CHANGING PROFESSIONAL FORMS 177pessimism’ (Aronowitz and DiFazio 1995; Burris 1993; Ehrenreich and Ehren-
reich 1978; Haug 1973; Johnson 1972; Webb 1999). But whatever the longer-
term prognosis, there is an underlying general agreement that successive waves
of restructuring have produced a much more fragmented, polarized, and
contested system of professions in which the dominant occupational strategy,
organizational mechanism, and work identity is struggling to maintain its
position.
As a result, what Freidson (2001) calls the third logic of professional work
organization and control in advanced capitalist societies seems to be in some
considerable trouble, if not terminal decay. He argues these essentially struc-
tural changes in political and economic control will have a major impact on
the cultural legitimacy and identity of ‘professional work’ and the people
who perform it. Capital-led marketization on the one hand and state-led
rationalization on the other have fundamentally weakened the credibility and
sustainability of a once dominant, professional ideology and morality that
is ultimately grounded in notions of judgemental indeterminacy and task
autonomy protected both by the law and by quasi-judicial administrative con-
ventions. Reviving this compromised ideology of professional independence
and objectivity becomes doubly difficult when the system of professions is
racked by material and status conflicts and increasingly divided into a rela-
tively protected, elite core and an increasingly exposed periphery. The decline
in institutionalized trust consequent on these developments is likely to have
fateful consequences for the ways in which professional workers see themselves
and are seen by the rest of society.
Recent work in the area of professional ideology, culture, and identity (Dent
and Whitehead 2002; Fournier 1999; Freidson 1994; Sennett 1998) would
suggest that the conventional public image of the professional (as someone
who is naturally trusted, widely respected and well-rewarded in return for
expert knowledge and skill wisely deployed to protect the collective good
and enhance individual well-being) is in desperate need of a radical over-
haul. Indeed, many have argued that this stereotype of the professional ‘no
longer exists ... swept aside by the relentless, cold, instrumental logic of the
global market, and with it the old order has been upturned’ (Dent and
Whitehead 2002: 1). In its place, we are offered an ideological and cultural
simulacrum of ‘professional performativity’ that simulates many of the old
values and norms but within a fundamentally transformed institutional envi-
ronment and organizational context where the power of managerialism and
management seems unassailable. Yet, this new ‘identity formation’ does little
to soothe, much less appease, the deep-seated uncertainties and ambiguities
that remain for the professional worker and for the client or customer alike.
Once we accept that the stereotype of the ‘true professional’ has been funda-
mentally compromised, how then is institutionalized trust, as the structural
cornerstone and cultural lodestone of professionalism, to be generated and