46 Closure tactics

Over the years, Neo-Weberian scholars have identified a lot of tactics used by professions to secure their professional territories and ensure the privileges of being a member of the profession are conferred only on those within the profession.

Professions do this through a variety of techniques that can seem benign but are, in reality, very powerful.

Think about the physiotherapy profession today, but also back to your training, and ask yourself which of the 17 tactics listed below you have experienced or known to be used to raise the social status of physiotherapists and the profession.

1. Specialised examinations
2. Registration and restricted group membership
3. Restricting supply of their resources to increase their value (and salary)
4. Creation of scarcity by restricting training places and growth – never meeting demand
5. Monopolising supply – only allowing doctors to do certain procedures
6. Tying value to claims of altruism and ethical practice = honour
7. Separation of performance from meeting client’s needs (doctor knows best)
8. Discourses of complexity (medicine far too complex for lay person, or to be governed by others
9. High skill and exclusive training
10. Insisting students pay high personal cost to enter profession
11. Elimination of competition
12. Building group solidarity and team cooperation = occupational homogeneity
13. Processes of socialisation increasing sense of being in special club
14. Hidden curricula only accessible to those on inside
15. Illusions of a coherent identity i.e. single definitions of profession
16. Supplying services that are hard to price
17. Promoting autonomy and self-management – managing all but the worst breaches in-house