New ideas on the division of labor

Abstract

Thinking about stratification reached a watershed with the realization of the limits of status attainment. For organizations, the watershed was the discovery of the myriad ways environments impinge on organizational realities. For deviance, it was the importance of others' reactions for defining, even determining, abnormality and criminality. For the study of politics, it was the recognition that voting behavior and electoral politics are bounded by larger political economies. With the publication of these two books, especially The System of Professions by Andrew Abbott, the watershed for thinking about the professions, and possibly the division of labor in general, is nigh. Both volumes are clearly written and wide ranging in their intellectual concerns; both explore in interesting ways what makes the organization of expert work stable and what makes it change, and who benefits from that organization. But it is difficult to speak of these books in the same breath. Eliot Freidson's Professional Powers is idiographic, mainly nonhistorical, centered on the United States, very focused on the relation of knowledge to power. Abbott's book is nomothetic, history laden, comparative, generally focused on the division of expert labor. They are animals of the same species but with very different stripes.