Do Professions Remain Analytically Distinct From Non-Professional Occupations?

Abstract

Recent debates in sociological literature have questioned whether ‘professions’ and ‘non-professional occupations’ remain analytically distinct concepts. This article engages with longstanding scholarship on work, occupations and professions to address this question. Drawing primarily on the work of Adams (2018), Saks (2021) and their associated neo-Weberian approaches, I argue that professions are socially constructed and historically, geographically and temporally contingent. As such, the contemporary macrostructural conditions (re)shaping professional work in the Anglo-American context—most notably emerging subjective forms of precariousness—should not be interpreted as signalling the demise of professions. Rather, they represent the latest iteration of professional work and its ongoing effort to maintain hegemony amid shifting economic structures. Although professional and non-professional occupations appear to be converging in some of the respects traditionally separating them, I argue that professions remain analytically distinct from non-professions. This distinction persists because professionals continue to benefit from the economic and symbolic advantages they have secured through state legitimation, social closure, and the enduring cultural representations of themselves and their work that promote the ideological ‘common-senseness’ of their elevated social and economic status. The article therefore concludes that professions are not experiencing a ‘crisis’ but are instead entering a new phase of their ongoing reconstruction.