Contribution
Abbott revises The System of Professions (1988), which treated the state, the public and the workplace as simple audiences that arbitrate professions’ jurisdictional claims. In fact “ces auditoires sont eux-mêmes des structures interactionnelles complexes, dominées par les forces écologiques” (these audiences are themselves complex interactional structures, governed by ecological forces; p. 30). The precursor states the general thesis (“nous devrions imaginer le monde social tout entier sous forme d’écologies liées”, we should imagine the whole social world as linked ecologies; p. 30), works one case, and sketches the variables an analysis of linked ecologies needs. The 2005 article, by its abstract, adds universities as a third ecology, the concept of avatars, a second licensing case (England) and four avatar cases.
Key insight
An event in one ecology is also an event in another, and the actors in each want it for their own reasons. “L’État ne constitue pas un auditoire unifié, mais un système de petits groupes menant leurs propres petites guerres pour leurs propres petites raisons” (the state is not a unified audience but a system of small groups fighting their own small wars for their own small reasons; p. 33). So licensing passed or lapsed according to whether it served some political actor, not according to the merits argued in medicine.
Assumptions
- An ecology is actors, locations and a mapping. “Une écologie comprend trois éléments : des acteurs, des lieux et une fonction (au sens mathématique) associant les uns aux autres” (p. 44). In the professions: professions, tasks, jurisdiction. In politics: parties, officials, agencies and lobbies; the locations are “bundles” of political issues.
- Between mechanism and atoms. An ecology is less unified than a machine or an organism and more than the atoms of classical liberalism (p. 43).
- Analytic and ontological at once. Abbott takes “écologie” both as a way of seeing and as a claim about what is there, and says he will take both roads (p. 44).
Key results
- New York licensing, 1806–1907 (pp. 32–43). Licensing was granted, removed and restored about eight times, with twenty or thirty failed bills (p. 39). Three passed bills are analysed from legislative journals. The 1844 repeal: “Le vote n’était pas un vote de parti” (the vote was not a party vote; p. 40); it split urban against rural counties, and gave radical Democrats an occasion for rhetoric on liberty and science, which Abbott quotes from the committee reports (p. 41). The 1872 act: again no party vote and no identifiable demographic pattern (p. 42). The 1907 act passed unopposed when medical and Tammany elites were allied (pp. 42–43).
- Asymmetry between the ecologies (pp. 45–47). The medical ecology was small and its identities exclusive (an allopath was not a homeopath); the political one was large and its memberships overlapping. “Les acteurs du champ politique n’étaient donc point exclusifs” (p. 46). Licensing was a jurisdictional matter in medicine and a minor location in politics.
- Tempo (pp. 47–48). Licensing could be settled once for medicine; politics worked by urgency. “Cette différence de rythme entre les deux écologies explique que les alliés des médecins, allopathes comme homéopathes, n’ont pas toujours été les mêmes pendant les décennies de lutte sur la question du permis” (this difference of tempo explains why the doctors’ allies were not always the same; pp. 47–48). Perhaps also “les médecins n’ont gagné que lorsqu’ils s’engagèrent dans des actions politiques d’importance générale et durable, comme la santé publique” (the doctors won only when they took up political causes of general and lasting importance, such as public health; p. 48). Note 12 adds that legislative arenas may look fixed only because they run “à un rythme beaucoup plus lent que les écologies politiques” (at a much slower tempo; p. 45).
- Hinges (p. 48). What one looks for are “les « charnières », les articulations entre les opérations des deux écologies” (hinges, the articulations between the two ecologies’ operations). Licensing never became one: “La réglementation du permis ne devint jamais une question charnière parce que les acteurs intéressés ne pouvaient pas en jouer efficacement” (p. 48). The detailed analysis is deferred.
- The omitted Bourdieu section (BOURD.pdf). Ecologies differ from fields in having “no concept of dominance or subordination”, in being more dynamic, and in endogenizing their actors and their own boundaries: “social things come from boundaries, rather than boundaries being produced around things or by regular oppositions”. The resemblance between the two is “a kind of accidental resemblance”.
Claims
Not filled: this note is Skimmed, a reading of an earlier and smaller
text, not of the work the LIT names.
Concepts
- Écologie (ecology): a system of many interacting, mostly independent elements, defined by actors, locations and the relation between them (pp. 43–44).
- Écologies liées (linked ecologies): ecologies each of which is an environment for the others, so that events and alliances span them (pp. 30–31).
- Charnière (hinge): an issue or articulation that works in both ecologies at once (p. 48); in the 2005 abstract, “issues or strategies that ‘work’ in both ecologies at once”.
- Bundle: a loosely structured cluster of political issues, the political ecology’s analogue of a jurisdiction (p. 44).
Connections
It extends The System of Professions (1988) and Department and Discipline (1999), and borrows from urban ecology (von Thünen, Burgess, Hawley), Long’s “ecology of games” and Laumann and Knoke’s organizational state. The Bourdieu section sets it against the field concept and claims a pragmatist, processual lineage. Sewell’s schemas and resources (LIT-1383) and Wacquant’s habitus (LIT-1377) are the neighbouring accounts the exchange named with it; Abbott’s own contrast with Bourdieu is the closest he comes to them.
Bearing on the record
- CLAIM-423 (timescale and authority in a political collective). The LIT says A30 called linked ecologies “even closer to the expanded domain” than its own “regime ecology”. The precursor bears that out, and on the claim’s own defeater. Its tempo result is the claim’s link between speed and influence in one historical case: the political ecology’s urgency and medicine’s settle-once horizon decided who the doctors’ allies were, and the doctors prevailed only by joining durable political causes. That is a case, from legislative journals, of temporal horizons affecting which alliances form and hold. The claim names Pierson and Putnam as the accounts that might already state it; Abbott (2003, 2005) should be added to that list. The precursor states tempo differences as an explanatory variable, not as an account of which component gains authority over another, so it does not by itself defeat the claim.
- CLAIM-331 (higher levels are slower). Note 12 is a small confirmation and a caution: arenas look like fixed structures from outside because they change more slowly, and seen close up they are ecologies too.
- CLAIM-417 (selves as organizational perspectives). The claim’s defeater lists linked ecologies among the accounts that might explain the same transitions with fewer assumptions. The precursor is about jurisdictions and alliances, not perspectives, and has nothing on what a perspective is. Its one point of contact is the omitted section’s thesis that “social things come from boundaries”: actors in an ecology “merge, divide, and reshape”, which is the carrier-level fluidity the claim needs and the self vocabulary lacked. It is a statement of orientation, not an argument.
- CLAIM-416 (competition over tests). The audience that judges a profession’s claim is itself an arena of competition, and it judges for its own reasons. That is the claim’s point that the judge of a contest is not neutral, from the side of the judge. The 1844 repeal is a clear instance: the test of medical competence was set by legislators using it for a contest of their own.
- CASE-133 (party realignment). Not touched directly. The precursor’s New York politics (Whigs, Hunkers, Tammany, upstate Republicans) is the same nineteenth-century party system, and it found that licensing votes did not follow party lines.
- The LIT’s summary is corrected. It said actors “seek alliances across ecologies (‘hinges’)”. Hinges are not alliances: they are issues or strategies that work in both ecologies at once, and alliances form around them. The summary also lacked avatars, the article’s second concept.
- THEORY warranted? None. The precursor is one case, a sketch, and not the work the record holds.
- No instruction for machine-learning practice; nothing for the anthology.
Limitations
- Not the published article. Hinges are undeveloped here and avatars, universities and the English case are absent.
- One case. The vote analyses are counts by party and county from legislative journals, without tests, and Abbott himself offers a second “revisionist” reading in which licensing simply did not matter to the legislature (p. 39).
- The variables (size, number, exclusivity, tempo, homeomorphism) are listed, and Abbott says plainly that he cannot yet state which conditions produce which outcomes (p. 46).
- OCR of a scan: quoted passages were checked against the page images, the rest was read from OCR text.
Open questions
- What makes an issue a hinge? The precursor says licensing never became one because no actor could play it, which is close to circular until the article’s fuller account is read.
- Does a difference in tempo between linked ecologies predict which side sets the terms of an alliance? That is the form CLAIM-423 would need, and the precursor’s case points to it without testing it.
- The published article should be read when a copy is supplied.