The Politics of Professionalism: A Retro-Progressive Proposal for Librarianship PDF
Preview The Politics of Professionalism: A Retro-Progressive Proposal for Librarianship
The Politics of Professionalism The Politics of Professionalism A Retro-Progressive Proposal for Librarianship By Juris Dilevko Library Juice Press Duluth, Minnesota Copyright Juris Dilevko, 2009 Published in 2009 by Library Juice Press PO Box 3320 Duluth, MN 55803 http://libraryjuicepress.com This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets all present ANSI standards for archival preservation. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dilevko, Juris. The politics of professionalism : a retro-progressive proposal for librarianship / Juris Dilevko. p. cm. Summary: "An alternative proposal for the education of librarians, emphasizing general knowledge and intellectual rigor and discouraging careerism"--Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-1-936117-04-8 (acid-free paper) 1. Library education. 2. Library education--United States. 3. Library education-- Canada. I. Title. Z668.D46 2009 020.7--dc22 2009037388 Table of Contents Textual Notes and Acknowledgements vii 1. Fateful Choices 1 2. Professionalism, Achievement, and the Quantified 9 University 3. Reconsidering Library Professionalism 53 4. The Ideology of Professionalism 85 5. Interrogating the Socio-Cultural Premises of 125 Education for Librarianship 6. The Professionalization of Librarianship and the 187 Professionalization of Eating Bibliography 203 Index 225 About the Author 233 Textual Notes and Acknowledgements Whenever words appear in italics as part of a quotation, those italics were present in the original quotation. In paragraphs that include multiple quotations from a single source, that source is typically referenced, with a list of all appropriate page numbers, either at the beginning or end of the paragraph in question. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the following individuals who brought to my attention, through the assignments that they submitted for some of the courses that I have taught in the past three years at the University of Toronto, bibliographic references that I likely would not have found on my own: Sandra Lee; Frances O’Reagan; Teresa Rodak; Jessica Rovito; and Kellie Scott. Chapter One Fateful Choices Almost everyone will find fault with some or all aspects of this book. It will be labeled by many as unhelpful or far-fetched. People will say that I have misconstrued things; painted too dire or too simplistic a picture; that I can’t be serious. Despite what readers may think, I love libraries and librarianship. But I also think librarianship has lost its way and is heading down the wrong path to a tragic end. I don’t want this to happen. I therefore present a radical proposal for the education of librarians that some might call counter-productive: the removal of library education from the jurisdiction of universities, which in recent decades have become increasingly corporatized, internalizing market-based concepts such as performance metrics and “audit culture” (Shore & Wright, 2000: 57) to the extent that, ideologically speaking, they are indistinguishable from corporations (Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004). As such, aspiring librarians would no longer be required to earn a university-level professional degree. Concomitantly, they would no longer be obsessed with being thought of as professionals, nor with enhancing their professional standing. This would be a positive development because the notion of professionalism has devolved to a point where it is more about credentialism, careerism, and the accumulation of power and prestige than about the possession of meaningful knowledge that can be turned toward social good. Unfortunately, the foregoing assertion applies just as much to what Roma M. Harris (1992: 20, 163) called the expert-focused “male model of professionalism” as to the care-based and service-oriented “female professionalism” model; just as much to what Steven Brint (1994: 8-11, 40- 44) identified as “expert professionalism” as to “social trustee professionalism.” Female professionalism and social-trustee professionalism were once viable categories, but as Brint (1994: 8, 11, 12) noted, “[o]ver the last thirty years, the idea of professions as a status category has become increasingly disconnected from functions perceived to be central to the public welfare and more exclusively connected to the idea of ‘expert knowledge.’” Indeed, contemporary professionalism—whether that professionalism is exercised at the “core” or at the “periphery” of the 2 THE POLITICS OF PROFESSIONALISM professional stratum; whether it is exercised in the private or public sector— must be viewed primarily “in relation to the development of markets for professional services and in relation to the interests of organizations that employ large numbers of professionals.” And because these organizational interests are more and more associated with market-based criteria in their various quantitative forms, professionals, while retaining some of their “priest-like” qualities with regard to “their authority over secular knowledge bases,” have become “merchants of the cultural and human ‘capital’ that is their major source of mobility across and up organizational hierarchies.” In other words, professionalism is synonymous with the market-oriented expert model. To be sure, there are differences between “upper-level experts” possessing “marketable skills and location in resource-rich organizations” and “lower-level experts” possessing “less marketable skills and location in resource-poor organizations.” But by the end of the twentieth century, all professionals, no matter their level, were guided by a single set of “commonalities,” including a “strong commitment to [formal higher] education and meritocracy as principles of advancement”; “the simultaneous experience of a large degree of technical control over work … combined with the constraints of organization life and the fluctuations of market demand for expert labor”; “expectations for a middle-class (or, where possible, an upper-middle-class) style of life”; and “a rationalist outlook on problem solving” (Brint, 1994: 11, 12). As a stark illustration of what professionalism entailed at the beginning of the twenty-first century, consider the debate about individuals who constantly used their BlackBerrys® and iPhones® during meetings to check for and send messages, among other sundry tasks. As Alex Williams (2009) reported, although some organizations banned the use of smartphones during meetings because they were concerned about enabling a culture of distraction, disrespect, and impoliteness, a consensus nevertheless emerged in favor of their use. Williams concluded with this telling paragraph. Mr. Brotherton, [a Seattle-based media] consultant, wrote in an e-mail message that it was customary now for professionals to lay BlackBerrys or iPhones on a conference table before a meeting—like gunfighters placing their Colt revolvers on the card tables in a saloon. “It’s a not-so-subtle way of signaling ‘I’m connected. I’m busy. I’m important. And if this meeting doesn’t hold my interest, I’ve got 10 other things I can do instead.’” Certainly, not all professionals are like this. Yet some of the mindsets and skill-sets emphasized at university-based professional schools—the importance of market-based criteria, performance metrics, social
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