Colony and Empire or The System of Professions

Colony and Empire: The Capitalist Transformation of the American West

Author: William G Robbins

"A compelling survey of the ways capitalist ideology and institutions transformed the West. Few historians of the American West have written as provocatively and as forcefully as Robbins."—James P. Ronda, author of Astoria and Empire

"For one hundred and fifty years, the pace of historical change in the American West has been rapid and disorienting. This book gives us the map and the compass we need to chart our course through the confusing terrain of the Western past and present. Drawing our attention to the central role of capitalism as a shaper of attitudes and social relations, Robbins offers us a new and valuable vantage point. His knowledge is as wide-ranging as his style is fair and compassionate. This book will be frequently consulted by historians, and-one hopes-by residents of what is proving to be the nation's most contested region."—Patricia Nelson Limerick, author of The Legacy of Conquest

Author Biography: William G. Robbins, professor of history at Oregon State University, is author of Hard Times in Paradise: Coos Bay, Oregon, 1850-1896, Lumberjacks and Legislators: Political Economy of the U.S. Lumber Industry, 1890-1941, and American Forestry: A History of National, State, and Private Cooperation.

Colorado History

A worthwhile book. Has much to say about the West's past and how it has become what it is today.

Library Journal

Robbins (American Forestry, Univ. of Nebraska Pr., 1985) focuses on changes in the American West during the last 150 years. These changes brought the West from a region of traders and hunters to an area driven by industrialism. Mechanization had a profound social and economic effect on all areas of Western life from agriculture to mining. Dividing his work into three parts, Robbins analyzes the myth and reality of the West, including the effects of proximity to Mexican and Canadian borders: he zeroes in on the capitalistic expansion of the West and develops comparisons between the South and West and the country and the city. The epilog discusses the emerging New West and its ties to the past, and there are extensive chapter notes with citations to other materials. This work will appeal to scholars and specialists in Western U.S. history.-Dorothy Lilly, Grosse Pointe North H.S. Lib., Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich.

Booknews

Robbins (history, Oregon State U.) counters the myth of the rugged individualist transforming the American West, and shows how the Guggenheims, Hearsts, Mellons, and other "industrial statesmen," aided by Eastern US and European capital, manipulated investments while controlling wage-earning cowboys and miners. He discusses violence and racism along the Texas/Mexico border, colonial-style company towns in Montana and the Northwest, and agribusiness and exploitation of labor in California. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Book review: Labor Economics or Principles of Cost Accounting

The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor

Author: Andrew Delano Abbott

In The System of Professions Andrew Abbott explores central questions about the role of professions in modern life: Why should there be occupational groups controlling expert knowledge? Where and why did groups such as law and medicine achieve their power? Will professionalism spread throughout the occupational world? While most inquiries in this field study one profession at a time, Abbott here considers the system of professions as a whole. Through comparative and historical study of the professions in nineteenth- and twentieth-century England, France, and America, Abbott builds a general theory of how and why professionals evolve.

Booknews

Abbott (sociology, Rutgers) explores the role of the professions in modern life, and theorizes upon their evolution. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Table of Contents:

Preface
1. Introduction
The Professions Literature
The Concept of Professionalization
Cases of Professional Development
I. Work, Jurisdiction, and Competition
2. Professional Work
Objective and Subjective
Diagnosis
Treatment
Inference
Academic Knowledge
3. The Claim of Jurisdiction
Audiences
Settlements
Internal Structure
4. The System of Professions
The Implications of Exclusion: A System of Professions
Sources of Systems Disturbances
The Mechanisms of Jurisdiction Shift: Abstractions
Conclusion
II. The System's Environment
5. Internal Differentiation and the Problem of Power
Internal Stratification
Client Differentiation
Workplace, Workplace Structure, and Internal Divisions of Labor
Career Patterns
Power
6. The Social Environment of Professional Development
Forces Opening and Closing Jurisdictions
The Internal Organization of Professional Work
Changing Audiences for Jurisdictional Claims
Co-optable Powers, Oligarchy, and the New Class
7. The Cultural Environment of Professional Development
Changes in the Organization of Knowledge
New Forms of Legitimacy
The Rise of Universities
III. Three Case Studies
8. The Information Professions
The Qualitative Task Area
The Quantitative Task Area
The Combined Jurisdiction
9. Lawyers and Their Competitors
Potential Jurisdictional Conflicts of the Legal Profession
Complaints about Unqualified Practice and Other Invasions
Conclusions
10. The Construction of the Personal Problems Jurisdiction
The Status of Personal Problems, 1850-75
The First Response to "American Nervousness"
The Psychiatric Revolution
The Rise of Psychotherapy
Conclusion: The Clergy Surrender
11. Conclusion
The System of Professions
History
Theory and the Professions
Notes
References
Index