ABSTRACT
The chapter makes the following inter-connected argument: Michael Young has in his own work, and in his joint work with Johan Muller, about the professions and the professional knowledge which they define as the ‘trinary’: (i) over-stretched his knowledge argument by assuming a liner and unidirectional relationship between the disciplines and the professions, and glossed over the constitutive role of work in the development of professional expertise; and (ii) been under-attentive to changes in the organisation of work and their implications for the deployment, and creation, of professional knowledge. In contrast, the chapter introduces the concepts of: (i) immaterial labour to explain why work is increasingly concerned with the circulation and generation of knowledge in interprofessional contexts, which can include clients and user-groups; and (ii) recontextualisation to explain the nature of the knowledge produced in those contexts. It concludes by introducing a recontextualised model of professional knowledge and formation and explaining how it supports the development of an outward and networked conception of the role of professions and professional activity.
