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Public Good and Professogenesis

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Theorising Professions

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Abstract

Professional public good—the first of the two bundled claims of historic professionalism (goodness and expertise)—is problematised in the first part of this chapter, questioning the idea of professional benefit. This normative claim from early-modernity formed the rationale of government outsourcing certain areas of work and knowledge application. Professional groups promised to only benefit society, avoid profiteering and agreed to self-manage poor conduct by their members. Several strategies strengthened these claims: double-denial of anything but benefit, occupational anti-conquest narratives masking competition, and combining science and goodness narratives even for non-science professions. The discussion then identifies professogenic impacts of professions. That is, adverse effects from the presence, absence, mistakes, involvement or miss-positioning of professions. These changes and events contribute to the discursive unbundling of professional goodness.

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  1. Waikato University, Napier, New Zealand

    Edgar A Burns

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Burns, E.A. (2019). Public Good and Professogenesis. In: Theorising Professions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27935-6_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27935-6_7

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