“Turf battles” or “class struggles”: the internationalization of the market for expertise in the “professional society” (original) (raw)

1995, Accounting, Organizations and Society

This article offers a critical reflection on the theses of Pe&n (Ibe Rise of Bofessional Society: England Since 1880, London: Routledge, 1989) and Abbott (l'be System of Apfessions, Chicago: University of Chicago FVcss, 19&Q, and compares these with empirIcaI observations conducted by the author (Lkzalay, 1991, Modem hw RevceW; 1992, Marcbands de droit, la restwcturution de l'o&rs jutjdique intsrnutfonulpar les multinationales du dtwft, Paris: Payard) on the international market for business k+w. As a way of illuminating the world of the professionals, the article begins by emphasi&g how macro&wry and micro-sociology complement and compete with each other; in the lirst, the profes-sionaI society appears as the motor and product of the WeIfarc State; in the second, it is the permanent confrontations between sum&s which contributes to a continuaI redcfintkm of these &Ids of practices. These two dimensions are inherent in, if not exacerbated by, the opening of frontiers. However, both approaches negkct the effects of class: the recruitment practices and sodal authority of these merent groups of professionab. These fiekls symbolic power are also one of the prlndpaI sites of reproduction-and of hierarchization-of the different forms of sodaI capital. It is perhaps there that one should seek the expIanation for the paradox noted by Perkin: that the shattering of a professionaI society coincides with its triumph, or at least its gewtalization. ' In fact, this hypothesis of a division of the "professional society" between public and private sectors scarcely applies to countries like France where professional elites circulate cheerfully from one to the other (Marceau, 1989) or to the United States where, according to Gordon (1984) they "sutTer" a kind of "institutional schizophrenia" (cf. Auetbach, 1986). * See, for example, the questions raised by the application to Germany of this concept of profession, as conceived by North American sociology (Cocks % Jarausch, 1990, p. 10; McClelland, 1991). 3 Nonetheless, ifwe take the example of law, this split is not produced along the lines of the public-private opposition, but between big firms working for the international market and small practices concerned almost exclusively with the everyday problems of a clientele of individti property tmnmctions, divorce, traflic accidents.. What is in the process of taking shape suggests, rather, a divergence of mtetests between defenders of national traditions and partisans of entry on to the big international market.