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Crisis or Decline?

Problems of Legitimation and Loss of Trust in Modern Professionalism

University of Dortmund

The terms ‘licence’ and ‘mandate’ mark the characteristic of modern professionalism. On the one hand, the professional has the licence, i.e. the permission to implement specific actions that are disallowed to other actors. On the other hand, the professional is provided with the mandate to become authoritatively active. With regard to both these dimensions, a crisis of modern professionalism can be diagnosed. This crisis relating to the claim for cognitive superiority, which results from the certified acquisition of special knowledge, seems to evolve as a destructive process. The crisis relating to the claim for normative superiority, which results typically from the welfare orientation, seems to evolve as an erosion process. Both processes are imbedded in social developments that are described by modernization theoreticians by the terms ‘individualization’ and ‘pluralization’. These also apply to the professional, whereby modern professionalism is undermined not only from the outside but also from within. For the client, this crisis of professionalism becomes manifest as a creeping loss of trust in professional expertise and achievement. From a structuralistic point of view, this confidence is a non-material reward for the professional. From an actiontheory perspective, it is regarded as a necessary condition for the ‘labour consensus’ between professional and client that is threatened to be lost in the change to an ‘other’ modernity. This asymmetric relationship in favour of the professional is changing at present to become a relationship between a reflexive and insecure expertise producer and a self-confident and critical expertise consumer.

Key Words: critical client • insecure professional • legitimation • pluralization • reflexive modernity

Current Sociology, Vol. 54, No. 4, 565-578 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0011392106065088


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