ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the organizations of producers which we call professions were indispensable for the constitution of new markets of mainly intangible and rather exceptional products. It emphasizes the essential import and importance of cognitive unification for professional commonality. The chapter suggests that professional identity is experienced as shared expertise and therefore involves a sense of at least cognitive superiority with regard to the layman or the irregular practitioner. In the older modern professions, as we know, corporate control ultimately succeeded in regulating competition and in establishing some standards of group behavior. Anti-market and anti-capitalist principles were incorporated in the professions' task of organizing for a market because they were elements which supported social credit and the public's belief in professional ethicality. The chapter implies that the "ideal of service"—for which there is scant empirical evidence—translates at the individual level into a work ethic which places intrinsic value on work.
