ABSTRACT
Sociologists have long understood the importance of professional groups in society. Emile Durkheim saw them as important integrating mechanisms between individuals and society in the modern industrial era. Modern society would be much benefited by these formal and informal professional associations, he reasoned, which would aggregate interests and impose self-discipline at a manageable level. 1 Talcott Parsons also stressed the growth of professions in the twentieth century, and noted their particular importance in the United States and Canada. 2 Although their influence is usually subtler than the influence of organizations and the legal system, in some ways it is more pervasive and ingrained, as we shall see when we turn to the characteristics of professionalism.
