Challenging Dualism: Public Professionalism in 'Troubled' Times

• Published in: Sociology (Oxford) Vol. 40; no. 2; pp. 277 - 295
• Main Authors: Gleeson, Denis, Knights, David
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge SAGE Publications 01.04.2006; Cambridge University Press
• Subjects: Agency; Civics; Dualism; Empowerment; Government services; Management audits; Managerialism; Neoliberalism; Nurses; Organizational structure; Policy analysis; Policy Reform; Professional practices; Professionalism; Professionals; Public Sector; Reform; Social structures; Sociology; Studies; Tutoring; Victims
• ISSN: 0038-0385; 1469-8684
• DOI: 10.1177/0038038506062033

In recent decades neo-liberal reform has significantly impacted on public sector professionals. Sociological interest in such impact has tended to focus on professionals as subjects of such reform: as either de-professionalized 'Victims' who feel oppressed by the structures of control or strategic operators seeking to contest the spaces and contradictions of market managerial and audit cultures. Such a dualism is reflective of wider separations of agency and structure that have plagued sociology down the years. Our approach challenges modernizing agendas which seek to re-professionalize or empower professionals without examining the changing conditions of their work or the neo-liberal conditions which frame their practice. It also questions the policy outcomes of reconciling the dualism between agency and structure through a 'third way' politics that purports to remove the tensions and conflicts between professions and various stakeholders, the private and the public, and markets and civic society.