DEFINING THE PROFESSIONS

On my individualist, teleological (normative) account, the members of the various professions are institutional role occupants and, as such, defined not only by recourse to their constitutive activities, but also by the collective ends served by these activities (Alexandra and Miller 1996), and, specifically, by the collective goods that they produce (or contribute to the production, maintenance, or renewal of), that is, jointly produced goods that are, and ought to be, produced and made available to the whole community because they are desirable and the members of the community have a joint right to them, for example, health, shelter, and justice. Thus surgeons engage in practices such as the cutting away of malignant tissue, and do so having as a (collective) end the preservation of health and, indeed, of life itself. Engineers design buildings, railways, and the like, and do so having as collective ends the provision of the needs-based right to shelter, the enabling of transport needed in a modern society, and so on. Similarly, the legal profession has as collective end the provision of a collective good to which all members of the community have a jointly held right, namely, justice.

Obviously some occupational groups that are not professions, nevertheless, provide collective goods. Firemen, for example, engage in activities such as hosing down buildings, and do so having as a (collective) end the extinguishing of fires; however, arguably, the occupational role of fireman is not a profession.