ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book employs theory explicitly to examine the metaphors used to analyze professions, as classically illustrated by the notion of 'turf battles'. In conceptual metaphor theory, metaphors are considered to be conceptual by nature. The book develops a more comprehensive account of occupations and their relationship to analyses of professions, and provides a more fluid and productive direction for the sociology of professions, based on the ecological tradition. It examines the position of women in the legal profession with reference to the historic institutional, cultural and political coupling between Law and Justice - in which the latter has for long been metaphorically identified and represented as a woman. The book then discusses the 'engineers of the soul' by focusing on the teaching profession seen through metaphors in China and Iran.
