Professionalism and Social Change: Processes of Differentiation Within, Between and Beyond Professions

The book examines and discusses conditions for professional work, including employment situations and working conditions. This is done via various empirical accounts, in which the contributors discuss professionalism and changes in professionalism. The authors illustrate what professionalism currently entails and how the conditions for employment and work are changing. As the processes of change, both driven by and impacting the professional labour market, pose new theoretical challenges, the chapters also suggest that different concepts need to complement/guide further analysis and comprehension of contemporary professionalism, to shed light on the previously mentioned processes of differentiation. The book's original contribution to this debate is to propose, define, and empirically apply an analytical framework that can provide powerful tools to understand the changes occurring in professional work.

As such, this edited volume will help scholars to read the changes in professionalism empirically while creating bridges with nearby fields, such as the sociology of education, sociology of work, industrial relations, and management and gender studies, using simple conceptual tools that can also be understood beyond the specialist debate on professions and professionalism.