Professions and the Public Interest

<p>The importance and influence of professions in public life has grown increasingly over the twentieth century but the question of whether they subordinate their own self-interests to the public interest has yet to be adequately researched within a major sociological perspective. In <em>Professions and the Public Interest</em> Mike Saks develops a theoretical and methodological framework for assessing professional groups in Western society. The empirical applicability of this framework is demonstrated with particular reference to a novel case study of the response of the medical profession to acupuncture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.<br><br><em>Professions and the Public Interest</em> will be of great interest to all lecturers and students of social policy sociology and medical sociology as well as to professional groups and their members.</p>