Professionals, Experts, Intellectuals
The concept of professional is one of the key terms in sociological vocabulary (Goode, 1957; Wilensky, 1964). Seminal texts in the study of professions are Carr-Saunders and Wilson's (1933) classic work The Professions, followed a few decades later by Johnson (1972), Larson (1977), Abbott (1988) and the works of Friedson (1986, 2001). There are many definitions of professionals, but here we use the definition of Leicht and Fennell (2008):
We define professional work as occupational incumbents: (a) whose work is defined by the application of theoretical and scientific knowledge to tasks tied to core societal values (health, justice, financial status, etc.), (b) where the terms and conditions of work traditionally command considerable autonomy and freedom from oversight, except by peer representatives of the professional occupation, and (c) where claims to exclusive or nearly exclusive control over a task domain are linked to the application of the knowledge imparted to professionals as part of their training (Leicht and Fennell, 2008: 431).
In addition, the concept of professionalization is defined by Leicht and Fennell (2001: 8) as “the result of a successful professional project; an occupation is professionalized to the extent that it successfully defines a set of work tasks as their exclusive domain, and successfully defends that domain against competing claims.” Professionalization is thus the process whereby a particular social group is capable of monopolizing a specific domain of expertise and erecting entry barriers in the form of demands for formal education and other credentials to be admitted into the profession (Larson, 1977). The term deprofessionalization denotes the inverse process, wherein particular groups are unable to maintain the regulation and control of their domain of jurisdiction. Deprofessionalization may be caused by many processes, including political struggle between the state and international political bodies or professional organizations, or pressure from the market. Deprofessionalization is generally depicted in the literature as a painful loss of status and control over financial resources. In the present economic regime, based on financial governance and managerial initiatives, the professions are under siege and at times century-long traditions are displaced by what Leicht and Fennell (2008) call neoentrepreneurial ideologies. Freidson (2001, Chapter 8) is even talking about the “assault on professionalism” in the new economic regime. Other studies are less negative regarding the future of professions, showing that professional groups are in fact capable of accommodating, for instance, auditing procedures within their domain of jurisdiction and enacting new professional roles for themselves as new managerial initiatives are implemented (McGivern and Ferlie, 2007). Brint (1994) emphasizes that the ancien régime of professionalism, based on what he calls “social trustee professionalism,” is being displaced by an “expert professionalism,” a form of professionalism paired with managerialist doctrines and a strong emphasis on market value:
The shift from social trustee professionalism to expert professionalism has led to a splintering of the professional stratum in relation to the market value of different forms of “expert knowledge.” There is the real possibility in this split for the eventual consolidation of the professional stratum into a more exclusive status category, since “formal knowledge” implies gradations in the value, efficacy, and validity of different forms of knowledge … In this process of splitting, the technical and moral aspirations of professionalism have tended to separate and to become associated, respectively, with the “core” and the “periphery” of the stratum (Brint, 1994: 11).
Brint (1994: 39) dates the birth of expert professionalism to the early 1960s: “Beginning in the 1960s, social trustee professionalism came under increasingly attack for its apparent lack of correspondence to the organizational realities of professional life.” In Brink's (1994) view, social trustee professionalism is an outmoded form of professionalism and today we are seeing the emergence of an expert culture.
Brint (1994) is suggesting that while professionals used to be intellectuals they are increasingly restraining their role to a narrower specialist field, i.e., they are becoming experts. The relationships among the concepts of professionals, intellectuals and experts are far from trivial. The concept of intellectuals was used in the medieval period to denote a category of individuals enjoying freedom from regular work (Le Goff, 1993). These literate scholars (from Greek, skholē) were defined in opposition to the illiterate, being referred to by a variety of terms, including illiterati, indocti, laici, and perhaps more instructively, rustici and idiotae (Stock, 1983: 27). Over the course of the centuries, these intellectuals were part of a small, exclusively male category that engaged first in theological discussions but increasingly took part in wider social discussions and in the development of the natural sciences. The enlightenment project positioned the intellectual centrally in the advancement of human reason, and until at least the middle of the twentieth century the intellectual maintained a rather well-defined and respected role in society. Foucault claims that we are no longer seeing the universal intellectual (Jean-Paul Sartre being perhaps the archetypical intellectual of this kind) but what Foucault calls specific intellectuals. These specific intellectuals are no longer spokesmen for universal values but for their “own particular expertise and situation” (Deleuze, 1995: 87–8). The specific intellectual is then gradually transformed into an expert. This new image of the intellectual has been debated in the social sciences (Said, 1994; Osborne, 2004). Julien Benda's (1969) The Treason of the Intellectuals (first published in 1928) is indicative of the change from universal to specific intellectuals postulated by Foucault. Benda's critical account of the intellectuals’ failure to quench brute nationalism during the First World War and his emphasis on the increased reliance on scientific procedures to support any statement made in the public sphere led to his conclusion that intellectuals no longer play a key role in setting the standards for discussions in modern society. “To-day all political ideologies claim to be founded on science, to be the result of a ‘precise observation of facts,’” Benda (1969: 28) writes. Rather than drawing on universal values and human interests, vested interests intervene and render the intellectual obsolete. Benda's (1969) daunting view of the future of intellectuals has been a persistent theme in the discussion about intellectuals.
While the intellectual has been portrayed in somewhat bleak terms, the present age is undoubtedly, as suggested by Brint (1994), an “age of expert.” As opposed to the intellectual, more concerned about maintaining discussions and posing adequate questions, the expert is prone to claim to have the answers. Herein lies also the standing concerns regarding expertise, namely to define its limits and adequacy outside of narrowly defined fields. “An expert is someone who doesn't want to learn anything new, because then he wouldn't be an expert,” Harry Truman (cited in McCloskey, 2006: 73) once claimed. Experts are not of necessity concerned with speculating about the validity of entrenched fields of expertise and therefore they may easily become technocrats, speaking on behalf of specific technologies or methods rather than societal and human interests. This is also why experts are regarded as being problematic in a social and organizational setting (Turner, 2001; Reed, 1996): they have the credibility of the intellectual without of necessity sharing the universal, humanistic values that the intellectual has (in the classic model stipulated by, e.g., Julien Benda) and they are therefore a potential concern for democratic open society. Shenhav's (1999) study of what he called the “efficiency craze” as the new emerging engineering class implemented scientific management principles in a variety of settings – eminently parodied by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times (1936), introducing the “feeding-machine” designed to rationalize the conveyor-belt worker's lunch – is indicative of how technocratic expertise without thoughtful reflections about the validity and meaning of the operations may easily lead to undesirable outcomes.
When defining experts, it is evident that professionals and experts have much in common. In Turner's account:
Experts who are members of groups whose expertise is generally acknowledged, such as physicists; experts whose personal expertise is tested and accepted by individuals, such as the authors of self-help books; members of groups whose expertise is accepted only by particular groups, like theologians whose authority is accepted only by their sect; experts whose audience is the public but who derive their support from subsidies from parties interested in their acceptance of their opinions as authoritative; and experts whose audience is bureaucrats with discretionary power, such as experts in public administration whose ...