ABSTRACT
Claiming membership of an official occupation involves something more than checking a box on a census form. That act does represent a process of self-definition, of identification as an engineer rather than a production manager, a director of a small company rather than a jobbing plumber, or a part-time nurse rather than a housewife. At the same time, it is a claim to belong to a group whose boundaries are socially rather than individually defined. To represent oneself as a member of an occupation is to assert that one should be included in a category of people who share some distinctive skill.
