Two Cultures--Two Ships: The Rise of Medicine's Modern Day Professionalism Movement & Sociology's Missing Analysis.

In this paper we explore a cultural divide between sociology's study of professions during the 1970s and 1980s and the subsequent rise of a professionalism movement within organized medicine -- the latter somewhat ironically taking place just as sociology's analytic interest in medicine's professionalism prospects began to wain. In turn, sociology appears to be equally disinterested in medicine's current (and ongoing) efforts to reestablish its professionalism credentials. It is as if two ships have passed in the night -- twice over. To explore these two waves of inattention, we briefly review the rise of a sociology of professions, with a particular focus on the "great debate" of the 1970s and early 1980s between Eliot Freidson and his critics. Next, we more fully explore the subsequent rise of a professionalism movement within organized medicine -- largely because its evolution has taken place largely outside of sociological scrutiny. Here, we take particular interest in the relative (and longstanding) absence of a sociological perspective within medicine's emerging discourse on professionalism, and how recent twists in this discourse may well signal a shift within medicine from an almost exclusive focus on motives (e.g., the call to physicians to rediscover their professional roots) to the recognition of how various structural conditions facing professions, including public policy, payment structures, and different organizational forms may hinder or facilitate agency --thereby offering sociology a strategic seat at the head of the analytic table. How sociology might respond to this challenge rounds out the remainder of our discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]