academia, noting at the outset that academics, more than any other professionals, routinely deny that their integrity is jeopardized by conflicts. Academics proudly proclaim their own freedom of speech and putative disinterestedness, all the while assuming without a second thought that other professionals feign both. Shapiro nonetheless finds that “conflicts of 41 42 43

Shapiro 2003:181–84. Shapiro 2003:187–88. Shapiro 2003:189–98.

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interest are rampant in the halls of academe” because academics wear more hats and juggle more competing interests “than any other trustees.” Professors, after all, bear “fiducial or contractual obligations” to: students, intra- and extra-institutional colleagues, their university, their department, their discipline, a scholarly or scientific community, sponsors and subjects of research, clients for whom they consult, the judicial system when testifying as experts, and the public when providing journalists background information.44 Yet, where lawyers struggle openly with the conflicts they face, professors cast the entire matter out of mind: “I am hard pressed to think of an instance in which a colleague, without any prodding, explicitly confronted or disclosed a conflict of interest – except when reviewing grant proposals – in more than two decades of affiliation with varied academic institutions.” Moreover, where journalists are typically discouraged or barred from partisan causes or social activism, professors frequently bring strong value commitments and passions to contested issues. This includes when they are providing background information to journalists. Yet, professors nonetheless fail to acknowledge any conflicts of interest, and precisely because they label them differently. This allows them to subsume conflicts under more benign, protective umbrellas – including academic freedom – and thereby to disregard any idea that their workplace conduct is unethical, or abjures fiducial responsibility, or enervates professionalism structurally.45 The problem is that colleges and universities, like law firms, hospitals and accounting firms, have been transformed by recent social changes. Shapiro points in particular to: relative declines in federal and state funding coupled with relative increases in corporate funding, and tightening academic labor markets.46 If we add the increasingly open and shameless ideological stridency of many academics in the humanities and social sciences, the snappish political correctness and stultifying left-bias, then received assumptions about scholarly value-neutrality – academic disinterestedness – seem utterly anachronistic, old-school. Shapiro finds that breakdowns in disinterestedness can be particularly evident in academic gate-keeping. Particular

44 45 46

Shapiro 2003:201. Shapiro 2003:201–202,217 and note 166. Shapiro 2003:205–208.

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individuals or particular types of ideas can be blackballed for motives that are more insidious or personal than scholarly.47 5. Why Professionals Retain a Collegial Form The accounts of professional activities by Kronman, Rothman and Shapiro all illustrate the intrinsic difficulty of any attempt to identify and explain the direction of change of any professionalism project directly in substance and, certainly, directly in terms of cultural understandings and social-psychological beliefs putatively shared by professionals. These accounts also indicate, by implication, why professional collegial formations and procedural-normative integrity are as constitutive of ongoing professionalism projects as are the two fiducial responsibilities discussed in Chapter 9. None of these are shared burdens which professional leaders endeavor openly to shirk or divest themselves. Collegiate bodies are not organizational conduits for monkish piety, for collegiants’ collective and individual abnegation as ends-in-themselves – whereas Kronman’s ideal of the lawyer-statesman certainly qualifies as such a conduit. To the contrary, professionals as well as corporate officers and other power holders in structured situations establish and maintain collegial formations and procedural-normative integrity in their own immediate corporate and positional interests. They do so even as these formations and this integrity simultaneously constrains each participant’s self-interestedness more narrowly, as does bearing fiducial responsibility. Constraints on self-interestedness, after all, characterize any team activity. The question is whether these constraints are proceduralnormative and bright line or strictly substantive-normative and thus intrinsically vague. At minimum, profession leaders are endeavoring collegiately – thus, intersubjectively – to identify positional one-sidedness. This advances their immediate corporate and positional interests because unchecked one-sidedness invariably undercuts any credible assertions of an independent socio-cultural authority. More grandly, profession leaders are also endeavoring collegiately to establish and maintain some shared cognition and understanding of their fiducial responsibilities and their occupational orientations, including the evolving and varying content 47

Shapiro 2003:223–25.

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of professional instruction and practice. Such a shared cognition and understanding is impossible to accomplish directly, in substance alone, in the absence of procedural-normative integrity and collegial deliberation at least at some venues of professional activity. More grandly still, profession leaders also seek collegiately to establish and maintain some shared cognition and understanding, across a profession, of opportunities and challenges in the larger environment, occupational as well as political, social and cultural. This shared cognition and understanding advances the immediate corporate and positional interests of all professional leaders and members because it is an irreducible prerequisite to anyone possibly identifying, describing and explaining those environmental opportunities and challenges which potentially threaten professionalism or, alternatively, which can advance professionalism benignly. After all, at minimum, any environmental opportunities and challenges which compel positional one-sidedness or either enervate or challenge procedural-normative integrity and collegial formations are threats to professionalism structurally and institutionally. This holds true irrespective of their substance. Profession leaders and members do not typically establish and maintain collegial formations more narrowly, out of strict self-interestedness, as opposed to doing so in order to advance the immediate positional and corporate interests of anyone in their position. Nor, certainly, do they do so ethereally, as if they share some internalized motivation of altruism or some cognitive “service orientation” which putatively demands monkish piety. Professional leaders are collegiants, not confessionalists. They are reason-givers, not faith-sharers. Moreover, they are no more divorced from profane, strictly material calculations of occupational success and failure than are corporate officers. Our point is that power holders within structured situations, including professionals and corporate officers, nonetheless typically exhibit behavioral fidelity to fiducial responsibilities, whereas other expert and middle-class practitioners routinely disregard them or openly flaunt them. But even professionals and corporate officers can only bear fiducial responsibilities in common, at dispersed workplaces and across cohorts and generations, when these fiducial responsibilities are cast, first and foremost, as ongoing behavioral fidelity to the threshold of procedural-normative integrity and to the collegial form. Aside from institutionalizing professionals’ behavioral fidelity to this threshold standard and then, through this, to any substantive fiducial responsibilities and occupational orientations also demanded

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structurally or positionally by professionalism, collegial formations simultaneously advance the immediate positional and corporate interests of professionals at dispersed occupational and instructional workplaces. They do so by institutionalizing a shared cognition of procedural-normative integrity and collegiality, and then of relative disinterestedness warranted by deliberation at these workplaces. This shared cognition is precisely what facilitates professionals’ scanning of environmental opportunities and challenges. Such scanning at workplace levels, after all, bears directly and indirectly on the success and failure of anyone in their position. To fail to secure any shared cognition and understanding of environmental changes is literally suicidal, first corporately and then positionally. We may consider in this light two examples of such scanning which came up in the article by Shapiro and book by Rothman. Large law firms typically delegate to specialized committees the oversight of potential conflicts of interest which new legal business, new clients or new lawyers might bring with them.48 These committees are deliberative bodies, not hierarchies; they are responsible for screening “all new matters;” and their proscriptive power can be documented empirically. Their place and purpose within law firms is hardly window dressing or perfunctory. Indeed, Shapiro found “everywhere at least one example” in each law firm she studied (my emphasis) where a new commercial opportunity was rejected outright because it required the firm to champion interests adverse to those of other clients. Lucien Karpik found the same sort of abnegating behavior at the French bar, and across centuries, from the ancien régime to today.49 The other example is related, namely institutional review boards which govern medical research as well as hospital standing committees which govern bedside practice. They, too, review cases collegiately or deliberatively for possible conflicts, including abuses of trust. Of course, their scanning is typically retrospective, not prospective.50 Finally, collegial formations can also advance the self-interests of individual professionals. This is illustrated in particular by cases of professionals who are the most innovative, creative or rebellious. As individual professionals provide expert services or undertake research openly in ways which exhibit the procedural-normative integrity 48 49 50

Shapiro 2003:130–31,135–37,149. Karpik 1995. Rothman 1991.

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uniquely institutionalized by collegial formations, this largely indemnifies the substance of their activities simultaneously, at least at the outset. That is, critics of particular substantive activities or outcomes must provide reasons for drawing attention to them. In turn, innovative, creative or rebellious professionals can then respond to these reasons, as opposed to being subjected to unilateral decrees. Bourdieu appreciates this: “Not everything in the bureaucratic contract is contractual: the regulations that define the duties of the subordinate part also define the limits of the arbitrary rule of the dominant.”51 Indeed, profession leaders direct their own ongoing deliberation and that of dispersed members not only outwardly, to environmental opportunities and challenges, but also inwardly, to internal disputes and controversies. Profession leaders, and then dispersed members, deliberate over whether they as well as dispersed practitioners and researchers are in fact bearing fiducial responsibilities (those of which they are aware). They also deliberate over whether expert services are being provided consistently with epistemological and didactic occupational orientations. Here, too, we see that collegial formations and procedural-normative integrity are quite consistent organizationally with the most powerful epistemological standard of analysis of substantive activities and outcomes available to any science today, that provided by a discourse theory of truth as opposed to a (positivist) copy theory. As examples, by initiating and maintaining double-blind refereeing of submissions to profession journals, profession leaders institutionalize ongoing deliberation consistent with an epistemological occupational orientation. The same is true when profession leaders organize open presentations and discourses at association meetings, open to the press and other observers, as opposed to confining their findings and inquiries to more cloistered settings, whether laboratories or classrooms. Profession governance structures also institutionalize ongoing deliberation over practitioner and researcher behavioral fidelity to any didactic occupational orientation and to bearing immediate fiducial responsibilities.

51 Bourdieu 2000:131. Of course, Bourdieu fails: to appreciate that an organization can be collegial rather than bureaucratic; to draw any distinction between proceduralnormative thresholds and substantive-normative standards; and to see any connection between the passage quoted and professions.

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All of this is reflected in activities typical of professions, including admitting and promoting students as well as rewarding practitioners and researchers primarily on the basis of merit, as opposed to doing so primarily (and openly) on the basis of nepotism, patronage or venality. It is also reflected more generally in professionals’ probity, including their relatively disinterested behavior. However, the principle of open instruction is clearly being violated today by the compartmentalization of professor-graduate student relationships. Such compartmentalization typically results in barely disguised patron-client networks, and thereby marks an unambiguous reversion to guild mastership.52 6. External Regulation and Oversight 6.1 Form and Procedure as Screens or Gatekeepers Members of collegial formations are clearly exposed structurally or positionally to heteronomous inputs or influences, from outside observers and interested parties, but only on one particular condition. The condition is that outsiders conduct themselves consistently with collegiants’ own internal “orderliness,” their own ongoing behavioral fidelity to the collegial form and procedural-normative integrity. The same form and procedures, that is, simultaneously identifies for professionals in common when external regulation or criticism is acceptable, does not compromise their integrity. Inputs and influences from outsiders, including state regulators and judicial overseers, must be “acceptable” in this thin sense, at their very point of entry into the governance structures of collegial formations. Otherwise entry is either

52 The best recent description of the harms intrinsic to compartmentalized instruction is by Shapiro (2003:219–20). “Over time, students often become dependent on a limited number of faculty for their education,” such that a “multiple matrix of dependences exacerbates the imbalance of power between students and teachers and makes it too costly for students to extricate themselves when their professors’ conflicts of interest cause them to ignore or betray their obligations to their students.” In addition, this same compartmentalization threatens students who manage to avoid it: being “outsiders,” professors may evaluate them differently, give them “less attention, mentoring and support,” and lack “objectivity and responsibility as gatekeepers.” All of this only highlights the importance of the visual Académie’s policy of instructional rotation in identifying merit, in avoiding the impairment of judgment intrinsic to clientelist favoritism.

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denied or, at minimum, external influences and demands are mediated or redefined. At the very least, neither the substance of these influences and demands nor the pathways through which they enter governance structures organized in a collegial form can compromise, jeopardize or, certainly, challenge collegiants’ procedural-normative integrity. Such integrity, after all, is constitutive uniquely of the collegial form. Correlatively, to the extent collegiants simply maintain this formation’s integrity, in their own immediate positional and corporate interests, they simultaneously leave themselves no choice structurally or positionally other than to disregard (or to redefine in terms more acceptable procedural normatively) all heteronomous inputs and influences which compromise, jeopardize or challenge the internal “orderliness” – the acknowledged range of expectations – institutionalized “thinly” by this formation alone. Moreover, these same pathways of entry for all outside inputs and influences simultaneously filter any and all internal disputes, including those internal to professions. If a profession apologist or profession challenger cannot convert or translate a controversial issue or activity of professional practice, research or instruction into a matter supportive of collegial form and the procedural-normative threshold of rule understandability and interpretability, then the issue or activity remains a conundrum. It festers unresolved. It is simply another addition to a literal sea of competing substantive-normative social constructions of meaning by participants and incommensurable interpretations by outsiders. Not converted or translated in the terms noted above, it cannot credibly claim any particular priority, or be posed less ambiguously or controversially, let alone addressed methodically and conclusively. 6.2 Necessity of External Oversight and Regulation In addition to the deliberation of profession leaders, which is directed both outward and inward, the governance and behavior of professions is also broadly overseen and regulated, whether by specialized courts or, alternatively, by functionally dedicated administrative agencies. This typically happens because structured situations are considered so consequential that elites, particularly today, are reluctant to leave their governance to market forces or to any monopoly, including one that is putatively self-regulating. Always and everywhere, the governance and activities of professional activities at all levels – associational,

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disciplinary and instructional, and workplace – are overseen by judges or administers. Importantly, they are overseen on fiducial grounds, not strictly commercial grounds. We saw in Chapter 4 the importance of Delaware court rulings which address positional conflicts between entrenched positions of power and entrenched positions of dependence within corporate governance structures. By extension, it would seem equally important for courts (or administrative agencies) to provide external oversight of pioneering applications of professional services and expertise. However, no democratic society – including the United States – has yet institutionalized fully any such regime of specialized, clear and consistent oversight of all professional venues. This is another way of saying that no democratic society has yet institutionalized professional governance structures fully in all major intermediary associations in civil society. In this light we can appreciate that what largely accounts for differences in advanced societies’ directions of institutional change today is not the presence or absence of formal democracy. It is instead the scope of rule clarity and consistency: Does this extend only across the state – courts and government agencies – as in the case of limited governments? Or does it extend also to major intermediary associations of civil society, led by professions (but also affecting corporate governance), as is the case in democratic societies in particular? Even in most advanced societies the scope of clear and consistent rule making and rule enforcement remains largely confined to the state. Rarely does it extend to the governance of some major intermediary associations in civil society, such as hospitals, universities and other sites of professional practice, and never does it extend to all. Rarely does it extend to publicly traded corporations, let alone to other corporate or commercial enterprises. Even when rule clarity and consistency is institutionalized exclusively within and around the state, an institutional design has already gone beyond that of simple formal democracy. It has evolved to limited government. In turn, when rule clarity and consistency extends also to at least some major intermediary associations in civil society, an institutional design is evolving further, to democratic society. Whether it also becomes (or remains) economically competitive in a global economy remains an open, empirical question. But the institutions of a democratic society – collegial formations which institutionalize the possibility of ongoing deliberative scanning of environmental

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opportunities and challenges – certainly prepare the way for this, as opposed to obstructing it. Our point is that private governance structures, those of major intermediary associations in civil society, always and everywhere introduce longer-term, institutional consequences into a larger social order structurally, and thus inadvertently if not also purposefully. This is why these consequences, which include how corporate power and professional power is exercised in structured situations, are so elusive. What is typically reported in trade journals or the popular press are the immediate consequences of major intermediary associations. Journalists dutifully report when one-sidedness or self-interestedness harms discrete individuals and groups, and particularly when these harms (or first-person accounts of them) are relatively self-evident. We can nonetheless begin to identify institutional externalities across modern societies by recalling when and how the corporate judiciary (or in Europe and Japan an equivalent administrative agency) intervenes into the internal governance of publicly traded corporations. Only when the corporate judiciary converts its fiduciary law tradition into a threshold of procedural normative integrity, as opposed to retaining any independent substantive normative standards by which to gauge the trajectory of change of corporate governance structures, can state judges resolve corporate governance disputes with consistency over time and across jurisdictions. Only by taking this procedural turn can state judges first establish and then maintain, first among themselves, a shared cognition and understanding of what the corporate judiciary itself is endeavoring to accomplish as an institution. Such an interpersonal cognition and understanding among judges is, of course, a prerequisite for directors and other corporate officers possibly to understand in common what the mandatory rules (and then suppletory and enabling rules) of corporate law doctrine require of them. Unlike corporate governance structures, professions tend more “naturally” to accommodate collegial formations. They do so not because profession leaders are more likely to be motivated in common by altruism or to acknowledge in common a service orientation. They do so because collegial formations advance the corporate and positional interests of profession leaders and patrons far more immediately than they advance the corporate and positional interests of corporate officers and shareholders. Profession leaders rely on venues of ongoing

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deliberation to scan occupational and social environments for opportunities and challenges. They do so even if rank and file practitioners could care less about the latest occupational developments and, even less, about the theoretical issues which invariably come into play when describing, explaining and predicting these developments. Thus, even in autocracies, profession leaders may endeavor to institutionalize their own (and others’) deliberation and thus disinterested behavior out of immediate corporate and positional interest. They do not do so out of public spiritedness nor, certainly, with an eye to adumbrating the institutional design of a democratic, economically competitive society. And yet, clear and consistent professional governance enervates structurally – in subtle, longer-term ways – the institutional designs of all social orders. It does so without professional leaders (or members) ever challenging these received institutions directly. Venues of ongoing deliberation organized in collegial formations invariably either anticipate or support structurally one and only one set of institutional designs. They anticipate and support this set structurally and, therefore, irrespective of whether the institutional designs are anachronistic historically or otherwise absent from the cultural understandings available in a civil society. Collegial formations contribute structurally to a democratic, economically competitive society by ameliorating structurally the harms that would otherwise befall this set of institutional designs by the state, commerce and patronage, that is, by bureaucratic hierarchy, market-mimicking behavior and patron-client networks. Even though venues of deliberation are more elitist (or meritocratic) than leveling (formally democratic), their presence in any civil society structurally compliments the institutional designs of a democratic, economically competitive society in particular. Such venues adumbrate this institutional design when it is not yet in place, and they support this institutional design when it is present. The irony is that professions introduce this grander, institutional consequence into all civil societies structurally and thus inadvertently. They do so by their very presence in civil society, and thus despite the fact that they are elitist and restrictive by tying entry and advancement to meritocratic instructional and occupational standards. We can see in this light why the charge made so frequently against professionalism today (e.g. by Waters 1989 and many others), of introducing unnecessary occupational closure into civil society, misses the

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central point of professionalism. This charge does not establish a ground on which either to grasp empirically or to criticize at a conceptual level the institutional consequences which professions introduce structurally into the state or into civil society by their sheer presence. Professions in particular and collegial formations in general introduce into state agencies and into major intermediary associations in civil society procedural-normative restraints on positional one-sidedness. Whether public or private or both, such restraints are a public good or social capital. This remains the case even if collegial formations also introduce occupational closure into the state or civil society as Malcolm Waters (and others) describes it.53 We are also bringing into view a related problem in Abbott’s “systems” approach to the sociology of professions. Successful monopolization in the labor market for expert services – what Abbott calls successful control over worksite “jurisdiction” – is not constitutive of professionalism as such. It is instead an extraneous, accompanying variable of some professionalism projects which is also found in all sorts of other occupations, and not only other expert occupations and middle-class occupations. This accompanying variable does not establish that any particular occupation is either a profession or, for that matter, a deliberative body organized in a collegial form. We can also explain why Waters, Abbott and other revisionist critics of Parsons’ sociology of professions arrived at the faulty positions just noted. Too frequently, the continued presence of collegial formations – whether in the state or in civil society – strikes outsiders, those competing commercially or politically more immediately within embedded exchanges and at fluid sites, as “artificial” and “monopolistic,” and thus intrinsically unnecessary and unwarranted.54 The presence of collegial formations means that “protected arenas” – structured situations – may be found amidst the embedded exchanges and fluid sites of the state or civil society or both. These arenas-structured situations are indeed protected from what would otherwise be a more unmediated, robust commercial competition within economic markets and political competition (horse-trading, logrolling and balancing) within the state. 53

Waters 1989. Larson (1977) codified this line of argument, Collins (1979) fetishized it (as had Milton Friedman earlier, in 1963), and public choice theorists Brennan and Buchanan (1989:5–11) offer theoretical underpinnings which, ultimately, are unconvincing. 54

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Moreover, these arenas-structured situations are, as a result, subjected to unrelenting systemic pressures to regress to either embedded exchanges or fluid sites. On one side, they are vulnerable to outsiders’ publicly presented, ideological proposals to eliminate all instances of “social closure” which, by definition, are intrinsically unnecessary and unwarranted.55 On the other, they are also vulnerable to their own members’ personal cliques, factions and opportunism. Such private or personal relationships and exchanges can either compel or induce members to subordinate the shared cognition and fiducial responsibility institutionalized by the collegial form to substantive outcomes or goals. The latter, however, reflect a quite different form of organization and institutionalize a quite different cognition, orientation and responsibility. Such substantive outcomes and goals reflect a patron-client form of organization and its ethos of personalist allegiance.

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Collins 1979:169–170,197–204.

CHAPTER TWELVE

DRAWING DISTINCTIONS: STRUCTURAL QUALITIES, ILLUSTRATIONS AND A REREADING We are now in a position to illustrate in two ways the empirical and theoretical fruitfulness of our structural and institutional approach to professionalism. Because our approach holds up always and everywhere, some illustrations in this chapter challenge basic assertions of received wisdom in the sociology of professions. Others address and resolve long-standing conundrums and aporias in the literature. For instance, received wisdom insists there are two distinct professionalism projects, one Anglo-American, the other continental. This putative duality, however, only appears to follow logically, self-evidently from available empirical evidence because the empirical record itself has been distorted by the two well-worn ways in which sociologists study professions and their associations. They define professions and professionalism on the basis of shaky (relativist) empirical generalizations, not grounded (invariant) abstract (analytical) distinctions. In addition, their vision, both cross-national and historiographic, is unnecessarily restricted by the shallow pool of modern exemplars: law and medicine, science and engineering. Sociologists (and historians) dutifully trace the origins of professionalism only as far back into history as documentary records permit in law, and then also in the other three field exemplars. The result is a manifestly Whiggish historiography, which poses an unnecessary obstacle first to theoretical advances and then to both cross-national comparisons and further historiographic inquiries. By contrast to this received wisdom, we propose there is one professionalism project which spans all societies, both historically and crossnationally today. We identify this project more abstractly, on the basis of analytical distinctions and, in addition, we take our empirical bearings from a far deeper pool of cases. Basing our analysis first and foremost on the structured situations in any occupational field in any society, our pool includes visual académies of the Renaissance and ancien régime, looking retrospectively, and includes unfolding developments within corporate governance structures, looking prospec-

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tively. With this, we take our bearings, both conceptual and empirical, from occupational fields entirely removed from the four exemplars of received wisdom. Moreover, unlike received wisdom, we can explain and predict the trajectories and outcomes of professionalism prospectively, as opposed to reconstructing this always after the fact. Our structural and institutional approach also breaks from received wisdom in a second way, namely by establishing that the sociology of professions is a branch of the study of intermediary associations in civil society and, thus, of political sociology. It is not more narrowly, as received wisdom asserts, “a branch of the sociology of work concerned with the analysis of expert occupations.”1 We thereby recast entirely the central theoretical and empirical issue of the sociology of professions. The central issue for us is whether and how the governance, regulation and activities of intermediary associations in general and of professions in particular either support or enervate structurally the institutional design of the larger social order. The central issue for received wisdom is whether and how expert occupations in general and professions in particular compete for workplace jurisdictions and establish monopolies in the labor market for expert services, irrespective of its affects on the direction of social change. The longer-term, institutional significance of professions’ place and purpose in civil society, whether during the ancien régime or today, has long eluded sociologists (and historians). For instance, there is no structural or intrinsic relationship between professions and liberalism, between professions and the status quo, or between professions and both.2 Rather, the institutional consequences of professionalism projects are subtler than this. This is why they can only be identified more abstractly, analytically. Yet, we are also proposing that these institutional consequences are nonetheless invariant, both historically and cross-nationally today. This follows because the analytical and empirical qualities constitutive of professionalism are structural, not narrowly economic and also not broadly cultural (and social psychological). On the one hand, therefore, the scope of application of our more abstract, structural and institutional approach to the sociology of professions is far broader than that of the essentially economistic,

1

Abbott 2002. On liberalism, see Halliday and Karpik 1997b; on the status quo, see Brint 1994; on both, see Larson 1989, Shamir 1995 and Evetts 2006:137 and 2003a:403. 2

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“jurisdictions and systems” approach of today’s received wisdom.3 When professions are treated primarily as a status category and thus as a tactic of labor market closure or monopoly, sociologists are capable of identifying only the immediate, largely instrumental consequences of professional governance, regulation and activities. These are the benefits and harms which expert services of any kind can cause directly to clients and local communities, and then by extension to the occupational order and stratification system.4 At best, professions and other expert occupations can also be treated as the typical or characteristic way in which cultivated middle classes (Bildungsbürgertum) organize their learned services.5 On the other hand, our approach, being structural and institutional, simultaneously brings greater analytical and empirical focus to the sociology of professions than the earlier cultural and social-psychological approach of functionalists.6 When professions are treated as major intermediary associations in civil society, alongside publicly traded corporations, the longer-term, institutional consequences of professional governance, regulation and activities finally come into view. These are the benefits and harms professions and their associations introduce structurally, thus invariantly, into institutional designs which evolve historically and differ cross-nationally. This line of inquiry is much more focused than any effort to identify the putative contributions professions and their associations make culturally to “social order” more generally. The presence of professionalism projects in any civil society, whether during the ancien régime or today, invariably either supports or enervates structurally the existing institutional design. Even as institutional designs evolve and vary, these structural reverberations are invariant. They unfold in predictable ways quite irrespective of practitioners’ cultural understandings, social-psychological beliefs, or occupational and

3

Larson 1977; Collins 1979; Abbott 1988,2002,2005; Macdonald 1995. For example, see Beckman and Phillips 2005 for a recent study confined exclusively to these narrow consequences. 5 Kocka 1990, Siegrist 2002b. This is common today even in the United States and Great Britain. For instance, more than two decades after Burton Bledstein published his pathbreaking study (1978) of the rise of a culture of professionalism in the United States during the nineteenth century, he and Robert Johnston edited a 2001 collection titled “The Middling Sorts: Explorations in the History of the American Middle Class.” 6 Parsons and Platt 1973. 4

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class ideologies. Moreover, these structural reverberations are unique to professionalism. They do not accompany the presence of any other expert occupations or middle class occupations in civil society, including haute couture, haute cuisine and home entertainment installation. Against the shaky, relativist empirical generalizations of received wisdom, we propose there is one invariant, grounded set of analytical distinctions constitutive of professionalism as such. Being constitutive and invariant, this set distinguishes professions from all other occupations and organizations even as it also accounts for why the term “professional” is overextended in colloquial usage. Unlike Parsons’ approach to professionalism, our structural and institutional approach does not trace these constitutive qualities to professionals putatively sharing social-psychological beliefs (“service orientation”) or cultural understandings (“valued cultural patterns”). Any beliefs and understandings professionals happen to share in substance at any particular time and place are variables, not invariant, not constitutive of professionalism as such. They appear in particular associations, scholarly disciplines and instructional facilities, and workplaces, but are absent in others. Being constitutive and invariant, the structural qualities of professionalism projects appear empirically irrespective of whether instances of occupational upgrading being studied are in the Anglo-American world or on the continent, in the Pacific Rim or Southern Hemisphere. They also appear empirically irrespective of whether we are studying prototype professionalism projects during the ancien régime, or purposeful professionalism amidst industrialization, or inadvertent professionalism in corporate governance today. These structural qualities, in short, provide sociologists and historians with a grounded – invariant – conceptual basis on which to distinguish professions from all other expert occupations, both retrospectively and prospectively. Our grounding at a conceptual level allows sociologists to identify professionalism historically and to explain and predict its rise, trajectory and outcome today and in the future. For instance, the structural qualities constitutive of professionalism permit sociologists and historians to explain why haute couture and haute cuisine in Paris never embarked on professionalism projects during the nineteenth century, despite the fact that they are both clearly expert occupations. Likewise, they permit sociologists and historians to explain why law in Britain and medicine, science and engineering in Germany and France did embark on professionalism projects during the nineteenth century. It also permits them to explain why professionalism on the continent

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unfolded more unevenly and ambiguously, and why this was consistent with institutional designs which tacked between formal democracy and autocracy. 1. Invariant Constitutive Qualities Given our two cases (Chapters 3–4) and theoretical discussion (Chapters 6–11), it is helpful to present the structural qualities and institutional consequences constitutive of professionalism in two listings. The first is bare bones, and thus useful for basic orientation; the second listing adds elaboration as well as commentary. 1.1 An Essential Listing Shorn of elaboration and commentary, successful professionalism projects, whether in practice or research, in associations, or in instructional facilities, always and everywhere: – Unfold within structured situations, at which two sets of positions are entrenched: positions of power, discretionary judgment and impersonal trust; and positions of dependence, vulnerability and apprehension. – Successfully claim an independent socio-cultural authority within their structured situations (areas of expertise), which is asserted and exercised also consistently with the positional and corporate interests and fiducial responsibilities noted below. Being independent, professions never directly “control” this socio-cultural authority – or its direction of change, or the uses to which it can be put by either dissidents internally or critics externally. – Are held structurally, positionally, to two sets of fiducial responsibilities. One set is assumed purposefully, namely fiducial responsibilities for client or patron wellbeing and that of local communities; this set is variable in part and invariant in part. The other set is invariant historically and cross-nationally but also typically assumed inadvertently rather than purposefully, namely fiducial responsibilities for the institutional design of the larger social order. A dividing line in the occupational order (or in what Abbott calls the “system of professions”) goes here, as Burrage, Jarausch and Siegrist anticipated: All qualities or traits above are exclusive to professions. By contrast, those below can be, and today frequently are, adopted

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or feigned by other occupations. However, all qualities or traits, those below as much as those above, are equally constitutive of professionalism as such. Thus, again, always and everywhere professions: – Revolve around two occupational orientations, one epistemological or scientific and the other didactic or moral. As behavior, credible claims to incarnate truth and morality are invariant in professionalism; but, in content, these claims certainly evolve historically as well as vary by specialty. – Establish and maintain their independent socio-cultural authority in both internal governance and external regulation through ongoing procedural-normative integrity, deliberation and relative disinterestedness organized in a collegial form of organization. They do not do so through unwarranted social closure, through occupational monopoly organized bureaucratically, strictly commercially or clientelistically. – Their collegial formations uniquely institutionalize proceduralnormative integrity – a bright-line threshold of rule clarity and consistency – which, first and foremost, permits dispersed professionals themselves, and then also any interested outsiders, shared cognition of: 1. instances of possible positional one-sidedness (or self-interested opportunism); 2. the principles and precepts of the profession’s independent sociocultural authority; 3. the substance of professionals’ structurally or positionally imposed fiducial responsibilities and occupational orientations; 4. the evolving and varying content of professionals’ instructional and occupational activities; 5. professionals’ ongoing disinterestedness and deliberation, as substantive-normative behavior. – Privilege merit structurally in both instructional entry and then occupational placement and advancement, as opposed to permitting open nepotism, patronage or venality to displace or subordinate demonstrable merit. – Establish and maintain identifiable jurisdictions or fields (if not monopolies) in the labor market for expert services which are relatively well-patrolled. Such patrolling is possible only because these jurisdictions span structured situations based on an independent

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socio-cultural authority and framed by fiducial responsibilities. As a result, this means these jurisdictions are warranted both structurally and institutionally (and also typically culturally); they are never wanton – pointless, capricious, or indefensible on generalizable grounds. 1.2 An Elaborated Listing Now elaborating on the listing above and adding commentary where necessary, once again the first four constitutive qualities are exclusive to professions: – Professions are occupations which provide socio-culturally consequential expert services within structured situations, not less consequential services within embedded exchanges or at fluid sites of commerce or diversion where fiducial responsibility is absent, neither expected or anticipated. Structured situations are identifiable venues in either civil society or the state at which positional power is entrenched. They are also venues at which any and all inequalities benefiting or disadvantaging participants in the wider society – of status and influence, wealth or power – are either irrelevant or secondary. Within structured situations, professionals always and everywhere occupy entrenched positions of power; in turn, their patrons or clients always and everywhere occupy entrenched positions of dependence. Thus, any ongoing professionalism project revolves around positions of power and positions of dependence which are at once entrenched structurally and consequential socio-culturally (and institutionally). Moreover, the relationship – the power differential – between these two sets of positions is equally structural, equally invariant. It is not altered fundamentally even when clients and patrons are individuals of unambiguously superior status and influence, wealth and power in the larger society. This is why positional and corporate interests within structured situations are readily distinguishable from participants’ self-interests. – The positional power professionals exercise within structured situations is identified by, stems from, and is legitimated by an independent socio-cultural authority recognized or acknowledged universally, as a literal cultural truism of a society and era. Structured situations are distinguished from embedded exchanges and fluid sites by a literal cultural truism of a society and era. The same

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cultural truism which is distinguishing socio-culturally consequential structured situations from all other venues of interaction in civil society (or within and around the state) opens the possibility of some occupations successfully claiming an independent socio-cultural authority within these structured situations. This socio-cultural authority is independent in this same sense. Being an authority available only within structured situations, and following only from a cultural truism, it never becomes a simple instrument or tactic of profession leaders and members. It is ultimately independent of any profession’s full possession or control. Profession leaders and members do not control and cannot control the substantive uses to which their own successfully claimed independent sociocultural authority can potentially be put. They also do not control and cannot control this authority’s substantive evolution over time, including in particular cases of its eventual demise. The demise of this authority occurs simultaneously with the structured situation to which it had been anchored giving way to embedded exchanges or fluid sites of contracting. The cultural truism on which both are based is no longer credibly sustained; a new socio-cultural order is displacing its antecedent. This is precisely what happened during the mid-nineteenth century to the cultural truism, socio-cultural authority and structured situation associated with the Paris visual Académie and, more generally, with visual narrations. Being independent of profession control, the socio-cultural authority of professionalism is simultaneously facilitating of positional power and constraining of positional one-sidedness. It is independently regulative of professionalism, both internally and externally.7 Internally, it is regulative within all professional-patron and professional-client relationships as well as within profession governance and regulation. Externally, it is equally regulative when interested observers or affected outsiders use it to challenge professional governance and regulation, behavior and judgment, in particular instances. The socio-cultural authority of professionalism, in short, introduces into civil society (or into self-governing state agencies) an ever-present third-party arbiter. This authority is openly and readily available for 7 Luhmann would see this regulative quality of an independent socio-cultural authority as autopoietic. But this goes too far. Ongoing professionalism is quite consistent with external regulation of a certain kind, enforced by courts or administrative agencies of a certain kind.

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any party within a structured situation to cite or use in its own positional interests, albeit as long as they do so consistently with certain norms of behavior noted momentarily. It is equally available in this same sense for citation and use by interested observers or affected outsiders. Thus, professionals are free to cite this authority openly in overruling a client’s or patron’s preferences (and vanity); in turn, their clients or patrons (as well as the latter’s legal or other representatives) are equally free to cite the same authority openly in challenging a particular professional’s judgment and behavior. As a result of providing expert services within structured situations on the basis of an independent socio-cultural authority: – Professions disperse a publicly, openly exercised authority and power from the state to either private intermediary associations in civil society or to state agencies which are self-governing, not strictly subordinate in the state administrative hierarchy. In addition, the immediate positional and corporate interests of professionals are readily identifiable, both analytically and empirically. They can be distinguished from professionals’ self-interests as freestanding individuals and from any idiosyncrasies of their person or condition. The positional and corporate interests of professionals (as well as of their clients or patrons) are readily identified, explained and predicted because the power differential within structured situations is structural and invariant, not personal or conditional. By contrast, individuals’ self-interests and idiosyncrasies are variables. They are conditional, personal or both. They also vary with individuals’ particular social-psychological beliefs about, and general cultural understandings of, their occupational activities and the latter’s environmental challenges and opportunities. – Structurally or positionally, professionals are accountable for two fiducial responsibilities, one immediate and typically borne purposefully, for client or patron wellbeing, the other longer-term and typically borne inadvertently, for institutional design. In being accountable for these fiducial responsibilities, professionals are expected to exercise positional power short of one-sidedness. Put more positively, they are expected to exercise positional power consistently with the independent socio-cultural authority they have successfully asserted and now exercise within structured situations. Indeed, these two fiducial responsibilities of professionalism, being structural and

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thus invariant, also illustrate the distinctiveness of professionals’ immediate positional and corporate interests, as opposed to their self-interests and idiosyncrasies as individuals. Related fiducial responsibilities noted below provide additional illustration of the same distinctiveness. Professionals clearly do not share as individuals a self-interest in abnegating their own power; they do not somehow share an altruistic motivation or a service orientation. To the contrary, like everyone else in civil society (or in the state), professionals share as individuals a selfinterest in neglecting or disregarding any fiducial restrictions placed on their entrenched positions of power. Yet, professionals nonetheless typically bear both fiducial responsibilities above behaviorally and precisely because both are structural or positional in source or origin. Both fiducial responsibilities of professionalism stem from professionals’ entrenched power (which includes their expertise) and independent socio-cultural authority within structured situations. The same responsibilities, therefore, do not extend to embedded exchanges. At best, substantive norms of probity may be found within embedded exchanges, but not fiducial responsibilities, not legally sanctioned restrictions capable of being enforced with consistency across place and time – whether by associations, courts, state agencies or all three. Even more, fiducial responsibilities are utterly irrelevant at fluid sites of commerce or diversion. At fluid sites, market-mimicking behavior is expected, indeed normative, consistent with the adage caveat emptor. Both venues – embedded exchanges and fluid sites – lack positional entrenchment as well as any universally recognized or acknowledged socio-cultural authority. They instead retain structurally a viable option of immediate, relatively costless exit. Fiducial duties of care and loyalty, the pivot around which corporate derivative suits revolve, are relevant only within structured situations. They uniquely proscribe positional one-sidedness and then, to a lesser extent, self-interested opportunism. Thus, fiducial duties of care and loyalty apply not only to corporate governance and regulation. They apply equally forcefully to profession governance and regulation as well as to all ongoing professional-patron or professional-client relationships. Likewise, the same duties apply also to state agencies, particularly in the civil law world of the continent and elsewhere, but only within two sets of institutional designs, that of limited government and that of democratic society. Fiducial duties of care and loyalty compel corporate officers as well as profession leaders and members and state officials to exhibit some

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degree of independence, of disinterestedness and deliberation, even as they are otherwise invariably exercising positional power over dependents (or otherwise acting self-interestedly). They are compelled, at minimum, to exercise positional power short of one-sidedness and then also to avoid opportunism when acting self-interestedly. Like the socio-cultural authority which credibly can only be claimed within structured situations, the fiducial responsibilities constitutive of structured situations are at once facilitating (of immediate positional and corporate interest) and regulative (of positional one-sidedness and opportunism). Care and loyalty simultaneously advance the immediate positional and corporate interests – not self-interests – of anyone in a professional position of power as well as the wellbeing of anyone in a client or patron position of dependence. In addition, how positional power is exercised within structured situations, whether in corporate governance, in professions or in state agencies, bears structurally, thus invariantly, on the institutional design of the larger society. However, institutional designs evolve historically and vary crossnationally. The independent socio-cultural authority and fiducial responsibilities constitutive of professionalism within structured situations in civil society advance structurally only one set of institutional designs, that of democratic society. The same authority and responsibilities constitutive of professionalism within state agencies advance structurally this same set of institutional designs but also, even more centrally, that of limited government. Otherwise, this authority and these responsibilities expose structural limitations in formal democracy, an institutional design which falls short of limited government, and they enervate structurally all other sets of institutional designs (those of despotism and authoritarianism). – Institutionally, professionalism within structured situations, whether successful or failed, introduces into civil society two sets of consequences: immediate consequences, some variable but others invariant, for discrete individuals or groups; and structural consequences for institutional design which are invariant, even as institutional designs evolve and vary. Institutional designs evolve historically and vary cross-nationally today, as do, certainly, the cultural truisms distinguishing structured situations from embedded exchanges and fluid sites. But the consequences which either successful or failed professionalism introduce into institutional design are structural, and thus invariant. They can be

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readily identified, explained and predicted irrespective of any institutional design currently in place. Indeed, precisely because the four sets of structural qualities listed in bullet points above are constitutive of professionalism as such, always and everywhere professions introduce four invariant consequences institutionally into the civil societies in which they appear. Professions: 1. Exercise entrenched positional power short of one-sidedness but consistently with an independent socio-cultural authority, fiducial responsibilities, and identifiable positional and corporate interests. 2. Establish and maintain an independent socio-cultural authority in a particular occupational jurisdiction or field, available generally for citation and use. 3. Typically advance the wellbeing of patrons and clients even as professionals are capable structurally or positionally of doing great harm. 4. Support structurally one and only one set of institutional designs in particular, that of a democratic, commercially competitive society. Professions in the state support limited government structurally, but professions in civil society challenge structurally all other sets of institutional designs: they expose structural limitations in limited governments and formal democracies and they enervate structurally all autocracies. The dividing line we identified at the outset of Chapter 10 goes here: All other qualities constitutive of professionalism stem from the four sets listed above, those constitutive of professionalism exclusively. The next five sets of additional qualities are equally constitutive of professionalism, are equally structural and invariant for any ongoing professionalism project. But many other expert and middle-class occupations are free voluntarily to adopt (or feign adopting) some of these sets in whole or part. Other occupations, however, do not typically adopt, or feign adopting, all of these sets or, for that matter, all of the qualities within each set. This is reflected well in the examples of haute couture, haute cuisine and home entertainment installation. In short, the five sets of qualities below are variables within any occupational order in general, present or absent from occupation to occupation, but they are structural and invariant within any ongoing professionalism project. They are constitutive of professionalism as such, and may be classified schematically as: structural or positional;

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institutional; organizational; instructional and behavioral; and occupational and behavioral. – Structurally, in their own positional and corporate interests, professions are held accountable for adopting and maintaining two occupational orientations: epistemological and didactic. – Institutionally, in their own positional and corporate interests: 1) Professions introduce into civil society (or into state agencies or both) a particular standard of governance and regulation, of instructional and occupational behavior, and of shared cognition of them. All of this stems from a bright-line, procedural-normative threshold of rule clarity and consistency, which facilitates shared understandability and interpretability of professional behavior within and across dispersed venues of practice and research, and within and across cohorts and generations. Professions exemplify ongoing behavioral fidelity to procedural norms which underpin reasoned governance, as opposed to arbitrary rule or aesthetic posturing. In this way they not only institutionalize quintessentially middle-class (or learned) standards of discourse and sociability among themselves. They also display these standards openly and publicly to all patrons and clients with whom they come into contact at their sites of instruction and practice or research. Professionals’ ongoing behavioral fidelity to the threshold as well as their shared cognition of this behavior and this threshold has already been illustrated by the two fiducial responsibilities constitutive of professionalism within structured situations. Now we are identifying the very particular, readily identifiable procedural-normative backdrop necessary for such shared cognition to be established and then sustained over time. It is this backdrop which permits dispersed and heterogeneous profession leaders and members – as well as interested observers, including judicial overseers and administrative regulators, as well as affected outsiders, all of whom are equally dispersed and heterogeneous – to cognize or acknowledge in common over time, across cohorts and generations, the same normative or qualitative responsibilities. Put more specifically, this backdrop accounts for the possibility of the same people identifying in common over time professionals’ behavioral fidelity to: the independent socio-cultural authority of professionalism, the fiducial responsibilities and occupational

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orientations of professionalism, and the evolving and varying content of instructional and occupational activities. All three invariant behavioral manifestations of professionalism – in professional governance and regulation, in professional instructional and occupational activities, and in ongoing shared cognition of them – follow upon each other because all three revolve around the same bright-line, procedural-normative threshold of rule clarity and consistency. Under modern conditions, none of these three behavioral manifestations of professionalism do revolve or can revolve more directly or primarily around any existing or available substantivenormative standards of behavior. Whenever this is attempted, deliberation and relative disinterestedness are displaced by hierarchy or caprice (or both), commercialism or favoritism (or both). In itself, any such displacement jeopardizes professionalism. 2) Professions also introduce into civil society (or into state agencies or both) a particular form of organization: a collegial form. Only a collegial form is capable of institutionalizing within and across dispersed venues participants’ ongoing behavioral fidelity to the bright-line procedural-normative threshold of rule clarity and consistency. At minimum, this formation and threshold mediate professional exercises of positional power short of one-sidedness. They also mediate, but to a lesser extent, individuals’ self-interestedness within structured situations short of opportunism. Given this most basic behavioral consequence of procedural-normative integrity and collegiality, both the threshold and the formation provide everyone with a baseline: everyone involved in professional practice or research and everyone observing, regulating or challenging it. This baseline provided by threshold and formation does not in itself guarantee that professional governance, regulation and behavior will always and everywhere be marked by relative disinterestedness warranted by ongoing deliberation. But it alone keeps open the possibility that professional activities at any venue can become and remain relatively disinterested and deliberative. Indeed, professionals typically provide expert services or undertake research and instruction consistently with deliberative warranting, rather than absent such warranting. They also typically provide expert services and undertake research and instruction in relatively disinterested ways, rather than narrowly selfinterestedly.

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More than this, we also typically find ongoing deliberation and disinterestedness in professional instruction as well as in research activities which advance professional practice. Deliberation and disinterestedness have been vital in the history of professionalism, and they remain vital today in any profession’s collective quest for abstract principles and practicable precepts of advanced instruction and ambitious occupational practice. We saw procedural-normative integrity and collegial formations, and also relative disinterestedness warranted by deliberation, in the Paris visual Académie. Today we see the same qualities in experimental research activities and in the policy of scholarly journals reviewing and scoring submissions anonymously. 3) More particularly, professions establish and maintain collegial formations within and across all major venues of professional governance and regulation, and of instructional and occupational activities. These venues are found within major intermediary associations in civil society as well as state agencies at which professionals are employed collectively or in large numbers. – Organizationally: 1) Collegial formations within professions, and thus within intermediary associations and state agencies, not only uniquely institutionalize practitioner and researcher behavioral fidelity to the threshold of procedural-normative integrity. Collegial formations also simultaneously either facilitate or constrain regulative oversight of professional activities by both participants internally and interested observers externally. Whether they facilitate or constrain regulative oversight depends on whether this oversight itself exhibits procedural-normative integrity. Collegial formations facilitate regulative oversight when the latter is undertaken consistently with the procedural-normative threshold of rule clarity and consistency and then, in substance, with a profession’s independent socio-cultural authority. In itself, the latter demands some degree of relative disinterestedness warranted by deliberation on the part of regulators, whether established or aspirant. On the other hand, collegial formations constrain regulative oversight when it is undertaken more directly, whether by decree (from any bureaucratic hierarchy), by simple majoritarianism (from any formal democracy), or by

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personalist favoritism (from any patron-client network). In all of these cases, regulators can act capriciously, including one-sidedly, or opportunistically. 2) Collegial formations are constitutive of professionalism not only because they institutionalize ongoing behavioral fidelity to the threshold of procedural-normative integrity. They are also constitutive because they institutionalize ongoing efforts by dispersed and heterogeneous professionals to identify merit in common on the basis of openly articulated, clear and consistent standards. Given this institutionalized effort, constitutive of professionalism as such, professions are not and clearly cannot be organized as patronclient networks. They do not and cannot openly reward nepotism, patronage or venality more directly or exclusively than merit. Of course, professions are also not organized as formal bureaucracies or, certainly, as formal democracies. Decrees and majority votes are no more capable structurally of identifying merit openly and consistently than are nepotism, patronage or venality. Irrespective of any and all inegalitarian effects stemming from individuals’ primary socialization and early schooling (which Bourdieu calls habitus), entry into professions and advancement and distinction within them nonetheless hinges first and foremost on all aspirants and tyros crossing identifiable thresholds of merit. Nepotism, patronage and venality do not and cannot substitute openly for such meritocratic qualifications without this simultaneously jeopardizing professionalism. This follows first on structural or positional grounds and then secondarily on socio-cultural and instructional grounds. Socio-culturally and instructionally, professions cannot successfully retain an independent socio-cultural authority when nepotism, patronage or venality displace meritocracy. Likewise, structurally and positionally, professions also literally have no choice except to privilege merit in both instructional entry and advancement and then in occupational placement and distinction. Professions cannot permit open nepotism, patronage or venality to displace demonstrable merit without literally committing suicide first organizationally and then behaviorally. Any such displacement renders professions indistinguishable from other expert occupations and middle-class occupations, including haute couture, haute cuisine and home entertainment installation. After all, displacement simultaneously: abandons the collegial form, disregards the bright-line threshold of procedural-normative integrity,

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and literally invites challenges to a profession’s independent sociocultural authority. The result is a displacing of relative disinterestedness and possible deliberation by decree, favoritism or cupidity. Professionalism gives way to bureaucratization, or clientelism or, at best, the anonymity and amorality of commercialism. – Instructionally and behaviorally: 1) All qualities constitutive of professionalism discussed to this point account for and warrant the length, difficulty and abstraction of professional instruction and training. Lengthy, difficult and abstract training is demanded and warranted, particularly at the most elite instructional facilities, by the effort credibly to retain an independent socio-cultural authority within structured situations. In addition, such training is also demanded and warranted by: the consequences of professionalism, both immediate and longer term; the fiducial responsibilities constitutive of professionalism within structured situations; and the (procedural-normative) integrity and collegial form of organization of professional governance and regulation. 2) Professional instruction and training invariably span both theoretical and abstract (or liberal) components and technical and vocational (or mechanical) components. 3) Instructional entry and advancement as well as occupational placement and distinction are meritocratic, and thus based on identifiable, intersubjectively cognizable standards which exhibit at least two minimal characteristics. Being intersubjectively cognizable, these standards by definition can be understood, interpreted and applied in common, consistently with the threshold of procedural-normative integrity. In addition, whether theoretical or applied, they are primarily epistemological in content, and then secondarily didactic. 4) Standards of meritocracy in professionalism indicate why instruction (as well as research and practice) is in principle open to inspection; professional instruction is not and cannot be based on guild (laboratory or classroom) mysteries or trade (commercial) secrets, withheld from scholarly journals and presentations. We noted at the end of Chapter 11 (page 395) that the principle of open instruction is violated today by compartmentalization in professorgraduate student relationships.

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5) Professional instruction proper revolves around ceaseless testing, including anonymously submitted and scored student competitions. Unfortunately, this norm, too, is routinely violated in many graduate programs today. Regardless, it is reflected well in double-blind reviewing for scholarly journals as well as in proscriptions on students (or collaborators) reviewing publicly the books of their senior professors.8 6) Professional instruction proper also includes sustained learned presentations and open discussions dedicated to weighty matters which advance immediate instructional and occupational ends, as opposed to being ethereal – pedantic or exclusively exegetical. 7) Through such instruction, professions codify, refine and disseminate a specialized instructional and occupational lexicon. Moreover, given the openness noted above, this lexicon invariably diffuses in some part into civil society through the discourse of interested outsiders and reading publics. This diffusion is part of a broader project of socio-cultural upgrading which invariably accompanies successful professionalism. By upgrading understanding and discernment by interested outsiders in a particular field of occupational activity, this process creates, and then sustains and enlarges, a constituency for ambitious instruction and occupational practice. However, even as parts of the public become more discerning, and more conversant with professional lexicons, professionals nonetheless retain for three reasons their entrenched positions of power in a structured situation and an independent sociocultural authority. First, professional instruction typically remains the most rigorous, as compared to instruction in any other expert occupation or middleclass occupation. Second, the specialized lexicon of professional instruction typically remains the most sophisticated, both analytically and in practical instructional and occupational application. Third, only professionals, not their most discerning patrons or clients, are capable of ongoing distance learning. Only professionals can (eventually) translate into principles and precepts disparate findings, techniques and methods published in journals as well as unusual outcomes and experiences in their occupational practice or research. Only 8

See Shapiro 2003:224–28.

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professionals are capable of establishing what is defensible epistemologically and didactically as well as isomorphic with evolving substantive-normative standards of best practice. A profession’s superior positional power is, in fact, in full display in its broader project of socio-culturally upgrading interested outsiders or reading publics. Invariably, a profession’s power differential is needed to overcome obstacles presented by received cultural understandings and social-psychological beliefs, including those of professional founders as well as those of initial and potential clients and patrons. During the ancien régime, the leaders of the visual Académie faced numerous obstacles to inadvertent professionalism. These obstacles included: academicien habitus, their artisanal and workshop socialization; elite (milieu mondain) disdain for pedantry, formal instruction, specialized discourse and occupational livelihoods; and collector (curieux) indiscipline and cupidity. We see comparable cultural and social-psychological obstacles to professionalism today. In corporate governance, these include: the habitus or socialization of corporate managers; the disdain of contractarians and neoclassical economists for state-enforced mandatory rules; and efforts by shareholders to maximize profits and by stakeholders to compete for takings or rents. More generally, prevailing ideologies (both right and left) characterize corporations as commercial enterprises, at which fiducial responsibilities are irrelevant. In universities today we see different obstacles, but these include: the disdain of postmodernists and deconstructionists for epistemological and didactic threshold standards; and the professor-student compartmentalization noted in Chapter 11. Indeed, given the received obstacles which any pioneering professionalism project invariably faces, courts or state agencies may find it necessary initially to advance the immediate positional and corporate interests of professionals for them. They may stimulate profession pioneers to overcome in particular their own received obstacles of habitus, and related self interests, social-psychological beliefs and cultural understandings. Thus, the surintendant des bâtiments, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, found it necessary to pressure Académie officers to professionalize (inadvertently) within a structured situation, to overcome their own received social-psychological beliefs and cultural understanding. Today, leaders of professional associations at times apply the same pressure to rank-and-file practitioners. Moreover, Delaware courts continue to pressure corporate boards and sitting management teams

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to professionalize within a quite different structured situation, and in the face of quite different challenges. As succeeding cohorts and generations of academiciens, professionals and corporate managers adapt to external stimuli to professionalize, their habitus can evolve to become more consistent with and supportive of ongoing professionalism. Their habitus and sense of selfinterest, that is, can become more isomorphic with the immediate positional and corporate interests of professionalism. As this happens, practitioners are increasingly capable of distinguishing these shared interests from the more disparate self-interests of profession pioneers as well as those of more commercially inclined competitors, those offering expert services outside structured situations. – Occupationally and behaviorally: 1) All occupational behavior by professionals is overarched and mediated by structural and fiducial demands that instructional and occupational activities be undertaken with consistency, alacrity, confidence (spezzatura) and detachment. Among professionals’ immediate positional and corporate interests, they bear fiducial responsibilities structurally or positionally not only for patron or client wellbeing (purposefully) as well as for institutional design (inadvertently). Professionals also bear fiducial responsibilities structurally or positionally for three instructional and occupational behavioral qualities constitutive of professionalism. First, professionals are responsible for defending and, whenever possible, advancing the epistemological and didactic content of professional instruction and practice. This responsibility is constitutive of professionalism because it simultaneously advances patron or client wellbeing as well as professional positional power and socio-cultural authority. Second, professionals are responsible for establishing and then maintaining collegial formations. This responsibility is constitutive of professionalism because it institutionalizes members’ ongoing procedural-normative integrity, which ultimately underpins diagnostic, inference and treatment consistency and reliability. Such behavioral fidelity, at minimum, mediates exercises of positional power short of one-sidedness. This alone encourages at least indirectly the sort of relative disinterestedness warranted by deliberation necessary for instructional and occupational consistency and reliability at dispersed venues. Third, professionals are also responsible for the ongoing sociocultural upgrading of understanding and discernment in the larger

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society noted earlier. This responsibility is constitutive of professionalism because it creates, retains and endeavors to broaden a constituency for advanced instruction and ambitious services. Moreover, it simultaneously advances professional positional power and socio-cultural authority as well as client or patron understanding and discourse. Professionalism is advanced and sustained by informed clients and patrons, not threatened by them. 2) Establish and maintain identifiable jurisdictions or fields (if not monopolies) in the labor market for expert services which are relatively well-patrolled. Here is where Abbott made a major contribution to the professions literature, and yet there are oversights at a conceptual level in his accounts of professional control over workplace jurisdictions and of challenges to it (which we explore momentarily). Jurisdictions can only be well-patrolled when they span structured situations, identified as such by a cultural truism of a society and era. Only as a result of this cultural truism is assiduous patrolling warranted, first structurally and socio-culturally, and then by reasoned deliberation within collegial formations. Professional jurisdictions are never unwarranted – unnecessary or craven – as Abbott frequently proposes. Moreover, they are hardly idiosyncratic to Anglo-American societies, as received wisdom tends to assume. 2. Eight Illustrative Applications There are three ways in which it is possible to illustrate how and why our approach to the sociology of professions advances the received literature. Each way provides examples of how and why our approach overcomes longstanding conundrums and aporias, those bedeviling the sociology of professions from its founding in the 1930s to today. One way to illustrate our approach’s potential is to bring it to dozens of examples of actual or potential professional projects, both historical and cross-national today. With this, we can demonstrate how our approach can be used to distinguish professions from expert occupations and middle-class occupations. Indeed, we did a bit of this earlier when discussing emergency services in today’s age of terrorism.9

9

See Chapter 6 at page188.

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Increasing incidences and lethality of terrorism are likely to generate new structured situations in civil society, and thereby increase opportunities for emergency services to professionalize. Professionalism is also possible in private firms which provide counter-insurgency forces and strategies to Third World governments. However, given that we have already discussed at some length a historical case, retrospectively, and a contemporary one, ongoing, too many additional cases in this mode of illustration would be tedious. Still, we can offer a few brief thoughts to indicate broadly how applications can be made. The additional examples below indicate that some professionals are highly paid, others are not; some attract lofty social status, others do not. Lucrative income and enviable status are extraneous variables. What is invariant is that all professionals provide expert services within structured situations to clients or patrons who are dependents, compelled by circumstance or condition to retain these services. As a result of this, professionals occupy entrenched positions of power, bear fiducial responsibilities, and exhibit all of the other structural qualities constitutive of professionalism we have just reviewed. Example One – Warfare and Diplomacy: Always and everywhere warfare and diplomacy are undertaken within structured situations. The consequences of these activities can be dire for any civil society. But professionalism does not always and everywhere unfold within these structured situations. These activities and occupations were not professionalized anywhere in Europe during the ancien régime. Napoleon initiated this development first in France and then his actions stimulated similar efforts across Europe and then beyond. Our point now is that any modern society facing a military or paramilitary threat is likely to professionalize within this structured situation. Correlatively, modern societies which experience generations of peace and domestic tranquility are likely to find it difficult to sustain military professionalism. They may be able to sustain diplomatic professionalism, but this depends on the complexity and significance of their relationships abroad, whether commercial, geopolitical (or regional), cultural or other. Example Two – Business Accountants and Consultants: Business accountants are more likely to professionalize than are business consultants.10 All businesses are compelled by circumstance and condition 10 See Theobald (2003) for a comparison of business consultancy to social work in Germany, with a particular focus on gender disparities, and then Rudolf (2003) on business consultancy in Europe more generally. See Shapiro (2003) on the conflicts of interest of American accountants.

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to retain accounting services, and then they do so either on commission or by creating a permanent internal division. By contrast, whether and when businesses retain consultants is typically an elective decision. Example Three – International Commercial Arbitration: The professional status of expert occupations dedicated to financial and commercial matters is ambiguous at best, including those engaged in investing, managing, consulting and both disputing and arbitration. Professionalism is currently being negotiated across many fields of financial and commercial activity, and the trajectory of these instances of occupational upgrading is not clear. As regards financial investing and managing, the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States is hardly the watchdog over investment houses and accounting and consulting firms which Delaware courts are over corporate boardrooms.11 As for international commercial arbitration, descriptions by Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth reveal ambiguity at best.12 The leading governing body of such arbitration is the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, which has member-arbitrators in one hundred countries and national committees in sixty.13 The ICC contains a court which reviews arbitration appointments and decisions as well as committees and forums which address problems typical of international trade and investment, such as bribery or baksheesh.14 But all of this oversight revolves directly around substantive-normative standards of probity. Any and all such standards are intrinsically vulnerable to competing social constructions of meaning by insiders and then also incommensurable understandings and interpretations by outsiders (including Dezalay and Garth). Oversight of the dispersed venues of international commercial arbitration, in short, does not revolve anywhere in the world around bright-line thresholds of proceduralnormative integrity. Only such thresholds, however, are capable of overarching and mediating some outer range of credible or acceptable meanings, understandings and interpretations. International commercial arbitration is intriguing for our purposes of comparison to professionalism precisely because we find here on

11

See Shapiro 2003:187–88. Dezalay and Garth 1996. 13 Other governing bodies include the American Arbitration Association, the London Court of International Arbitration and the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes. 14 Dezalay and Garth 1996:45–46,69. 12

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full display the great difference, more generally, between continental and Anglo-American legal systems.15 In civil law countries, ultimate legal authority, including constitutional rights and proscriptions, is essentially directly substantive-normative. It is found in state statutes or constitutional provisions, all of which are rewritten every generation or so, and at times much more frequently. This is characteristic of all Rechtsstaats and Sozialstaaats both historically and today. In common law countries, by contrast, ultimate legal authority is essentially procedural-normative first, and then only secondarily substantivenormative and either statutory or constitutional.16 This distinction applies to international commercial arbitration in that it explains why business leaders in Europe and elsewhere outside the Anglo-American world frequently go literally around the ICC court of Paris, in order, equally literally, to alter its rulings from behind. They much prefer to invest resources in legislative lobbying or in doctrinal consultation by legal scholars because these activities can alter the substantive understandings of the ICC court adjudicators, including how the latter interpret ICC court norms and past rulings. “Working through professor-lawyers as intermediaries, they are able to exert pressure to influence the interpretation of [substantive] norms – even to obtain their redefinition – to conform more to their interests.”17 Social movements, of course, can do the same thing. Our point is that all such activities contribute to a spiraling away from any identifiable threshold of procedural-normative integrity in ICC decisions. This alone undercuts any nascent project of professionalism in international commercial arbitration. Example Four – Comparing international commercial arbitration to American corporate governance today and to the Paris Académie historically. We saw in Chapter 4 that the direction of change in American corporate governance is also being contested. But here our structural and institutional approach to professionalism provides sociologists and the corporate bar and judiciary with standards by which to identify and explain shifts in this trajectory of occupational upgrading.

15

Dezalay and Garth 1996:68–69,147. Here is a central point distinguishing Lon Fuller’s discussion of the rule of law (1964/1969) from Joseph Raz’s (1979), with Raz essentially adopting and elaborating on the legal-jurisprudential position H.L.A. Hart had taken earlier in direct colloquy with Fuller. 17 Dezalay and Garth 1996:208. 16

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These standards also reveal why developments in international commercial arbitration differ so fundamentally from those in corporate governance. Neither American corporate officers nor ICA arbitrators are yet proceeding along a professionalism project purposefully, self-consciously. To the contrary, many of these officers and arbitrators resist ideologies of professionalism, and precisely because they face unrelenting commercial pressures in (global) product markets and labor markets. Yet even amidst these systemic pressures, many officers, but not arbitrators, are nonetheless proceeding inadvertently with an ongoing professionalism project. The difference is that American corporate officers are being prodded toward professionalism by Delaware court rulings in major corporate governance disputes. There is no equivalent external stimulus in international commercial arbitration, and certainly not from the ICC court in Paris. Delaware courts today are unique in that they are stimulating, albeit inadvertently, an ongoing project of socio-cultural upgrading at least within and across the American corporate judiciary and bar. This upgrading, in turn, is inducing inadvertent professionalism by American corporate officers and controlling shareholders. The unfolding rulings of Delaware courts in major corporate governance disputes, that is, are akin structurally to Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s external prodding of visual academiciens along an equally inadvertent professionalism project during the 1660s and 1670s. In international commercial arbitration, however, we have yet to see any similar external prodding. For that matter, we have yet to see any international court or agency pointing to the possible institutional (or long-term) externalities of arbitrators failing to professionalize. As Dezalay and Garth put the matter, the functions of international intermediary, broker and arbitrator are annexed exclusively to the business world. They are not yet linked to mastery of any knowledge and technique that is specifically or exclusively legal, or that otherwise demands any openly articulated epistemological warrant – let alone any identifiable didactic commitment. This explains why Dezalay and Garth find that specialists in international commercial arbitration law are subordinates.18 These legal practitioners are invariably consigned to low-level, strictly technical tasks;

18

Dezalay and Garth 1996:215–17.

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they are “legal mechanicals.” As a result of this, they are also typically pariahs socio-culturally, within the circles of sociability frequented by higher-status practitioners and clients of international commercial arbitration. The lowly status of legal specialists in this area of practice today is, in fact, exactly akin to that of avocats during the ancien régime – and, by contrast, quite unlike the loftier status of lawyers in the Anglo-American world since the turn of the twentieth century (and in the United States even earlier, since the Revolution).19 Regardless, in publicly traded corporations today as in the visual Académie historically, major “patrons,” respectively, of corporate governance and narrative painting share a characteristic with major “patrons” of international commercial arbitration. But then the situations in which these “patrons” find themselves diverge dramatically and unambiguously. In the first two cases, none of these patrons are, respectively, acting today or acted in the past out of altruism or any service orientation in respecting any claims of independent sociocultural authority in structured situations. Likewise, “patrons” in international commercial arbitration are hardly likely to act altruistically or selflessly in the future. But the area of divergence is that ICA is at best a service provided within embedded exchanges, not a service provided within structured situations. With this, another area of divergence also comes to light: Delaware courts today, like the surintendance des bâtiments in the past, advance their own immediate corporate and positional interests in overseeing, respectively, corporate governance and narrative painting. As they do so, they, respectively, realize today in corporate governance and realized in the past in visual narrations that these are structured situations in civil society. They, respectively, can claim and did claim credibly an independent socio-cultural authority, and fiducial responsibilities are and were salient. There is no equivalent or even broadly comparable realization by any court or agency in the field of international commercial arbitration. In the case of Colbert’s patronage and oversight of the visual Académie, he realized that the governance, regulation and activities of structured situations of ambitious decoration and ceremony involving patrons of gentle birth and visual academiciens of common birth bore

19 Compare Karpik 1995:32–35 on French avocats to Kronman 1993 on early American lawyers.

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on the kingdom’s prospects for cultural competitiveness with Italy. He also appreciated, as a cultural truism of his society and era, that any dramatic upgrading in the area of visual narrations carried consequences for both domestic tranquility and diplomatic leverage. Colbert and many other officials during the entire ancien régime were fully aware, in short, of the immediate and longer-term sociocultural consequences of dispersed patron-visual academicien relationships. But no one, of course, was cognizant of any institutional consequences of the visual Académie’s independent socio-cultural authority and increasingly meritocratic recruitment and advancement. Everyone during the mid-seventeenth century instead believed that the institutional design of an aristocratic, culturally competitive society was immutable, a literal “end of history” not to be eclipsed by any superior institutional designs. In the case of Delaware courts today, Delaware judges realize at times that the governance, regulation and activities of a quite different set of structured situations bear in distinctive ways on the institutional design of American society. These structured situations bear on institutional design through corporate officers’ behavioral fidelity to certain procedural norms and, related, through the form in which corporate governance is organized. However, at other times (such as in the Time-Warner case), Delaware judges confuse this insight with a quite different concern. They focus instead on the putative socio-cultural consequences of preserving certain corporate cultures or identities on directly substantive-normative grounds, and thus irrespective of procedural-normative integrity and organizational form. Yet, in both cases Delaware judges are appreciating an important fact, whether explicitly or implicitly: institutional design is contingent, vulnerable to enervation or challenge, not somehow ordained and self-reproducing. At times, when Delaware courts impose fiducial duties of care and loyalty on directors and other corporate officers, which they are redefining in procedural-normative terms, they simultaneously encourage managerial professionalism inadvertently. Yet, many influential legal scholars and economists (contractarians and balancers) resist this. They fail to appreciate the structural and institutional significance of this ongoing judicial redefining of the fiduciary law tradition. They certainly fail to appreciate this project’s connection to professionalism. They instead resist, on narrowly economistic grounds, any effort by Delaware courts to preserve any core of mandatory rules within corporate law doctrine.

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The wild card in predicting future developments in American corporate governance, therefore, is whether Delaware judges continue to appreciate at least at times that certain governance disputes can introduce not only immediate consequences into civil society but also longer-term consequences for institutional design. If Delaware judges ever lose sight of these more expansive social consequences of the corporate governance function, major business schools will be left alone to ponder, in their own interests, the point or merit of professionalism in any area of managerial activity. They will not likely grasp independently the institutional consequences of Delaware courts steadily acceding to the entreaties of contractarians and balancers. In addition, business schools are not likely to see a connection, let alone an invariant structural one, between managerial professionalism and fiducial responsibilities, as opposed to contractual obligations alone. It is very possible, therefore, for top management to remain an expert or middle-class occupation which fails truly to professionalize. Top management will instead become ever more prone to commercialism and contractarianism within a major structured situation in civil society, which is not recognized universally to be such. They will steadily disregard fiducial responsibility in the absence of Delaware court vigilance. As an expert or middle class occupation which fails to professionalize, top management would indeed become dedicated more one-sidedly to a production function. It will thereby neglect any norms framing the governance function whenever market pressures demand and Delaware court rulings permit. Example Five – Veterinarians and Plastic Surgeons: Some professional services may well be elective for patrons or clients and yet are indistinguishable occupationally and instructionally from professional services which patrons or clients are compelled by condition or circumstance to retain. This accounts for why veterinarians and plastic surgeons are typically professionals.20 Veterinarian services are 20 Not all physicians or surgeons are professionals, providing expert services within structured situations, and the same is true of lawyers. Physicians or surgeons whose medical practices revolve around periodic check-ups and providing basic dietary or pharmaceutical advice are operating within embedded exchanges at best. They are not exercising positional power over anyone. However, they are nonetheless vulnerable positionally to oversight and rebuke by colleagues, peers and association officers. In this respect they are similar to university instructors who fail to research and publish and instead devote themselves to student instruction. Likewise, lawyers whose case-loads revolve around routine business transactions and counseling, not client freedom or livelihood, are operating within embedded exchanges at best, not structured situations.

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inescapable for farmers and ranchers; they cannot avoid trusting their livelihoods to the discretion and judgment of veterinarians. The same services, however, are clearly elective for owners of household pets. Indeed, whether these veterinarian services are considered professional at all depends on whether a larger culture symbolizes house pets in suitably lofty socio-cultural terms, as opposed to symbolizing them more humbly, including in strictly utilitarian terms. In turn, the services of plastic surgeons are frequently elective. But they are also indistinguishable occupationally and instructionally from comparable professional services which are not. First, they are indistinguishable from the reconstructive surgery demanded by clients disfigured by accident or assault. Second, they are also indistinguishable from surgery more generally, for the occupational activities of plastic surgeons can be similarly invasive, and thus similarly consequential for patient wellbeing. Here we find an important principle salient for profession leaders. The leaders of plastic surgery can affiliate themselves voluntarily with surgery more generally. With this, they will simultaneously aspire to surgery’s social status and, more important for our purposes, bear more fulsomely this profession’s responsibilities for client wellbeing. This could very well result, however, in plastic surgeons forsaking lucrative elective procedures. Or, alternatively, plastic surgeons can increasingly decouple elective plastic surgery, and its price tag, from surgery more generally, including reconstructive surgery. With this, they will emphasize the aesthetics of their occupational services rather than its epistemological and didactic foundations. They may, in this light, encourage clients to consider a broader range of available cosmetic adjustments and touches. They thereby redefine their place and purpose in civil society. Plastic surgery no longer revolves primarily around structured situations but instead revolves, at best, around embedded exchanges at which practitioners may (or may not) voluntarily adhere to whatever substantive norms of suitability they consider salient. The problem is that this opens the door for many plastic surgeons to go much further, to offer their experts services at fluid sites of commerce and diversion, shorn even of the substantive norms just noted. With such decisions plastic surgeons then seek social status and wealth independently of how other surgeons typically conduct themselves. Related, they also openly and publicly deny the weighty fiducial responsibility for client wellbeing borne by other surgeons. They instead

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acknowledge and accept openly and publicly only those sanctions of law – contractual, criminal and civil – which extend to all providers of expert services, including couturiers, chefs and home entertainment specialists. Example Six – Architects: Association leaders in the field of architecture face the same principle and choices as those just described facing plastic surgeons. They can emphasize the aesthetics of their occupational services and thereby voluntarily affiliate themselves with the fine arts. Or they can emphasize the epistemology and didactics of their occupational services and thereby voluntarily continue to affiliate their occupational activities and instructional facilities with professionalism, alongside engineering. Ironically, American architects themselves see their own situation in an utterly opposite way: they believe that an ever-closer affiliation with the fine arts is their key to ongoing professionalization whereas a closer affiliation with engineering can only encumber the “profession” of architecture. Magali Larson adopts this self-understanding of architects outright, and thereby brings it unalloyed into the sociology of professions.21 With this, she does exactly what revisionists (including her) had for so long accused functionalists of doing: she adopts uncritically the subjective, self-serving rationales and received ideologies of profession leaders, of occupational entrepreneurs. Julia Evetts does the same thing more generally: She emphasizes the importance of “the ways in which occupational and professional workers themselves are accepting, incorporating and accommodating the idea of ‘profession’ and particularly ‘professionalism’ in their work.”22 Thus, instead of adopting the discourse 21 Larson 1993. Florian Kreutzer, a German sociologist, also treats artists as exemplars of professionalism today (2003:37). Florent Champy, a Paris sociologist, compares the situation of French landscape designers and industrial designers to that of architects on the basis of his premise that architecture is an “old” profession. This premise is false, both historically and today; architecture has always marked a case of ambivalent or uneven professionalism at best. Indeed, Champy’s own text confirms this in several places. He points out, without appreciating the contradiction, that France did not “protect” architecture legislatively until 1977 (2006:650). In addition, he footnotes (2006:659 note 3) that “the trend concerning French architects is rather towards deprofessionalization” in that around seventy percent of building activity is undertaken without them. Moreover, “increasing norms” in the construction industry favor engineers in the division of labor. Champy also notes: “Since the collapse of the system inherited from the Academy, after the events of May 1968, architects have never succeeded in giving a clear definition of what should be taught in architectural schools” (2006:652) Finally, he acknowledges: “The architectural profession has not got a very good reputation in France” (2006:658). 22 Evetts 2006:139; also 2003b:23,32.

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of “profession” leaders, as functionalists once did, Evetts proposes adopting the discourse of “profession” underlings. Because this is more politically correct or trendy, it is also presumably more insightful. Example Seven – Gallery Owners, Art School Teachers and Deconstructionists: Gallery owners are not professionals but museum curators may be. Teachers in art schools are not professionals, as opposed to professors of art history in universities. Some professors in the humanities and social sciences, however, are not professionals either, namely those deconstructionists, postmodernists, and others who openly disregard any and all epistemological standards of learned or scientific inquiry.23 All of these situations could well be different. One can imagine, for instance, a push to redefine the art gallery as a structured situation, as opposed to leaving it as either a venue of embedded exchanges or a fluid site of arm’s-length commercial contracting and diversion. Some gallery owners, no doubt, endeavor to assume voluntarily the occupational orientations of professionalism. Some may go so far as voluntarily to adopt (or feign adopting) fiducial responsibilities. But their clienteles understandably view skeptically all such putatively abnegating behavior, and precisely because it is not demanded structurally or positionally. We can also imagine, as another example, graduate schools of literature and art history banishing to trade schools – dedicated to creative writing, playwriting and screenplays – colleagues who reject and ridicule the self-discipline demanded by any openly articulated and defended epistemology. But this is hardly likely to happen any time soon. Example Eight – Sports, Entertainment and Contemporary Fine Arts: All occupations in the entertainment and sports industries are akin structurally to those in the art world from the mid-nineteenth century to today. Yet we continue to hear popular discourse refer to athletes and entertainers as “professionals,” whereas this term rarely finds its way into popular references to artists. It can be applied correctly to museum curators but it is applied incorrectly to gallery owners or to contemporary collectors. We can illustrate the general principle here by considering a prominent case in the world of sports, that of the New York Yankees. Across 23 Would a revisionist critic of Parsons entrust his wellbeing to a lawyer or doctor who is an avowed deconstructionist? What about to a professional who is an avowed proponent of market-mimicking behavior, and thus the adage caveat emptor?

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many decades, the Yankees may well act more “professionally” than all other major league baseball franchises. Yankee players, envied by others, may well practice and perform with greater alacrity, diligence and earnestness than their peers on other teams. Yankee coaching staff may well deliberate more robustly over draft and minor league prospects and also over the future productivity of veterans currently on their roster; their deliberations may well be disinterested, clinical. Moreover, management and fan expectations for team success may well be loftier than for any other franchise in any sport, and the entire world of (American) sport may well treat them with distinction. But the Yankees are not professionals structurally, nor are any other athletes. The same is true, of course, of “amateur” athletes, no matter how dedicated and successful, no matter how rigorous, strenuous and disciplined their training regimen. Bobby Jones remains the premier “amateur” golfer of all time, but he was no more a professional than was Jesse Owens in track & field or Mark Spitz in swimming. 3. Rereading Abbott: Vagaries of Today’s Disputes A second way to illustrate the superiority of our approach is to apply it in brief to various major theoretical contributions to the professions literature, from those by functionalists, to those of revisionists, to those by “neo-traditionalists” today on both sides of the Atlantic. However, given that we have already reviewed this literature in opening chapters, this mode of illustration would be even more tedious than the first. A third way is more promising, and provides a useful ending to this treatise. We apply our abstract, structural and institutional approach methodically and at some length to the single most compelling statement of today’s received wisdom. When Andrew Abbott’s The System of Professions first appeared, in 1988, it marked the most significant contribution to the sociology of professions, both empirical and theoretical, in over a decade (since the Johnson book of 1972, the Parsons and Platt book of 1973 and Larson’s revisionist alternative of 1977).24 It provided a literal synthesis of various theoretical positions by revisionists, in opposition to Parsons, and also advanced a new approach, a

24 Johnson was addressed in Chapter 6. For a lengthy description and criticism of Larson’s publications from 1977 to today, see Sciulli 2008c.

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“jurisdictions and systems” approach which Abbott believes resolves various controversies in the literature.25 A case can be made that Abbott’s book not only advanced the entire earlier literature, both functionalist and revisionist, but also anchored, and today continues to anchor, received wisdom in the sociology of professions. It remains the single most compelling theoretical statement of the post-Parsonian consensus.26 Using our structural and institutional approach, we identify conundrums and aporias in Abbott’s jurisdictions and systems approach to professions, and thus in received wisdom more generally. After all, because Abbott’s approach anchors received wisdom, it ultimately recapitulates conundrums and aporias in the entire literature. For instance, one of his central points of departure is that professions cannot ultimately be distinguished from other expert occupations. Given this point of departure, one of his central theses is that professions form a single system in the occupational order with all other occupations which use “knowledge systems” to establish and maintain control over what he calls workplace “jurisdictions” of expertise. With this Abbott explicitly collapses the category “profession” into the larger category “expert occupation.” Even today he summarizes his 1988 thesis in this way: “[T]he professions constitute an ecology, like those among nation states, ethnic groups, and so on (Abbott 1988).”27 Abbott’s book is impressive precisely because he provides the most compelling theoretical rationale in the literature today for these basic conceptual points of departure. The subtitle of his book, “An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor,” reflects this well as do frequent assertions in the text that he is providing “a theory of the division of labor more generally,” not a theory of professions in particular.28

25 Neither Abbott’s book nor any of the revisionist criticisms upon which it builds address at all, let alone methodically, the masterful Parsons and Platt book of 1973, The American University. 26 It is certainly superior in every respect to Keith Macdonald’s more recent overview, titled The Sociology of the Professions (1995). The 1973 book by Parsons and Platt does not appear in Macdonald’s bibliography nor otherwise bears on his characterizations of the functionalist approach. This entire discussion is at once deficient in substance and poorly written in form. In too many places Macdonald also describes received wisdom (from Larson 1977 forward) in shorthand, rather than communicating – as if today’s consensus is so compelling on its face that Macdonald (or anyone else) need not describe it clearly, let alone defend it with reasons. 27 Abbott 2005:246. 28 For example, Abbott 1988:35–6,346 note 35,359 note 28,387 note 10.

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With the conceptual decisions just noted, an irony pervades Abbott’s account of how Western, particularly American, experts successfully have gained control over their respective jurisdictions of expertise. Abbott, that is, acknowledges a significant problem at the very outset. Why, he asks, have auto mechanics and spiritualists of all sorts (whom Abbott calls “psychological mediums”) typically been less successful in securing the label “professional” than, say, physicians and psychologists?29 This question troubles Abbott because, as he notes, each of these sets of workers can credibly claim to “apply a set of esoteric skills to particular cases.” Ultimately, Abbott is compelled to concede he is unable to explain (or predict) adequately, on the basis of his conceptual framework, why only certain lines of work secure the label “profession.” His only option, therefore, is to follow earlier revisionists, Freidson and Larson, in attributing all such labeling to power plays alone.30 Correlatively, Abbott is compelled to concede that he is also unable to delimit at a conceptual level the lines of work which may be included in his generic category, that of expert occupation.31 That Abbott follows revisionism in reducing professionalism to power plays is exemplified by remarks he makes in passing, for instance when considering whether librarians can professionalize. Abbott immediately asserts that this question is reducible to asking whether librarians can “seize and maintain effective control of an arena of work.”32 It is also exemplified more generally by Abbott’s correct citation of Freidson and Larson in support of this line of argument. He fully appreciates that Larson had anticipated by a full decade Abbott’s emphasis on the importance of jurisdictional competition. Moreover, Abbott also appreciates that Larson was then simply summarizing Freidson’s even earlier revisionist challenge to Parsons’ functionalist sociology of professions, during the mid- and late 1960s. In the context of her summary of Freidson, Larson presented succinctly her own power approach to the sociology of professions, which Abbott adopts uncritically: 29

Abbott 1988:29–30. For example, Abbott 1988:80–85. 31 For example, Abbott 1988:8,318,332 note 2. This is apart from a related problem which Abbott also acknowledges: He does not and cannot address “why and when particular problems are expertized” in the first place (1988:332 note 2). 32 Abbott 1988:218. 30

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[T]he cognitive and normative elements generally used to define professions are undoubtedly significant; but they should not be viewed as stable and fixed characteristics … [They] are important, instead, because they can be used (with greater or lesser success) as arguments in a process which involves both struggle and persuasion. In this process, particular groups of people attempt to negotiate the boundaries of an area in the social division of labor and establish their own control over it. Persuasion tends to be typically directed to the outside – that is, to the relevant elites, the potential public or publics, and the political authorities. Conflict and struggle around who shall be included or excluded mark the process of internal unification of a profession.33

Abbott joins Larson in substituting a generic, seemingly neutral term, “expert occupation,” for what he (and she) considers a more ideological term, “profession.” Moreover, Abbott accepts this substitution because, even more than Larson, he dismisses out of hand any “narratives” which chronicle ethnographically or otherwise in detail the rise of specific professions. Abbott insists that we instead cast our sights far more broadly. We must bring into view many other experts, and particularly those competing for similar or related workplace jurisdictions. Moreover, he also dismisses out of hand any concerns about either the causes or consequences of de-professionalization. After all, such concerns, too, presuppose that professions differ in one way or another from other expert occupations. Indeed, precisely because Abbott’s central category, expert occupation, is so equipollent, the competitive “system of professions” he describes in detail throughout his book is simply incapable of contributing to cross-national study and historical inquiry any bright line distinctions between occupations. As examples, Abbott’s “system of professions” fails to identify whether and how American and Mexican, or German and either Soviet or Russian “professions” differ, if at all. It also fails to identify the impact these “professions” have on their respective civil societies, if any. Rather than appreciating how problematic this is for both crossnational study today and historical inquiry, Abbott sees this conceptual failing as a centerpiece of his jurisdictions and systems approach. Quite strategically, he explicitly turns the tables on sociologists who still wish to draw any distinctions between expert occupations. He disparages as superficial and misleading all such “narratives,” more fiction than fact.

33

Larson 1977:xii.

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With this he disregards from the start any and all retrospective descriptions of particular professionalism projects – composed after the dust has settled, after jurisdictions have been captured or otherwise allocated. Likewise, he expresses equal impatience with sociologists who describe particular instances of de-professionalization today, prospectively. These descriptions, too, are “narratives,” equally superficial and misleading. All “narratives” cling stubbornly to wrongheaded views, namely that professions are distinguishable from other expert occupations and that either professionalization or de-professionalization really matters empirically. Abbott is certain that his book’s major contribution will be forever to cut off any possible or credible return to such muddle-headed thinking, discreditable points of departure which informed the entire functionalist literature and thereby sealed its fate.34 For Abbott, as for Freidson and Larson earlier, “professions” are simply expert occupations which, by one clever, deceitful or sinister means or another, happen successfully to insulate themselves from more robust, open competition in the labor market for expert services. By Abbott’s account, and theirs, “profession” is a label of prestige or status which certain occupation leaders happen to secure or attract by means of power plays of one kind or another, whether manipulation of elite or mass opinion or strategic “closure” over parts of the labor market.35 Always and everywhere, the label “profession” helps to legitimate an ultimately unwarranted exclusionary control, monopoly, over particular expert services. 3.2 Overview of Abbott’s Jurisdictions and Systems Approach Abbott approaches expert occupations with an eye to describing and explaining retrospectively the once heated competition, from the turn of the twentieth century to around the 1960s or so, to establish and then maintain workplace “jurisdictions,” relative monopolies over expert services. Quite purposely, he elevates the importance of this past competition by all expert occupations above the emphasis by functionalists earlier – prior to the revisionist challenges by Freidson and

34

Abbott 1988:15–16,87,215. See Murphy (1988) for an influential survey of Weberian theories of “social closure,” particularly those of Parkin (1979) and Collins (1979). 35

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Larson – on any “organizational patterns” or “organizational forms” putatively distinctive to professions.36 Abbott’s point in broadening his sights to an entire “system of professions” is that the totality of expert occupations within any occupational order typically settles, at one point or another, into an “interdependent system” of “organized expertise.” That is, gains or losses in workplace control by any one set of experts invariably decreases or increases the workplace controls of its neighbors, functionally similar experts. This is why Abbott is so adamant that any given “professionalism” project is never strictly self-referential or unitary. It never unfolds according to any single, identifiable pattern which some distinguishable set of occupations uniquely recapitulates independently, thereby qualifying as “professions.”37 Even today Abbott says his 1988 book “provides a [systems] alternative to a teleological historiography in which professions grow like independent units.”38 Contrary to any such teleology, Abbott instead finds great “substantive diversity” in how professions (expert occupations) surfaced historically. The same is true, of course, regarding how expert occupations today competed successfully for workplace control within and across the various jurisdictions, thereby comprising the “system of expert labor” we now find within the occupational order.39 Given this substantive diversity, the only thing clear in the historical record, by Abbott’s reading, is that “professionalization takes place interdependently” with simultaneous changes in many other occupations, with broader “sequences of jurisdictional control.” Abbott’s thesis here is that “events propagate backwards in some sense, with jurisdictional vacancies.” Events do not instead unfold forward, with “professions themselves.” A particular profession never “has much of the initiative” in determining whether its particular professionalism project either succeeds or fails.40 All of this was first seen by Freidson and Larson. But now Abbott is codifying it and exploring its implications. Given that he takes a

36 For example, Abbott 1988:19–20. In addition to neglecting professions’ organizational distinctiveness, Halpern (1992:996) points out that Abbott also largely ignores intra-profession (intra-expert occupation) rivalries. He ignores how factions compete for influence within any expert occupation, and then whether and how such rivalries affects the latter’s boundaries with neighboring occupations. 37 Abbott 1988:9. 38 Abbott 2005:246. 39 Abbott 1988:14–15. 40 Abbott 1988:2–33; also 87–91.

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“jurisdictions and systems” approach to the power plays, ideological appeals and manipulative ploys attending any particular professionalism project, Abbott explicitly rejects “five underlying assumptions” at the core of earlier functionalist approaches to professionalism, broadly cultural and social-psychological approaches:41 – He does not accept that professionalism projects revolve around any unidirectional cultural (or structural) change. – He does not accept that each profession evolves independently of all others, such that its trajectory can be presented coherently as a specific “narrative” case. – He does not accept that professions are homogeneous entities; they are instead quite differentiated workplace enterprises. – He does not accept that the cultural (and structural) claims which profession leaders assert are more important than the actual work practitioners perform. – He does not accept that professionalism is some fixed endpoint; it is instead an ongoing process which has a (jurisdictions and systems) history of its own. All of these objections to the earlier sociology of professions are interrelated and, on their face, eminently reasonable. Moreover, Abbott’s discussion of inter-professional competition for workplace jurisdiction is as instructive as any contribution ever made to this literature. His presentation is far more specific than Freidson’s and Larson’s more general arguments about labor market closure and monopoly. Indeed, Abbott’s book is path-breaking at several points, including: his treatment of the intrinsically qualitative nature of professional work (diagnosis, inference and treatment) and his discussion of the three “audiences” before which profession leaders press their claims: the legal system, public opinion, and the workplace.42 3.3 Five Limitations of Revisionism, of Systems and Power Approaches Still, there are at least five significant limitations in Abbott’s jurisdictions and systems approach. As will become apparent, these same limitations riddle received wisdom more generally, initiated by the earlier power approach of Johnson, Freidson and Larson (which Larson has 41 42

Abbott 1988:17. Abbott 1988:35–69,215–225.

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increasingly abandoned or amended since the late 1980s). Being received wisdom, Macdonald dutifully and uncritically recapitulates all of these limitations.43 3.3.1 First, Inability to Explain (or Predict) Rise (or Fall) of Particular Professions Abbott fails to draw any distinctions at a conceptual level capable of explaining (or predicting) why and how professions differ from other expert occupations. Thus, his only definitions of “profession” are broad, generic. Professions are, by his account, any and all “exclusive occupational groups applying somewhat abstract knowledge to particular cases.”44 Often his wording is even broader. As examples, he calls professions any and all occupational groups which “seize and maintain effective control of an area of work,” and says with great assurance that “the central organizing reality of professional life is control of tasks.”45 Much like Freidson and Larson before him, Abbott is equally certain that “the fundamental assumption of the [functionalist] professionalization literature is incorrect; there is no fixed limit of structure towards which all professions tend.”46 Instead, for Abbott as for Freidson and Larson earlier, how professions control tasks, through which organizational forms or structures they govern workplace jurisdictions, is an utterly secondary issue. The only thing that matters is their relative degree of jurisdictional competitiveness. Here professions are utterly indistinguishable from all other expert occupations, not at all distinct organizationally or structurally. All expert occupations compete pluralistically for turf, for workplace jurisdiction over expert services, irrespective of whether their formations differ organizationally and irrespective of whether their jurisdictions differ structurally. This means Abbott cannot appreciate at the outset, at a conceptual level, how organizational forms (or “structures”) might possibly distinguish professions from other “expert occupations” irrespective of what empirical evidence happens to reveal to the contrary. Abbott is not interested, in short, in exploring the trajectory of either professionalism or de-professionalization as such. His attention is focused instead, and rather exclusively, on the “ways occupational

43 44 45 46

Macdonald 1995. Abbott 1988:8. Abbott 1988:218,84. Abbott 1988: 84.

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groups control knowledge and skill.”47 In this light, when he poses the explicit question, When does a group of workers coalesce into a profession?, his answer is hardly surprising: Any work group becomes a profession when it secures a jurisdictional claim.48 Abbott otherwise dismisses out of hand the trajectory of professionalism projects because this requires the sorts of narratives he considers intrinsically superficial and misleading. Equally damning, these narratives encourage the “original typological debates” which had preoccupied functionalists from the 1930s to the early 1970s (see chapter 1). In this way Abbott employs guilt by association. Any inquiry into the rise or fall of particular professionalism projects is by his account illegitimate a priori. Other than this, Abbott does not feel obliged to provide any reasoned argument for why such inquiries are condemnable on their face. Here Abbott goes much further than Freidson. Across his career, Freidson remained convinced that defining professions analytically is not only a legitimate line of inquiry. He was equally convinced that this was a vital precondition for methodical and cumulative empirical studies of either professionalism or deprofessionalization. “In default of a definition of profession … one does not know where the process [of professionalism] is headed, and one cannot assess its progress by any stable criterion.”49 Rather than taking heed of this point, Abbott instead continues to conflate professions within the larger category expert occupations: The “importance of professional social structure [lies solely in] its effect on professions’ abilities to maintain themselves within a competing system.”50 For example, Abbott argues that it does not matter whether a profession (expert occupation) formulates and enforces a code of ethics; and, of course, he is correct about this particular characteristic. This is indeed an extraneous variable, not an invariant quality constitutive of professionalism as such. The problem is Abbott converts this truism into a general proposition at a conceptual level.

47

Abbott 1988:8. Abbott 1988:81. 49 Freidson 1970:186 note 1. 50 And then Halpern amends Abbott’s discussion by bringing in pluralist competition within each profession itself. Thus, the study of professions cannot escape drift or balancing at two levels: within professions and between professions. With this, the issue of the institutional consequences of professionalism, how professions might contribute in any respect to the direction of social change, is bracketed entirely from consideration. 48

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He extends it to every other quality which can possibly distinguish professions from other expert occupations, asserting explicitly that “this same generalization holds for the rest of the internal social structure of professions.”51 Accordingly, by Abbott’s account, even abstract knowledge is important to professions (expert occupations) only to the extent that it can be converted into a “currency of competition” in expert occupations’ ongoing pluralist struggle for workplace jurisdictions.52 It is not otherwise important, for instance in successfully claiming an independent socio-cultural authority within a structured situation which invariably revolves around principles and precepts of instruction and practice. Abstract knowledge is also not otherwise important, for instance because it provides collegial formations with sufficiently qualitative substantive content to sustain ongoing deliberation and disinterestedness. Abbott then reveals that his jurisdiction and systems approach is not only reductionist at a conceptual level but also what Jeffrey Alexander correctly calls (in other contexts) presentist. The only factor relevant in assessing a code of ethics, abstract knowledge, or any other quality of professionalism is, by his account, “whether or not having [it] influences competition for jurisdiction at that particular moment.”53 By contrast to such conceptual reductionism and presentist relativism, consider what happens once sociologists identify at a conceptual level any invariant or structural interrelationship, in practice, between professionalism and structured situations, between professionalism and organizational forms, and between professionalism and institutional design. Consider, for instance, the invariant or structural relationship between professionals’ independent socio-cultural authority, their ongoing fiducial responsibility for identifying and diagnosing (or explaining) qualitative phenomena in ways which simultaneously advance their own positional power and patron or client wellbeing, and their ongoing behavioral fidelity to both procedural-normative integrity and a collegial form of organization. In this light, sociologists may still concede one of Abbott’s central points: Professions do not compete simply as an end in itself but rather,

51 52 53

Abbott 1988:82. Abbott 1988:102. Abbott 1988:82.

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indeed, as a means to jurisdictional workplace control. However, sociologists may then hastily add that irrespective of any ongoing jurisdictional competition with other expert occupations, professions are nonetheless distinct analytically and then empirically at structural and institutional levels. Professions alone provide expert services within structured situations, and thereby exercise positional power over dependents. They alone establish and then maintain an independent socio-cultural authority and then the integrity of collegial formations as ends in themselves, as demanded structurally or positionally by their fiducial responsibilities within structured situations. All of this, as a package or gestalt, is literally constitutive of professions exclusively. None of the parts of this package or gestalt are necessarily found empirically in other expert occupations, those which provide expert services within embedded exchanges or at fluid sites, including haute couture, haute cuisine, and home entertainment installation. The presence of collegial formations at venues of professional instruction and practice holds one key to whether these experts can possibly perform their duties and bear their responsibilities with consistency, thus with integrity, at dispersed worksites. By contrast, systemic forces of commercialism as well as situational pressures make it difficult for other expert occupations either to establish or to maintain collegial formations. Only professions overcome these forces and pressures, and only they do so always and everywhere. They do so, moreover, irrespective of the particular qualitative phenomena which happen to comprise the substance (and technical core) of their particular jurisdiction at any given moment in time. 3.3.2 Second, Relativism and Apologetics of Jurisdictional Control A second limitation of Abbott’s conceptual reductionism and presentist relativism is that his focus on systemic competition for workplace jurisdictions leads him unwittingly to recapitulate a very old problem in comparative politics.54 Are we to assume that each nation-state’s positive laws qualify equally as “legal” irrespective of how a nationstate happens to decree or legislate and then enforce its statutes and provisions? Or can comparativists demonstrate at a conceptual level that positive laws in certain regimes and states are unlawful – arbitrary or capricious – even if they are enforced effectively and happen also to

54

Wendt 1999; Fuller 1964/1969.

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secure subjective acceptance by citizen majorities, thus legitimacy in this superficial sense? Abbott’s problem is comparable: Does any occupation’s successful control over expert services and abstract knowledge within a workplace jurisdiction qualify it as a “profession,” irrespective of any other qualifying factors? These factors include whether or not it is providing expert services within structured situations or instead within embedded exchanges or at fluid sites. They also include whether it exercises positional power one-sidedly or short of this, whether it bears fiducial responsibilities or disregards them, and whether it contains collegial formations at any level (associational, instructional and workplace). Because we bring these “domestic” (intra-jurisdictional) factors into view whereas Abbott looks only at “international” (inter-jurisdictional) factors, we are able to pose questions which Abbott’s approach elides: Can sociologists demonstrate at a conceptual level that certain venues at which expert services are provided (namely, embedded exchanges and fluid sites) are invariantly – structurally – non-professional? Can they also demonstrate that certain ways of successfully controlling expert jurisdictions (namely, one-sidedly) are also non-professional on their face, are indeed reducible to power plays, ideological subterfuge and caprice? Abbott’s reductionism and relativism also lead him to a related problem. He finds that “professions” (expert occupations) which suffered extinction during the early twentieth century – including spiritualism or mediumship, various occult professions, and matchmakers – tended to control their workplace jurisdictions in ways that now, in retrospect, he calls “rigid” or “excessive.” But, once again, Abbott immediately slights the significance of this insight because his framework of concepts literally compels him to make assessments only retrospectively, after the dust has settled, never prospectively, as jurisdictional claims are being contested. For instance, at the end of his book Abbott lists weaknesses of his approach, and the most damning is that he expects occupational jurisdictions to rigidify as a higher percentage of the labor force becomes “expertized.”55 He expects established expert occupations no longer to be threatened by encroachments, whether from late comers or from neighboring occupations. Thus, “it may well be that [this] attenuation 55

Abbott 1988:317–8.

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of competition, along with its relocation [or decentralization] into complex workplaces, vitiates a competitive model for the future of professions.” This is damning because Abbott is essentially conceding that his jurisdictions and systems approach to professionalism is instructive only retrospectively, when describing inter-professional competitions already settled, prior to the 1970s. He is conceding that his approach is already decidedly anachronistic going forward. It cannot possibly be used to explain and predict existing or future vicissitudes of professionalism. This is why Abbott acknowledges explicitly that the predictive power of his model is weak.56 As a result of acknowledging this, he is then compelled at a conceptual level to convert the insight we noted above into a presentist proposition consistent with his jurisdictions and systems approach. It must have been, he conjectures, that extinct professions were originally effective in securing their monopoly against immediate jurisdictional rivals, but this very effectiveness must somehow have hampered them later, as they continued to adapt to ongoing systems dynamics in providing expert services.57 The problem Abbott is facing is that his jurisdictions and systems approach fails to provide him or any other sociologist with concepts or guidelines by which to explain and predict when (and why) any particular expert occupation’s control over its jurisdiction is becoming rigid or excessive prior to its extinction. Rather, sociologists can only posit this retrospectively, after an expert occupation has in fact become extinct. Thus, Abbott’s jurisdictions and systems approach cannot be applied to any professionalism projects still unfolding. Here we have not only unbounded presentist relativism but also Whiggish historiography run amuck. This explains why Abbott describes always retrospectively how “expert occupations” have developed, and how existing divisions of expert labor in modern occupational orders have evolved. Moreover, we can now see more clearly where Abbott’s jurisdictions and systems approach differs from the approaches Freidson and Larson took to professions. Freidson emphasized the importance of professional autonomy, and he accepted that at least some manifestations of this autonomy may be warranted or legitimate. By contrast, Larson, during her early (1977) power approach, held that professional autonomy is

56 57

Abbott 1988:325–26. Abbott 1988:249–52.

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always unwarranted, secured strictly by power plays (including ideological subterfuge). Much like neoclassical economists, she took as her point of departure an absolutist critique of any manifestation of labor market closure, of any monopoly in the labor market for expert services (Collins 1979 is the worst offender here, exceeding even Larson). Abbott’s point of departure is quite the opposite, namely an absolutist apologetics of any manifestation of what he calls exclusive jurisdictional control. He then notices professional “autonomy” only in this light. Remarkably, and yet quite understandably, Abbott’s apologetics make his sociology of professions appear initially to be more valueneutral than the rather heavy-handed critiques of earlier revisionists. His systems approach is intrinsically apologetic of any and all actions taken by contemporary (or historical) occupational leaders which, in retrospect, resulted in their successfully retaining (and then broadening) jurisdictional control. Indeed, when Abbott refers most candidly to his “systems model,” his terminology rivals the most lamentable apologetics of the old modernization school in comparative politics. Worse, his terminology rivals the most orthodox references to system equilibrium or “social order” by Parsons and, equally, would endear itself to Luhmann for its parallels to his many references to “autopoietics” or self-regulating behavior.58 For instance, Abbott calls his approach a “competitive, equilibrating model.”59 This phrase would make any modernization theorist envious, and the same is true of any Parsonian from the early 1950s to the early 1960s, but not most functionalists thereafter. Abbott, however, is far less repentant than later functionalists: “While power plays an important role in inter-professional competition, the long run of professional development reflects the equilibrating forces discussed in preceding sections and chapters.”60 He also finds what Parsons and modernization theorists had found earlier: One can describe and explain system equilibrium as a rolling or ongoing phenomenon, and it is senseless to try to isolate and criticize particular manifestations of it at particular points in time. But why does Abbott embrace so unapologetically a metaphor of system equilibrium more than thirty years after Parsons had done so, and more than fifteen years after Parsons had significantly altered the 58 59 60

Abbott 1988:89–91,108–111. Abbott 1988:134. Abbott 1988:141.

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way he used any such metaphor, as a result of relentless criticism? Abbott is attracted to this metaphor regardless precisely because of his reductionism and presentism at a conceptual level: He cannot see any point in distinguishing professions analytically (or ideal-typically) from the more generic category of expert occupations. Given this basic decision at a conceptual level, it is simply not possible for Abbott (or anyone using his approach) subsequently to introduce into his jurisdictions and systems approach any critical standards of professionalism (or de-professionalization). He is incapable of providing disinterested sociologists with any standard by which to monitor whether, when and why any particular expert occupation is either maintaining or losing integrity as a profession. He can only provide retrospective descriptions of workplace settlements or distributions in existing (or historical) occupational orders. Abbott’s sociology of professions of 1988 as well as all of his references to it today revolve literally around the same foundational proposition as Parsons’ general social theory of the early 1950s, which was at once unreadable stylistically and primitive conceptually (unlike his later AGIL schema). In each theory the most important sources of change – of social order for Parsons and of jurisdictional settlement for Abbott – are exogenous. In Parsons’ case, sources of change are not only exogenous to any society but also to each social group or set of institutions within it. In Abbott’s case they are exogenous to any system of expert labor, any occupational order, and also to each expert occupation within it. As Abbott puts the matter today:61 [T[he concept of [professional] openings or defeats presupposes a criterion of success, and that criterion is, in fact, external. The several professions’ claims for legitimate control are judged by various ‘audiences:’ the state, the public, co-workers in workplaces. These external judgments ratify professions’ claims, thereby making them efficacious against competitors. But these external referees of jurisdiction draw their own legitimacy from outside the system of professions.

Given such a systemic, inter-professional approach, sources of change of professional integrity are utterly inscrutable. They certainly cannot be endogenous to any given profession or to any set of professions.62 61

Abbott 2005:246. Compare Abbott 1988:91–96, 144–50 to 1988:96–98, 150–57; also see 1988: 177–84. 62

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3.3.3 Third, Bureaucratization as Immutable Social Force A third and related limitation in Abbott’s approach is that he accepts uncritically Weber’s view, formulated nearly a century earlier, that “collegiate” (Kollegialitat) rule or authority in any organization is premodern, and thus “distinctly anachronistic” today.63 By implication,therefore, a collegial form cannot possibly be constitutive of modern professions or, certainly, of modern corporate governance. Moreover, such a view of “collegiate” organization makes perfect sense in light of the continent’s general Bürgertum approach to the occupational order and to middle classes. Continental sociologists, too, fail to appreciate at a conceptual level the distinctiveness of professionalism, seeing only a generic commitment to “expertise” by the Bildungsbürgertum, cultivated middle classes. Abbott’s uncritical deference to this “classic” conceptual claim, a major decision at a conceptual level which Weber made amidst predatory industrialization, tentative democratization and fledgling professionalization, leads Abbott completely astray in 1988, in a book putatively dealing directly with professionalism. We see this in Abbott’s distorted understanding of what he calls “associational professionalism.” He defines this as “professionalism based largely on independent practice, with voluntary associations for exchanging professional knowledge, conducting professional education and regulation, and attempting to co-opt state authority.”64 Abbott dates associational professionalism historically to England from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, and then also to the United States from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. These periods span precisely the period during which Weber was insisting, largely in passing references, that “collegiate bodies” are anachronistic in executive bodies, in decision-making offices, in the governance structures of either public or private organizations.65 For his part, Abbott is certain that associational professionalism is similarly anachronistic. His evidence, always retrospective, is that this sort of professionalism is not to be found anywhere today, in whole or

63 Abbott 1988:3–4; Weber 1914–1920:271–84,994–98. By contrast, when Vile in 1967 discussed the salience of constitutionalism and the separation of powers today, in his concluding chapter, he treated “hierarchy” and “collegium” as “two basic structures” in any major organization today (1967:336–39). 64 Abbott 1988:339,note 25; also 359,note 28, 155–56. 65 For example, Weber 1910–1920:277.

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in part. Everywhere associational professionalism has succumbed to what Abbott sees, consistently with Weber, as unrelenting systemic pressures toward “bureaucratic professionalism.” Thus, Abbott accepts uncritically a Weberian characterization of systemic drift in modern social change: this drift is more or less unilinear, resulting invariably in bureaucratization. This systemic drift spans not only all expert service providers within the occupational order but also, more generally, all decision-making bodies and offices. Yet, the transition from industrial society to post-industrial, information society contradicts any such assertion on its face. The point at the moment is that Magali Larson nonetheless adopted the same Weberian position more than a half-century after Weber, in 1977, when referring to what she called “organizational professions.”66 Moreover, her rationale for doing so was exactly the same as Abbott’s would be a decade later. She, too, could not find any reasoned basis on which to distinguish professions at a conceptual level from the larger category of expert occupations, for all expert occupation compete for “power,” including for workplace control. “Organizational professions,” as Larson saw them, are simply unusually aggressive because their situations or contexts are particularly threatening. They are occupations whose leaders seek symbols of professional expertise only in order to legitimate their members’ power within bureaucratic settings – corporate, educational, medical and other – and thereby artificially to upgrade the status and inflate the rewards of their members. Such occupations, she says, include administration and management within corporations, schools, and hospitals because all such executive positions “borrow from the general ideology of professionalism.” More generally, these occupations also include school teaching, social work, city planning, museum curatorship and other positions and offices within municipal bureaucracies.67 Larson’s larger point in this discussion, like Abbott’s larger point in contrasting bureaucratic professionalism to anachronistic associational professionalism, is to demonstrate why professions cannot possibly be distinguished at a conceptual level from all sorts of other occupations. “Professional labor which is performed for the benefit of

66 Daniel Bell’s influential The Coming of Post-Industrial Society had been published four years earlier, in 1973. 67 Larson 1977:188–89,199.

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a capitalist firm is … not structurally different from any other kind of labor which is subject to capitalist relations of production.”68 Larson’s discussion of organizational professions, therefore, is clearly designed to support her basic, master position: ultimately, only unwarranted power plays (including ideological posturing) underpin any and all claims to professional status. With this, Larson readily accommodates Weber’s general claim about systemic drift toward bureaucratization: “the farther [sic] one moves from the classic market situation of the ‘free’ personal professions, the more purely ideological do the professional claims of disinterestedness and universality of service become.”69 She can only conclude, consistently with this line of argument and analysis that any extending of the term “profession” to any occupations embedded within corporate or bureaucratic settings is strictly ideological on its face. Moreover, she can only account for such ideological posturing by saying it provides a necessary smokescreen for the distasteful grasping – the “status projects” and cupidity – characteristic of striving, everinsecure middle-class occupational practitioners and researchers.70 Like Abbott in 1988 and today, Larson in 1977 believes “profession” is, at best, an artificial status category within a delimited, narrowly focused sociology of work and occupations. It cannot possibly be a structural category within a far more expansive sociology of intermediary associations, a sociology which speaks to why and how professionalism anywhere in the occupational order invariably affects simultaneously the direction of social change. By 1988 Abbott went further than Larson in reducing professionalism to the bureaucratization of expertise. As always, looking retrospectively at the historical record of occupational upgrading, he proposes that bureaucratic professionalism always characterized modern professions on the continent. This bit of Whiggish historiography too, is consistent with the Bürgertum approach of the continent. Any and all historical manifestations on the continent of “collegiate” decisionmaking bodies, or of associational professionalism, are treated by Abbott at the outset as invariably short-lived, fated, and strictly ideological or vainglorious. They stand strictly and solely as transitory instances of self-aggrandizing occupational posturing. 68 69 70

Larson 1977:214, my emphasis. Larson 1977:215. Larson 1977:216.

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In this light, Abbott then argues that at all occupational orders today are marked exclusively by bureaucratic professionalism, now in greater purity. They are all now shorn of any earlier posturing, any which any longer can credibly distinguish professions even superficially from other expert occupations.71 Here we see another reason why Abbott is so convinced it is a waste of time for sociologists to look for organizational or structural characteristics unique to professionalism, or to de-professionalization. The same reason also explains why he holds, even more stridently than Larson, that professionalism is at best strictly symbolic or ideological, not possibly reflecting any structural qualities which bear in any way on institutional change, let alone invariantly so. The occupational order has been bureaucratized: this was fated to happen and it could and can never be otherwise. Still, all of these manifestations of reductionism and presentism leave Abbott in a bit of a quandary. He has no idea why “professional social structure” nonetheless retains numerous non-rational elements, including “collegiality,” even as professions’ basis of cultural legitimation shifted long ago, during the nineteenth century, from an associational ideology to a nakedly bureaucratic actuality. It shifted from relying on member cultivation and character to emphasizing member technical expertise and the latter’s reliability. “The major shift in legitimation in the professions has thus been a shift from a reliance on social origins and character [of their members] to a reliance on scientization or rationalization of technique and on efficiency of service.”72 Unable to account for lingering “collegiality” within the occupational order, Abbott simply disregards the matter. He adopts blithely, without argument or reservation, Weber’s strictly unilinear vision of the direction of occupational and organizational change, toward bureaucratization, notwithstanding all empirical evidence to the contrary since Weber’s death (in 1920). Taking only one example, can anyone argue seriously that the governance and management of publicly traded corporations is more bureaucratic or hierarchical today than it was in the 1950s, that there was greater “collegiate rule” back then than today? To say this about hospital governance or law firm governance or research governance is even more ludicrous on its face.

71 72

Abbott 1988:70. Abbott 1988:195, also 190–94.

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3.3.4 Fourth, Uncertain Qualities of Professional Work Abbott insists, and correctly so, that the “tasks of professions are human problems amenable to expert service.”73 However, a fourth limitation of his systems and jurisdictions approach is that he fails to take note at a conceptual level that the human problems constitutive of professions are not only qualitative, rather than reducible to pricing or quantitative measurement. They are also worldly, as opposed to being transcendental, metaphysical or what Parsons called “consummatory” (directed always to ultimate ends). Here we find the first of two additional, related major oversights at a conceptual level at the center of Abbott’s entire sociology of professions. The first oversight is that rather than appreciating at a conceptual level the importance of professions’ qualitative human problems being also worldly, Abbott is instead confident about a quite different, more general point. “[A]bstraction is the quality that sets inter-professional competition apart from competition among occupations in general.”74 He is equally confident that the “power and prestige of its academic knowledge” is the crucial symbolic – that is strictly ideological – resource in any profession’s efforts to maintain control over workplace jurisdiction in the face of competitors.75 Abbott does not see professional instruction, being qualitative but worldly, revolving necessarily – structurally – around publicly articulated and eminently defensible epistemological and didactic principles and precepts. By identifying this oversight, we reveal yet another reason why Abbott collapses professions into the broader category of expert occupations. Amidst this discussion he acknowledges explicitly and repeatedly that he has no idea how much abstraction is needed, in any given case, for an occupation to qualify as a profession. Likewise, he adds that he also has no idea what type of academic knowledge is needed. Here we arrive at Abbott’s second oversight at a conceptual level. Both factors just noted – abstraction and academic knowledge – strike him as inherently relative to time and place. He is certain that neither factor can be identified more precisely at a conceptual level, as analytical components constitutive of professions structurally, always and everywhere.76 As a result of this, he again fails to see any critical or 73 74 75 76

Abbott 1988:35. Abbott 1988:8–9; also 30,98–107. Abbott 1988:53–4. Abbott 1988:9.

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grounded basis upon which to distinguish professions from expert occupations, whether in historical research retrospectively or, certainly, in cross-national study prospectively. By contrast, we showed clearly how and why ambitious painting and sculpture revolved around identifiable epistemological and didactic principles until the mid-nineteenth century, and then how and why this became impossible thereafter. All sorts of confusion run through Abbott’s book as a result of the two oversights just noted. As one example, he insists, on the one hand, that “academic knowledge legitimizes professional work by clarifying its foundations and tracing them to major cultural values,” typically those of “rationality, logic and science.”77 Yet he also acknowledges, on the other hand, that academic knowledge may also provide legitimation for “professional work” even in workplace jurisdictions “where the central values are not of efficacy but, say, of beauty.”78 Ultimately, Abbott has no alternative at a conceptual level other than to concede that “it is not clear [to him] how the properties of this perfected abstract system influence the vulnerability of a profession’s jurisdiction.”79 As Abbott’s argument bogs down in efforts to address the relationship between professions’ “jurisdictional control” and the sources of professions’ “cultural legitimation,” he regresses to what fairly can be called early Parsonian views of culture, legitimacy, and, yes again, equilibrium.80 Seemingly defensible during the early 1950s, these views have been discredited, for sound reasons, for over a half-century. Yet, Abbott nonetheless adopts them by proposing, without citing any evidence whatsoever in support, that “professions tend to withdraw into themselves, away from the task for which they claim public jurisdiction.” This elemental pull inward is so powerful, he continues, that, invariably, “professions generally attempt to move towards the consummatory legitimation of the Catholic clergies.”81 Abbott thinks of this trajectory of intra-professional hunkering down as literally a general law of occupational change, of “professional regression,” presumably akin to Robert Michels’ general law of

77 78 79 80 81

Abbott 1988:54. Abbott 1988:54. Abbott 1988:56. For example, Abbott 1988:103–4. Abbott 1988:118.

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organizational change, his “iron law of oligarchy”.82 Such regression is exemplified, in Abbott’s view, when Americans confuse their adversarial legal system with justice itself. They fail to appreciate that the former is, at best, a means to justice. It is also exemplified when Americans confuse health with not needing to see a doctor. They fail to view health in more positive terms as a lived condition independent of medical professionals.83 These examples, of course, hardly mean that professions somehow invariably abandon or become detached from any and all publicly articulated and defensible epistemological and didactic principles and precepts. 3.3.5 Fifth, When and Why Professionalization Ever Fails? The fifth limitation of Abbott’s systems approach is his inability to explain counterexamples, failed professionalism projects. Indeed, here is where the empirical consequences come to the fore of his failing to identify at a conceptual level even his own two broad criteria of professionalism. How much abstraction or what type of academic knowledge is needed for an occupation to qualify as a profession? Consider the following three examples. First, Abbott notes psychological mediums flourished during the late nineteenth century but, consistent with the failure just noted, he is compelled to acknowledge the following: [M]ediumship fits the basic definition of a profession very well. It applied a set of esoteric skills to particular cases. Certainly it possessed all the organizational paraphernalia of a profession – school, association, attempted regulation.84

In addition, social elites patronized the “medium profession” and it also enjoyed widespread cultural legitimation. But we can already appreciate at the outset a parallel case, which came to light during our discussion of prototype professionalism in the Paris visual Académie. We saw that university-trained physicians avoided physical contact with patients and instead performed astrological readings and provided pastoral (dietary) advice for individual patrons or households. Given their sort of academic knowledge, physicians could not credibly claim, on any identifiable epistemological or

82 83 84

Abbott 1988:185. Abbott 1988:185–86. Abbott 1988:29.

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didactic grounds, an independent socio-cultural authority within a structured situation. To the contrary, many patrons themselves, or their relatives or friends, could just as readily provide the same “expert services.” This was possible because, unlike the expert services being provided by visual academiciens, astrological readers were endeavoring to direct otherworldly means to qualitative worldly ends. The success or failure of these readings, that is, lacks any epistemological or didactic bases for verification (or falsification) on its face. As a result, these occupational services, unlike those of narrative painting and sculpture, lack any identifiable threshold standard of demonstrable expertise. Abbott lacks any such understanding of early modern “medicine” within the context of the advances made by visual academiciens. As a result, he finds, to his great consternation, that he cannot account for the failure of nineteenth century mediums to maintain their status as professionals. He cannot explain this failure, that is, in terms of the system of inter-professional competition for workplace jurisdictions which he considers the literal conceptual centerpiece of any credible sociology of professions today. He cannot explain it because he lacks any thresholds of abstraction, academic knowledge or anything else which might distinguish professions structurally from other occupations. What eludes his systems and jurisdictions approach is several levels of failure by mediums, all of which are brought into view by our alternative structural and institutional approach to professionalism. First, mediums failed credibly to claim any identifiable epistemological foundations, necessary bases for establishing and then sustaining an independent socio-cultural authority within a structured situation. Second, they were unable to sustain ongoing deliberation and disinterestedness even among themselves; much more minimally, they were unable to identify and then sanction either one-sidedness or opportunism, including by the most prominent practitioners. Third and more concretely, mediums failed to establish and maintain collegial formations. After all, they had no good reason, in their immediate selfinterests, to institutionalize their own ongoing behavioral fidelity to any identifiable threshold of procedural-normative integrity. Indeed, such a threshold is utterly irrelevant – inapplicable – when either the means or ends of an expert service are metaphysical, otherworldly. Finally, mediums also could not establish and maintain institutions of advanced instruction based on clearly identifiable and generally

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enforceable threshold standards of meritocratic entry and advancement. Merit and talent is as difficult to gauge prospectively in late nineteenth century mediumship as it is today in fine art. Mediums failed across all four of these fronts because they were claiming responsibility for identifying, describing and explaining qualitative phenomena which are more transcendental or metaphysical than worldly. In this respect they were more like artists today than like visual academiciens during the ancien régime. They were certainly unlike practitioners of modern law and medicine, science and engineering. Failing to appreciate the importance of any of this at a conceptual level, Abbott (as well as Freidson, Larson, and other revisionists) can only account for mediums’ failure strictly retrospectively on the basis of relativist empirical generalizations which cannot possibly be employed prospectively, to predict and explain occupational trajectories still unfolding today. That is, he and they can provide only Whiggish or teleological accounts of failed “professionalism” projects, as if each and every failure was somehow fated. He and they are incapable of proceeding prospectively within the terms of their respective approaches (whether systems and jurisdictions, autonomy or power approaches). They cannot predict and explain which particular professionalism projects will eventually but invariably fail as they are unfolding. By contrast, we have already demonstrated in our discussion of nascent professionalism within corporate governance that our structural and institutional approach to professionalism can be employed prospectively. A second example of Abbott’s inability to explain counterexamples is related, namely when he refers to “occult professions” without appreciating the oxymoron.85 Abbott’s only way of accounting for these practitioners’ failure to compete effectively for workplace jurisdictions, both historically and today, is simply to note that the “rules of inference” they employ remain strictly formal. That is, occultists’ rules of inference are detached from available evidence of successful intervention or treatment. What we are noting is that Abbott is able to acknowledge this only post hoc. He cannot accommodate this insight in more general terms at a conceptual level within his systems and jurisdictions approach, namely by bringing it into how he is defining professions, his object of study.

85

Abbott 1988:335–6 note 34.

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Abbott fails to emphasize that professions proper assume responsibilities for human problems which are both qualitative and worldly. He fails here, at this most basic conceptual point, because this combination bears on the structural distinctiveness of professionalism as such. Professions can only establish and maintain an independent sociocultural authority, fiducial responsibility for it, and collegial formations wherein practitioners deliberate over how best to identify, describe and explain the relative successes of various diagnoses, inferences and treatments, when they are addressing qualitative, worldly human problems. Whether professions then compete successfully for workplace jurisdiction is a completely secondary, utterly empirical issue. This characteristic is not constitutive of professionalism as such; it is an extraneous, accompanying variable of professionalism at certain times in certain places. Our third example of Abbott’s inability to explain counterexamples is his observation that finding a spouse was once handled by “experts” – matchmakers – and that today we are seeing a return to expertise in this field, including the advent of computer dating services.86 Yet, he acknowledges in a footnote that he does not – or, better, cannot – account at a conceptual level for why and when particular human problems, such as finding a spouse, become “expertized.”87 Here the point at issue is whether any aspirant profession, any occupation undergoing socio-cultural upgrading, can credibly establish and then sustain an independent socio-cultural authority within a structured situation. An additional point at issue is whether any aspirant profession is capable of describing and explaining deliberatively how best to identify and solve problems within a particular occupational field. The point is not, as Abbott believes, whether an expert occupation, whether matchmaking or home entertainment installation, can for a time stake out some arena of expertise, some workplace jurisdiction, within either embedded exchanges or at fluid sites of arm’s-length contracting. The point is also not whether an expert occupation can be commercially successful independently of vibrant and ongoing deliberative bodies spanning workplaces and advanced instructional institutions.

86 87

Abbott 1988:36. Abbott 1988:332 note 2.

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Because neither traditional matchmaking nor its contemporary iteration (computer dating services) is likely ever to provide expert services within a structured situation or to establish and sustain collegial formations, we can assert the following, against Abbott’s ambivalence. Matchmaking and dating services may “expertise” all they wish and they may even carve out a jurisdictional niche within an occupational order, but they will invariably fail to become professions. In this respect this field of human problems is akin not only to home entertainment installation but also to haute couture and haute cuisine.

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INDEX Abbott, Andrew 7, 12, 30–33, 35–36, 41, 44, 46, 59–60, 64–66, 113, 151, 214, 217, 219, 244–246, 307, 321–322, 333, 350–351, 357, 400, 404–405, 407, 423, 434–459 Abel, Richard L. 35, 42, 113, 182 Académie 43, 89–91, 93, 99, 105, 167, 301, 323, 342 Constituency 101, 164 Distinctiveness 153–161 Français 79, 85, 88, 100, 103, 159, 166, 186, 257 Corporate Interests 87, 94, 96–97, 101, 106–108, 154, 158, 163–164, 370 Literary 78–79, 85, 159 Paris 28, 69–70, 75, 77–80, 85, 88, 92, 95–96, 101–102, 104, 106–111, 114, 149–150, 152–153, 155–159, 161, 165–166, 168, 179–180, 183–184, 190, 229–230, 232, 248, 257, 270, 299, 320, 322, 324, 338, 353–354, 360, 362–363, 370, 374, 410, 417, 426, 455 Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture 15, 69, 77, 79, 88, 100, 116, 270 Sciences 77, 80, 85, 102–103, 159 Visual 28, 69–70, 75, 77–78, 80, 86–87, 94, 96–97, 100–103, 107, 111, 149–150, 152–153, 155–156, 158, 161, 165–166,179–180, 183–184, 190, 230, 232, 248, 257, 259, 295, 299, 316, 320, 322, 325, 338, 353–354, 360, 362, 364, 370, 374, 395, 410, 417, 421, 428–429, 455 Academy, Academies 43, 85, 92, 101–102, 105, 107, 149, 218, 220, 232, 432 Experimental, Experimentalist 78, 103, 255, 270 Literary 78–80, 84, 103, 270 Neo-Platonist 69, 78, 81, 86, 221, 338, 369 Specialized 78–79, 84, 231, 298, 369–370

Visual 75, 77–80, 84, 87, 103, 150, 159, 161, 270, 403 Accademia 89–90, 93, 108, 157, 165, 183, 186 Disegno 77, 79 Florence 79, 87, 114 Rome 114 San Luca 77, 107, 111 Alexander, Jeffrey C. 26, 326, 443 Anatomical theaters 229 Arato, Andrew 185 Arm’s-length 176, 186, 189, 201, 203–205, 216, 226, 280, 433, 458 Associations 25–26, 55, 65, 67, 85, 169, 173, 181–182, 185, 189, 207, 222, 256, 258, 262–263, 277, 285, 296, 300, 305, 319–320, 328, 339, 343, 345–346, 354, 359, 370, 403, 406–407, 412, 449 Intermediary 35–36, 61, 115–116, 127–128, 133–134, 137, 141–143, 145–146, 150, 153, 155, 159, 162, 168–169, 171–172, 174, 176, 220, 225–227, 236, 238, 240, 245, 251–252, 254–255, 259, 266–270, 273–275, 278–282, 284, 286, 288, 290, 341, 344, 358, 361, 364, 368–369, 397–398, 400, 404–405, 411, 417, 451 Professional 1, 30, 40, 146, 150, 152, 171–172, 257, 261, 289, 336, 367, 369, 373, 389, 421 Specialized 366 Authority 7, 100–101, 140, 154, 164, 166, 262–263, 265, 376, 381–382, 426, 449 Independent 88, 96–99, 160–162, 167, 181, 188, 225–228, 230, 233–240, 251, 255–259, 271–272, 275–277, 284–285, 294, 296, 302–304, 311, 318–319, 328, 330–331, 333, 345, 349, 352, 354–355, 374, 391, 407–415, 417–420, 422–423, 428–429, 443–444, 456, 458 Occupational 33, 214

476

index

Positional 159–161 Reasoned 134 Socio-cultural 88, 97, 102, 115, 161–163, 165, 181, 188, 215, 225–228, 230–240, 251, 255–259, 271–272, 275–277, 284–285, 294, 296, 302–304, 311, 318–319, 328, 330–331, 333, 345, 349, 352, 354–355, 359, 371, 374, 391, 407–415, 417–420, 422–423, 428–429, 443–444, 456, 458 Visual, Visual-cultural 96–99, 156–157, 161–163, 186, 325 Autocracy 31, 139, 183, 221, 259, 265, 268–269, 273, 278–279, 342, 344, 407 Backdrop dissonance 179–181 Balancers, Balancing 115, 117, 131–132, 135–137, 145–146, 152, 174–175, 236, 283, 288–291, 400, 429–430, 442 Bamboccianti 155 Bargaining 67–68, 307 Bell, David A. 6, 42 Beauvilliers, Antoine 203 Bildungsbürgertum 27, 30, 35–36, 39, 41, 44, 54, 56–58, 65, 67–68, 140, 264–265, 377, 382–383, 405, 449 Black, Anthony H. 232 Black, Donald 372 Blanning, T.C.W. 274 Bledstein, Burton J. 187, 268, 343, 405 Bourdieu, Pierre 13, 23, 29, 39s, 61, 182, 186–187, 233, 238–239, 247–248, 261, 268, 323–324, 394, 418 Brante, Thomas 7, 27, 42–43 Brint, Steven 113, 378, 382, 404 Bunce, Valerie 11 Bureaucracy, Bureaucrat, Bureaucratization 3, 5, 7, 24–25, 28, 31, 34, 43, 62–64, 80, 107, 143, 149, 151–152, 163, 166, 206, 221, 233, 235–238, 241, 246, 268, 273, 276, 279, 288, 290–291, 311, 314, 344–346, 364, 367–368, 370, 394, 399, 408, 417, 418–419, 449–452 Bürgerlichkeit 10, 35, 39, 56, 69, 180, 201, 205, 208, 273, 275, 295 Bürgertum 27–28, 39, 41, 45–46, 51–54, 56, 58–59, 61, 65–69, 187, 217–218, 246, 248, 262–263, 270, 274–277, 346, 382, 449, 451

Burrage, Michael 8, 27, 30, 35, 42–43, 45, 50–54, 59, 60–61, 140, 245, 298, 407 Calling 27, 35, 37, 40, 92, 203, 205, 276 Case relativism 5–6 Ceremony 84, 92, 118, 150, 156, 161–162, 169, 185–186, 191, 198, 211–212, 214–215, 270, 331, 428 Champy, Florent 7, 205, 208, 432 Chefs 2, 104, 201–205, 207, 287, 302–303, 313, 321, 327, 336, 339–340, 432 Clientelism 152, 158, 165, 182–183, 221, 233, 237–238, 250, 342, 344, 346, 364, 383, 419 Cohen, Jean L. 185 Coke, Sir Edward 149 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste 99–102, 104–105, 109, 158, 164, 228, 248, 332, 342, 360, 421, 427–429 Collegial form, Collegial formations, Collegiate, Collegiately 24, 51, 91, 107, 142–146, 151, 158, 162, 163–169, 230, 253, 276, 346–347, 353–355, 358, 360–364, 366–376, 378, 381, 383, 387, 389, 391–401, 408, 416–419, 422–423, 443–445, 449, 451–452, 456, 458–459 Collier, David 11, 140 Collins, Randall 30–31, 33–34, 42, 44, 151, 219, 232, 244–245, 307, 309–310, 400–401, 405, 438, 447 Common law 76, 113, 126, 131, 171–172, 174, 180, 228, 268, 281, 286, 288, 290, 426 Conceptual obscurantism 180, 191, 208–210 Contextual gestalt 10–15, 76 Contract, Contractarian, Contractual 108, 115–118, 123–124, 126, 128–138, 145–146, 150–152, 170–171, 174, 183–184, 189–190, 200–203, 206, 214, 220–222, 236, 238, 268, 271, 274–275, 282–283, 289, 303, 313, 321, 340, 357, 371, 374, 381, 385–388, 390, 394, 410, 421, 429–430, 432–433, 458 Corporate governance 15, 113, 118, 129, 132, 136, 139, 147, 149–153, 168, 183, 201, 218, 238, 316, 341–342, 353, 357–358, 398, 406, 412–413, 421, 426, 428–429, 457

index Disputes 117, 120, 122–123, 125–127, 133, 137–138, 171, 173, 175, 366–367, 398, 427, 430 Structures 114–115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 126–128, 131, 135, 137–138, 141–146, 148, 158, 170–175, 179, 184, 190, 199, 208, 220–221, 226, 237, 251, 267–269, 274–275, 281–284, 288–290, 299, 344–345, 354, 359, 369, 394–398, 403, 449 Courts 78, 113, 135, 150, 170, 221, 266–267, 354, 358, 386, 410, 412 Common law 76, 113, 126, 131, 171–172, 174, 180, 228, 268, 281, 286, 288, 290, 426 Corporate 84, 118–119, 121, 123, 125, 129–134, 137, 144, 170, 173–175, 268–269, 284, 368, 425, 427–428 Delaware 113, 117–134, 136–147, 150, 170, 173–176, 184, 268–269, 282, 357, 366, 377, 397, 421, 425, 427–430 Equity 118, 121, 126, 132, 136, 172, 174 Specialized 84, 126, 138, 281–282, 286, 396 Couturiers 2, 201–202, 204, 207, 302–303, 313, 321, 327, 336, 339, 340, 432 Cultural 5, 10, 21, 24–25, 27, 35–36, 38–39, 44–46, 49, 52, 62, 64–66, 76, 78, 84–85, 88, 90–91, 94, 96–102, 108–111, 115, 123, 152–161, 163, 165, 167–169, 179, 180–181, 183, 189, 191, 198, 202–204, 211–212, 214, 216, 221, 225–226, 228–229, 231–240, 243–245, 248, 251, 255–261, 263–265, 267, 270–271, 277–280, 283–286, 296, 299–300, 303, 307, 311, 314, 318, 326, 328–331, 333–334, 336, 342, 344–345, 347, 349–350, 352, 354–355, 360, 362, 371, 380, 392, 404, 407–408, 412, 414–415, 417–421, 422, 424–428, 431, 440, 443–444, 452, 454–456, 458 Approach 22–23, 26, 30–31, 33, 41, 51, 53, 209, 219, 246, 249, 252–253, 306, 374, 405 Factors 26, 53, 61, 149, 246 Imperialism 12–13, 182, 323 Truism 69, 150, 162, 173, 176, 182, 185–188, 215, 227, 230, 275, 287,

477 302, 304, 319, 322, 324, 359, 409–410, 413, 423, 429 Understanding 22–23, 54–59, 63, 77, 80, 95, 153, 164, 173, 176, 182, 184, 187, 192–193, 215, 246, 254, 262, 266, 269, 272–274, 276, 282, 290, 294, 305–306, 308, 315–316, 323, 338, 343, 361, 391, 399, 405–406, 411, 421

Deconstruction, Deconstructionism, Deconstructionist 188, 191, 237, 325–326, 421, 433 Decoration 84, 97, 150, 156, 161–162, 169, 185–186, 191, 198, 211–212, 214–215, 270, 331, 428 Deliberation 91, 107, 124, 136, 142–144, 151–152, 158, 162, 164–165, 167–168, 173, 181, 279, 291, 331, 345, 349, 351, 353, 356, 361–368, 370, 372–373, 381, 392–394, 396, 399, 408, 413, 416–417, 419, 422–423, 434, 443, 456 Democratic society 139, 141–142, 145, 175, 250, 260, 266, 277, 279, 281–282, 284, 286, 288–289, 336, 342–345, 397, 412–413 Dependence, Dependent 115, 118, 128, 156, 160, 162, 166, 173, 185, 190–191, 195, 199, 201–202, 215, 220–221, 225–226, 258–259, 270, 272, 290, 293, 349, 385, 395, 397, 407, 409, 413, 424, 444 Derivative suits 122–123, 129, 131–132, 137, 146, 282, 412 Derogation 169, 269 Dezalay, Yves 182, 247, 262, 323–324, 425–427 Diamond, Larry 11, 140, 249, 260 Didactic 91, 102, 158, 161–162, 166, 181, 220, 226–228, 251, 272, 319, 326–328, 332–334, 336, 339–340, 343–347, 350, 355, 360, 371, 374, 381, 394, 408, 415, 421, 427, 431–432, 453–454, 456 Content 81, 153, 163, 349, 419, 422 Principles 94, 98, 455 Standards 97, 115, 150, 165, 230,238, 270–271, 324–325, 331, 335 Weightiness 69, 81, 87, 94, 156, 165, 185 Discretionary judgment 128, 160, 188, 190–191, 301, 407

478

index

Disinterest, Disinterestedness 22, 30, 54, 94, 97, 108, 111, 120–122, 124–125, 127, 129–130, 136, 142–143, 145, 151–152, 158, 163, 165–166, 168, 173, 181, 193, 195–197, 200, 223, 246–247, 272–273, 276, 279, 288, 291, 299, 313, 320, 323, 331, 334–338, 340, 349, 351, 356, 363–367, 370, 372–374, 388–390, 393, 395, 399, 408, 413, 416–417, 419, 422, 434, 443, 448, 451, 456 Dyson, Kenneth H.F. 63–64, 264 Embedded exchanges 128, 135, 137, 167, 173–174, 186–187, 189, 194, 198–204, 206, 214–216, 219, 221–222, 227, 230, 234–235, 241, 258, 270, 273–275, 282, 287–288, 302–305, 310, 319, 322, 324, 330, 339, 349, 352, 359, 374, 384–386, 400–401, 409–410, 412–413, 428, 430–431, 433, 444–445, 458 Encyclopedism 78 Enervate, Enervation 70, 124, 127, 140–141, 145, 160, 163–164, 170, 176, 214, 218, 259, 264–265, 272, 289–291, 314, 342, 345, 353, 375, 384, 387, 390, 392, 399, 404–405, 413–414, 429 Inadvertent 15, 142, 182, 304, 343–344, 365 Purposeful 182 Entertainment 2, 60, 183, 202, 204–205, 207, 227, 313–314, 327, 332, 336, 338–340, 351–352, 406, 414, 418, 432–433, 444, 458–459 Epistemic, Epistemology, Epistemological 3, 53, 59–60, 68– 69, 85, 91, 97, 102, 153, 158, 161–162, 166, 181, 226, 237, 251, 272, 313, 319, 321–322, 326–327, 330, 333–335, 339–341, 343–347, 360, 374, 381, 394, 408, 415, 421, 427, 431–432, 453–456 Content 10, 58, 81, 163, 349–350, 355, 371, 419, 422 Standards 43, 49, 61–62, 98, 115, 150, 165, 227–228, 230, 270–271, 320, 323–325, 331, 433 Weightiness 81, 87, 94, 113, 156, 165, 185 Equity, Equity law 118, 121, 126, 132, 136, 172, 174

Etymology, Etymological 27–28, 36–40, 58–59, 62 Etzioni, Amitai 23, 124, 249, 264, 360, 374 Evetts, Julia 7, 34–35, 42, 60, 180, 182, 197, 206, 208, 262, 317, 404, 432–433 Expert, Expertise, Expertization 3, 12–13, 20, 27, 30–31, 33, 36–37, 39–40, 46–47, 50–56, 59, 61–62, 65, 67, 69, 94, 101, 122, 205–208, 211, 217, 232, 234, 236, 239, 243, 245–246, 257–258, 261, 270, 273–275, 278–280, 293–294, 307, 313, 315, 327–328, 333–336, 338, 344, 349–353, 355, 360, 366, 378, 382, 390, 392, 397, 406–407, 412, 414, 418, 420, 425, 431, 435–437, 439, 442–443, 448–454, 458 Behavior 44, 70, 79, 165, 357 Contracts 183–184, 190, 238 Services 1–2, 21–22, 32, 34–35, 45, 65, 77, 98, 115–116, 150, 152, 159, 162–163, 172, 181–182, 188–189, 197, 201–204, 212, 216, 218, 226–230, 235, 237, 241, 247, 255, 272, 276, 287, 295, 298, 302–305, 310–311, 314, 317–319, 321–324, 329–332, 339–340, 343, 393–394, 400, 404–405, 408–409, 411, 416, 422–424, 430, 432, 438, 441, 444–447, 456, 459 Extraneous accompanying variables 179, 207–208, 216–218, 254, 266, 334 Fair justice 170, 290 Fiduciary, Fiducial 116–117, 119, 123, 134, 136–138, 141, 144–145, 166, 171, 175, 189, 201–203, 220, 223, 230, 267, 271, 281, 283, 286, 288, 298–299, 330, 346, 378, 381, 384–386, 389, 397–398 Care 130–131, 170, 172–173, 268, 412, 429 Doctrine 118, 126–128 Duty 118, 124, 127, 129–131, 170, 172–173, 268, 357, 412, 429 Impulsion 190 Loyalty 124, 131, 170, 172–173, 268, 412, 429 Responsibility 20–22, 35–36, 71, 115, 150–153, 155, 158–159, 160–161, 163, 167, 174, 181, 187, 197, 206,

index

479

221–222, 235, 264, 270, 272, 274–276, 282, 284, 287, 293–297, 300–306, 310–313, 315–319, 321, 333–336, 340, 343, 349, 354–355, 360, 364, 366, 371, 373–374, 376, 387–388, 390–392, 394, 401, 407–409, 411–415, 419, 421–422, 424, 428, 430–431, 433, 443–445, 458 Fine, Gary Alan 325, 327 First responders Police 188, 198 EMS (Emergency Medical Services) 188 Firefighters 188 Hazmat (Hazardous Materials Units) 188 Flaubert, Gustave 186–187 Flawed prism 4 Fluid sites 199–200 Fournier, Valerie 42, 182, 208, 247 Formal democracy 80, 125, 139–142, 149, 152, 163, 166, 237, 250, 271–273, 276–281, 286, 289, 342, 368, 397, 407, 413, 417 Freedman, Judith 144 Freidson, Eliot 5, 19, 30–32, 56, 436, 438–442, 446, 457 Fuller, Lon L. 138, 149, 357, 408, 426, 444 Functional, Functionalism, Functionalist 3, 20, 29, 31–33, 35, 41–44, 46, 49–50, 52–56, 60, 67, 76, 192, 209, 219, 249, 256, 258, 291, 297–300, 306–307, 309, 313, 315, 341, 396, 405, 432–436, 438–442, 447 Differentiation 237, 345–346

Governance 40, 45, 52, 102, 116, 205, 273, 288, 339, 343, 349, 354, 368, 370–371, 381, 408, 410, 416–417, 419, 452 Corporate 15, 96, 113–115, 117–123, 125–127, 129, 131–139, 141–147, 149–153, 158, 168, 170–176, 183–184, 190, 199, 201, 208, 218, 220–221, 238, 251, 299, 316, 341–342, 353, 357–358, 366, 397–398, 403, 406, 412–413, 415, 421, 426–430, 449, 457 Instructional 94, 163, 165, 371 Internal 121–123, 125, 146, 220, 354, 356, 359–360, 362, 364, 367, 369, 398, 408 Occupational 163, 165, 264, 415 Positions 146, 190, 266, 397 Private 141–142, 171, 172, 174–175, 226, 251, 266–267, 274–275, 280–284, 286–287, 290, 344, 398 Public 139–140, 226, 249, 251, 266–267, 273, 275, 280, 286, 290–291 Structure 114–115, 117, 121, 123, 125–129, 131, 135, 137, 140, 146, 172–176, 184, 189–190, 199, 220–221, 226, 237, 251, 255, 264, 267–269, 274–275, 289–290, 313–314, 344–346, 359, 367, 369, 394–399, 403–404, 449, 457 Gregg, Benjamin 360 Guild 38, 64, 80, 82, 84, 86, 88–92, 96, 104, 155, 159, 162, 166–168, 196–197, 218, 229, 231–232, 236, 270, 298, 312, 329, 360, 364, 395, 419

Galileo 86, 211–212, 328 Geison, Gerald L. 35, 38–39 Gentle 99, 101, 154, 207, 212, 221, 331 Birth 79–80, 161, 190, 332, 337–338, 428 Household 37, 78, 155, 167, 203, 229, 257, 332 Patrons 84, 98, 102, 156–157, 160–161, 210–211, 217–218, 324 Society 69, 82, 84–85, 87–88, 94–95, 97, 155–156, 159, 164, 231, 332, 338 Gestalt 10–15, 76, 180, 195, 217, 377, 444 Gleeson, Denis 7, 298, 369 Goodin, Robert E. 249

Habermas, Jürgen 29, 39, 78, 136, 144, 320, 322, 350 Halliday, Terence C. 5, 35, 42, 60, 404 Halpern, Sydney 439, 442 Haute cuisine 182, 186, 201–204, 207, 234, 287, 293, 295, 302–303, 314, 324, 328, 332–333, 352, 406, 414, 418, 444, 459 Haute couture 182, 186, 201–204, 207, 235, 287, 293, 295, 302–303, 314, 324, 328, 332–333, 352, 406, 414, 418, 444, 459 Hermeneutical method 57–58, 63 Hierarchy, hierarchical 25, 33–34, 44, 62, 105, 143, 151–152, 158,

480

index

165–167, 198, 211, 276, 279, 325, 367–369, 393, 399, 411, 416–417, 449, 452 Historiography 82, 93, 212, 439 Faulty 231–232 Whiggish 3, 7–9, 11, 60, 113, 150, 403, 446, 451 Hollander, Anne 203 Home entertainment installation 202, 204, 314, 340, 352, 414, 418, 444, 458–459 Impersonal trust 20, 128, 160, 171, 188–191, 197, 220–222, 251, 273, 407 Impressionist Revolution 88, 150, 324 Institutional Design 11–15, 25, 69, 71, 76, 79–80, 104, 108, 115–116, 132, 135, 136–137, 147, 159, 171, 226, 233, 249–252, 256, 258, 261, 264, 270, 275–276, 284, 287–288, 291, 297, 300, 305, 310–311, 313, 339–340, 363, 369–370, 404–405, 411, 422, 443 Autocratic 182–183, 237, 259–260, 269, 271, 273, 278, 342, 344–345, 407, 414 Enervate, Enervation 70, 124, 127, 140, 145, 163, 170, 176, 265, 272, 342–344, 399, 414, 429 Formally Democratic 141, 277–279, 281, 286, 289, 342, 368, 397, 407, 414 Inadvertent enervation 139, 141–142, 182 Limited Government 140–141, 169, 175, 266, 279–281, 286, 289, 342, 412–414 Democratic Society 117, 123, 128, 141–142, 145, 168–169, 175, 182–183, 259–260, 265, 268, 277, 281–283, 285–286, 289–290, 314, 342–345, 362, 397, 399, 412–414 Institutional 19, 23–24, 33, 53, 56, 68, 70, 114–116, 128, 146, 174, 176, 189, 194, 216, 219, 221, 248–250, 255, 276, 282–283, 291, 293–294, 314, 317, 336, 342–343, 359, 363, 377, 381, 390, 393, 397, 403, 406, 415, 426, 434–435, 444, 452, 456–457 Backdrop 179–180 Consequences 11–15, 25–26, 36, 76, 119, 151, 158, 168, 181–182, 184,

201–202, 207, 243, 246, 253–254, 258–259, 266, 284, 286–287, 295–296, 304, 308, 315–316, 318, 341, 346, 398–400, 404–405, 407, 429–430 Externalities 144, 158, 284, 398, 427 Reasons 311, 349 Insulation 122, 236 Integrity 1, 21, 23, 96, 119, 123, 125, 133, 143, 146, 154, 167, 190, 228, 236, 259, 268, 271, 284–285, 288–290, 296–297, 300–301, 303, 314, 323–324, 335, 345–346, 350, 353–356, 358, 360–365, 368, 371–374, 376, 378, 381, 383, 387, 389, 391–396, 398, 408, 416–419, 422, 425–426, 429, 443, 448, 456 Definitional 43, 49, 58–59, 61 Workplace 375, 444 Interest, Interests 11, 33, 41, 54–55, 109, 115, 145, 167, 184, 189, 197, 223, 229, 231–232, 236, 258, 262–264, 293–294, 328–329, 357, 365–366, 410, 417, 420, 426, 430, 441 Conflicts of 120–121, 124, 166, 171, 196, 375, 383–390, 393, 395, 424 Corporate 69, 87–88, 94, 97, 101, 111, 120, 124, 126, 131, 133, 135, 140, 143, 146, 154–155, 157–158, 160, 162–164, 168, 173–174, 176, 280, 296, 302–303, 311, 318, 320, 328, 346, 349, 351–352, 354, 358, 362, 370, 379, 391–392, 396, 398–399, 407, 409, 411–415, 421–422, 428 Excessive 168 Immediate 101, 126, 154–155, 157–158, 160, 162–164, 168, 174, 296, 318, 338, 349, 351–352, 354, 358, 362, 370–371, 391–392, 396, 399, 411–413, 421–422, 428 Inadvertent 164, 237, 250, 302 Longer-term One-sided 120–121, 125, 130, 140, 154, 173, 196, 225–226, 230, 240, 251, 282, 296, 301, 398, 408 Opportunistic 129, 154, 173, 194, 196, 220, 225, 240, 251, 259, 273, 296, 301, 359, 408, 412, 416 Positional 69, 87–88, 97, 99, 101, 111, 120–121, 125–126, 129–131, 133, 143, 146, 154–155, 157–158, 160, 162–164, 168, 173–174, 176, 191, 194–196, 199, 220, 222, 225–226, 230, 233, 235, 240, 280, 296,

index 301–303, 311, 318, 320, 328, 336, 338, 346, 349, 351–352, 354, 358, 362, 370–371, 379, 381, 384, 391–392, 396, 398–399, 407–409, 411–415, 421–422, 428 Public law 137, 146, 164, 174 Purposeful Self 44, 116–117, 120, 128, 133, 135, 143, 153–154, 157, 160, 162, 164, 168, 172–173, 176, 191, 194–196, 199–202, 207, 220, 225–226, 233, 238, 240, 251, 259, 269, 273, 276–277, 279, 282–283, 288, 296, 302–304, 315, 318, 321, 336, 359, 361, 370, 379, 391–393, 398, 408–409, 411–413, 416, 421–422, 456 Structural 158 Intermediary associations 35–36, 61, 115–116, 127–128, 141, 145–146, 150, 168–169, 171, 176, 220, 225–227, 236, 238, 245, 251–252, 254–255, 259, 266–270, 273–275, 278–282, 284, 286, 288, 290, 341, 344, 358, 364, 368–369, 397–398, 400, 404–405, 411, 417, 451 Jarausch, Konrad H. 6–7, 27, 30, 39, 42–43, 45, 50–54, 59–61, 187, 245, 407 Johnson, Terence 10, 30, 32, 44, 209–219, 221, 243, 245–246, 298, 305–307, 310–311, 434, 440 Journalism 375, 383, 385, 388–389 Juridification 136 Jurisdictions 46, 181, 398, 404–405, 408–409, 423, 435–441, 443–446, 448, 453–454, 456–457 Karpik, Lucien 5–6, 35, 42, 60, 170, 194–195, 368, 393, 404, 428 Kocka, Jürgen 27, 29–30, 36, 45, 56–58, 65, 405 Kornhauser, William 244, 364 Krause, Elliott A. 218, 232 Kreutzer, Florian 7, 25, 432 Kritzer, Herbert M. 113, 183, 208, 232 Kronman, Anthony T. 372, 375–378, 383, 385, 391, 428 Larson, Magali Sarfatti 8, 30–33, 41–42, 44, 60, 113, 151, 209, 219, 244, 307, 400, 404–405, 432, 434–441, 446–447, 450–452, 457

481

Lawful, Lawfulness 124, 130, 139, 141–142, 144–146, 169, 259–260, 444 Lebrun, Charles 87, 91, 97–102, 104, 109–110, 154–155, 158–160, 248, 322, 332 Learned 9, 30, 37, 39–40, 50, 59, 69, 82–83, 86, 90, 101, 104, 163, 229, 262, 264, 265, 322, 325, 331, 382, 405, 415, 420, 433 Corporation 38, 80, 84, 91, 149, 166, 168, 270, 360 Society 87–89, 94–95, 162, 164, 332, 338, 351, 364 Ledford, Kenneth F. 6, 42, 262 Leveling 121, 151, 158, 237–238, 245, 267, 364, 367, 369, 399 Levy, Jonah D. 368 Lexicon, Lexical 80, 85, 94–95, 102, 108–110, 125–126, 131, 134, 149, 156, 159, 164–165, 182, 184, 195, 206, 228, 231, 237, 247–248, 252–253, 256, 258, 265, 312, 328–329, 361–362, 420 Liberalism, Neo-liberalism 5, 10–11, 28, 42, 69, 179–180, 261, 285, 404 Limited Government 139–142, 146–147, 169, 175, 182, 250, 260, 265–269, 271–272, 277, 279–281, 285–286, 288–290, 314, 342–343, 362, 364, 397, 412–414 Luhmann, Niklas 277, 282, 370, 410, 447 Luzio, Gaia di. 7 Macdonald, Keith M. 405, 435, 441 Madison, James 364 Majoritarianism 151, 165, 237–238, 364, 367–368, 417 Malatesta, Maria 38–40, 45 Mandatory rules 123–124, 126, 130–135, 137, 141, 144, 146, 171, 173–175, 268, 286, 398, 421, 429 Manet, Edouard 187, 270–271 Market for corporate control 117, 119, 132–133, 135, 137, 143, 283 Market-mimicking behavior 151–152, 169, 173, 238, 288, 291, 295, 304, 340, 370, 399, 412, 433 Mass society, massification 33, 244–245, 364 McLennan, Gregor 26 Mediums 7, 59, 321–322, 436, 445, 455–457

482

index

Merit, Meritocracy 30, 69–70, 75, 79, 92, 111, 137, 145–146, 151–152, 158–159, 162–164, 167, 181–183, 194, 197, 222, 233, 238–240, 247, 270, 272–275, 278–279, 288, 326, 330, 345, 378, 382, 395, 399, 408, 418–419, 429–430, 457 Merkel, Wolfgang 11 Middle Class 2–3, 5, 12–13, 15, 21, 25, 27–28, 35, 38–39, 41–44, 46–47, 50–51, 53–54, 56, 59, 61–62, 65–66, 70, 76, 140, 180, 185–186, 188, 195, 201–202, 218–219, 221, 243, 245–246, 248, 257–258, 261–262, 265, 270, 272–273, 276, 283, 293–295, 302–303, 310, 313, 317–318, 323, 334, 339, 343–344, 346, 349, 382, 392, 405–406, 414–415, 418, 423, 430, 449, 451 Clients, Clienteles 204, 206, 212–213, 217 Patrons 30, 205, 217, 400 Minorities 192 Morlino, Leonardo 11, 140, 249 Munck, Gerardo L. 249 Neo-corporatism 172, 250 Nexus of contracts 133–134, 137 174, 201 Noblesse 159, 169, 190–191, 198, 200, 211–212, 214–215, 229, 331–332 Normative capsule 124, 130, 170 Occupation, Occupational 4, 6–8, 14–15, 19, 21, 26, 28, 49, 64, 67, 75, 78, 80, 82–85, 88, 90, 96–98, 100–101, 103–104, 106–107, 109–111, 113–114, 149–150, 153–155, 159–160, 163, 165–166, 179–180, 182, 184, 187, 191–194, 196–197, 200, 202, 205–206, 209, 212–214, 217, 221, 227–228, 231–233, 237–239, 254, 263, 265–266, 270–272, 276, 281–282, 285–287, 296, 304, 306, 308–312, 324–325, 327–330, 337, 357, 359, 363, 369, 372–376, 383, 393, 399, 403, 409–411, 415–417, 419, 421–422, 424, 431–432, 447, 450, 455–457 Credentials 34 Expert 2–3, 30–36, 39–40, 44, 46–47, 50, 52, 54, 56, 59, 65, 70, 77, 152, 162, 172, 181, 188–189, 201, 203–204, 207–208, 234–235, 255, 257, 261,

274–275, 278–280, 294–295, 302–303, 305, 314–315, 317–318, 327–328, 333–335, 338, 344, 349, 351–352, 355, 366, 400, 404, 406, 414, 418, 420, 423, 425, 430, 435–439, 441–446, 448, 452–454 Middle Class 2–3, 12–13, 28, 30, 35, 38–39, 41–44, 46–47, 50–51, 54, 56, 59, 61–62, 185–186, 201, 204, 243, 245–246, 248, 257, 283, 293–295, 302–303, 313, 317–318, 322, 334, 339, 343–346, 349, 400, 414, 418, 420, 423, 430, 449, 451 Order 1, 9–10, 25, 27, 29–30, 33, 35–37, 44, 47, 68, 76, 116, 185, 189, 210–211, 225, 230, 243–247, 251–252, 256–258, 262, 264, 268, 288, 291, 294, 297–298, 305, 317, 331, 338–339, 341–343, 345–346, 349, 353, 356, 405, 407, 414, 435, 439, 446, 448–449, 451–452, 459 Orientations 23, 34, 319–323, 331–334, 336, 339–340, 343–345, 347, 349, 353–355, 360, 364, 371, 391–392, 394, 408, 433 Reasons 93 Upgrading 45, 50, 52–53, 55, 58–61, 63, 66, 68–69, 87, 94, 151, 164, 208, 210–211, 215–216, 218–219, 225–226, 247–248, 253, 255, 275, 277, 295, 317–318, 406, 425, 451, 458 O’Donnell, Guillermo 11, 139, 140, 249, 260 Olgiati, Vittorio 6, 60 Ontology, Ontological 11, 79, 81, 86, 97, 159, 161, 186, 188, 191, 198, 200, 274–275, 320, 322, 324 Opportunism 1, 116, 129, 152, 154, 173, 194–196, 220, 225, 240, 259, 273, 275, 278, 280, 282, 296, 314, 321, 336–337, 359, 364–365, 367–368, 383, 401, 408, 412–413, 416, 456 Opting out 133, 135, 146 Oversight 121, 197, 221, 226, 236, 251, 254, 271, 280–281, 346, 357–360, 362, 383, 385, 393, 395–397, 417, 423, 425, 428, 430, 453–454 Parsons, Talcott; Parsonian 3, 5, 8, 13–14, 19–27, 29–39, 39, 41, 43–44, 46–47, 49–50, 53–54, 66, 76, 127, 136, 150, 183, 192, 197, 208–209, 219, 237–238, 243–246, 249–254, 256,

index 258, 264, 287, 291, 297–300, 305–310, 316, 336, 341–342, 345–346, 374, 400, 405–406, 433–436, 447–448, 453–454 Patfield, Fiona Macmillan 144 Patron-client, Patronage, Patronage Networks 34, 37, 84–85, 96, 111, 143, 157, 166, 182–183, 210–213, 215, 217–218, 238, 265, 268–269, 272, 279, 290, 344, 358, 363–364, 367–368, 395, 399, 401, 428 Nepotism 70, 79–80, 91, 107–108, 158, 163, 169–170, 181, 222, 228, 237–239, 241, 269, 270, 272–274, 278–280, 288, 290, 395, 408, 418 Venality 70, 79–80, 91, 107–108, 158, 163, 169–170, 181, 222, 229, 237–239, 241, 269, 272, 278–280, 288, 395, 408, 418 Pattern maintenance 126–128, 164, 174 Personalism 183 Phenomenal, Phenomenology, Phenomenological, Phenomenologically 6–7, 10, 21, 25, 46, 61, 63, 76, 83, 85–86, 105–106, 207–208, 213, 215–217, 254, 294–295, 297–298, 300, 349, 353, 356, 377, 443–444, 447, 457 Pluralism, Pluralist 172, 222, 237, 250, 441–443 Position, Positional, Positionally 13, 27, 34, 51, 80, 82, 98, 103, 132, 145, 181, 197–198, 211–212, 239, 251, 262–263, 270, 273, 287, 295, 297, 305–306, 312–313, 315–316, 322, 327, 332–335, 340, 356, 360, 369, 395, 403, 418, 426, 433–434, 450–451 Abuse 129, 202, 222, 303, 321, 355, 359 Conflicts 100, 120–121, 173, 384–386, 397 Demands 118, 160, 163 Dependence, Dependent 115, 118, 128, 156, 160, 162, 173, 190–191, 195, 199, 201–202, 215, 220, 225–226, 258, 293, 385, 397, 407, 409, 413, 444 Entrenched 70, 115, 119, 128–129, 142, 156–157, 160, 164, 168, 172, 183, 188, 190–191, 196, 199, 201–202, 206, 209, 215, 220, 240, 254, 267, 299, 304, 310, 314, 385, 397, 407, 409, 412, 420

483

Identifiable 69, 87–88, 97, 99, 101, 111, 120–121, 125–126, 129–131, 133, 143, 146, 154–155, 157–158, 160, 162–164, 168, 195, 199, 220, 289 Integrity 296, 301 Interests 173–174, 176, 191, 194–196, 199, 220, 222, 225–226, 230, 233, 235, 240, 280, 296, 301–303, 311, 318, 320–321, 328–329, 336, 338, 346, 349, 351–352, 354, 358–359, 362, 370–371, 379, 381, 391–393, 396, 398–399, 407–409, 411–415, 421–422, 428 One-sidedness 120–121, 125, 128–131, 140, 152, 169–170, 173–176, 195, 220, 222, 225, 240, 259, 266–267, 269, 277–279, 283, 286, 288–289, 296, 301, 314, 321, 352–353, 355, 359, 361, 365, 367, 391–392, 400, 408, 410–414, 416, 422, 445 Power 70, 115, 118–120, 122–123, 125, 127–130, 133, 140–142, 146, 157–158, 160, 162, 164, 166, 169–172, 173, 175, 188, 190–191, 194–196, 199, 201–202, 206, 215, 222, 225, 233, 235, 240, 254, 258–259, 266–269, 271, 274, 277–281, 283–284, 286, 288–289, 293–294, 296, 299, 301–304, 310, 314, 318–321, 336, 339, 345, 349, 352–353, 355, 359, 365, 367, 370, 385–387, 397, 407, 409–414, 416, 420–424, 430, 443–445 Responsibility 159–161, 164 Prest, Wilfrid R. 3–4, 6–8, 28, 36–38, 60, 64, 245 Procedural norms, Procedural normative, Procedural turn 1, 25–26, 116, 137, 171, 175, 192, 253, 267, 269, 273, 286, 289, 300–301, 327, 366, 369, 400 Approach 23 Fidelity 142, 144 Integrity 119, 228, 268, 324, 353–358, 361–365, 367, 371–376, 378, 383, 387, 391–396, 398, 408, 416–419, 422, 425–426, 429, 443, 456 Legality 149 Standards 138, 142, 145, 268, 286, 311, 320, 323–324, 331, 357 Threshold 23–24, 136, 138, 140–142, 144–145, 168–169, 254, 278–281,

484

index

286, 288, 290–291, 293, 311–312, 335, 353, 357, 360, 362, 379–381, 384, 389, 394, 396, 415–416 Profession, Professional, Professionalism, Professionalization Abnegation 192, 194, 197, 299, 336–337 Abuse 195, 222, 240, 359 Associations 1, 22, 30, 35–36, 40, 61, 67, 115–116, 146, 150, 152, 168–169, 171–172, 181–182, 189, 256–259, 289, 296, 300, 305, 319–320, 336, 343–346, 358, 367, 370, 373, 403, 405, 407, 421, 449 Autonomy 183, 446–447 Behavior 1, 22, 47, 66, 99, 196–197, 238–239, 253–254, 259, 283–284, 293, 295–296, 298–304, 306–307, 312, 319, 322–323, 335, 337, 346, 350–351, 355–356, 358–361, 364, 371, 374–375, 415–416, 422 Classification 350 Clients, Client relationships 20, 24, 47, 68, 71, 116, 128, 171–172, 189–190, 197–198, 212–213, 218–221, 275, 288, 290, 300, 307, 313, 372, 383–384, 410–412, 414, 431 Colleagues 237, 240, 300, 323, 372 Conditions 113, 184, 187, 214, 237, 281, 355, 357–358, 416 Conflicts of interest 375, 383–384, 389 Consequences 1–2, 11–15, 19, 25–26, 30–33, 35, 43, 47, 54, 57, 61, 66, 68, 71, 76, 151, 158, 168, 184, 189, 202, 207, 225, 243–246, 248–249, 252–262, 265–266, 284–287, 291, 293, 295–297, 300, 304–305, 311, 313, 315–316, 318, 341, 404–405, 407, 413, 419, 442, 455 Constitutive qualities 349, 406, 409 Diagnosis 350, 372 Disciplines 25, 188, 296, 300, 305, 319, 328, 336, 343–346 Discretion 212, 214, 218 Everyday shared cognition 357 Externalities 158, 230, 243, 246, 284, 343, 427 Fidelity 25, 238–239, 304, 343, 355–356, 415 Governance 114–117, 150, 152, 168, 171–172, 184, 208, 218, 254–256, 262, 281–283, 289, 314, 342–345,

349, 354, 357–362, 364, 367–368, 394, 396–397, 399, 404–406, 410, 412–413, 416–417, 419, 457 Inadvertent 15, 49, 65, 71, 77, 111, 114–115, 117, 149, 153, 158–159, 165, 168, 172, 179, 181–184, 204, 209–210, 216, 219, 227, 229–230, 237, 246, 255, 259, 268, 270–271, 275, 277, 285, 304, 320, 335, 343, 346, 353–354, 364, 370, 406, 421–422, 427, 429 Inference 350, 372, 422, 440 Instruction, Instructors 2, 22–23, 47, 52, 153, 171, 189, 193, 233, 235–236, 244, 300, 306, 308–313, 321, 324, 328, 333–336, 349–352, 355–356, 359–360, 392, 408, 416–420, 422, 430–432, 440, 444, 446, 453 Integrity 1, 23, 49, 259, 271, 284–285, 288–290, 300, 314, 335, 345, 353, 355, 360–361, 371–373, 392, 448 Middle class clienteles 217 Nascent 150, 344, 426, 457 Officers 158, 184, 197, 222, 282–283, 286, 288, 391–392, 412, 421, 427 One-sidedness 140, 240, 284, 286, 288, 314, 352, 359, 383, 410–411, 416 Originating 4, 6, 9, 75–77, 113–114 Patrons, Patron relationships 70–71, 190, 197–198, 209, 212–213, 220, 225, 231–232, 234–235, 294–295, 297, 300, 313, 335, 352, 357, 372, 384, 398, 410–412, 414, 418, 420–423, 430, 455 Peers 233, 236–237, 340 Positional conflicts 384 Practitioners 2, 20, 26, 40, 61, 65, 150, 152, 181, 184, 191, 213, 215, 218, 221, 232, 234, 237, 258, 270, 283, 293–294, 300–301, 313–315, 318–319, 323, 327, 333, 335–337, 340, 344–345, 355, 373, 378, 421–422, 440 Process 51, 55–58, 63–67, 282, 246, 351, 369, 437, 442 Project 1–2, 6–7, 9, 11, 13–15, 29, 35–37, 42–43, 46, 61–63, 69–71, 77–78, 104, 107, 114, 117, 149–150, 152–153, 158, 165, 172, 181–184, 188, 200, 206, 216, 225, 227, 232, 236–237, 254–255, 261, 270, 272, 284–285, 295–296, 314, 316,

index 318–321, 323–326, 328–330, 334, 344–345, 349, 352, 362, 369–370, 375, 391, 400, 403–409, 414, 420, 423, 426–427, 429, 438–440, 442, 446, 455, 457 Prototypical 156, 160 Purposeful 71, 77, 153, 179–184, 227–230, 237, 271, 277, 282, 284, 302, 304–305, 315, 329, 346, 353, 406, 427 Researchers 181–182, 184, 192–194, 231–232, 234, 237, 239, 265, 293–294, 300–301, 309, 314, 318–319, 323, 331, 335, 337, 343, 345, 394–395 Sub-discipline 6, 12 Vulnerability 151–152, 220, 359 Public realm, Public sphere 29, 78, 144 Pue, W. Wesley 42 Rationalization 31, 117, 237, 311, 345, 370, 452 Received wisdom 8, 11–14, 21, 30, 32, 35–37, 40, 46–47, 49, 60, 113–114, 150–151, 179–180, 197, 203, 208, 214, 225, 239, 243, 248, 252, 256, 258, 291, 294, 297, 299, 305, 307, 329–331, 403–406, 423, 434–435, 440–441 Rechtsstaat 169, 260, 265, 272–273, 275–277, 288, 290, 344, 426 Regulation 34, 51, 116, 221, 226, 236, 251, 254–256, 268, 271, 275, 279–281, 305, 313–314, 339, 343–345, 356–360, 362, 364, 367–368, 381, 383, 389, 394–396, 404–405, 408, 410, 412, 415–417, 428–429, 449, 455 Revisionism, Revisionist 8, 30–35, 37–38, 41, 43, 46, 49, 52, 54, 56, 59–60, 67, 76, 150, 181, 191, 209–211, 215–216, 218–219, 225, 232–233, 243, 245–248, 251, 256, 258, 291, 297–300, 305–311, 313, 400, 432–436, 438, 440, 447, 457 Rohrschneider, Robert 285 Rudolf, Hedwig 424 Rule clarity and consistency 162, 168, 353, 357–362, 364, 367, 379, 384, 389, 397, 408, 415–417 Rules 51, 90–93, 101, 105, 116, 123–124, 126, 130–135, 137–141, 143–144, 146, 161, 167, 171, 173–175, 249, 268, 283,

485 286, 354, 357, 369, 379–380, 382, 384, 398, 421, 429, 457

Schedler, Andreas 11 Science, Scientific 1, 4, 8–9, 15, 27–28, 30, 40, 51, 54, 60–61, 68, 75–77, 80, 82, 85–86, 100, 102–103, 106–107, 111, 122, 134, 150, 159, 166, 180, 183, 185, 188, 197, 200, 203–204, 206–207, 210–211, 215, 222, 228–229, 239, 246–247, 249–252, 256–257, 261, 271, 276, 298, 301, 307, 313, 320–326, 331, 334–335, 337, 340, 342, 345, 350, 365, 376, 390, 394, 403, 406, 408, 433, 452, 454, 457 Schmitter, Philippe C. 11, 140, 249 Schneider, Carsten Q. 11 Sciulli, David 27, 38, 49, 77, 91, 121–122, 140, 149, 151, 154, 192, 248, 251, 260, 267, 346, 434 Service Orientation 21, 34–35, 44, 54, 97, 193, 244, 299, 328, 333–334, 336, 392, 398, 406, 412, 428 Shallow pool (of exemplars) 4–9, 13, 24, 403 Shapiro, Susan P. 166, 171, 194, 196, 220, 299, 313, 323, 327, 337, 375, 383–391, 393, 395, 420, 424–425 Shareholder balancing 137, 145–146, 174, 288–290 Siegrist, Hannes 6, 27, 30, 36, 40, 42–43, 45, 50–68, 232, 245, 307, 405, 407 Sites, Sites of 22, 171, 182, 190, 193, 201, 220, 246, 283, 289–290, 397, 415 Elective diversion 183, 186, 199–200 Embedded commercial exchanges 128, 186–187, 189, 194, 199–200, 202, 204, 214–216, 221–222, 227, 230, 234–235, 241, 258, 270, 273, 282, 287–288, 302–305, 310, 319, 322, 330, 349, 352, 359, 374, 384–386, 400–401, 409–410, 412–413, 444–445, 458 Fluid 128, 130, 135, 172–173, 176, 183, 186–187, 189, 194, 199–200, 202, 204, 214–216, 219, 221–222, 227, 230, 234–235, 241, 258, 270, 273, 275–276, 282, 287–288, 302–305, 310, 319, 322, 330, 349, 352, 359, 374, 384–386, 400–401, 409–410, 412–413, 431, 444–445, 458 Commercial transacting, contracting 77, 128

486

index

Structured 128, 130, 135, 184–185, 188–189, 204, 208–209, 219, 221, 230, 276, 319, 384 Situation, Situationally 12, 22, 24, 29, 44, 49, 57–58, 97, 127, 157, 191, 253, 256, 380, 416, 432, 450 Embedded 70, 114, 186–187, 190, 194, 201, 204, 208, 214–215, 219, 221–222, 226–227, 230, 241, 272, 287–288, 302, 304–305, 319, 324, 359, 374, 400, 409–410, 428, 445 Entrenched 70, 128–129, 156, 162, 164, 168, 188, 190, 215, 240, 254, 267, 269, 296, 407, 409, 413 Fluid 70, 77, 114, 128–130, 135, 187, 194, 204, 214–216, 219, 221–222, 230, 241, 287–288, 302, 304–305, 319, 359, 374, 400, 413, 445 Structured 1, 77, 113–119, 126, 128–130, 133, 135, 137, 140–142, 144–146, 151–152, 154, 156, 159–160, 162, 164, 166–173, 175–176, 179, 181–187, 189–190, 194, 196, 198–199, 201, 203–204, 207–210, 214–216, 219–223, 225–231, 233–235, 237, 240–241, 251–252, 254–255, 258, 266–267, 269–275, 277, 279–290, 293, 295–296, 299, 301–302, 304–305, 310–314, 317–319, 321–322, 324, 328, 330, 335, 336, 339–340, 343–345, 349, 358–360, 365–366, 371, 374–375, 384–386, 391–392, 396, 398, 400–401, 403, 407, 409–413, 415, 419–424, 428–431, 433, 443–445, 456, 458–459 Social 2–3, 5, 7, 21–24, 37, 39, 41, 43, 45, 51, 53–59, 61–64, 67–69, 78, 80, 82, 87, 96, 103, 122–128, 130–133, 143, 153, 157, 160, 164, 168–169, 172–173, 175–176, 183–184, 186–187, 190–194, 196, 198, 201, 203–204, 209, 214–216, 218–219, 228, 231, 237–238, 246–247, 257, 261–263, 265–268, 270–271, 276, 283, 294, 298, 300–301, 310–311, 314–316, 318, 320, 325–327, 332–333, 335–338, 344–345, 347, 361–362, 365–366, 368, 374–375, 377–378, 380, 382, 390–392, 396, 400, 406, 411, 424–426, 430–431, 433, 437, 440, 442, 449–452, 455 Breakdown 33, 244–245 Closure 44, 181, 401, 408, 438

Control 31–34, 273, 278, 280, 286, 372 Inclusiveness 158 Integration 31–32, 244–245, 264 Order 11, 13, 19–20, 25–27, 29–33, 36, 42, 44, 46–47, 60, 66, 70–71, 76, 139–140, 147, 163, 174, 184, 189, 195, 226, 233, 243–245, 249–254, 256, 258, 260, 264, 269, 273, 278–279, 284, 287, 291, 299, 304–308, 313, 339–343, 346, 356, 369, 398–399, 404–405, 407, 447–448 Social psychological 36, 44–46, 58, 61–62, 66, 69, 76, 168, 172, 184, 189, 191, 195–196, 228, 238, 243–245, 252, 256–257, 261–264, 280, 287, 300–301, 304, 307, 310, 333, 336, 342, 344, 347, 362, 404 Approach 22, 24–26, 30–31, 33, 41, 67, 209, 219, 249, 253, 374, 405, 440 Beliefs 23, 54–57, 59, 63, 80, 164, 173, 192–193, 215, 218, 246, 254, 266, 269, 276, 299, 305–306, 308, 315–316, 343, 361, 380, 391, 405–406, 411, 421 Factors 26, 53 Standards 194 Societal Constituents 146 Socio-cultural, Socio-culturally 5, 27, 39, 58, 64, 85, 95, 153, 154, 156, 159, 183, 191, 198, 203, 212, 221, 260, 274, 279, 316, 323, 431 Aristocratic 97, 155, 169, 179, 211, 273 Authority 88, 97, 102, 115, 160–162, 165, 181, 188, 215, 225–228, 230–240, 251, 255, 258–259, 271–272, 275–277, 284–285, 294, 296, 302–304, 319, 323, 330–331, 333, 346, 349, 352, 354–355, 359, 371, 374, 391, 407–415, 417–419, 422–423, 428–429, 443–444, 456, 458 Backdrop 179–180 Distinction 169 Independent 102, 160–162, 181, 215, 225–228, 230–240, 251, 255, 258–259, 271–272, 275–277, 284–285, 294, 296, 302–304, 319, 323, 330–331, 333, 345, 349, 352, 354–355, 374, 391, 407–415,

index 417–419, 428–429, 443–444, 456, 458 Middle class 180, 202, 273 Refinement 169 Upgrading 163–164, 420–421, 427, 458 Sousa Santos, Boaventura de 182, 247 Sozialstaat 169, 260, 265, 344 Specialization 78, 237, 310, 345 Sports 2, 204, 207, 321, 338, 340, 433 Sprezzatura 163, 229, 337 Stakeholders 140, 421 Balancing 137, 145–146, 174, 288–290 Corporate 119, 122, 129, 146, 173, 190, 198, 220–221, 283 Representation 135, 145–146, 289 Societal 145–146 Standards 23–24, 69–70, 90, 101, 119, 124, 129, 132, 144, 159, 233–234, 264, 274–275, 339, 357–358, 367, 415, 427, 448, 457 Cognizable 21, 227, 251, 324, 371, 419 Contemporary, Contemporaneous 171, 322–323 Didactic 97, 115, 150, 162, 165, 227–228, 230, 238, 251, 270–271, 325, 331, 421, 433 Epistemic, Epistemological 97, 115, 150, 162, 165, 227–228, 230, 238, 251, 270–271, 320, 323–325, 331, 421, 433 Fiducial 119, 144, 159, 264, 274–275 Procedural-normative 142, 169, 268, 273, 286, 311, 320, 331, 335, 383, 389, 394 Publicly articulated 172, 418 Substantive-normative 23, 25–26, 85, 165, 193–194, 228, 273, 276–278, 280, 293, 299, 305–306, 308, 311–312, 320, 322–324, 331, 335, 361, 374, 379–384, 389, 394, 398, 416, 421, 425 Stichweh, Rudolf 113 Stratification system 2, 10, 13, 29–30, 32–33, 35–36, 44, 47, 68, 76, 116, 185, 189, 230, 239, 243, 245, 247–248, 252, 256–258, 264, 291, 305, 342, 411 Structure, Structuredness Structuring, Structural, Structurally 23–26, 32–33, 36, 56,

487

61, 64, 77–79, 84, 102, 108, 113–114, 116–121, 123–131, 133, 135, 137–138, 140–146, 154–156, 158–160, 166, 168–170, 173–177, 182–183, 186–188, 193, 197–204, 206–207, 209, 211, 213–215, 220–223, 226–232, 234–237, 239–241, 243, 248–249, 253, 255, 258–259, 262–264, 266–285, 288–290, 299–303, 305, 308–309, 312, 320–324, 326–328, 333, 339, 342–343, 346–347, 353–354, 358–360, 364–365, 367, 369, 370, 374, 379, 384–387, 390–395, 397–401, 403–404, 410, 412, 415–418, 421, 423, 426–429, 431, 433–435, 437, 440–442, 445, 449, 451, 453, 456, 457, 459 Accountable 181, 296 Demands 163, 396 Distinctiveness 246, 294, 304, 458 Dual 189 Invariant 1, 11–15, 55, 63, 68, 70, 153, 179, 181, 184–185, 190–191, 194, 208, 210, 216–219, 225, 233, 238, 245, 250–252, 254, 260, 286, 293–294, 310, 314, 316, 319, 330, 344–345, 349, 352, 405, 409, 411, 413–414, 424, 430, 443 Qualities 55, 63, 66, 68, 70, 76, 115, 151, 153, 161–162, 171–172, 179–181, 196, 216–217, 254, 293–294, 315, 318, 335, 349, 356, 362, 403, 406–407, 414, 424, 452 Qualities constitutive of professions, professionalism 11, 63, 115, 180–181, 225, 349, 406, 424 Reasons 164, 311, 313, 371, 420 Responsibilities 70–71, 115, 163, 167, 287, 293–297, 300, 310, 315–318, 334, 336, 340, 366, 371, 408, 411, 413, 419, 422, 424, 444 Tension 69, 152, 260, 265 Structured situations 1, 77, 113–116, 118, 126, 128–130, 133, 135, 137, 140–142, 144–146, 151–152, 160, 162, 167–169, 171–173, 175–176, 179, 181–191, 194, 196, 198–199, 201–205, 207–210, 214–216, 219–222, 225–228, 230–231, 233–235, 237, 240–241, 251–252, 254–255, 258, 266–267, 269–275, 277, 279–290, 293–296, 299, 301–302, 304–305, 310–314, 317–319,

488

index

321–322, 324, 328, 339–340, 343–345, 358–360, 365–366, 371, 374, 384–386, 391–392, 396, 398, 400–401, 403, 407–413, 415–416, 419, 422–424, 428–431, 443–445 Substantive norms, Substantive normative 1, 24, 26, 44, 46, 118–119, 136, 138, 144, 165, 169, 171, 173–175, 192–194, 196, 254, 268–269, 273–278, 280, 287, 289, 291, 293, 299–300, 305, 327, 340, 344, 350, 352, 355, 358, 360, 362–363, 365–366, 368–369, 371–374, 376–378, 391, 396, 408, 412, 426, 429, 431 Approach 23, 25, 137 Confusion 252, 375 Fidelity 21, 25, 308, 354 Guideline 22 Institutional consequences 168, 253 Outcomes 307, 309 Standards 23, 25–26, 85, 165, 193–194, 228, 273, 276–278, 280, 293, 299, 305–306, 308, 311–312, 320, 322–324, 331, 335, 361, 367, 374, 379–384, 389, 394, 398, 416, 421, 425 Terms 23, 306, 335, 374 Teubner, Gunther 183–184, 190, 236, 285, 388 Theobald, Hildegard 424 Thought experiment 76, 78, 144, 179, 187–188 Torstendahl, Rolf 27, 35, 41, 43, 45, 50, 53, 58, 140 Tribunals 83, 170, 228, 312, 366, 368 Trubek, Amy B. 203

Type relativism, Typological relativism 46, 51, 53, 56–57, 63, 67–68, 341 Value added 124, 130, 170 Valued cultural patterns 21, 44, 244, 287, 299, 306, 316, 406 Verisimilitude, Verisimilitudinous 99, 155, 167, 322, 324, 326 Vocation 2, 37, 47, 77–78, 184, 186, 203, 205, 211–212, 226, 276, 311, 313, 330, 350, 419 Waters, Malcolm 399–400 Watteau, Jean-Antoine 154 Weber, Max 3, 5, 28–29, 31, 34, 43, 62–63, 117, 203, 237, 244, 311, 345, 364, 369, 438, 449–452 Whiggish historiography, Wiggishly 3, 7–9, 11, 60, 113, 150, 403, 446, 451 Wolfe, Alan 365, 372 Women 192, 229 Workplace, Workshop, Worksite 31, 44–46, 52, 54, 65, 80, 82, 86, 89, 91–93, 100, 159, 166–168, 193, 203, 222, 229, 237, 261, 285, 299–300, 306, 309–310, 312, 333, 336, 339–340, 350, 354, 356, 358–359, 362, 364, 367, 370–371, 373, 375, 382, 393, 397, 400, 404, 406, 421, 423, 435, 437, 439–441, 443–446, 448, 450, 453–454, 456–457 Expertise 40, 51, 438, 458 Mystery 197, 231 Responsibility 51, 390, 392, 444 Worth, Charles Frederick 202, 340