ABSTRACT
Approaches to the analysis of professions in the general sociological literature and within medical sociology in the case of health professions share a linked limitation. In the former case there is a tendency in the broader academic discipline to consider professions, however in detail defined, as discretely bounded, successful occupations. This common assumption is then linked in the second case to a medico-centric bias, through an arguably understandable but disproportionate focus, in the United Kingdom at least, upon the medical profession. There are notable exceptions in the broader academic field to these initial remarks, evident for example most recently in the emphasis by Abbott (1988) upon the systematic interconnectedness of professions in their quest for jurisdictions of control. Within medical sociology, Stacey (1988) in particular locates her analysis of biomedicine firmly within the evolution of both the health-related and the broader social division of labour. However, despite these and other exceptions, our insights into the construction of expert labour have accumulated extensively through the study of ‘end-process’ occupational forms or outcomes. In particular, across the spectrum of health occupations an academic division of labour has also given separate and varied levels of attention to doctors, allied health professions and alternative practitioners rather than focused on the frameworks which inextricably link and shape their individual histories.
