Disabling Professions (Open Forum) [Paperback]

Although written in 1977 this still carries the heavy weight title, principally because society has not moved forward as much as we would like to think in over 35 years. More importantly we are led to believe it has progressed but in reality it has been in a form of stasis since 1979. This is about to change.

The capture of everyday life activities by surgeons, lawyers, teachers and social workers has entailed the mystification of social processes. This book explains why professions which provide help have colonised knowledge and then shut out any other contenders. It is a companion to Foucault although written I would hazard wihout knowledge of his work.

It has been a long slow road but the creation of specialisms is an arduous process through manufacturing specialist guilds, limiting intake and further through the creation of a rarified language to ensure only the initiates can pass the exam. This allows the initiate to go through a process where they begin to feel their specialism so they can act the part. It also allows them to gain hold of large amounts of state resources.

Surgeons have moved from being barbers and sawbones into someone inhabiting the art worlds in creating body sculptures via plastic surgery, botox etc. Teachers are involved in defining in what is socially useful and endow their students with social capital, a term not used in this book but it is deemed more important than the knowledge imparted. The public school is the apotheosis of knowledge but is more important for the stamp and the peers than the papers. Lawyers have moved from dealing with criminal issues to becoming litigation experts over life/death, status, and trade union rights.

None of these professions were created through democratic election, their opinions never fully defined in relation to the greater good. Therefore what is the purpose of the law, why do we educate, what type of families do we wish to produce. Everything is fudged in terms of debate. Perhaps happiness should be a decider, an issue Illich introduces.

These professions rest upon achieving a certain academic status, a form of socialisation. Their legitimacy is taken for granted based on various unvocalise assumptions. They define what can and cannot be discussed in the public realm through their various forms of litigation/pressure groups.

Post War Social Workers have gained the right to intervene within family structures and pronounce appropriate child rearing practices. They have become moral arbiters sanctioned by the state. The notion of what constitutes appropriate child rearing has been part of an unwritten cannon and is open to contention; behaviourism, attachment,discipline and punishment, gene scripts. These debates are never aired in public and instead celebrity mush is spoon fed where these ideas emerge by default- Kerry Katona (alcoholism, drug misuse, child rearing) Rooney/Giggs (Fidelity and fatherliness). However the debates are ersatz, sterile and without any rigour all based on assumption and projection.

All of these professional groups rising have been undertaken without public discussion because they are deemed to be part of the service industry. These provide various forms of care. Care is linked to love and no one would question the need for more love, care and support.

This book is easily digestible in exposing the ideological forms of these various forms of care. These hide other motives such as power to control, define and shape agendas and take power away from individuals. Decision making is then undertaken by a technocractic elite. The consumer is essentially divorced from the selection process. They are only provided with the end verdict after having had their case discussed. The forms of teaching are not open to be challenged or what is being taught, whether it is socially useful and whether it can be utilised. The use of the law to settle disputes is also never questionned. Doctors are now linked to the science of genetics where all answers around explanation are being reduced to genetic encoders. This ensures vast resources are then utilised to find the genes so a medical model becomes enshrined as a norm. Explanations that codify disaese within this model are provided with vast resources. The codification of disease ensures vast resources are being spent to classify then eradicate these categories regardless whether it exists in fact. This is not just a social construction as these technocracts have defined it.

This book is thought provoking and stimulating needing to be read, discussed and new appraisals sought before we all sink into a soggy mess of assumptions without any form of ground basis.

Marx's theory of alienation applied to the professions as they make us all into consumers providing the "care" we appear to desperately crave and are led to believe we need all at a huge personal and social cost.

This is the power of love.

Used this book time and time again when carrying out my undergraduate degree in Professional Practice. Fully expect to continue it's use in Masters level study. Although slightly outdated in some of the scenarios, it presents the fundamental ideologies when discussing 'what makes a profession'.

The professions e.g doctors, lawyers teachers, social workers are more akin to a priesthood. Their prescription for the masses is non negotiable what they say goes. The masses for their part have given up responsibility for themselves and would rather have the state make decisions for them.