Carriers of Knowledge Society: A Study of the Historical Emergence and Contemporary Importance of the Swedish Professions

The main objective of the study is to provide a comprehensive view of the historical emergence of the professional stratum and in detail explore its current conditions, dynamics and functions, and its varying relations to society at large.

A second objective is to use the empirical material for contributing to the theoretical development of studies of professions, esp. by proposing an alternative definition of the concept and phenomenon of profession.

The first objective implies constructing a broad, theoretically based conceptualization of the professional stratum in its entirety. We use the concept of “professional landscape”, referring to a matrix with one vertical and one horizontal axis. The vertical axis comprises three segments or historical “generations” of professional types. In mode of organization, the generations/types of professions emerge in historically distinct social formations: industrialization and a liberal state during the nineteenth century, the welfare state and the expansion of broad welfare systems during the twentieth century, and neo-liberal politics and the market as prime mechanism of production and distribution during the last decades of the twentieth century.

Funded by: The Swedish Research Council