What does the concept of professional professionalism mean today - lloyddavis/ckop GitHub Wiki

The discussion centred around the extreme fluidity of contemporary definitions of profession, and, at the same time, the ubiquity of the term professionalism; this led us into the value of professional status.

We discussed how, on the one hand, professionalism can be understood, if we adopt a Foucaultian perspective, as a disciplinary discourse which facilitates the exploitation of labour. I pointed to its use in the legal profession which had undergone dramatic diversification apparently eroding the closure practices which were fundamental to its professional project, but where, in practice, diverse lawyers tended to be restricted to work which is characterised by few or none of the ‘traits’ associated with the classical profession. In other words, the conceptual opacity of profession/ professionalism, makes it possible for elite institutions and their powerful members to engage in a ‘facial’ democratisation, while retaining professional privileges for themselves. And this is achieved by recruiting ‘insecure overachievers’ (predominantly women but increasingly other ‘outsiders’) who will act as the ‘grinders’ in the now largely industrialised ‘professional’ work place, subscribing to the ethic of total commitment in the belief that they are ‘professionals’. Contemporary professionalism in such sites therefore offers us a lens through which to examine how a toxic alliance between neo-liberal ideologies and discourses of ‘natural’ difference works to reinforce ‘natural hierarchies’ in the workplace – and beyond.