Professions and the Public Interest: Medical Power, Altruism and Alternative Medicine (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780415018050)

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 Professions and the Public Interest 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.

Professions and the Public Interest 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.

Author: Mike Saks
ISBN-10: 0415018056
ISBN-13: 9780415018050
Publisher: Routledge
Language: English
Published: 11/24/1994
Pages: 328
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.24lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.88d