ABSTRACT
This chapter explores that professions and professionals have a crucial role in society, which is 'to speak truth to power'. It examines the origins of the professions in the Middle Ages, in the culture of the sacred. The notion of a 'calling' gave to the early professions a relation to the sacred. Over time, professionals such as physicians and lawyers began to form associations and organisations that codified the moral principles that ought to regulate professional behaviour. The chapter discusses the transition of professionalism from the culture of the sacred to the culture of the profane by the nineteenth century, with special reference to Emile Durkheim's classic text, Professional ethics and civic morals. It focuses on professionalism in the culture of global marketisation. The great theorist of the transitions from the culture of the sacred to the culture of the profane was Emile Durkheim, the leading contemporary theorist and empirical researcher of today's culture of global marketisation is Manuel Castells.
