TY - JOUR AU - Harrits, Gitte Sommer PY - 2014/03/17 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Professional Closure Beyond State Authorization JF - Professions and Professionalism JA - P&P VL - 4 IS - 1 SE - Articles DO - 10.7577/pp.567 UR - https://journals.oslomet.no/index.php/pp/article/view/567 SP - AB - <p>For decades, the Weberian approach to the study of professions has been strong, emphasizing state authorization and market monopolies as constituting what is considered a profession. Originally, however, the Weberian conception of closure, or the ways in which a profession is constituted and made separate, was broader. This article suggests a revision of the closure concept, integrating insights from Pierre Bourdieu, and conceptualizing professional closure as the intersection of social, symbolic <em>and</em> legal closure. Based on this revision, this article demonstrates how to apply such a concept in empirical studies. This is done by exploring social, symbolic and legal closure across sixteen professional degree programs. The analyses show a tendency for some overlap between different forms of closure, with a somewhat divergent pattern for legal closure. Results support the argument that we need to study these processes as an intersection of different sources of closure, including capital, lifestyles and discourse</p> ER -