Paradigm Conflict in the Sociology of Service Professions: Midwifery as a Case Study

Abstract

Functionalist scholars have long regarded health service professions as enjoying special privileges because of their pivotal societal function: quality care of citizens. Fusion of service ethic and technical expertise grants service professions monopoly over possession and transmission of knowledge, autonomy to organize working conditions to their own choosing, and authority over clients and allied occupational groups. Many sociologists remain critical of this functionalist position, however, maintaining that it presents an idealized picture of practising professionals who, for reasons internal or external to themselves, fail to realize their avowed service goal. In this paper I delineate three competing approaches in the post-functionalist debate on service professions - professional dominance, professional decline and patriarchal control. I use an age-old kind of service work, midwifery, to uncover theoretical shortcomings in the various stances profiled. In the third section of the paper, I blend interactionist and state perspectives to conceptualize primary and secondary data on midwives