L’estime professionnelle selon E C. Hughes

In this paper, I reflect upon Hughes’s sociology of professions, in which I shall look for elements that would give Honneth’s theory of the third sphere of recognition an empirical basis. According to Hughes’ writings, that extend the anthropo-sociological tradition of the first Chicago school, both the identity and the personality of the actor are progressively constructed by the social environment with which he interacts. Among the factors that contribute to this self-construction process, Hughes emphasizes the importance of the recognition of the status, the activity and the value of the worker. My goal here is to analyze the notion of “professionalization process”, developed both in Hughes writings and in the sociological literature dealing with the question of work. By “professionalization process” is meant that a profession - i.e. any activity that is recognized as valuable within a society - doesn’t appear at once: it is constructed little by little by the very actors that practice it throughout a typical process which can be formally described. Moreover, Hughes puts forward the idea that the value attached to a given activity depends as much - if no more - on the collective efforts made to make it look good to the public, as it depends on the intrinsic features of the profession. In other words, the process corresponding to the constitution of a profession might very well be considered as a struggle for recognition. In the final part, we shall see that Hughes proposes a critical analysis of the power and prestige attached to “high level” professions, thus providing critical tools that shall help professional workers who have to undergo this power obtaining recognition for their activity