ABSTRACT
At the heart of every expertise is a claim to the command of an arcane knowledge that goes beyond everyday understanding. That is, expertise is usually taken to be something more than mere competence in a domain. In linguistics, for example, “competence” refers to the normal command of one's native language. Barring neurological difficulties or extreme social deprivation, everyone is expected to become a competent speaker. Expert knowledge, on the other hand, is assumed to be arcane knowledge that can only be acquired through specialized training and practice. Not everyone will get it, even among those who try. For this reason, few of us would quarrel with the characterization of expertise given by Freidson in a 1984 collection on The Authority of Experts:
There are some tasks that almost everyone in a given society at a given point of history can perform merely by virtue of being an adult who possesses such conventional skills of everyday life as being able to dial a telephone or drive an automobile, and there are others which can be performed after only brief training or instruction. There are still other tasks which require either extensive training or experience or both, and in this case, the performers are true specialists with skill and knowledge—that is, with expertise—which is distinctly theirs and not part of the normal competence of adults in general. (p. 14)
