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By Mike Saks
The significance and effect of professions in public lifestyles has grown more and more over the 20 th century however the query of whether or not they subordinate their very own self-interests to the general public curiosity has but to be competently researched inside of an important sociological viewpoint. In Professions and the general public curiosity Mike Saks develops a theoretical and methodological framework for assessing expert teams in Western society. The empirical applicability of this framework is confirmed with specific connection with a singular case research of the reaction of the scientific career to acupuncture within the 19th and 20th centuries. Professions and the general public curiosity might be of significant curiosity to all teachers and scholars of social coverage, sociology, and scientific sociology in addition to to specialist teams and their contributors.
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Professions and the Public Interest: Medical Power, Altruism and Alternative Medicine
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Additional info for Professions and the Public Interest: Medical Power, Altruism and Alternative Medicine
Example text
Conducting potentially harmful clinical trials without the consent of the patients involved, for instance, could be justified by utilitarians on the grounds that the data obtained would bring about ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ through the development of more effective medical procedures (Campbell 1975). Equally, the emphasis placed by political scientists on majority opinion in decisionmaking in health and other fields opens the way for people to express selfish preferences in the process of resource allocation which could lead to the infringement of the protection given to minority rights in liberal-democratic societies (Dryberg 1992).
Like neo-Weberian accounts, Marxist studies in this area have far too frequently consisted merely of the uncritical reiteration of anti-professional beliefs. Key terms in the debate have been either inadequately conceptualized or, worse still, not defined at all. Empirical evidence has also only sporadically been used to sustain the positions maintained. In light of these shared failings, therefore, the Marxist and neo-Weberian critique of professional claims to subordinate self-interest to the common good is paradoxically little more firmly grounded than the more benevolent view of professions taken by the much castigated authors working within the taxonomic perspective.
Yet when he goes on to criticize such arguments, further problems arise. In brief, Johnson is sceptical of the claim that professions serve the public interest, because the application of professional codes does not have uniformly beneficial consequences for different sections of the community. Johnson may or may not be right to accept Rueschemeyer’s argument that the legal profession, for example, provides services which are ‘irrelevant to those groups in the society who seek radical change in the existing order’ (Johnson 1972: 25) and that ‘the values and organisation of that profession will vary in their consequences for different class or status groups’ (Johnson 1972: 34).