Professions, Caring and the State

Abstract

Social power is an integral aspect of the daily working lives of professionals. The centrality of power in professional work has been increasingly recognised (Wilding, 1982; Cousins, 1987), yet the interconnection of power and caring work in health and welfare provision has been relatively under-explored. For example, there have been debates, chiefly but not entirely within social work, about whether the relationship between care and control (as a form of power) is one of mutual opposition or interlocked contradiction (Satyamurti, 1979; Day, 1981). At the same time the extent to which professional caring might itself emerge from and be sustained within power relationships has often been neglected.