Introduction
What this book sets out to do — Why we need more social theory in physiotherapy — A brief primer on the sociology of the professions — Sociology currently in physiotherapy — Closing words
Most people living in high-income countries are now so familiar with the idea of professions that it would be hard to imagine life without them. Imagine what life might be like without lawyers, doctors, architects, and plumbers. And yet, professions as we know them today are a relatively recent invention. They prosper mostly in affluent countries with large urban populations, but even here they are only one of a number of different ways of organising society. Given this, the professions have achieved extraordinary levels of privilege over the last 150 years, with medicine being the paradigm case. Physiotherapy[1] is not far behind though. With three quarters of a million practitioners worldwide, access to protective legislation, subsidised training and practice, physiotherapy is a model of a modern health profession.The story of how physiotherapy arrived at this point in its history was the subject of The End of Physiotherapy [2], and this book focused on a critical history of the profession. But there is another story to be told about physiotherapy that is becoming pressingly important, and it draws on an entirely new body of literature known as the sociology of the professions. When I say new, I mean new to physiotherapists. Because, search as you might, you will find very few references to the material presented in this book in the physiotherapy literature, even though it explores subjects that are at the very heart of the profession’s contemporary issues and challenges.
This book, then, is an analysis of physiotherapy through the lens of the sociology of the professions. It explores what the professions are, what they do in society, what’s good about them, and what’s bad. It applies these ideas to physiotherapy so that we can better understand the issues the profession is now facing. And the book concludes with some challenging and, some might say, heretical recommendations for where physiotherapy goes next, as we all adapt to the post-professional era.
- I use the term physiotherapy throughout the book to refer to the discipline and professional body. I have done this to reserve the terms physical therapy for the action of performing the physical therapies. In this book, my argument is based on the principle that anyone can perform the physical therapies, but only recognised members of the profession enclosure can be physiotherapists. The physical therapies refer to those practices of therapeutic touch, mobilisation and manipulation; forms of movement and exercise used for health; as well as the use of various therapeutic agents like heat and cold, electromagnetism, water and light, that have been part of human civilisation since the dawn of humanity. ↵
- Nicholls DA. The end of physiotherapy. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge; 2017. ↵
