ABSTRACT
It is part of the formal ideology of health and welfare that services, and the professionals who staff them, exist for the benefit of the wider society in general and of the individual service user specifically. This ‘service ethic’ has formed a key element in sociological attempts to construct a concept of professionalism (Durkheim 1957; Greenwood 1957; Carr-Saunders and Wilson 1962; Etzioni 1969). Such a picture of professionals as the servants of society has been repeatedly challenged, from the stringent attacks of Shaw (1911) through the polemics of Wootton (1959) and Illich (1971, 1976), to a corresponding reappraisal of the concept of professionalism within sociology (Freidson 1970; T.J.Johnson 1972; Wilding 1982).
