Editing Profession (section)

== Sociology ==
[[Émile Durkheim]] argued that professions created a stable society by providing structure separate from the state and the military that was less inclined to create [[authoritarianism]] or [[anomie]] and could create altruism and encourage social responsibility and altruism. This [[Structural functionalism|functionalist]] perspective was extended by [[Talcott Parsons]] who considered how the function of a profession could change in responses to changes in society.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last1=Dent|first1=Mike|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EE-TDAAAQBAJ|title=The Routledge Companion to the Professions and Professionalism|last2=Bourgeault|first2=Ivy Lynn|last3=Denis|first3=Jean-Louis|last4=Kuhlmann|first4=Ellen|date=2016-07-01|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-69948-4|language=en|access-date=4 May 2021|archive-date=6 March 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230306085841/https://books.google.com/books?id=EE-TDAAAQBAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>{{Rp|17}}<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Parsons |first=Talcott |date=1939 |title=The Professions and Social Structure |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2570695 |journal=Social Forces |volume=17 |issue=4 |pages=457–467 |doi=10.2307/2570695 |issn=0037-7732}}</ref>

[[Esther Lucile Brown]], an anthropologist, studied various professions starting the 1930s while working with Ralph Hurlin at the [[Russell Sage Foundation]]. She published ''Social Work as a Profession'' in 1935, and following this publications studying the work of engineers, nurses, medical physicians and lawyers. In 1944, the Department of Studies in the Professions was created at the Russell Sage Foundation with Brown as its head.<ref name=":02">{{Cite book |last1=Bloom |first1=Samuel William |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b_EH7ZBnm5EC&dq=0%E2%80%9319%E2%80%93507232%E2%80%934&pg=PA8 |title=The Word as Scalpel: A History of Medical Sociology |last2=Bloom |first2=Samuel W. |date=2002 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-507232-7 |language=en |access-date=4 December 2021 |archive-date=6 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230306085820/https://books.google.com/books?id=b_EH7ZBnm5EC&dq=0%C3%A2%C2%80%C2%9319%C3%A2%C2%80%C2%93507232%C3%A2%C2%80%C2%934&pg=PA8 |url-status=live }}</ref>{{Rp|183}}

Theories based on [[conflict theories]] following [[Karl Marx|Marx]] and [[Max Weber|Weber]] consider how professions can act in the interest of their own group to secure social and financial benefits were espoused by Johnson (''Professions and Powers,'' 1972) and Larson (''The Rise of Professionalism'', 1977). One way that a profession can derive financial benefits is limiting the supply of services.<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|18}}

Theories based on discourse, following [[George Herbert Mead|Mead]] and applying ideas of [[Jean-Paul Sartre|Sartre]] and [[Martin Heidegger|Heidegger]] look at how the individual's understanding of reality influence the role of professions. These viewpoints were espoused by [[Peter L. Berger|Berger]] and [[Thomas Luckmann|Luckmann]] (''[[The Social Construction of Reality]]'', 1966).<ref name=":0" />{{Rp|19}}

=== System of professions ===
[[Andrew Abbott (sociologist)|Andrew Abbott]] constructed a sociological model of professions in his book ''The System of Professions''. Abbott views professions as having ''jurisdiction'' over the right to carry out tasks with different possession vying for control of jurisdiction over tasks.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Abbott|first=Andrew|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WWzRAgAAQBAJ|title=The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor|date=2014-02-07|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-18966-6|language=en|access-date=4 May 2021|archive-date=6 March 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230306085822/https://books.google.com/books?id=WWzRAgAAQBAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>

A profession often possesses an ''expert knowledge system'' which is distinct from the profession itself. This abstract system is often not of direct practical use but is rather optimized for logical consistency and rationality, and to some degree acts to increase the status of the entire profession. One profession may seek control of another profession's jurisdiction by challenging it at this academic level. Abbott argues that in the 1920s the [[Psychiatry|psychiatric]] profession tried to challenge the legal profession for control over society's response to criminal behavior. Abbott argues the formalization of a profession often serves to make a jurisdiction easier or harder to protect from other jurisdictions: general principles making it harder for other professions to gain jurisdiction over one area, clear boundaries preventing encroachment, fuzzy boundaries making it easier for one profession to take jurisdiction over other tasks.

Professions may expand their jurisdiction by other means. Lay education on the part of professions as in part an attempt to expand jurisdiction by imposing a particular understanding on the world (one in which the profession has expertise). He terms this sort of jurisdiction ''public jurisdiction''. ''Legal jurisdiction'' is a monopoly created by the state legislation, as applies to law in many nations.