Robert Dingwall is Professor of Sociology and Director of IGBiS at the University of Nottingham, UK. He has edited/authored many books including co-authoring Qualitative Methods and Health Policy Research (2003).

Contents: Series editor's preface; Foreword; The legacy of Parsons and Hughes; Accomplishing profession; 'Atrocity stories' and professional relationships; 'In the beginning was the work...': reflections on the genesis of occupations; A respectable profession? Sociological and economic perspectives on the regulation of professional services; Closing the market: licensure and English pharmacy, 1794-1868; Herbert Spencer and the professions: occupational ecology reconsidered; Professions and social order in a global society; After the Fall...: capitulating to the routine in professional work; In memory of Eliot Freidson: is 'professional dominance' an obsolete concept?; Endnotes; Bibliography; Indexes.

Over the past 30 years Robert Dingwall has published an influential series of articles on the professions, especially law and medicine. This represents a substantial and coherent body of work in an important sub-discipline of sociology. This volume assembles the best of these writings in one single accessible place. The ten essays are republished in their original form, each bearing the traces of the time and place it was written. In sum, they provide a fascinating account of an academic journey. They are introduced with a foreword from the author, who places the work in context and offers some thoughts about how the work might be used by scholars in developing the field, to evaluate, for example, the effects of the New Labour period on professional autonomy. The essays will be indispensable to sociologists with a general interest in the professions and to scholars of law, medicine and business.