ABSTRACT
This chapter takes the following form: after briefly reviewing the modern analysis of professional imperialism particularly that of medicine, the author shall apply the same method to sociology and argue that, as a fellow-profession within bourgeois society, it too has imperial ambitions and opportunities. The principal danger which naivety poses is that of exaggeration; a danger which is increased to the extent that political sympathies march in line with professional enthusiasm. Without financial rewards there is, as the Ehrenreichs point out, no basis for medical imperialism. Medicine is an applied science, a fundamentally pragmatic discipline. The restrictions can only reinforce the fundamentally biological emphasis in medical ideology. In the imperialist thesis, the fact of this freedom of choice is overcome by the argument that patients are addicted to medicine and cannot therefore be described as choosing the services which they procure. Medical sociologists have rightly emphasised the heavy control that is exerted by most doctors on such occasions.
