ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF EXPERT KNOWLEDGE WORK: CURRENT TRENDS AND CHANGES IN THE STUDY OF THE PROFESSIONS, PROFESSIONALIZATION, AND PROFESSIONALISM William A. Yagatich, Doctor of Philosophy, 2018 Dissertation directed by: Professor Dana R. Fisher Department of Sociology This dissertation is a collection of three papers, separate but related investigations in the sociological study of expert knowledge. Drawing on the theoretical perspectives developed in the study of the professions, this work continues the current trend of applying the revised concepts to occupational groups that more accurately reflect contemporary economic arrangements. To contribute to the most recent trends in the study of expert knowledge, this dissertation endeavors to integrate the concepts of professionalism and professionalization to the study of expert knowledge— specifically, a group’s ability to control an area of labor and define its practice. The first case study builds on previous research pertaining to professionalization to argue control over consumers is integral to understanding how expert knowledge is leveraged and cordoned off from competition. Using a qualitative approach to the study of tattoo artists and their interactions with clientele and the public, the findings provide support for recognizing informal and formal means of control over consumers, in addition to controls over standards of practice and membership. The second case study investigates the professionalization of volunteer work. This study aims to explicate the ways in which volunteer work may operate and be understood in the same ways as paid occupational groups. Employing survey and in- depth interview data to evaluate the effects of volunteers’ training, the study reveals training programs for volunteer work can instill a sense legitimacy in volunteers and make them more effective in their work, however, like other occupational groups, to attain social closure they would also need a strong, active network of members and a coordinated means of influencing their public image. The last case study investigates how professionalism is maintained or diminished in the wake of change spurred by external bureaucratic arrangements. Taking faculty members of higher education as the focus of this study, situating them in the context of expanding enrollments and online course instruction, this work demonstrates how professionalism is exercised through defining problems in terms of their expertise. In that way, engagement with problems posed by external pressures may foster disciplinary identity and new boundaries of professional practice. THE SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF EXPERT KNOWLEDGE WORK: CURRENT TRENDS AND CHANGES IN THE STUDY OF THE PROFESSIONS, PROFESSIONALIZATION, AND PROFESSIONALISM by William A. Yagatich Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology 2018 Advisory Committee: Professor Dana R. Fisher, Chair Professor Victoria Chanse Professor Philip N. Cohen Dr. William W. Falk Dr. Linda Moghadam © Copyright by William A. Yagatich 2018 Dedication Earning a Ph.D. is a selfish enterprise, one that I could not have done without the support of my family who have given so much. In too many ways to recount they made my success possible—they encouraged me to persist and persevere when work seemed unsurmountable, they made it possible for me to work when I did not have the means alone, and they never wavered in their confidence that I was capable of doing this work. To Ken and Angie Martzolff, Barbara and Theresa Yagatich, Patty and Eddie Sewell, Alton, Scott, and Maggie Alexander, and Paula Calhoun, a special thank you. I know that I cannot ever repay all the things that you have done for me, but I love you all and thank you for everything you have done for me. I dedicate this work to you. To my brother, Joseph Alexander Yagatich, I am lucky to have you in my life. You have and continue to accomplish great things with such an awe-inspiring sense of humility. Your work ethic and unabashed appreciation of life at large are enviable qualities, qualities I try to emulate on a daily basis. When I’ve wrestled with difficult questions, scholarly, philosophical, or the inevitabilities of life in general, you’ve always had the answers (or at least something thoughtful to add) and knew how to help me right the course of things. Thank you a million times over for being my best man. I love you unconditionally. Thank you for reading my work, for listening to long-winded ramblings about abstract theories, and for taking a vested interest in ii what I was doing. It has always meant the world to me and I am eternally grateful. I dedicate this work to you. To Coty and William Yagatich (now better known as Nana and PopPop), I hope to be half the parents you are. You’ve shown resolve, kindness, and love like none other. You’ve set the bar extremely high, almost impossibly so. I don’t even know where to start, or how to really express what you mean to me, or how much I appreciate what you have done for me to make this dream of mine achievable. You have been with me every step of the way, bending over backward and ready to give everything you could to see me reach goal after goal, aspiration after dream and so on. I hope that I continue to make you proud. I hope you know I mean it when I tell you that the most impactful, the most meaningful lessons I’ve learned, inside the classroom and out, are those that you’ve taught me. I love you both very much. I dedicate this work to you. To my children, Brody Blair and Griffin Joseph, thank you for giving my life a new sense of purpose. Thank you for fostering a deeper appreciation for the little things in life. You have proven to me time and again that there really is such a thing as boundless love. The two of you have taken me through ranges of emotions I did not know existed in our brief time together, and I can say without reservation that all of the feelings of anxiety or worry that comes with being a parent pale in comparison to the overwhelming joys you have brought me. I wouldn’t trade a second of it for anything. I cannot wait to see what the rest of life has in store for us. If nothing else, iii know that I love you with all of my heart and then some. “I love you, your button nose, your eyes, your ears, your knees, your toes.” I dedicate this work to you. Last, I would like to thank my wife, my best friend, and partner in crime, Meghan Martzolff Yagatich for taking a leap of faith. Meg, this endeavor has taken the better part of a decade and your refusal to let me give up is worthy of an appreciation that I will never be able to adequately convey. Thank you for all of the late nights, thank you for all of the words of encouragement, thank you for indulging all of the soapboxes, thank you for sticking by your convictions, thank you for having confidence in me, thank you for being a wonderful mother, and thank you for helping me become a better father, husband, and person day in and day out. Thank you, for everything. It all started with making up our own story as we went along, and I couldn’t be happier knowing that we still are. I love you mostest. I dedicate this work to you. I am very fortunate to have each of you in my life. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I love you. “May you leave this place better than you found it.” iv Acknowledgements None of this would have been possible without the continued support of faculty of the Sociology department at the University of Maryland, who have had an integral role in my development as a scholar. Through their encouragement, guidance, persistence, and mentorship, they have made an indelible mark on my identity as an academic, all for the better. I know this acknowledgement will not be commensurate with the impacts all of these people have made, but I would have them know that words alone cannot express my gratitude and how much I appreciate everything they have done for me. To Dr. William Falk, thank you for making my introduction into academia an easy choice and taking a chance on me. Thank you for sowing the seeds of my interest in professionalism and my own professionalization as a sociologist. At the drop of a hat, you have always made yourself available, given excellent counsel, shared your experiences, and have always been brutally honest about what you thought was best. Your direction has been and always will be welcome. To Dr. Alan Neustadtl, thank you for taking the time to help me develop a set of skills that I did not know I had, let alone capable of cultivating. I sincerely appreciate the opportunities you afforded me to engage in novel ways of teaching, which helped to develop my own pedagogical identity. “Ride hard, shoot straight, and tell the truth,” are words to live by and I appreciate you imparting that wisdom. v I would also like to thank Drs. Patricia Hill Collins, George Ritzer, Roberto Patricio- Korzeniewicz, Reeve Vanneman, Philip N. Cohen, Jeff Lucas, and Linda Moghadam. At one time or another, whether it was through a seminar, a research project, or workshop, each of you have had a hand in shaping my academic career and I wish to thank you for your time and your vested interest in my success. Last, to Dr. Dana R. Fisher, my dissertation advisor and most recent mentor, thank you for more than I can list here. With your help and assistance, I am proud of this work that I have achieved, as well as the forthcoming works you provided me the opportunity to participate in and the opportunities that you made possible for me. Under your tutelage I rediscovered my passion for a praxis-oriented scholarship and I have found “where I want to be,” so to speak. I cannot thank you enough for all of the accommodations you made for me as I started a family. As a new father, I was grossly unprepared for how much becoming a parent would change my life, and you worked with me through every bit of those growing pains—for that, most of all, thank you. To my friends here at the University of Maryland, it has been a pleasure to sit shoulder to shoulder with you, supporting and helping one another. In our separate endeavors toward finishing the program, as we each figured our way through graduate school and the burdens it imposes on the rest of life, it can be easy to feel isolated and lonely. But having the right people around you can make all the difference. So, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Amanda Dewey, David Paul vi Strohecker, Joseph McCartney Waggle, Ann Dubin, Patrick Liu, Zachary Richer, Tyler Crabb, Mark Gross, Crosby Hipes, Danny Swann, and Anya Galli Robertson. And I would like to thank my friends outside of the university as well, those who have helped to keep me grounded and reminded me that it is healthy to have interests and hobbies outside of research. For that, I wish to thank Ryan Bowles, Tim Doody, Matt Morris, Daniel Sinkuc, and Trey Kober. I am truly indebted to your friendship and support, and I have no doubt I would not have made it this far if not for you. And to finish this acknowledgment with where my intellectual journey began, I would like to thank Drs. Susan Webb, Christopher Podeschi, Sara Brallier, and Philip Whalen. My time at Coastal Carolina University was formative for my academic career and interests as a scholar—thank each of you for your guidance and instruction. Thank you most for instilling curiosity about the social world and providing the means to pursue those questions. vii Table of Contents Dedication ................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... v Table of Contents ................................................................................................... viii List of Tables ............................................................................................................ x List of Figures .......................................................................................................... xi Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................. 1 Expert Knowledge: The Exercise of Power and Discourse ..................................... 5 Power and the Discourse of Experts ...................................................................... 7 Case Studies ........................................................................................................ 17 Chapter 2: Professionalizing Body Art? Challenges to the Professionalization of Marginalized Occupational Groups ......................................................................... 21 Abstract ............................................................................................................... 21 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 22 Controlling Standards of Practice, Membership, and Consumers ......................... 25 Methods and Data ............................................................................................... 31 Findings: Professionalizing Tattooing and the Challenge of Consumers .............. 34 Revisiting Maroto’s Spheres of Control: Membership and Practice.................. 35 Informal Controls Over the Consumer ............................................................. 43 Formal Controls Over the Consumer ............................................................... 50 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 56 Chapter 3: Professionalizing Volunteer Work: Parallels and Limitations of the Watershed Stewards Academies of Maryland .......................................................... 62 Abstract ............................................................................................................... 62 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 63 Professionalization and Volunteer Work.............................................................. 65 Methods .............................................................................................................. 72 Case Selection: The Watershed Stewards Academies of Maryland .................. 72 Online Survey ................................................................................................. 74 In-Depth Interviews ......................................................................................... 75 Findings .............................................................................................................. 78 Who Volunteers to be a Steward and Why? ..................................................... 78 “You’re about a Chapter Ahead of the General Public” ................................... 81 “Some Things Were Just a Little Too Deep”.................................................... 84 “It’s Like a Form of Social Marketing”............................................................ 88 “Keeping Those People to Stay Involved” ....................................................... 91 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 93 Chapter 4: Overstating the Pressures on Professionalism: Faculty Members’ Perspectives of Teaching Online ............................................................................. 98 Abstract ............................................................................................................... 98 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 99 Growing Enrollments, Growing Professional Pressures ..................................... 101 Changes in Higher Education ........................................................................ 101 Deprofessionalization and Operating Within Bureaucracies ........................... 103 viii Case Selection ................................................................................................... 108 Methods ............................................................................................................ 111 Results .............................................................................................................. 113 Demographic and Instructional Background .................................................. 114 Sense of Professionalism ............................................................................... 116 Opinions of Teaching Online ......................................................................... 118 Defining Professional Practice ....................................................................... 123 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 129 Chapter 5: Conclusion ........................................................................................... 135 Summary of the Three Case Studies .................................................................. 135 Professionalization of Tattooing .................................................................... 135 Professionalization of Volunteer Work .......................................................... 138 Professionalism of Faculty: Adapting to External Pressures ........................... 141 Contributions to the Study of Expert Knowledge ............................................... 143 Conclusion: Implications and Future Research .................................................. 146 Appendix .............................................................................................................. 148 Interview Protocol for Study One ...................................................................... 148 Interview Protocol for Case Study Two ............................................................. 151 Survey Instrument for Case Study Three ........................................................... 154 Works Cited .......................................................................................................... 166 ix List of Tables Table 3.1: Survey Sample, Responses, and Response Rate by WSA .......................... 74 Table 3.2: Sample of WSA Participant in Follow-Up Interviews .............................. 76 Table 3.3 WSA Stewards versus Population in Surrounding Counties ...................... 79 Table 4.1: Respondents' Self-Reported Background Information ........................... 115 Table 4.2. Dominant Themes in Response to First Open-Ended Question on Teaching Online ................................................................................................................... 119 Table 4.3: Association of Previous Experience Teaching a Hybrid Course and Volunteering to Teach Online ................................................................................ 120 Table 4.4: Association of Previous Experience Teaching an Online Course and Volunteering to Teach Online ................................................................................ 121 Table 4.5: Association of Belief in Most Problematic Aspects of Online Teaching and Previous Experience Teaching an Online or Hybrid Course .................................. 128 Table A: Faculty’s Agreement with Statements Measuring Professional Identity and Attitudes ................................................................................................................ 165 x List of Figures Figure 3.1. Histogram of Faculty’s Index Score for Sense of Professionalism ....... 117 xi Chapter 1: Introduction The sociological study of the professions elucidates the consequences of how particular occupational groups garner unique privileges and control of an area of labor. More recently, it has been argued that the study of professions and professionals has become a project of studying knowledge and, in particular, expert knowledge (Fournier 1999; Gorman and Sandefur 2011; Muzio and Kirkpatrick 2011; Reed 1996). The shift to focus on knowledge is meant to account for positions of power, discourse, and the varying processes of structuration across diverse occupational groups (Fournier 1999). This dissertation builds upon and extends recent developments in the study of professions to explore how groups acting professionally seek to establish and maintain control over certain areas of labor through a variety of means that have been overlooked and undertheorized. Historically, the sociological study of professions largely followed a functional or trait approach (Evetts 2013; Gorman and Sandefur 2011; Hodgson 2002). Early studies tended to focus on a set of qualities an occupational group must possess or attain to achieve the status of professional, and those qualities, as well as their rewards, were often assumed uncritically (see Kingsley and Moore 1945 or Wilensky 1964). In step with larger trends in sociology (Ritzer 2011), critical perspectives on professions became popular as early as the 1970’s when the works of Freidson (1970), Larson (1977), and Johnson (1972) exemplified the early adoption of Neo-Weberian and Neo-Marxian perspectives. As this canon developed, the study of the professions has given way to studies of professionalization and 1 professionalism, as opposed to the category of professions, indicating a shift from the ideographic to the nomothetic, with Neo-Weberian and Foucauldian studies becoming the more prominent perspectives (Evetts 2013; Gorman and Sandefur 2011; Saks 2010). Still, current research, despite its theoretical orientations, owe much to the foundational work on the professions. Professional work, as it is traditionally described, requires a specialized and formal knowledge where a professional applies the abstract and esoteric knowledge to real-world, concrete problems (Freidson 1986). In addition, the comingling and simultaneous deployment of formal and tacit knowledge is a labor performed under the auspices that the practitioner operates in the best interest of whomever they serve (Abbott 1988; Freidson 2001; Ritzer and Walczak 1988). Professionalization, or the process of becoming attaining a professional status, requires that an occupational group, not necessarily a profession, employs specific strategies to convince the public they should be given exclusive rights to practice their labor and the ability to self- regulate those practices (Ritzer 1975). The sociological literature on professionalization spans a much larger swathe of occupational groups than the traditional sociological study of professions simply because it does not assume that the means of professionalization are exclusive to occupational groups that have achieved the traditional qualities and traits of a “profession.” Occupational groups may undertake projects of professionalization so that they can establish control over, or aspects of, their area of labor and establish themselves as legitimate authorities over that labor. For example, an occupational group may convince state authorities that individuals with specific credentials are the 2 only people that may legally perform particular tasks and labor, such as the practice of medicine or law. Part of establishing themselves as a legitimate authority means to convince others of their expertise, which, in a word, is what scholars refer to as professionalism (Freidson 2001; Pescosolido, Tuch, and Martin 2001). When a group acts professionally, emulates a profession, or claims to be a profession, we can assume that these actions have very real and tangible social consequences, which may or may not resemble the efforts and successes of the traditional professions. Incorporating a focus on both professionalization and professionalism in sociological inquiries of various occupational groups allows for the exploration of how they act professionally and the consequences of those actions without limiting research to the traditional professions (groups that possess a very specific constellation of characteristics discussed in more detail in the next section). At the same time, works that focus on professionalism still acknowledge that most occupational groups do not command the same power and authority as traditional professions. In fact, some efforts at professionalization or appearing to be professional inevitably fail and do not result in a group attaining public or state recognition. This dissertation incorporates these perspectives, refraining from an exclusive focus on either professionalism or professionalization. Instead, I employ three case studies to demonstrate that individuals acting professionally are part of a larger structure shaped by the process of professionalization that culminates in leveraging expert knowledge to exert power and control. Whether it is over a general public, an individual, or community, power is enacted through the operations of formalized 3 training, through the presentation of credentials, and the exaltation of altruism (Abbott 1988; Freidson 1986, 2001; Ritzer 1975; Weber 1922/1978). These qualities are often attained or strived for without reflection or understanding of the larger organizing principles that such collective action has in terms of structuring who is included or excluded from certain forms of labor or what is considered the acceptable and normative forms of such labor. While these individuals may or may not be cognizant that they are pursuing these strategies of professionalization or professionalism, the aims and desired outcomes are the same nonetheless. Through an appeal of working in the best interest of others or a claim to a greater good, those practitioners are seeking to establish themselves as an expert and as having a legitimate claim to that area of knowledge and labor. Based on the literature I review below, I highlight how the exercise of professionalism by a group, the appearance of being professional, the use of standardization, credentialing, and altruism, are means of control over a specific area of labor that results in a deference to that group that affords that group to define how that labor is practiced and who is able to practice it. In the pages that follow, I argue that the exercise of professionalism is an exercise of power that is deployed under the guise of altruism and appeals toward working in the public’s best interest. As the literature suggests and my case studies demonstrate, the use of professionalism as a mechanism of control is not exclusive to traditional professional groups, professions such as medicine or law, or , or even paid occupations. In fact, I contend that each of these groups make appeals to professionalism with the intent of convincing a germane public that they are experts and legitimate sources of information in the same manner 4 as the traditional professions. In doing so, those groups are seeking control of practicing a certain form of labor by presenting their knowledge of the subject as expert (or even expert enough) to be deferred to as an authority. Drawing on three case studies—tattoo artists, volunteer environmental stewards, and higher education faculty—I show that each group strives to convince a public of their expertise and exert control over their respective areas of labor through strategies of professionalization and means of demonstrating professionalism. Each of these case studies are accomplished utilizing a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative data, to demonstrate the use of professionalism as a mechanism of power and control. In addition, building upon the current trends in the study of professionalization and professionalism, I highlight how expert knowledge is central to exerting control over an over of labor. Expert Knowledge: The Exercise of Power and Discourse In a special issue of Work and Occupations, Gorman and Sandefur declared the study of professions had become quiescent and the work on professional occupational groups had gone “underground” (2011). While there are researchers undertaking projects about professions and professionals to this day, Gorman and Sandefur’s statement keenly describes a turning point in the study of professions. This turning point represents a very significant change brought upon by a loosening of the terminology, enlarging the scope of occupations studied, and the variance in the use of theoretical underpinnings, even going as far as to include multiple theoretical perspectives within the same study (Evetts 2013; Gorman and Sandefur 2011; Saks 5 2010). This dissertation illustrates these points, using a collection of case studies to demonstrate how older taxonomic approaches have given way to the study of occupational groups and their use of strategies of professionalization, as well as the discourse of professionalism, to success or a lack thereof. Further, as my work asserts, projects of professionalization and discourses of professionalism are undertaken with the intent of gaining control over a certain area of labor, knowledge, and practice. In the following, I build upon new trends in the study of the professions to argue that the study of occupational groups and their relationship to power requires the examination of “expert knowledges” to define, describe, and delineate the contours of control. As I use the term “expert knowledges” here, I refer to those particular bodies of knowledge that are deemed to be the exclusive jurisdiction of an elite few who alone have the ability to shape and affect its content and application. Control allows occupational groups to wield discipline, both through their construction of and their claim to a unique subject matter. Thus, it is the goal of credentialing, boundary work, distinction, and the careful maintenance of appearance on the behalf of certain groups, those with the ability to define a particular discourse and body of expert knowledge, to achieve a privileged position to define how certain areas of labor are performed and who is able to perform them. Expert knowledges are the abstract, scientific, and esoteric assemblages of discourse that serve as the basis for training and acculturation of members within an occupational group. Expert knowledge is often granted or conferred to individuals through bureaucratic and formally rationalized institutions (Giddens 1990). When an 6 individual is recognized as having a mastery of some form of expert knowledge, they are often granted a title or credential of some sort (Reed 1996). In particular, the professions structure and are structured by the maintenance, protection, and development of a specific corpus of expert knowledge (Freidson 2001; Hodgson 2002). The exercise of expert knowledge, its deployment, maintenance, and development, produce discipline (Foucault 1979; Fournier 1999). Individuals and groups seek recognition through processes of professionalization, to be recognized as experts within certain areas of labor. Recognition as an expert or authority over a certain area of labor affords members of that group the ability to define how a certain labor is practiced and who is qualified to practice that labor. To be recognized as an expert or authority of some area of labor, those groups must demonstrate through some means that they deserve to be trusted and deferred to as authorities by laypersons and the public at large. For groups that are not considered professions in the traditional sense or professional groups whose autonomy is under threat, those groups will leverage a discourse and presentation of professionalism to convince and reassure their publics that they are experts and should have or retain the ability to define, regulate, and develop the practices of a certain labor. Power and the Discourse of Experts In reference to Foucault’s work on the disciplining power of knowledge production, Freidson (1986) explains that discipline itself operates at two levels. Discipline is a formal and systematized body of knowledge, yet at the same time it refers to the effects of applying that knowledge to individuals and human institutions. More 7 specifically, “The formal knowledge of the disciplines shapes the way human institutions are organized and the way the behavior of human beings is conceived, providing justification for particular methods of interpreting and disposing of a wide variety of human behaviors” (Freidson 1986:6). In turn, the discourse of professionalism operates to produce self-discipline and control from a distance—that is, a means of governing professionals so that certain behaviors and practices are commonplace and expected at the micro-level (Aldridge and Evetts 2003; Evetts 2013). On a larger scale, Abbott writes, “Before the public, power is exercised through various forms of media coverage—advice columns, feature material, personal appearances, and enforcement of standards for media presentations of professionals” (1988:138). Understanding discipline as an operation of power, an occupational group’s control over the public is derived from manipulating public perception, which is also a part of hoarding the abstract principles and knowledge of how such occupational labors operate through highly esoteric and structured modes of training and membership (Reed 1996). Even more important, these strategies of controlling public perception allow an occupational group to demonstrate a specialization and a distinction from other occupational groups, where “an occupation that has had the power to have undergone a developmental process enabling it to acquire, or convince significant others (for example, clients, the law) that it has acquired, a constellation of characteristics we have come to accept as denoting a profession” (Ritzer and Walczak 1986: 62). Occupational groups leverage boundary-work strategies to achieve status and legitimacy, in a process that is well documented. For example, scientists engage 8 in boundary-work to distinguish themselves from non-science (Gieryn 1983), the medical profession from chiropractors (Smith-Cunnien 1998), alternative medicine from orthodox medicine (Beyerstein 1997; Saks 2001), or the attempts of radiology to reconstitute a professional identity within the medical community through distinctions from other medical positions (Burri 2008). The use of boundary work to delineate a body of expert knowledge creates discipline, which operates both at the individual and structural levels. I argue that this power, and its exercise, is central to understanding how professions and other occupational groups leverage control. To gain a better theoretical perspective of how these dynamics operate, I draw from the postmodern1 and poststructuralist works of Bourdieu and Foucault. Taking the overarching projects of their respective works together, I believe they provide a more nuanced and comprehensive means of critically engaging strategies of professionalization and an occupational group’s use of expert knowledge, focusing on Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic capital and Foucault’s theory of discipline. Bourdieu (1990:31) aimed to address the “…absurd opposition between individual and society,” the debate between the primacy of agent versus structure, with the concepts of habitus and fields. In Bourdieu’s description of the habitus and fields, he discusses how different forms of capital can be embodied and practiced,2 1 Here I employ the term postmodern in the sense that it reflects a change in sociological thought and theory that comes with being more critical of classical approaches and modernity as a teleological project (see Ritzer 1997 for a nuanced discussion of postmodern theory versus postmodernity). 2 Capital is typically discussed as some form of accumulated resources or goods, such as “material property (economic capital), networks of connections (social capital) and prestige (cultural capital)” (Calhoun 2003: 294). These forms of capital can be changed into other forms of capital. For example, the expenditure of money on education converts economic capital into cultural capital. The last form of capital, symbolic capital, impacts where each individual’s habitus is situated within a field. In Bourdieu’s theoretical framework a field is a hierarchy of distance amongst various positions that an 9 but one form of capital—symbolic capital is especially important when considering social influence (Calhoun 2003). It is symbolic capital that ultimately separates classes and individuals and positions them within the hierarchies of social status and power. Symbolic capital is a basis for symbolic power (Bourdieu 1990:138) and Bourdieu’s description of symbolic power is the ability of “worldmaking” (1990:137) or “the power of creating things with words” (1990:138). By focusing on symbolic capital and its relation to fields, he articulates how one may legitimize or reshape a particular field. For example, Bourdieu (1990:137) states: [S]ymbolic power can become a power of constitution, taking the term, with Dewey, in both the philosophical sense and in the political sense of the term: that is, a power of keeping or transforming the objective principles of union or separation, marriage and divorce, association and dissociation which are at work in the social world, a power of conserving or transforming present classifications when it comes to gender, nation, region, age and social status, a power mediated by the words that are used to designate or to describe individuals, groups or institutions. Those with the most symbolic capital effectively have the symbolic power to make different forms of capital and cultural forms within a particular field legitimate or illegitimate—they are able to write and rewrite the rules of the game. individual’s habitus can occupy within a particular social arena, institution, or setting. The field, put more succinctly, is literally where groups of habitus embody distinction from others. To provide a practical example, if we were to consider a game of baseball as a field, the process by which varying forms of capital within the possession of each habitus determine one’s location within a field, so too do the abilities and talents of each individual baseball player determine their position on the team. Each position is accorded a particular status with regard to the game or field as a whole due to this distinction. As one can imagine, an athletic, quick base runner with a decent batting average would be viewed more favorably than someone who may not be familiar with the game of baseball altogether if we were making value judgments based upon one’s affiliation with baseball. This status is typically what we refer to as symbolic capital. 10 Bourdieu’s theoretical framework can be read a number of different ways and applied to various subdisciplines of sociology, but it is important here to stress Bourdieu’s relevance to the field of the sociology of knowledge: symbolic power and symbolic capital are wielded to create legitimate and accepted knowledge; the habitus is embodied knowledge about one’s experience of various fields; fields are structured around the collective knowledge and interaction of each individual’s habitus. Bourdieu’s larger contribution to the sociology of knowledge is that dominant modes of knowledge can be wielded symbolically to oppress other classes that embody less regarded knowledge, yet this system is not immutable and open to change through competition and distinction. Foucault shares a similar view of knowledge production, yet there are key differences in their approach to theorizing power and its implications for the social body. According to Foucault, discursive regimes seek to produce knowledge through the observation and study of their subjects for the benefit of society, yet in Discipline and Punish, he emphasizes “knowledge and power directly imply one another” (Foucault 1975/1990:27). By tracing the development of disciplinary apparatuses, the tools and methods used to produce a body of knowledge, such as a hierarchy of observation, normalizing judgments, and the use of examination, he contends those apparatuses are developed to ensure the efficient production of docile bodies, and the production of docile bodies is contingent upon an effective means of control— therefore it is through knowledge and scientific logic that these discourses render the means and operative form of power. 11 Essentially, control is rendered through subjection to a discursive regime. Surveillance, or more specific to Foucault’s work the Panoptic gaze, helped to produce docile bodies thereby ensuring that “Discipline is no longer simply an art of distributing bodies, of extracting time from them and accumulating it, but of composing forces in order to obtain an efficient machine” (Foucault 1975/1995:164). Highlighting the management of bodily gestures, he argues the effect of discipline is far more pervasive than the individual. Rather, discipline accounts for the ordering of individuals into a hierarchy and structure. The relevance of this point is clear in his genealogical work, which examines bodies of knowledge constructed by experts and makes clear those bodies of knowledge are suspect for the fact they are based on an “expert” level of understanding. The overarching theme is to highlight these discursive regimes are constructed around the assumption that they produce “truth,” and thereby disregard other ways of knowing a particular subject or practice (Foucault 1980). It is in this way power is inherently connected to knowledge and why the consequences of expert knowledges are so pervasive amongst the social body. This body of work highlights how those with the capital and recognition to be deemed experts are vested with trust and permission to define the practice of labor— effectively, they are granted the power to produce a discipline. When certain individuals are deemed as expert or having expert knowledge, their work results in the production of control, control over who can practice that labor, who can use that labor, and who has access to the knowledge to practice that labor. In effect, experts are given the ability to produce a discipline. The privilege to shape a discipline, a 12 position of power, is conferred to them through the ability to garner certain credentials and qualifications that legitimize them as expert. Traditionally, professions are unique occupations, and certain characteristics separate professions from other occupational groups. While the debates about what qualifies as a profession have been revisited a number of times (Evetts 2013; Saks 2010), it widely agreed that occupational groups that demonstrate the ability for social closure (Weber 1922/1978), closing the occupation off from outside pressures or regulation, that have a distinct specialization, a clientele, and a claim to altruism are considered a profession (Abbott 1988; Ritzer 1975; Saks 2010). Further, professions are described, generally, as having five traits: systematic theory, authority, community sanction, ethical codes, and a culture unto themselves (Greenwood 1957:45). According to Ritzer and Walczak (1986; 1988), those occupational groups considered professions exhibit a combination of formal rationality and substantive rationality,3 an accounting of Weber’s (1922/1978) uses of the terms at the structural level. The professions in medicine and law long served as the paradigmatic examples of a profession; they typically adhered to the above criteria and were largely cited as what professions should be characteristically in the ideal-normative sense. Yet, despite functionalist trends to treat the above criterion for professions as 3 In those works, Ritzer and Walczak (1986; 1988) followed the definitions of rationality set out by Stephen Kalberg (1980). Formal rationality, “involves… a concern for actors making choices in terms of means and ends… in reference to universally applied rules, regulations, and laws” (Ritzer and Walczak 1988:3). Formal rationality is typically manifested at the macro-level, paradigmatically in the form of bureaucratic structures. On the other hand, substantive rationality “is the degree to which the provisioning of given groups of persons (no matter how delimited) with goods is shaped by economically oriented social action under some criterion (past, present, or potential) of ultimate values… regardless of the nature of these ends” (Weber 1922/1978:85). 13 an immutable reality, previous and current research has insisted the concept of a profession is only an ideal type (Abbott 1988; George 2008; Maroto 2011; Ritzer and Walczak 1986). In fact, there is variation among and within occupational groups that were homogenously labeled professions (Gorman and Sandefur 2011; Saks 2015). Given that the concept of a profession is an ideal-type, research turned to understand the process by which an occupational group achieve and affect a professional status. When researchers speak of professionalization, they mean the process by which occupational groups strive toward the level of power enjoyed by the historic professions such as medicine and law (Freidson 2001). According to George Ritzer (1975:632-633), professionalization is a process of rationalization, drawing on the work of Weber (1922/1978) to explain professionalization as a process of routinizing structural qualities and professional practice resembling the development of the modern bureaucracy. To compare occupational groups of diverse composition and task, not only professions such as law and medicine, researchers focus on the means of control that occupational groups use, specifically those that they employ to move closer to the ideal of a profession. Those means of control that are formally rationalized are known as strategies of professionalization (Maroto 2011). Strategies of professionalization are meant to offer a form of social closure, a means of controlling the practices, membership, and authority of the occupational group’s practitioners, to provide a market shelter from potential or actual competition (Freidson 1994; Timmermans 2008; Weeden 2002). In effect, strategies of professionalization, “formalize social relationships, essentially ‘closing off’ an occupation through licensing procedures, professionalization organizations, 14 standardized training, and legal regulation,” (Maroto 2011:105). Producing a market shelter allows an occupational group to horde opportunities and a particular area of labor (Timmermans 2008), and therefore the leveraging of many professionalization strategies are part of exerting control over the state, the public, and the workplace (Abbott 1988). When a profession collectively and successfully formalizes their control over the occupational groups’ practices and membership, these qualities are taken together to afford the occupational a privileged position of power and control, one that is supported and recognized by the public (Ritzer and Walczak 1988). The professions enjoy a privileged position of authority because they are accorded a distinct level of discretion and trust. That privileged position of discretion and trust is, in part, due to the notion that their work is value-rationally oriented and any failure on the behalf of the professional is not “willful neglect” (Freidson 2001:35). In fact, professions are often accorded the legal backing of the state to practice as they see fit and self-regulate their membership and practices, given their altruistic practice is assumed to be done in the public’s best interest (Abbott 1988; Freidson 2001; Ritzer and Walczak 1988). In Freidson’s (1970; 1986; 2001) work on professionalism, he highlights that while the ordering logic of professionalism may produce the structural qualities that guarantee the legal and state backing of practice, that is only part of the “the social phenomenon securing the public’s willingness to support and use services” (Pescosolido, Tuch, and Martin 2001:3). In fact, as Abbott (1988) notes in his work on the efforts of professions to shape their public appearance, professions strive to win the support and recognition of the public in concrete ways to convince the public 15 they are the exclusive authorities over a particular area of labor. Without the ability to shape public opinion or public appearance, an occupational group would face difficulty winning state support and therefore social closure and exclusive jurisdiction. Thus, researchers have taken up the concept of professionalism as an important feature of understanding professional powers and control. A focus on professionalism is a focus on the presentation of identity, discourse, legitimacy, and ultimately the appearance of being professional. Occupational groups that can demonstrate professionalism, “Those specializations, which embody values held by the public at large, the state, or some powerful elite are given the privileged status of monopoly, or control over their own work. This monopolistic control is the essential characteristic of ideal-typical professionalism from which all else flows” (Freidson 2001:32). Taking this perspective emphasizes that professionals and other laborers, that appear to be acting agentially, undertake projects of professionalization in an attempt to shape their respective fields of occupational labor in the context of larger projects of institutionalization (Muzio, Brock, and Suddaby 2013). In this way, occupational groups that wish to appear professional, that is demonstrate, professionalism, carefully ensure, “Claims about who a group is (identity) articulate with claims about what that group does (jurisdiction) so that professionals attempt to protect both” (Chiarello 2011:310). Following the work of Evetts (2013), the notion of professionalism can be applied to occupational groups that are far removed from the traditional professions and find similar results, in addition to contributing to understanding what succeeds and fails for occupational groups in their employment of professionalism. In the following, I 16 briefly describe each of the three case studies that comprise this dissertation, which applies the reviewed literature to various groups to demonstrate the empirical value and applicability of professionalism and professionalization when based in the study of knowledge. Case Studies As previously noted, although each case study is based in a different context of labor, each is consistent in theoretical frame and method. Comprising this dissertation, I present, listed in the order of their appearance, three case studies: elite tattoo artists, the Watershed Stewards Academies of Maryland, and faculty of higher education. The first case study explores how tattoo artists attempt to establish control over their clientele and the public more broadly through various strategies of professionalization. By emulating credentialed and learned experts, these tattoo artists work toward establishing control over the consumer in order to dictate and pursue the practice of their labor unfettered by outside pressures, including demanding clients. The second case study explores how volunteer environmental stewards invest time and training into defined programs to become sources of reliable information and community mobilization. More specifically, this research explores how amateurs engage in expert service work and deploy scientific language so that they are trusted by their respective communities on a particular issue. The third case study examines how faculty of higher education react to proposals for and actual structural changes to the production and dissemination of formal knowledge via the use of the internet, in conjunction with or as a replacement for the traditional classroom. The three groups that comprise each of the following case studies are 17 uniquely positioned to provide useful and much needed insights into the sociological study of professions as they are currently known. The three case studies are formulated upon the presumption that, “knowledge and power directly imply one another” (Foucault 1975/1995:23). By assuming that knowledge and power are inextricably bound, the analyses are acutely critical of positions of knowledge and the power that certain forms of knowledge can yield from those positions. Each of these studies contribute a unique vantage point of the relationship between knowledge and power by taking the “expert” or “professional” as their focus and how the presentation of “professional” or “expert” is wielded by individuals acting professionally to establish and maintain control and influence over others. While each of these studies asks their own specific questions, they all aim to analyze the relationship between knowledge and power with regard to the role of the professional and the structural tenets that are wedded to occupational groups and individuals acting professionally. The tattoo artists that are a part of the first case study are considered to be at the forefront of their industry, an elite group that is often recognized as the experts or leaders in their industry. As a group, they are acutely aware of the commonplace and expected practices in their occupational field, a field that has and is experiencing a tremendous amount of growth and competition. Elite tattoo artists are keenly aware of the normative business practices that they have had to develop and employ in the wake of occupational change and competition. Reflecting on these changes within their industry, the tattoo artists interviewed here reveal they have had to manage their appearance of professionalism carefully and have gone to great lengths of working 18 with the public to convince them of their ability to provide expert and superior services. The second group to be discussed, the group of volunteer environmental stewards, provide insight into an under-theorized and under-researched area of study in the professionalization of social movements and civic associations. While this area of professionalization has a wealth of information and research regarding the structural changes of non-profit and civic organizations, the macro-processes and developments of the organizations themselves, little research has been conducted on the effects of group members becoming professionalized in an organization’s efforts to affect change. This case study explores the perceptions of volunteers who have participated in a formal training program, attempting to obtain a credential and certification of training, and how this process may or may not benefit their ability to work with and mobilize members of their communities. In effect, I ask: does this effort in professionalization, the participation in a very specific training, lead those volunteers to become recognized by their communities as authorities on the subject of environmental restoration? The final case study focuses on professional academics and their impressions of adopting online technologies for the classroom. This research exclusively engages with questions about deprofessionalization, examining if there is a challenge to the independence and autonomy of academics to practice their labor. The adoption of online technologies for teaching in higher education positions this research to be very timely and of potential importance to higher education. The limited amount of research on this transition in higher education often alludes or outright states that 19 these changes have been spurred by the demands for greater accountability and measuring educational outcomes, as well as boosting enrollment numbers. In this case study, I examine, first and foremost, if there is a sense amongst a community of faculty in higher education that online technologies used for course instruction pose a threat to professional autonomy and practice. Exploring further, I ask, does experience and familiarity with online technologies assuage the perception that online course instruction threaten the practice of faculty with the effects of deprofessionalization? 20 Chapter 2: Professionalizing Body Art? Challenges to the Professionalization of Marginalized Occupational Groups Abstract Studies of professionalization tend to focus on the adoption of formal means of control, and those analyses are often limited to interrogating occupational control over the standards of practice and the prerequisites of membership. This study builds on studies of professionalization to argue strategies of professionalization are also leveraged to assert control over consumers, in addition to control over standards of practice and membership. Using an ethnographic approach to the study of tattoo artists and their relationship with consumers, the findings demonstrate control over the consumer, whether it is formal or informal, is an integral criterion for understanding strategies of professionalization. 21 Introduction The study of professions and the topic of professionalization have long been central foci of work and occupations research. In spite of efforts theoretically and analytically to explore professionalization, which, I define here as the formal and substantive rationalization of occupational control, current research has struggled to move beyond strict definitions of the professions. Researchers have overlooked how partial, semi-professions, and even marginalized occupational groups practice professionalism and organize and exert control over their labors similar to traditional professions. A definitive framework for the comparative study of how the traditional professions and non-professions exert control over their occupational group has not yet been clearly defined. One framework (Maroto 2011) made great strides in addressing these shortcomings, yet by focusing exclusively on informal and formal means of control over membership and standards of practice, the framework does not afford researchers the opportunity to explore the control an occupational group wields over consumers and the public to affirm their professional status. In this ethnographic analysis of tattoo artists, who tour regional and national tattoo conventions, I expand the framework to include control over the consumer. Professions, as they are described in both foundational and current works, are unique occupational groups and specific structural and discursive qualities separate professions from the body of occupational groups. Generally, occupational groups are considered professions when: (1) they demonstrate a mastery over an abstract knowledge, (2) exhibit a distinct specialization, (3) attain the deference of a clientele, (4) exhibit altruism for the public in their work, and (6) achieve social closure 22 (Abbott 1988; Ritzer 1975; Ritzer and Walczak 1986; 1988; Saks 2001; Weber 1922/1978). Social closure is the structural closing off of the occupation from outside pressures or regulation (Abbott 1988; Ritzer 1975; Saks 2001; Weber 1922/1978). Early work on the professions treated the characteristics outlined above as the threshold for achieving a professional status, citing law and medicine as ideal- normative examples of professions. Current research has moved beyond such a simplistic view, often employing the concept of profession as an ideal-type (Abbott 1988; George 2008; Maroto 2011; Ritzer and Walczak 1986; 1988). Using the concept of a profession as an ideal type reflects the arrangements of contemporary occupational groups and the great amount of heterogeneity between and within occupational groups (Gorman and Sandefur 2011; Saks 2015). Central to the ideal-profession is exclusive jurisdiction, what Abbott (1988) describes as an occupational group’s ability to exercise complete control over their occupational groups. Without the ability to exercise exclusive jurisdiction, many groups of independent contractors and expert service workers have restructured their practices in order to maintain and assert control over their own occupations (George 2008; Maroto 2011; Osnowitz 2006), that is leveraging various strategies of professionalization. Professionalization is the process by which an occupational group works toward achieving a professional status in order to assert control over their area of labor (Abbott 1988; Freidson 2001; Maroto 2011). Strategies of professionalization are meant to offer a form or some forms of social closure, a means of controlling the practices, membership, and authority of the occupational group’s practitioners (Abbott 1988). In effect, these structures and the practice of an 23 occupation provide a market shelter from potential or actual competition (Freidson 1982, 1994; Timmermans 2008). Following Freidson’s (2001) work, the framework this study utilizes and builds upon for the analysis later in this paper, “incorporates professionalism but focuses on mechanisms of social control and order it promulgates” (Maroto 2011:103). That is, the theoretical orientation of the framework accounts for individual behavior and self-presentation of professional practice (Goode 1969), while also acknowledging the social institutions and structures that reinforce and affirm professional identity (Abbott 1988; Osnowitz 2006). The framework proposes two spheres of control for analysis, divided into formal and informal strategies of control: control over the standards of practice and control over group membership. As it is emphasized in the professions, professionalization, and professionalism literature, substantive rationality is both intrinsic to and an emphasized quality of the professions. In this study, I build on and extend the framework by highlighting strategies of professionalization that seek control over consumers and the public. More specifically, this study focuses on how an occupational group establishes authority over an area of labor through winning the trust and recognition of the public via informal and formal practices directed at their relevant audience. Drawing upon over a year of fieldwork and ethnographic data, tattoo artists interviewed in this study reveal they share an ethic of altruism for their customers, engage in informal means of control utilizing dramaturgical strategies (Goffman 1959) and a discourse of self- control (Aldridge and Evetts 2003) to influence customer choices, yet the tattoo 24 artists are frequently challenged by consumers over the price and rendition of tattoos given the lack of pursuing formal means of control over public perception. Formal means of control over the public, as I will show, typically employ strategies of boundary work (Gieryn 1983) and “doing distinction” (Burri 2008). This study provides evidence for future research on strategies of professionalization to consider control over the consumer, and more generally the public at large, as a crucial and necessary focus in addition to membership and standards of practice. More specifically, this study’s findings will demonstrate the centrality of strategies of professionalization that have the intent of controlling public image and the definition of labor. Controlling Standards of Practice, Membership, and Consumers To compare occupational groups that exhibit qualities of a profession or highlight how occupational groups achieve control over their area of labor, researchers focus on strategies of professionalization. The theoretical framework used in this study focuses on two spheres of control where occupational groups leverage strategies of professionalization; control over standards of practice and membership, which occupational groups formalize to achieve social closure. Occupational groups work to replace or reinforce informal means of control with formal means of control— drawing on the classic concept of rationalization. Drawing upon Weber’s (1978) description of occupations, Ritzer (1975) describes professionalization as a process of rationalization. According to Ritzer and Walczak (1986; 1988), those occupational groups considered professions exhibit what 25 Kalberg (1980) termed formal rationality and substantive rationality, but nonetheless rationalize their practices. Formal rationality, “…[I]nvolves… a concern for actors making choices in terms of means and ends… in reference to universally applied rules, regulations, and laws” (Ritzer and Walczak 1988:3), whereas, substantive rationality, “[I]s the degree to which the provisioning of given groups of persons (no matter how delimited) with goods is shaped by economically oriented social action under some criterion (past, present, or potential) of ultimate values… regardless of the nature of these ends” (Weber 1922/1978:85). Thus, for an occupational group to be professional, there is a codification, a rationalization, of altruism, in addition to the codification of credentials for membership and standards of practice. This constellation of altruistic and formal practice is understood to produce a market shelter, allowing occupational groups to horde opportunities and lay a monopolistic claim of control over a particular area of labor (Timmermans 2008). Leveraging strategies of professionalization aides in exerting control over the state, the public, and the workplace (Abbott 1988). The two spheres of control originally proposed in the framework, standards of practice and membership, largely focus on the workplace and the state. As a consequence, not considering control over the public, and consumers more generally, the framework lacks the ability to elaborate many of the strategies that occupational groups engage in to achieve social closure. Professional occupations exhibit formal rationality through codified regulations over practices and membership, yet the professions are accorded a distinct level of discretion and trust, given that their work is value-rationally oriented (Freidson 2001). The implication is any failure on the behalf of the professional 26 occurs with the professional working in the consumer’s best interest and is not “willful neglect” (Freidson 2001:35). Professional work intended for the care and service of others typically requires an esoteric and specialized formal knowledge in order to perform the tasks of a professional, which entails the application of abstract concepts and knowledge to concrete problems that are believed to be solved under the auspices of altruism and efficacy derived from self-regulating occupational organizations (Abbott 1988; Freidson 2001; Ritzer and Walczak 1988). The particular combination of structural qualities, the standardization of training, the closure and mastery of abstract knowledge, and the credentialing and control over membership, and the level of autonomy enjoyed by the professions culminate into a position of power and influence over the public (Ritzer and Walczak 1988). Working toward exclusive jurisdiction over those structural qualities denotes professionalization par excellence, where, “…[A]n occupation that has had the power to have undergone a developmental process enabling it to acquire, or convince significant others (for example, clients, the law) that it has acquired, a constellation of characteristics we have come to accept as denoting a profession” (Ritzer and Walczak 1986:62 [italics added for emphasis]). The emphasis on the public perception of an occupational group stems from what Freidson (1970) observed as the distinction between obtaining state-backed support through legal recognition of autonomy and self-regulation and “the social phenomenon securing the public’s willingness to support and use services” (Pescosolido, Tuch, and Martin 2001:3). An occupational group can achieve control over membership and practices through the state, but an occupational group successfully ascends to a professional 27 status when it convinces the public that it is has the legitimacy to claim autonomy and status. As Freidson says of the professions, “Those specializations, which embody values held by the public at large, the state, or some powerful elite are given the privileged status of monopoly, or control over their own work. This monopolistic control is the essential characteristic of ideal-typical professionalism from which all else flows” (2001:32 [italics added for emphasis]). A profession’s ability to exert exclusive jurisdiction or social closure over a particular area of labor is dependent upon their control and power over its members, the state, and the public (Abbott 2005). Put more succinctly, “Claims about who a group is (identity) articulate with claims about what that group does (jurisdiction) so that professionals attempt to protect both” (Chiarello 2011:310). My work focuses on informal and formal means of control over consumers, building upon the framework Maroto outlined for control over membership and standards of practice. As Maroto confirmed, on an informal level body art practitioners utilize social networks to establish surveillance and control over an intimate group maintained by its exclusivity to particular members and practices (McGuire 2007; Osnowitz 2006; Sanders 1989). For tattoo artists, these networks are maintained through various means, including apprenticeships, where the technical aspects of tattooing are shared in conjunction with the expectations and sets of values apprentices should come to practice on their own (Sanders 1989; Wicks and Grandy 2007). Yet, as the number of body art practitioners and the potential for competition increases, the occupational group formalizes their control over standards of practice and membership given that it becomes infeasible to maintain an effective social 28 network for controlling the expanding body art industry. In effect, professionalization strategies, “formalize social relationships, essentially ‘closing off’ an occupation through licensing procedures, professionalization organizations, standardized training, and legal regulation,” (Maroto 2011: 105). In the case of body art practitioners, Maroto found that this was accomplished through establishing laws through the state that mandated the certifications and training one needed to legally operate in King’s County, Washington. Professionalization strategies that seek to establish control over the public and consumers are essential to understanding how occupational groups attain authority and status for self-regulation and autonomy (Smith-Cunnien 1998). Informally, tattoo artists have leveraged social networks and dramaturgical strategies to convince consumers of their authority and legitimacy to fashion tattoos, exercising their creativity and discretion to render custom and unique tattoos. On a more formal level, tattoo artists have organized a number of recurring tattoo conventions and magazines (Sanders 1989) and art exhibitions (Kosut 2006a). This analysis will focus on what mechanisms enable practitioners to assert their control, and more importantly, how it is threatened by a lack of interest on behalf of tattoo artists to leverage strategies of professionalization for the control of public perception. Informal means of control over consumers rely upon charismatic authority or on artistic abilities for legitimating the occupational group’s exercise of control (Ritzer 1975). Historically, tattoo artists have relied upon dramaturgical strategies (Goffman 1959) to convince clients they are qualified and know what is best for the customer when it comes to the content, placement, and rendition of a tattoo (Sanders 29 1989). Similarly, these dramaturgical strategies are related to the presentation of tattoo artists amongst the public, attempting to demonstrate their work is professional and fit for mainstream consumption by consistently identifying and being identified as artists and their works as art (Kosut 2006a; Maroto 2011). These informal means of control have been leveraged through the presentation of their work and through the rhetorical strategies they use in settings where tattoo artists interact with clients on an informal and personal level. Concretely, these strategies range from interactions with clients during the rendition of a tattoo (Sanders 1989; Vail 1999), constructing a portfolio for display at tattoo studios and conventions, producing tattoo art influenced work in multiple mediums for sale and display, to showcasing their work and tattoo artifacts in museum exhibitions (Kosut 2006a). Formal means of controlling the consumer are accomplished by displaying a specialization through rigorous training and the establishment of a full-time occupation that aids in creating a closed, professional culture, lifestyle, and clientele (Ritzer 1975:631). Abbott (1988: 138) states, “Before the public, power is exercised through various forms of media coverage—advice columns, feature material, personal appearances, and enforcement of standards for media presentations of professionals.” In this way, an occupational group’s control over the public is derived from controlling public perception. Even more important, these strategies of controlling public perception allow an occupational group to demonstrate a specialization and a distinction from other occupational groups. For example, the boundary work that scientists engaged into define themselves apart from non-science (Gieryn 1983), the attack on chiropractors (Smith-Cunnien 1998) or complimentary alternative medicine 30 (Beyerstein 1997) from orthodox medicine, or the attempts of radiology to reconstitute a professional identity within the medical community through distinctions (Bourdieu 1990) from other medical positions (Burri 2008); all demonstrate how various occupational groups have leveraged strategies to achieve status and legitimacy. Similarly, tattoo artists have attempted to shape public perceptions through annual or bi-annual organized tattoo conventions (Irwin 2003), the use of print media in the form of magazines (Sanders 1989), and art exhibitions (Kosut 2006a). I demonstrate that elite tattoo artists, leaders of an occupational group, selectively utilize various strategies of professionalization in order to maintain control over membership, practices, and consumers and achieve some successes. However, as the findings will also demonstrate, the public and their expectations about the services tattoo artists provide do not always align with the intentions of tattoo artists despite concerted efforts to win over the public’s deference, which poses challenges to the power of tattoo artists to achieve social closure. Methods and Data This study employs a qualitative methodology, with semi-structured interviews and participant observation. Interviews were conducted face-to-face with individuals who have a unique perspective and understanding of the tattoo industry and its business practices. I employed a mid-range ethnographic approach (Dewalt and Dewalt 2002), rather than constructing a completely grounded theoretical analysis approach (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Kuzel 1999). The interview structure adopted in this study, intensive interviewing (Lofland and Lofland 1984), employed open-ended questions 31 that were based upon the conceptual framework of identifying dominant business practices with a specific focus on qualities of rationalization. In a conversational approach, respondents were encouraged to reflect on their own experiences and provide insight into the changing terrain of the tattoo industry. Utilizing sensitizing concepts (Bowen 2006; Seibold 2002; Strauss and Corbin 1990), the semi-structured interviews addressed the different aspects of rationalization, attitudinal traits of their work, client interactions, and the American popularization of tattooing. Conducting the data collection with a colleague allowed us to test one another’s initial findings and refine our analysis as we continued work in the field (Schouten and McAlexander 1995). This method of interviewing allowed for a degree of reflexivity both during and after the interviews, which led to the adjustment of the interview protocol to pursue emergent themes while keeping the initial research question of dominant business practices in focus.4 Various strategies of professionalization often overlap the three spheres of control discussed above, just as various types of rationality often coexist within phenomenological processes. Therefore, I encouraged participants to be as clear as possible, so the nuances of their business practices and perspectives on the tattoo industry could be captured in detail. Further, it was important to explore the daily experience of tattoo artists within the tattoo industry (client interactions, rendering a tattoo or the act of tattooing, shop keeping, etc.), evaluating them each individually, and then returning to the whole in order to determine where various strategies of control over occupational practices 4 The initial interview protocol can be found in the Appendix, titled as, “Interview Protocol for Case Study One.” 32 may coalesce or come into conflict. The interviews were continued, refined, and refocused until a point of theoretical saturation (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Kuzel 1999) was met. A little over an entire year was spent gathering field notes and digitally recorded interviews to assemble a primary dataset beginning in the Spring of 2010. The sample is drawn largely from convenience. People were solicited to volunteer their participation in this study before, during, and after tattoo conventions across the Eastern and Midwest region of the United States. I employed snowball sampling, utilizing known contacts within the tattoo industry, employing those individuals as gatekeepers (Rossman and Rallis 1998); they then led and introduced other tattoo artists willing to share their viewpoints and perspective. While the sample is purposive, drawn mostly by convenience and by ease of access, the people interviewed closely represent the top echelons of tattoo artists of the tattoo industry in the U.S. These tattoo artists regularly attended national and regional conventions. They are tattoo artists are who could be considered the “tattoo elite” (Irwin 2003). In total, three apprentices and thirty-two tattoo artists interviewed at fifteen conventions, most of which met over a three-day period during the duration of the data collection. The sample included six females and twenty-nine males. The racial composition of those interviewed consisted of nearly all White respondents aside from one Asian-American, one African-American, and one Hispanic-American. The majority of those interviewed were from a self-identified working class background. Only nine of those interviewed identified themselves as middle class and two did not respond. Twelve of the tattoo artists have a high school education or less, while 33 twenty-two artists stated they attended some form of schooling beyond high school. One artist did not respond. From the experience in the field, the composition of the sample reflects the majority of tattoo artists who frequent conventions, most of whom are predominately male, White, and of a working-class background. For the purposes of confidentiality, all of the tattoo artists’ names and affiliations have been replaced with pseudonyms. The transcriptions of the interviews were analyzed using a systematic coding scheme to find deductive themes, focusing on the business practices of the tattoo industry and inductive themes that emerged during the data collection process. This process involved reflecting on my initial findings of deductive themes, refining the focus of the analysis in concert with the inductive themes, testing my initial findings. After several iterations, the appropriate codes were generated and used to support the analysis and conclusions of this study. For the purposes of making directly quoted interviews poignant and clear, the colloquialisms such as “um,” and “uh,” were deleted as long as they were determined to not be informative or an integral part of what the individual tattoo artists had to say. Findings: Professionalizing Tattooing and the Challenge of Consumers I begin this section by revisiting the findings of Maroto’s analysis and framework, the informal and formal means of control over standards of practice and membership. After I have revisited these two areas of control, I evaluate the sphere of control I have added—control over the consumer. In essence, I argue that evaluating strategies of professionalization, including those that establish control over consumers and the 34 public, provides researchers the ability to identify strategies of professionalization that aid in granting occupational groups autonomy, social closure, and the authority to self-regulate. The analysis also demonstrates the need for researchers to continue to postulate how occupational groups may informally and formally assert control over their occupational group members, practices, and the public. Revisiting Maroto’s Spheres of Control: Membership and Practice The tattoo artists interviewed in this study reveal that their occupational group is rapidly expanding, thus posing challenges to their efforts to define the industry—in other words, in their view they saw threats to their ability to dictate how the training to tattoo, the practice of tattooing, and even the popular representation of tattooing should be. To assert some control, industry leaders worked to incorporate strategies of professionalization, as shown in this study and found in existing literature. For example, Maroto (2011) demonstrates tattoo artists have marginally incorporated standardized training, professional associations, and statutory regulations alongside more informal means of control over standards of practice and membership that were once the dominant practices of the tattoo industry. The process of securing an apprenticeship is often difficult, but it has long served as the primary means for controlling membership in the tattoo industry. Latent consequences have been eliminating the threat of potential competition and structurally ensuring that the tattoo artists were a part of a closely-knit industry that could be monitored by a vanguard of gatekeepers (Sanders 1989; Wicks and Grandy 2007). Maroto’s sample of body art practitioners found shop owners dominantly comprised this group of gatekeepers, and despite the potential threat of increased 35 numbers of practitioners they did not wish to adopt a more formalized system of training. This study’s findings largely support this. Given that tattooing is learned on-site from practical experience and requires a great commitment of time, experienced artists insist on the norm of an apprenticeship. As noted above, the tattoo artists in this sample varied in educational background from high school dropouts to art school graduates. Similarly, no two artists experienced the same systematic education, entry, or training in the tattoo industry. Many experienced a great deal of adversity when just trying to find work in a tattoo shop while others said they were lucky to know someone who worked in a shop and through them gained access to training. Some admitted to being self taught, but the importance of an apprenticeship system to tattoo artists in this sample is central. As Tom, a thirty-nine year old tattoo artist with eighteen years of experience, described the expected, standard training of a tattoo artist, “As long as the person has blood borne pathogens certification, and CPR, and as long as someone has really received good instruction from a reputable mentor—I think honestly the mentorship program is paramount because that right there weeds out the good eggs from the bad eggs.” Artists often cited the apprenticeship as being extremely important, but they often stressed it is a long and arduous process. Peter, who had been working in the industry for sixteen years, drew an analogy between training to be a sushi chef and learning to tattoo to emphasize the importance of the gradual progression of an apprenticeship. This way, mentors, the gatekeepers of the industry, can weed the good eggs from the bad eggs. As Peter said: You know, it takes ten years to become a sushi chef. The first—I believe the first five years of the apprenticeship you wash the dishes. 36 That’s all you do. You don’t touch a knife. You don’t do anything. The next three years you cook the rice. And then the last two you learn to cut the fish. If you don’t go through that process, no real Japanese sushi chef will consider you worthy of working for him or a sushi chef at all. You know what I mean? That doesn’t exist anymore in the United States. I don’t care what it is. Not carpentry, not anything. And I think that’s a shame. I think that what it creates is a respect for who is teaching you and your place in the line of experience. Whether or not you’re actually worthy to pick up that knife. I’m sure that if you wash the dishes like shit and you burn the rice or it comes out soggy, by the time that you’re like, “Okay, can I now learn how to make sushi,” they’d probably be like, “No. No. You pretty much sucked at everything else. Why don’t you find another job?” You know what I mean? They should do that in tattooing too. This emphasis upon the outcomes of such an apprenticeship, the notions of respect and learning one’s place, reflects the realities of an informal network that aims to be watchful over the training and practices of its occupational members, which consciously weeds out the “bad eggs.” The apprenticeship is likely to remain the dominant model for training tattoo artists; arguably, the only other form of training or professional instruction for tattooing takes place at tattoo conventions (Sanders 1989; Kosut 2006a; Maroto 2011). Many of the respondents described conventions as a means of maintaining networks with clients and other artists. At some tattoo conventions, artists can attend seminars about every aspect of the business in the tattoo industry, ranging from lessons in color theory to securing insurance for your business. Most of the learning that goes on at conventions, according to the tattoo artists we interviewed, comes from watching others work at the convention, which is often described as being surrounded by the greats or legends of the tattoo industry. Betty, a tattoo artist of only a couple of years said of the conventions she attended, “It’s like if you play basketball, it’s like meeting Kobe Bryant in person, and playing basketball with him, 37 while he is telling you how he does certain things he does. Not everybody in a profession gets to do that.” So, even the type of learning that is dominant at conventions is informal, and even those classes that can be arguably setting standards for the industry occur in a loose, time and place specific instructional setting that could not ensure that all tattoo artists are following these policies. This combination of informal and formal strategies of occupational control is further supported by the tattoo artists’ attitudes toward professional associations. Tattoo artists are resistant to supporting formalized professional associations. As they see it, professional associations have had a history for being ineffective and not sharing information about the tattoo industry with the public; this is evidenced by the interviews and survey data Maroto presented. Professional associations were not given an explicit focus in this study; however after traveling to numerous national and regional tattoo conventions, it became clear that no one group was responsible for organizing a majority of the conventions. In fact, the only normative aspect was that conventions were often sponsored by a number of businesses, including those that specifically sell tattoo aftercare products, clothing and décor influenced by tattoo art, tattoo equipment supply companies, and tattoo-affiliated publications, and tattoo artists themselves by paying for booth space at the convention. There was never one dominant special interest group that was representative of the tattoo artist occupational group at each convention. Rather, as discussed above, many of the same tattoo artists regularly attend heavily toured tattoo conventions, which functions as a means of maintaining informal social networks. These findings support what others (Irwin 2003; Kosut 2006b; Maroto 2011; Sanders 1989) have found: many of the 38 relationships and group cohesion continue to occur at an informal level at conventions, whereas the conventions are continually organized in a rationalized fashion, run by tattoo artists or others who are by default, responsible for the dominant structural form of the tattoo convention. Similar to the two strategies of professionalization above, standardization of training and professional associations, statutory regulation was also varied in both informal and formal practice. Maroto (2011: 121 and 130) presents an excellent overview of the variation of state laws governing body art practitioners and their attitudes toward licensing and regulation; there the impact of state regulation was embraced for its ability to confer credentials but abhorred for the regulations that required the oversight of authorities outside the occupational group. Nearly all of the artists in this study confirmed that at a minimum, a local health department periodically inspected the cleanliness of their shops and the functionality of autoclaves (a machine that is meant to sterilize tattoo equipment) on site. Further, most of the tattoo artists must complete an annual blood borne pathogens and cardiopulmonary resuscitation training in order to legally tattoo. These inspections varied by breadth of detail, rigor, and time lapsed between inspections according to locale. Most experiences were along the line of Carl’s, a tattoo artist of seventeen years. He described the regulations in his area as not being effective in maintaining standards in tattooing, at least as he understood what the standards should be. He said, “Well, we basically have the local health department. The lady comes by on a monthly basis, I think she checks the records of paperwork, sterilizer sheets, test strips we send off… [T]here’s always some new thing that you are supposed to do, but it doesn’t really have any bearing,” on tattooing. Being 39 representative of the tattoo artists interviewed, Carl and others felt the regulation did nothing for the art of tattooing but all of them agreed it did guarantee some form of safety. As I will discuss later in the analysis, health regulations can be viewed as both a hindrance to and an opportunity for advancing social closure over tattooing. For example, Kyle, a twenty-seven-year-old tattoo artist who has been working in the industry for six years, talked about the safety courses he was required to take in order to legally tattoo. He said of the certifications in his area, “The class is a joke… The test is basically, ‘Should you stab yourself with needles? Yes or no? When you’re done tattooing should you drink the rinse cup? Yes or no?’ It’s like bullshit.” According to Kyle, the certifications did nothing for the quality of tattooing. He complained, “You don’t have to know how to tattoo. You don’t have to have any artistic ability. It’s cross contamination, blood borne pathogens and disease control, which is very important, but it has actually nothing to do with tattooing… You don’t have to know whether or not you can use regular ink or acrylic paint to do a tattoo. It doesn’t matter.” It is clear that tattoo artists in my sample, Kyle included, were concerned about the lack of statutory regulation to guarantee a minimum standard of quality in tattooing, but solace was taken insofar as these statutory regulations helped to shape public perceptions about tattooing (which will be emphasized later in the analysis and discussion). In terms of actually wanting additional statutory regulations that would formalize requirements for credentialing and training, some want more or different regulations to be in place that would test would-be tattoo artists on the artistic 40 qualities of tattooing. For instance, Kyle said, “I think there should be an art exam to be able to tattoo. Not a strict one because I understand some people are shitty artists, but they love tattooing. Fine, but there’s got to be some.” Others artists wanted similar regulations to ensure only legitimately qualified people were legally allowed to tattoo, yet very few artists would agree to some sort of a national standard. They argue that tattooing cannot be taught formally in an institutionalized school. James, a tattoo artist who was attending school for industrial design, said in response to institutionalizing training for tattoo artists, “Are you trying to gentrify? Are you trying to homogenize everyone into the same like vein of teaching? Because that’s not tattooing.” He took offense to the idea that there should be some sort of standard or common-core for tattoo artists to learn before tattooing. It is clear that, given the lack of an effective professional association, more formal means of controlling entry into tattooing at a national level is unlikely. Instead, controlling entry into tattooing will have to continue as it has through informal networks. As Betty put it, current practices of regulation over the sale of tattoo equipment, including inks, needles, machines, and other supplies, are informal where some businesses will take the time to verify that the purchaser of any items is a tattoo artist who works in a “legitimate” tattoo shop. Given that these practices are not required, however, and are not easily enforced, she expressed frustration, saying, “Some machine builders will not sell to people who tattoo out of their basements, and that’s the right thing that they do because if you do that… you are defeating something you help create and if you are passionate for it you would never do this [selling tattoo equipment and supplies to non-tattoo artists].” These sorts of informal 41 means of control, comprised of networks and gatekeepers, are still very much the common practice of the tattoo industry today. Yet, some tattoo artists would seek to establish control through standardized training, professional associations, and statutory regulations so that those established in the tattoo industry may pursue the social closure of the tattoo industry. At the same time, there is still resistance to formalizing these controls because tattooing is something learned through practical experience and many tattoo artists still value informal practices of control. To this point, my findings support what others have found: tattoo artists, as an occupational group, are motivated to adopt formal means of controlling their members only when more informal means no longer work as they once did—thereby threatening their sense of occupational control and perception of what it means to be “professional.” Still, tattoo artists refuse to go so far as to support means of control that emulate the “ideal” profession because this would belie their identity as edgy or deviant. Still, the informal and formal controls exercised over membership and practice by tattoo artists provide an incomplete picture of their attempts to establish control over tattooing as an occupation. In the pages that follow, I demonstrate that although control over the public is implicitly addressed by the strategies of professionalization discussed thus far, they do not address the explicit ideological construction of an occupational groups’ public perception—the concerted, purposeful strategies of professionalization that are focused on establishing control over the public. Without considering public opinion, which is essential for the attainment of professional status (Abbott 1988; Freidson 2001; Ritzer and Walczak 1986), the framework for studying informal and formal 42 occupational group controls amounts to exploring the formal rationalization of an occupational group because it ignores the values they espouse—a central tenet of Weber’s contribution to the study of professions, the inclusion of substantive rationality. In other words, ignoring how occupational groups attempt to shape the public perception of their identity, we fail to recognize the symbolic resources occupational groups attempt to leverage as a means of controlling the public’s support and achieving social closure. Informal Controls Over the Consumer The informal means of controlling consumers usually takes place on the level of personal interaction. There, tattoo artists engage in dramaturgical strategies (Goffman 1959) to convince consumers that they are legitimate professionals with discretion to create a tattoo for the client. These strategies use rhetoric, capitalizing on charismatic authority and an emphasis on artistic qualities (Ritzer 1975). I explore this issue, particularly the ways that tattoo artists foil themselves against “scratchers,” those that are amateur, unsafe, and unskilled tattooers. Tattoo artists emphasize the artistic and professional qualities of their work to customers through the construction of portfolios and the appearance of their workplaces. Distinction of Artists from Scratchers. The tattoo artists interviewed emphasized that scratchers typically were not safe, did not follow generally accepted practices of proper sanitation, and lacked the necessary training and knowledge to produce quality tattoos. Candice, one of the younger artists interviewed, said when asked about the difference between an artist and a scratcher, “It’s the difference of an amazing, talented artist, well educated and learned the safety precautions.” According 43 to the tattoo artists, scratchers do not take tattooing seriously and thus didn’t follow a set of values that tattoo artists held dear, for example a reverence for marking someone’s skin permanently or rendering a quality tattoo. I asked David, a tattoo artist who has been working in the industry for twenty-one years, about the difference between an artist and a scratcher, he said the difference was, “The drive to want to learn it [tattooing], not just look… Constantly, and all the time, I’m always thinking, ‘How can the machines run better? How can I be more efficient?’ I don’t think that scratchers are totally into it because a scratcher to me is when a tattoo has been scratched on. Like it’s being scratched.” Artists like David use the scratcher as a foil, depicting the threat that scratchers pose to the legitimacy of tattoo artists because scratchers produce low quality tattoos that “scarred” a person’s skin. In addition to having no regard for the person who wears the tattoo, scratchers were also described as having a “rock star” mentality, where they did not care to learn the trade. Rather, they bought a tattooing kit from a supplier that did not bother to check out their credentials (a failure of the informal controls over standards of practice discussed above), and they tattooed without first going through an apprenticeship or any training (again a failure of the informal control over training). Lauren, who had been tattooing for only two years, felt especially strong about taking a stand against scratchers (most likely because she was not that far removed from her time as an apprentice). She described the difference between scratchers and artists as, “[A]n artist cares more about what they are doing, where as a scratcher is either doing it for the money or the rock star mentality, get chicks, and I feel like an artist really wants to push themselves forward. Not because it’s just their job or anything like that. They 44 want to push themselves forward because that’s what they do.” Tattoo artists in this study equated a scratcher’s preference to simply make money with a quantity over quality mentality; it was something antithetical to the values that tattoo artists wish to display to their clientele and others interested in tattooing. These descriptions of scratchers provide evidence that tattoo artists continually engage in reframing their work as art and thereby stress the artistic qualities of their occupation. They also stress to consumers that it is a lifestyle choice to be a tattoo artist, a level of commitment to tattooing that scratchers lack. This sort of rhetoric is also a means to establish clear value distinctions between those that represent the professional tattoo artist against the amateur tattooer. Various manifestations of this intraoccupational group distinction appear in the emergence of a tattoo elite (Irwin 2003) and the comparisons drawn between tattooing and fine art (Kosut 2006a). As Peter spoke of ideal apprenticeships in the section above, apprenticeships are not only meant to keep scratchers out of tattooing, but apprenticeships are also an informal means of transferring these value systems that emphasize humility, hard work, and dedication to tattooing. As another respondent, Tom, said, tattoo artists must have, “Respect. Respect for one’s self. Respect for the industry. Respect for the process.” The distinct set of values that are held by the tattoo artists in this sample reveals that the presentation of their work, in the form of portfolios and the appearance of their workplace, is carefully orchestrated, thus giving the public a sense that they embody those values described above. The Role of Portfolios. At first glance, a tattoo artists’ portfolio appears to be a photographic diary of sorts, showing off the work history of an artist. Given that all 45 tattoo artists in this sample engaged in creating a portfolio and brought these with them to conventions, it became important to discern why tattoo artists construct portfolios and what it means for them in relation to consumers. Michael, a tattoo artist of nineteen years, explained the portfolio is a good way of looking at one’s artistic progression, but ultimately the portfolio is for presenting one’s work to a customer: You know, you put your best of what you got in there. As you progress, and you look back at what you got in your portfolio, you’re going to start replacing those older photos with the newer stuff. And you can see the progression through that. You know, somebody comes in, they’re looking around, you know, they don’t know what style of art you’re into… I personally like to do realism. I like portraits and wildlife, things like that. Even though I’m pretty versatile and could do any style that you want, I prefer to do the portraits, so that’s what I try to push. People come in, they look at the portfolio. If all they see are portraits, they’re going to start thinking portraits. If I have a bunch of tribal in my book, they’re going to get tribal. So, you have to put in what you want to do, you know. The photos that become a part of the portfolio, according to the tattoo artists interviewed, represent one’s artistic styles, and emphasize those qualities that tattoo artists feel are their strengths, as in Michael’s case by including photos of portrait and photorealistic wildlife tattoos in his portfolio. Interestingly, portfolios are also a way of showing off a distinct specialization within tattooing. Tattoo artists often described the relations that they have with other tattoo artists within the shops they work out of as lacking an explicit division of labor, but, naturally borne out of artistic styles and preferences, each person finds their own distinct style and strengths. Thus, a division of labor and specialization is established around styles of tattooing. As Carl described, when people come into the shop where he works, people come in, not knowing which artist they should specifically seek out. 46 So, he would advise them, “[W]e’ll say, ‘Look at the portfolios. There’s a bunch of different stuff. Everyone does their own thing.’ …It’s obvious, you know, if you want to get an Asian style quarter sleeve or if you want to get traditional work or you want to get something with color outlines… If somebody that wants to get something that is a little more specialized we’ll try to direct them.” This dynamic presents discerning customers with the ability to compare works along lines of quality and their own tastes. It also presents a clear division of strengths amongst tattoo artists within one shop or one convention thereby allowing the presentation of artistic abilities to justify customers preferring one artist over another. This rather simple dynamic is essential in understanding how tattoo artists have managed to create various styles and the demand for them amongst the public. The tattoo artists that were interviewed claimed there is a minimal standard of ability and therefore some overlap in styles and abilities, yet as Candice pointed out, “So, I mean definitely there’s overlapping but we each have a different, specific style… Typically, people come to us and already know who they want to get tattooed by because they have already done the research, which is really nice that I am able to work in a studio that attracts people who aren’t idiots by and large or it attracts the more educated tattoo collectors.” The admission of “idiots” versus “more educated tattoo collectors” reveals exactly the desired effect of portfolios—the impact of the portfolio, the presentation of art and its framing as a view into one’s abilities, establishes a clientele. This effect is a central part of the professionalization process (Ritzer 1975) and establishing jurisdiction over an area of labor (Abbott 1988). Aldridge and Evetts (2003:555) state that such techniques of manipulating the 47 perception of professionalism is a form of cultural capital, and “It is a discourse of self-control, even self-belief, an occupational badge or marker which gives meaning to the work and enables workers to justify and emphasize the importance of their work to themselves and others.” Thus, portfolios are one dramaturgical strategy that artists use to convince significant others of their ability and to convince customers of their familiarity with the artistic qualities of the profession. For tattoo artists, presentation and appearance are central components to convincing others that they have the authority to exclusively exercise the labor of tattooing. The Shop. When speaking of the tattoo shop’s appearance, according to one respondent, “You got to have it all. You got to have like the sterility of a doctor’s office, the aesthetic of a spa, and the unique like hip atmosphere of a salon.” This sort of negotiation entails finding a balance between showing off the creative and artistic qualities of tattooing while at the same time assuring customers that such a space is sterile, clean, and safe. These two points may not seem antithetical, but when considering some of the literature on the rationalization of consumption settings, it becomes clear that the designers of places of consumption pay special attention to creating a sense of excitement that encourages consumption. The designers do so because the too sterile or too ascetic appearance of bare formal rationality disenchants potential consumers (Ritzer 1999). All of the tattoo artists, first and foremost, identified cleanliness to be the most important part of maintaining a workplace, as evidenced by Betty’s take on what is most pressing for the appearance of a tattoo shop, “You know, but obviously yeah, it’s always good if you walk into a shop and it’s you know clean and it’s nice. I try to 48 keep my shit clean you know. It’s definitely safe.” Yet, it is also important to maintain the distinct character of what a tattoo shop should look like. Carl says of tattoo shops, “Tattooing, one of the things that makes it cool, tattooing, you walk into a tattoo shop and it doesn’t look like someone else’s tattoo shop. You got the flash on the walls, or weird colors, or art, or stuff hanging up.” In this way, each shop is reflection of the tattoo artists and shop owners. He emphasized that while a tattoo shop should be clean, he said, “You know, a tattoo shop, I think, should look like a tattoo shop. It shouldn’t be like walking into a doctor’s office. As far as the cleanliness and the standards of the bed, yes it should be, but you should be able to see cool things that you can’t see [elsewhere].” To be clear, these are dramaturgical strategies, whether it is distinguishing tattoo artists and scratchers, constructing a portfolio, or rationally planning the appearance of a tattoo shop are meant to convey a particular set of values to consumers. These values reflect an ethic of altruism, a sense of care for the customer, emphasizing the artistic qualities of tattoo artists’ work, and most of all allowing the artists to stake out a specialization, a definitive point of reference so that consumers get exposed to issues of quality and what it means to be a professional tattoo artist. Each of these dramaturgical strategies operate at the individual level, where artists share their points of view directly with consumers through interactions or indirectly through various tools of their trade, like the portfolio and the shop. Next, I focus on formal means of controlling the public’s perception of tattoo artists. I show how, as strategies of professionalization, boundary work and professional associations play a central role in an occupational group’s ability to convince the public of their 49 legitimacy to claiming jurisdiction over a particular area of labor. Formal Controls Over the Consumer Tattoo Competitions. Often at tattoo conventions, there are competitions for tattoos. They are divided into various categories, usually based on size, placement, or style, which are judged by a panel of fellow tattoo artists. Anyone attending the convention can enter the competitions, and normally entrants in the competition are collectors or someone who wishes to represent a tattoo artist and their work in a competition. A small fee is typically required for entry and the prizes are often trophies that are given to the entrant and bragging rights for the artists and collectors. The competitions generally follow a predictable routine. Entrants are called to the stage one at a time; each is asked their name and who did their tattoo; and in front of a gathered crowd, each entrant shows off their tattoo to the panel of judges. The panel is normally made up of at least three judges, typically tattoo artists and collectors who are heavily involved in the tattoo industry, or quite literally a part of the “tattoo elite” (Irwin 2003). The tattoo competition, a form of peer review, is a formal means of control over the consumer. Consumers’ tattoos are reviewed by tattoo artists who present themselves as experts, able to judge and discern the quality of tattoos as being artistic or not, and therefore legitimate or not. One particular tattoo competition that I witnessed was even more telling of this formal use of the peer review process: a competition for the worst tattoo at the convention. Winners of this award, for bearing this unkindly honor, are usually given a coupon for a discount on a tattoo laser removal service from a local sponsor of the convention or a participating tattoo shop 50 that offers tattoo removal services. Those with “bad tattoos” offer tattoo artists and the public a sort of teachable moment: while the “winner” may be a good sport, they are on display to emphasize only professionals should do tattoos. Just as they are able to define what is a bad tattoo, in the same event, tattoo artists display the best of their collective artistic abilities and show the audience what is a “good tattoo.” When asked directly, tattoo artists often could not settle on one particular definition for an authentic or legitimate tattoo, or a good tattoo versus a bad tattoo, but it was clear, for them, a good tattoo, regardless of the content of the tattoo, is done by a professional. As Kyle put it, “I don’t know if there are any bad images if it is done by a good tattooer. You know, a fucking dick on a pair of roller skates looks good if it is done by the right guy.” Often, the image itself becomes inconsequential and much more emphasis is given to whether or not the level of artistic ability is shown in a tattoo, showing all of the qualities of a professionally rendered tattoo. This dynamic of boundary work is similar to the rhetorical use of “scratcher” as a foil to tattoo artists, but it is different in the sense that these competitions and judgments are passed before an audience at a tattoo convention, composed of both the producers and consumers. This exercise of boundary work and distinction allows those with cultural capital to define the rules of the game (Bourdieu 1990), in this case the tattoo elite judging what is a good or bad tattoo, and in the process demonstrates a sort of education for consumers at tattoo conventions by clearly identifying leaders of the tattoo industry. Having an audience for a convention demonstrates that these tattoo artists have successfully established a clientele, or at 51 least a general interest amongst consumers. Some artists dislike competitions at conventions. As Betty said, some view it as a “penis contest,” yet the interviewed tattoo artists stress earning the recognition of your peers is something to strive toward. Further, most tattoo artists claim they have no interest in occupying a limelight unless it aides in establishing a clientele or it is to earn the respect of those in the industry. When I asked David if he felt that gaining exposure in tattoo affiliated publications was important he said, “If you want to broaden your clientele base. Your clientele base gets bigger if more people from out of town see it and stuff,” and later went on to remark that, “There aren’t a lot of values totally to tattooing. You know? Tattoo artists respect each other and they respect each other’s work and art, doing things right, and pushing the envelope.” Most tattoo artists made similar comments, where it was not important to gain exposure in the media. If they did good, solid tattoos they would be able to stay in business without having to market themselves by appearing in a magazine or television, but the appeal to being in magazines was clear, as Betty says, “It definitely helps and it definitely makes you feel better about your work. You get your work out there… [T]he more you get published, the more [potential clients] realize what kind of style you’re working for, and people are vain. They want to be in magazines. It works both ways. It works for you to get your work out there and it works for you to get the clients that you want to get.” Betty’s articulation about the importance of exposure in the tattoo industry also identifies much of the tattoo artists’ focus of control, the tattoo artists themselves. Betty continued, explaining how magazine exposure can help with expanding an artist’s 52 clientele, and in that discussion she cites Tattoo Artist Magazine (TAM). The reason the specific magazine she cites is important is because TAM is a magazine that is explicitly sold and marketed to tattoo artists as, “The Journal for the Professional Tattooer.” TAM is not sold in stores to the general public, requires a verification of status as a tattoo artist to obtain a subscription, and even TAM’s website requires a password to access parts of the site. The use of media exposure, especially through TAM, reflects a formal means of distinction, allowing artists to demonstrate their unique styles, artistic abilities, and quality of work. Though these efforts allow the public to glimpse how artists set themselves apart from scratchers and from other tattoo artists with distinct specializations, these efforts are not coordinated through an officiating body of tattoo artists. As Abbott (1988) observed of the professions, controlling the professional group’s public image in popular media was paramount to convincing a public they are able to and deserve to monopolize a particular area of labor. Many of the informal and formal means of control that tattoo artists use to control their public image appears to have been successful, given that some consumers think of their bodies as canvases to collect art (Vail 1999). This has been accomplished through the dramaturgical strategies and rhetorical devices on the informal level and boundary work and making distinctions on the formal level. Yet, according to the tattoo artists, these strategies have not clearly defined a professional tattoo artist for the public as a whole. 53 Lack of Professional Association. As mentioned earlier, tattoo artists do not have a distinct professional association that helps to shape the formal organization of their standards of practice or membership. This absence of a professional association is also a hindrance to the ability of tattoo artists to shape their public image in a coordinated manner, which becomes problematic if part of convincing the public and consumers of their authority to claim a jurisdiction cannot be matched up to values that are shared by the public. Increasingly, tattoo artists find that new customers have what the tattoo artists described to be a distorted view of tattooing. According to these tattoo artists, the cause of this mismatch of expectations on behalf of consumers and tattoo artists is due to popular reality television shows, such as Miami Ink or LA Ink. Candice remarked, “…[I]t sucks that the shows focus more on the lifestyles and what’s going on in the artists’ lives than it focuses on the artwork, so it’s like well, why am I watching this? …It’s not really about tattoos so what does it matter?” Candice continued, explaining that while it was annoying there was a reality TV show with tattoo artists (not a reality TV show about tattooing), when they did include any part of tattooing in the show, it was a very distorted look into tattooing and misrepresented how tattoos are done. Candice recalled, “…[T]he shows is that to make it seem as though these sixteen-hour tattoos can get done in two hours… Like I have had multiple tattoo customers come in for their first tattoo and be like, ‘Wow, I had no idea how much prep work it takes to get ready,’ …I’m setting up my machine and pouring out my ink, …I’m prepping their skin, I’m shaving them, and they’re like, ‘Wow, I had no idea.’” For tattoo artists, it is a source of frustration that customers 54 come in with expectations that are unrealistic, like the belief that large tattoos can be completed in a matter of minutes, simply because the television shows do not go into detail about the process of tattooing. Similarly, there is no discussion over the prices of the tattoos that many see on television, which creates a situation like Carl describes: People, you know, once you’ve had more than a couple of tattoos and you kind of know the thing, people get to know what is a good tattoo and what’s not. And when you see people with tattoos that were obviously done cheaply or shoddily or whatever then you say that is not necessarily a huge thing, they’re not a terrible person but they’re not—they didn’t see themselves fit to invest in getting good tattoos. Or, at least taking the time or spending the money to go and get it done. They go to, you know, it’s that Payless shoe store mentality, if you can go get the Chuck Taylors for twelve bucks and they’re fifty somewhere else you get them. I think a lot of people our age were brought up thinking they are the same shoes. Unfortunately, a lot of people apply that to tattoos and it’s not the case. Carl’s comment is telling with regard to formal controls over the consumer in two ways. First, it is clear that consumers who are not familiar with tattooing or who have not taken the time to “invest” are unaware and oblivious to the fact that professional tattoo artists, those who claim to be at the head of the industry, are going to charge more for what they consider to be a superior product. Second, it also demonstrates that consumers are reluctant and even resistant to paying what they may feel is an unfair price. The results are less than the ideal for professional-client relationships, as Kyle recounts the dynamic created by the a less-than-professional tattoo shop down the street from his own. Lamenting the “heinous” tattoos, he claims, “I fix up one a week. These things come in and I look at it and I’m like, ‘Awww, Dammit.’ It’s the worst shit ever.” And he says this happens because people simply do not understand 55 appropriate pricing for tattoos and the level of quality associated with the higher price. He says people will balk at the price his shop will quote for a tattoo sometimes, so customers will pay for the cheaper tattoo at the shop down the street. He finds it frustrating because, “They come back and they say, ‘How much to fix this?’ I say, ‘100 bucks. And on top of that, right now it’s a fucking F. I can make it into a C+ even though you’re paying an extra 50 bucks. It would have been an A+ if you had let us do it for the 100 [bucks] to begin with.’ People are stupid. People come in wearing $500 shoes and they bitch that their tattoo is $200 dollars. I’m like, ‘Don’t you realize?’” The disconnect between mediated portrayals of tattoo artists and the day-to- day realities of tattooing are inextricably linked to the inability of tattoo artists to control their public image in popular culture. As a result, consumers are at times combative, and sometimes even outright refuse the insistent advice of tattoo artists. Yet, tattoo artists do enjoy a growing market, and, according to the artists, most customers are willing to listen to advice and direction about the design, placement, and price of a tattoo. Conclusion This study demonstrates control over the public, consumers and relevant audiences, are key a consideration when occupational groups attempt asserting control over a specific area of labor. When seeking legitimacy as a professional, I make the case that strategies of professionalization are not exclusive to establishing control over standards of practice or membership. Rather, there are strategies of professionalization, that is, formal and informal controls, specific to establishing 56 control over the public. In the above, I draw on the case of tattoo artists to show an occupational group that could be considered marginalized or deviant operates in the same ways as other occupational groups that wish to assert control over an area of labor, in addition to building on a theoretical framework to account for control over the public. Specifically, this work supports the findings of others that demonstrate occupational groups, and even tattoo artists, leverage strategies of professionalization (Aldridge and Evetts 2003; George 2008; Maroto 2011; Osnowitz 2011). Further, I show controlling what consumers know of tattooing, in terms of appreciating the quality of the tattoo, the procedures involved in tattooing, the defining the appropriate roles of tattoo artists and consumers, are at the forefront of elite tattoo artists’ attempts to assert professional means of control. As Maroto (2011:104) points out, researchers previously missed deepening our understandings professional control by adhering to narrow views of the professions; a product of sociological research traditionally treating law and medicine as ideal-normative professions, the points of comparison for all other occupational groups. Instead, it is argued, and this study supports the argument, that research should focus on professionalization and its incorporation of professionalism to better understand how occupational groups leverage strategies of control once exclusively attributed to the professions. Building on the concept of social closure, Maroto proposes that the mechanisms of social closure, how an occupational group asserts control over occupational practices and membership, should inform the focus of research on occupational groups. This way, occupational groups that are not 57 considered professions in the traditional sense can still be compared empirically with the diverse range of semi-professions and professions. In this analysis, like Maroto, I followed Welsh, Kelner, Wellman, and Boon’s (2004:219) insistence that a focus on social closure moves, “beyond outlining traits and attributes needed to professionalize,” and focuses more specifically on how the occupational group actually legitimates newly attained status and popularity. Thus, this study focuses on the mechanisms of social closure, the exercise of power, and specifically the exercise of power over consumers. This is akin to W. I. Thomas’ (1972) “the definition of the situation”: occupational groups that think of themselves as professional expect clientele and the public at large to think of the occupational group as . A number of studies have examined the professionalism of occupational groups in response to changing occupational structures (see especially Sherman’s [2007] work on personal concierge’s, Champy’s [2006] work on landscape and industrial designers, Welsh, Kelner, Wellman, and Boon’s [2004] study of complementary and alternative medicine practitioners, and Aldridge and Evetts [2003] study of journalists). Amongst these studies, researchers have found that various occupational groups behave and have reacted to various social changes the way ideal-typical professions would, exhibiting the tendency or lack thereof for professionalism and professionalization, selecting specific strategies of professionalization and control that best fit the occupational group’s values and aims for exerting control. Similarly, George’s (2008:111-112) study of personal trainers called for an extension of the work and occupations literature to include “expert 58 service work” and their strategies to exert control over the expert knowledge and specialized services they offer. The opening of the canon to include a more diverse set of occupations in research on strategies of professionalization reflects the realities of post-Fordist capitalism that is predominantly a service-based economy. Coinciding with researchers attempting to explain the broader changes in the labor market, researchers have also attempted to describe many of the changes facing the professions. Researchers have posited the traditional professions would face or already have faced several challenges in maintaining their unique position in the labor market. These challenges have included deprofessionalization (Haug 1973; 1975), proletarianization, and external controls imposed by bureaucracies (Ritzer and Walczak 1988). Each of these varying explanations address the possibility of the professions losing control over their own practices and autonomy. In particular, the hypothesis of deprofessionalization credits a more knowledgeable lay public and the increased specialization of professionals with the erosion of the professions’ authority and autonomy (Haug 1973; 1975). The process of deprofessionalization leads professionals to be met with a skeptical public that will be more likely to contest the expertise of professionals and seek alternatives to the services of a professional. Further, this process will lead to devolving the professional-client relationship to a consumer-based relationship, and thus erase the altruism and care professionals would have for their clients. These dynamics threaten the power professions have enjoyed in relation to their work, and tattoo artists, without ever being considered a “profession” at large, have experienced and are facing those challenges. 59 As Maroto demonstrated in an analysis of body art practitioners, this group has responded to the threat of competition by attempting to employ strategies of professionalization, concrete mechanisms of social closure. The resulting organizational structure of this occupational group is one that exhibits an unconventional mix of informal and formal means of control over the standards of practice and membership. Tattoo artists at the forefront of their industry demonstrate that in the wake of increasing popularity, they must negotiate both the formalization of strict regulations and spontaneous creativity and enchantment, which makes for a variety of interactions with the consumer. The formal and informal mechanisms of control over the consumer that tattoo artists use range from appearance of a tattoo studio, the use and presentation of licensing, and constant boundary work both in interactions with individuals and at conventions. Each of these means of control range from the highly rationalized and calculated to the variable and individual operations of control, which mirrors the informal and formal means of control dichotomy in the framework Maroto proposed for researchers. Through evaluating the experiences of tattoo artists with consumers, I have tried to demonstrate how some of the means of control over the consumer have become highly formalized, a means of legitimating authority to consumers. These formal means of control are used in conjunction with informal means of control, which can lead to a mismatch of expectations between tattoo artists and customers. The analysis of this dynamic sheds light on some of the challenges that occupational groups may face from consumers when attempting to employ strategies of professionalization. 60 Through the use of such a framework, focusing specifically on the mechanisms of social closure and strategies of professionalization, researchers can work toward identifying spheres of control, the informal means of social closure, and strategies of professionalization that occupational groups may employ when circumstances have deemed such actions as appropriate. This strategy does not keep researchers beholden to strict definitions of a profession, and it also warrants the recognition of informal means of control in addition to those that are considered formal in order to fully explore how occupational groups establish control. If researchers exclude an evaluation of control over the consumer from such a framework, it fails to identify strategies of professionalization that are often overlooked and meant to convince the public that they have the authority and a legitimate claim to self-regulation. 61 Chapter 3: Professionalizing Volunteer Work: Parallels and Limitations of the Watershed Stewards Academies of Maryland Abstract This paper explores the role of professionalization in volunteer work. The professionalization of social movement organizations is well documented in sociological research, but the impacts of professionalization on volunteer work itself has not garnered a great deal of scrutiny. Drawing on the case of the Watershed Stewards Academies of Maryland (WSAs), a non-profit group that trains volunteers to engage their local communities and lead watershed restoration projects, this study employs a mixed-methods approach to examine the limitations of professionalization in the context of volunteer work. More importantly, this paper poses the question: can efforts to train and professionalize volunteers result in building social closure in the same manner an occupational group would when undertaking a project of professionalization? The results of the survey and interviews with WSA participants and partner organizations find training programs such as the WSAs lend credentials and legitimacy to their volunteers at the community level. The effort to professionalize this sort of volunteer work potentially creates barriers to participation and resource mobilization for other volunteers working on watershed restoration. 62 Introduction Exploring the professionalization of social movement organizations (SMOs) has yielded an extensive body of research, most notably the works of McCarthy and Zald on resource mobilization (1973; 1977), Staggenborg’s examination of the consequences of professionalization (1988), and Skocpol’s work on the decline of American civil society (2003). While the formalization of SMOs and the hiring of paid, full-time staff have served previously as an adequate description of the process of professionalization for SMOs, this body of literature employs a very nondescript understanding of the term “professional.” For example, as originally posed by McCarthy and Zald in their theory of resource mobilization, professional applies to SMOs with a full-time, managerial staff and a large budget (1973;1977). Further, volunteers are differentiated from professionals within SMOs based on whether the position is paid or not, even if those who fill those positions make a life-long commitment to that labor (Staggenborg 1988). Despite the wealth of research on SMOs, the role of professionalization and professionalism in volunteer work has escaped the level of scrutiny given to the study of the professions and professional work in the work and occupations literature (Andreassen et al. 2014; Brown and Green 2015). This dearth stands in contrast to the literature on professional occupational groups, where there has been a great amount of debate about what qualifies as a profession (Wilensky 1964; see Gorman and Sandefur 2011 for a history of the field; see also Evetts 2013). In short, professions are occupational groups that have credentials and training to signify their mastery of knowledge on a subject, exercise 63 autonomy to self-regulate standards of practice and membership, maintain professional associations and networks, and perform their work under a constellation of altruistic values (Abbott 1988; Freidson 1994, 2001; Greenwood 1957; Ritzer 1975; Wilensky 1964). Building on Weber’s theory of social closure (1922/1978), scholars argue this combination of characteristics provide for a monopoly over a given area of labor, allowing occupational groups to dictate how labor is performed and who can perform that labor (Freidson 2001; Saks 2010; Timmermans 2008). The overall effect of this professionalization is a routinization of practice and standards that gives professionals the means to stifle competition and reap the benefits of owning an exclusive jurisdiction over a particular area of labor (Abbott 1988). The professionalization of SMOs and the study of professions often use much of the same language and terminology without being in conversation with one another, lacking a shared meaning for the same language. As a consequence, what remains largely unexplored and underdeveloped is the notion of professional volunteer work or professionalizing volunteer work, despite current developments that make this social change visible. In their study of Norwegian volunteers undergo a specific training program, Andreassan and colleagues (2014:12) find, “Voluntary organizations and social movements are becoming formalized, knowledge-intensive and professionally staffed organizations, copying ideas and ideals from the for-profit sector,” and these developments are largely unexplored. Referring to what happens in the for-profit sector, other researchers have found that professionals who would typically work within a professional organization, such as accountants and lawyers within their own firms, are increasingly finding employment within large 64 corporations, so that businesses have those resources in-house (Evetts 2013; Muzio et al. 2011; Muzio et al. 2013). These developments bear relevance and parallels to volunteer work organizations by following the same trend of social movement organizations and for-profit corporations incorporating professionals into their ranks. This paper examines how a group of environmental non-profit organizations, the Watershed Stewards Academies of Maryland (WSAs), have sought to train volunteers, employing a cadre of professionals in that training, to make volunteers more effective at watershed restoration and the consequences of professionalizing their volunteers. In the pages that follow, I begin with a review of the relevant literature on SMOs, volunteer organizations, volunteer work, and studies of professionalization and professionalism. The review provides the foundations for understanding how this paper contributes to understanding current trends in volunteer and social movement organizations and studies of professionalization and professionalism. Next, I give a more in-depth account of the WSAs and the methods employed in this study to analyze the participants of the WSAs. Then, I move to a discussion of the findings. Professionalization and Volunteer Work The work of McCarthy and Zald is credited with the coining the term “resource mobilization,” highlighting the professionalization of SMOs. In it, they point to professionalization, the employment of full-time managers and paid staff within social movement organizations, qualitatively changing the role of volunteer work (1973; 1977; see also Kleidman 1994, Skocpol 2003, and Staggenborg 1998). The shift to employing a professional, managerial class of laborers in SMOs is often 65 associated with the disconnection of local citizens from those working at the national level (McCarthy and Zald 1973; Skocpol 2003). In addition, researchers often contextualize this change with a concomitant disengaged citizenry, evidenced by declining rates of civic activity and affiliation with voluntary associations (Painter and Paxton 2014; Putnam 1995; 2000; see also McPherson et al. 2006), the routinization of crises and social movements (Eliasoph 2016), the outsourcing of activism (Fisher 2006), and the loss of social capital (Putnam 1995; 2000). Yet, despite the extensive research that has captured the impacts of SMOs, the role and the effects of professionalizing volunteer labor is relatively unexamined (but see Andreassen et al. 2014; Brown and Green 2015). Rather, the focus on volunteer work has often looked at topics like likelihood for participation in political and civic actions (Lichterman 1995; Martinez and McMullin 2004; Verba et al. 2003; Walker 2008; see Elaisoph 1998 for how people avoid civic engagement), personal motivations and attitudes about volunteering (Bruyere and Rappe 2007; Wuthnow 1991), and who participates in volunteer work (Eckstein 2001; Smith 1994) (see Sampson et al. 2005 for an overview of changing civic action; see also Painter and Paxton 2014 for an overview on the merits of the declining of voluntary association membership thesis). To understand better the professionalization of volunteer work, it is important to understand contemporary research on the topics of professionalization and professionalism. Traditionally, projects of professionalization are sought to assert control over a particular area of labor (Abbott 1988; Larson 1977; Muzio et al. 2011; Ritzer 1975; Saks 2010). Through these projects of professionalization, occupational groups seek 66 to establish formal control over standards of practice and membership through things like credentials and memberships to exclusive associations (Maroto 2011). Going through this process, occupational groups are meant to achieve a level of power over that area of labor (Freidson 1994, 2001), which can provide a market shelter from outside competition (Timmermans 2008). Professionalizing an occupational group produces social closure (Weber 1922/1978), which effectively serves to, “formalize social relationships, essentially ‘closing off’ an occupation through licensing procedures, professionalization organizations, standardized training, and legal regulation,” (Maroto 2011:105). Garnering these privileges usually means winning state support via legal recognition of occupational accreditations and licensing (Freidson 1970; Saks 2010), however it is also important for winning public support and recognition (Pescosolido, Tuch, and Martin 2001). What the public sees is often understood as professionalism (Freidson 2001). The practice of professionalism is meant to operate at two levels, as a value and as identity (Evetts 2003). As a value, professionalism is meant to be the public face of an occupational groups’ altruism, that is working in their clientele’s best interest (Abbott 1998; Evetts 2003, 2013; Freidson 1986, 1994, 2001; Greenwood 1957; Ritzer and Walczk 1986; Wilenksy 1964). As an identity, professionalism is meant to operate as a disciplinary mechanism (Fournier 1999), ensuring the standards of behavior and practice across the whole of the occupational group (Chiarello 2011; Evetts 2003, 2013; Muzio et al. 2013). Group memberships and associations are important for maintaining professional identity, as they are often a conduit for professional controls over members, practices, and standards and a source of support 67 for members (Chiarello 2011; Fournier 1999; Freidson 1994; Maroto 2011; McGuire 2007; Osnowitz 2006; Saks 2010). Thus, professionalization and professionalism are closely related topics, and both are often hotly debated as separate versus intertwined parts of the same enterprise (Evetts 2013; Saks 2010). It should be made clear, for this research, professionals and other occupational groups working to be recognized as legitimate or expert in a certain area of labor will make sure, “Claims about who a group is (identity) articulate with claims about what that group does (jurisdiction) so that professionals attempt to protect both” (Chiarello 2011:310). Therefore, efforts to pursue projects of professionalization concern the presentation of professionalism and vice versa. Thus, neither are given primacy in this study and, instead, are useful only in as far as they help to shed light on how volunteer work can be empirically evaluated using these concepts. By adopting this perspective, professionalism can be understood as a disciplining mechanism that works through individuals and the bodies of knowledge they rely upon, so, “that the increase in security, status, material rewards and social influence afforded by professionalization is intrinsically linked to the subjection of such professionals to a significant level of discipline and domination” (Hodgson 2002:806). In sum, professionalization refers to cordoning off an area of labor from others, typically through legal protections and public recognition, which creates social closure. Professionalism on the other hand, is understood as the set of values that guide the actions of the individual, instilling a discipline of professionalism in the individual laborer. This approach to the study of occupational groups, including those outside of the traditional professions, and established professions facing 68 organizational change has produced rich work, including: the professionalization of tattoo artists (Maroto 2011), the adoption of professionalism among ambulance paramedics (McCann et al. 2013), maintaining professionalism in expert service work (George 2008), the professionalization of project management (Muzio et al. 2013), and the struggle of journalism to adopt professionalism pushed onto the journalists by management (Aldridge and Evetts 2003). In contrast, the professionalization of volunteer work has not garnered much attention in the social science literature, dedicated to understanding the processes and mechanisms of professionalization and professionalism or their consequences outside paid occupations. Beginning a project to uncover the professionalization of volunteer work, Andreassan and colleagues demonstrated that concepts of professionalization can be applied to volunteers’ work, and that this trend to train volunteers is becoming more popular as more SMO’s and volunteer organizations professionalize (2014). Focusing on the use of social health services in Norway, their study draws on the experience of volunteer service users that were professionalized to act as intermediaries between the health service organizations of the Norwegian state and the service users that would patron those health services. Andreassan and colleagues found that while those volunteers were recruited on the basis of being “professional representatives” of service users and volunteers were not meant to separate themselves from the general population, in the sense of losing touch with who they are meant to represent, yet they gained a competence through the training that separated them from other service users (2014:12). Leading Andreassan and colleagues to conclude that, “professionalization in the non-profit 69 and voluntary sector occurs through means similar to those for occupational professionalization, and that this professionalization too comes with ambivalence and dilemmas, in particular associated with balancing between the authenticity of experiential knowledge and formalized training and knowledge” (2014:12). This led them to the coining the term “professional amateurs,” those that work in a space that relies on tacit knowledge and credibility with those they interact with that demands they maintain an amateur position to be effective. Similarly, another study of professionalizing volunteer work focuses on volunteers working with NGOs focused on development intervention in Kenya and Tanzania. In this work, Brown and Green find the role of volunteers have become increasingly formalized and, in turn, qualifications of volunteers have become more stringent while the skills required to volunteer are increasingly specialized (2015). In contrast to the work of Andreassan and colleagues (2014), Brown and Green find that many volunteers see this work as means to attaining paid work, through grant and contract funding while they work as volunteers or establish networks to find paid employment in similar work (2015). Despite the difference in the two studies, like Andreassan and colleagues, Brown and Green find that volunteers occupy a unique position between those they serve and the NGOs themselves. The authors describe the position of volunteers as, “an interstitial and insecure space between beneficiaries and funders” (2015:77). However, as found in both case studies of professionalizing volunteer work, volunteers occupy these positions and perform this work because they wish to be helpful to their respective communities. Although these studies have begun to shed light on the professionalization of volunteer work, it is an 70 underdeveloped area of research and has yet to be studied in the American context of volunteer work. This study focuses on the Watershed Stewards Academies of Maryland, an organization that trains volunteers in watershed restoration work that can be best categorized as environmental stewardship. Fisher and colleagues define environmental stewardship as, “conserving, managing, monitoring, advocating for, and educating local people about a wide range of quality-of-life issues related to public and private resources in their local areas” (2012:27). In focusing on the perspectives of volunteers and their partner organizations, this research argues that organizations like the WSAs provide volunteers with the tools and resources to affect change in their communities and neighborhoods using methods that resemble professionalization found in other studies on paid occupational groups. Yet, given the nature of volunteer work, the degree to which volunteers are recognized as professional is circumscribed by the limitations inherent to the practice of volunteering itself. Based on the literature reviewed above, this paper will test several hypotheses concerning the professionalization and professionalism of volunteer work: 1. Volunteers will be well-educated and possess other markers of ability and prerequisites for specialized forms of volunteer work and training required for watershed restoration. 2. Volunteers will be guided in their work by a sense of altruism and will be disciplined by that ideal of working professionally. 71 3. Volunteers will distinguish themselves from the general public they serve through the knowledge they gain in their training, however they will rely on the hands-on volunteer work to connect with their neighbors. 4. A strong association of volunteers will maintain a network that provides support and correctives to the work of volunteer work. Methods This study employs a mixed-methods approach, combining survey and interview data to triangulate the role of professionalization and professionalism in volunteer work. This section begins with a description of the survey methodology, then provides a detailed account of the sampling procedures and protocols for conducting interviews with WSA participants and partner organizations. The survey of WSA participants was administered in the summer and fall of 2014.5 The interviews with WSA participants and partner organizations were conducted between the summer of 2015 and late winter of 2016.6 The survey and interview methodology is described in more detail below, following a brief description of the WSAs that provides the rationalization for selecting the WSAs for this case study. Case Selection: The Watershed Stewards Academies of Maryland The WSAs of Maryland are part of a larger trend of volunteer organizations professionalizing (Andreassan et al. 2014). More specifically, the WSAs are part of an environmental movement in the U.S. that is training and credentialing volunteers 5 The survey portion of the research was done in accordance with the Institutional Review Board requirements of the University of Maryland (protocol #598272-1). 6 The interviews with WSA participants and partner organizations were done in accordance with the Institutional Review Board requirements of the University of Maryland (protocol #598272-2). 72 to signify proficiencies in various types of environmental stewardship.7 The WSAs train volunteers to become Master Watershed Stewards (MWS). The training consists of attending classes, at least once a week, over several months, in addition to group outings in the field to do hands-on work. The classes are often led by an expert on the topic, a volunteer or member of the WSA’s consortium, who volunteers his or her time to lead a lecture. Volunteers become MWSs when they complete the course and a capstone project, an original project undertaken on their own or with others in the class with the aims improving the watershed. The WSAs of Maryland follow a franchise model, in that each WSA can only be started by someone who has been through the WSA training. The first WSA in Maryland commenced in Anne Arundel County in 2009. The other two WSAs included in this study, National Capital Region and Howard County, were founded in 2011 and 2012, respectively.8 Each of the WSAs are hybrid organizations (for a discussion of hybrid organizations see Fisher and Svendsen 2013), organizations that are a combination of non-profit and public offices. The WSAs are often funded through municipal governments, foundation funding, and state agencies. Furthermore, each of these organizations are not bound by a specific combination of participating parties or sources of funding, so each WSA can pick and choose the most effective means of organization and structure. Similarly, the curriculum is the same, for the 7 Yagatich et al. (2018) provides context for the WSAs being part of a national movement, outlining numerous environmental stewardship groups, engaged in work ranging from forestry to watershed restoration, that train volunteers with the aims to improving the environment. 8 Currently, there are five WSAs operating in the state of Maryland, with a sixth slated to begin training volunteers in September 2017. For more information, see https://extension.umd.edu/watershed/watershed-stewards-academy. 73 most part, across the WSAs but is allowed some flexibility to introduce local variation and areas of focus. Online Survey In the summer and fall of 2014, the survey was distributed to all WSA participants for whom contact information could be obtained from the WSAs—anyone who had at least attempted the training, board members, and staff members was included in the sampling frame for the survey. The survey was distributed and administered via Qualtrics, an online software tool made for survey design, distribution, and collection. Using the volunteer stewardship survey instrument employed by Fisher and colleagues as a model (2015), the survey was designed to be brief, non-invasive, and Table 3.1: Survey Sample, Responses, and Response Rate by WSA WSA Sampling Frame Surveys Completed Response Rate Anne Arundel County 153 90 58.8% Howard County 21 15 71.4% National Capital Region 100 49 49.0% Total 274 154 56.2% collect information about respondents’ demographic background, civic and environmental stewardship activities, and social networks. Results of the survey were analyzed using Microsoft Excel 2013, PASW Statistics 19 (SPSS), and NVivo 11. In total, 274 participants were asked for their participation in the survey. 174 WSA 74 participants responded, representing a response rate of 56.2%. Table 3.1 presents the number of participants, the number of responses, and response rates by WSA.9 The results of this survey made it possible to generate the sampling frames and methods for the interviews with WSA participants and organizational partners. In-Depth Interviews In-depth interviews with WSA participants and their partner organizations were conducted to triangulate the standing and perceptions of the WSA training in the field of volunteer watershed restoration work. The samples of WSA participants and organizations were drawn from the responses of those WSA participants that completed the initial survey. Those two samples, WSA participants and the organizations, were generated using different techniques. The sampling frame for WSA participants to be interviewed about their experiences with the WSA training were self-selected. On the survey, respondents were given the option to opt into a follow-up interview. A total of 91 respondents indicated they would be willing to participate in a follow-up interview, representing 52% of all 174 survey respondents. Drawing on that sampling frame of 91 willing respondents, WSA participants were divided into three categories based on their experience with the training: completed, in progress, and those who had dropped out or did not finish the training. As shown in Table 3.2, the proportion of respondents across the three categories is not equitable, and therefore the sampling design was 9 All analyses of the survey data are presented in the aggregate. Where appropriate, tests for significant differences and variances were performed for differences between the WSAs and no significant differences were found or those tests lacked the number of data-points in each WSA for tests of significance to be performed. 75 initially set to oversample from those categories that would be underrepresented in a totally random sample of willing WSA participants. This sampling technique was chosen to achieve the greatest diversity of opinions about the WSA training. However, faulty contact information and non-response led to an extremely low response rate for those who did not finish the training. Therefore, a random sample of participants were drawn from the remaining pool of WSA participants, those who finished and were still in training at the time of the survey, until theoretical saturation was achieved (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Kuzel 1999). Table 3.2: Sample of WSA Participant in Follow-Up Interviews Level of Training Requests for Interviews Completion Rate Interviews Completed by Training Completed 24 10 41.7% Currently Enrolled 19 10 52.6% Did Not Finisha 8 2 25.0% aThis category of WSA participants was exhausted in the course of the initial sampling design. Therefore, a number of WSA participants who had completed or were still in the process of completing the training at the time of the survey were not asked for a follow-up interview. Utilizing the survey described above, in order to know more about respondents’ volunteer networks, respondents were provided the opportunity to list up to ten organizations in which they were either a passive or active member. Respondents’ entries were cleaned for accuracy, then aggregated and compiled to make a list of organizations that WSA participants were affiliated with the most, as either passive or active members. From that list, which generated 167 unique organizations, the top eighteen most-cited local organizations were chosen to be interviewed about their perceptions and relation to the WSAs. Interviews were 76 conducted with representatives of those organizations, who were identified to be the most knowledgeable about the WSAs and its training program. In total, fourteen organizations were interviewed, representing a response rate of 78%. Utilizing sensitizing concepts (Bowen 2006; Seibold 2002), the interviews were conducted as semi-structured, open-ended interviews, emphasizing a conversational approach. Respondents, participants of the WSAs and the partner organizations, were asked to reflect on their experiences with the WSAs, to include the volunteers, training, staff, community impact, and environmental efficacy affiliated with the WSAs.10 Once interviews were complete, they were transcribed and analyzed using NVivo 11 based on the sensitizing concepts that informed the design of the interview instrument (Bowen 2006; Mitchell 2014; Seibold 2002), which included coding any discussion of professional qualities of WSA volunteers, such as a specialized knowledge, credentials, and altruism, the presence or absence of an association amongst volunteers, and the establishment of trust between the public and WSA volunteers to perform watershed restoration. In addition, transcripts were coded to allow for emergent themes to develop from the interviews (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss and Corbin 1990). The survey and interview data presented in the following section uses pseudonyms for the names of individuals and organizations to protect the privacy of those who shared their experiences and perspectives. 10 The interview protocols can be found in the Appendix, titled as “Interview Protocol for Case Study Two.” 77 Findings The discussion of results below begins with providing the demographic background of the WSA participants to delineate who participates in the WSAs, which may or may not provide evidence of social closure. Next, I detail the broad reasons why volunteers chose to participate in the WSAs based on their responses to the online survey to determine if altruism is a primary motivation for volunteering. Transitioning to a more focused discussion of the training, the analysis of interviews with WSA participants and organizations offers insights into the perceptions of what the training affords and does not provide to evaluate if volunteers believe they are gaining a specialized knowledge of watershed restoration. The discussion of training leads to a focused appraisal of the unique position that volunteers occupy in their communities and how that relates to the role of professionalization in volunteer work. I conclude by discussing if WSA participants and organizations form and sustain an association of volunteers and alumni of the training programs to form a network of support for WSA participants. Who Volunteers to be a Steward and Why? The results of the survey demonstrate that a specific group of people participated in the WSA programs. The group of volunteers surveyed are, on average, closer to retirement age with a mean age of 51.5 years and median of 53.5 years.11 WSA participants, according to the survey results, are majority female where they made up 64.4% of all respondents. Furthermore, the respondents are majority white (78% of 11 In accordance with the University of Maryland’s Institutional Review Board’s standards and policy, no one under the age of 18 participated in this study. 78 respondents reported their race as white, 14% and 2% identified as Black and Asian, respectively).12 Respondents also indicated they are very well educated. All respondents reported they had at least attended a college or university, and slightly more than half of all respondents hold a professional or graduate degree. Below, Table 3.3 presents comparisons of the sample of WSA participants and their surrounding counties. WSA participants are statistically significantly more white, female, and well-educated than their neighbors, meaning those groups are overrepresented in the demographic composition of the WSAs. These findings are consistent with previous research on volunteerism (Verba et al. 2003; Schlozman et Table 3.3 WSA Stewards versus Population in Surrounding Counties MD & DC WSA Countiesa Participants Gender Male 48.9% 35.6%** Female 51.1% 64.4%** Highest Level of Education Some High School 9.1% 0% High School 22.2% 0% Some College/University 19.1% 10.8%*** College/University 30.0% 38.5%** Graduate of Professional School 19.6% 50.7%*** Raceb White 62.1% 78.0%** Non-White 37.9% 22.0%*** Note: Weighted DC and MD Counties Values sample data from the American Community Survey 2012, 2012 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, see ahttp://factfinder2.census.gov/ (Accessed 1 April 2014). Weighted means were calculated for each of the WSA’s respective areas of geography by weighting the county-level measures by proportions representative of the WSA’s size in each area. bRace was tested using data from the American Community Survey for respondents who indicated only one race ***: p<.001, **: p<.01 12 6% of respondents reported “Other” for their race. 79 al. 2012), as well as research that is specific to volunteering for environmental issues (Travaline and Hunold 2010; Fisher et al. 2015). While this finding is expected, it is important in that it may point to issues of access. Specifically, it may offer insights into who can and cannot volunteer in programs such as the WSAs for reasons of time commitment or finances. Or, it may be an issue of who is attracted to participate in programs like the WSAs. Whether this finding may be considered evidence of social closure is discussed in further detail in the next section. To gain a better understanding of why WSA participants volunteered, and to determine whether motivations could be considered altruistic, the end of the survey posed an open-ended question to respondents, asking, “Briefly, why did you join the Watershed Stewards Academy? What motivated you to participate?” Coding these responses into emergent categories, respondents’ answers were varied, and, in many cases, they offered multiple reasons for participating. Yet, their responses are accounted for in at least one of five dominant themes: a desire to improve the environment, to learn more about watershed issues, to be more involved in their communities and neighborhoods, to network with their neighbors and others working on watershed issues, and to improve their professional repertoire. Invariably, the answers demonstrate that respondents wanted to take an active role in improving the environment, and they believed the WSA would help them in achieving that. For example, one WSA participant submitted, “I've been interested in environmental issues since high school and feel that working small scale, on a sub- watershed basis, may ultimately be more effective in reversing the decline of the Bay 80 and its [tributaries] than all the government programs that are so slow to evolve. I love working outside with plants and was impressed with the commitment and goals of the WSA, so I decided to join so that I could work under the umbrella of that organization.” Concerning more personal motivations, slightly more than one-third (36.7%) of respondents indicated that they wanted to learn more about the watershed and the science of watershed restoration, and more than one-tenth (12.7%) of respondents felt that completing the WSA training would improve their business or career prospects. These findings indicate participants were driven mostly by altruistic motivations to volunteer, which may strike the reader as obvious for volunteer work. Yet, a core component of professional identity and practice is working in the service of others, ensuring that work is guided by the notion they are working in the public’s best interest. This would suggest then, based on the literature on professional values, WSA participants would frame their interactions and work with neighbors and the public through a lens of working in their best interest, that is, to improve the health of the watershed. The following discussion of interview data will confirm that participants tailor their approaches to engagement so that they can be most effective in their goal of watershed restoration. In the next section, I present more detailed discussion of the notion that the training of the WSA could lend or bestow some recognition of expertise. “You’re about a Chapter Ahead of the General Public” To evaluate if volunteers were confident in their training and their ability to engage in watershed restoration, participants were asked about their perceptions of the training 81 and what they believed their communities thought about the WSA training. More specifically, do they see the training as granting credentials that set them apart from the general public? While participants felt like the training gave them some credibility, by their own admission the level of expertise granted by the training was with its limitations. When asked if the WSAs and the title of Master Watershed Steward (MWS) was recognized by their neighbors and in their communities, the responses were mixed. Respondents often said that because of the training, they were better positioned than their neighbors to weigh-in on issues related to the watershed. Mary, a MWS from the Anne Arundel WSA who has background in the public sector, is familiar with working with people in her waterfront community and had strong opinions about the training. When asked what the title of MWS means to her, she said, “Well, to me personally it means a whole lot of training, a lot of studying went into that title… It gives me, I don’t know, I don’t want to say power, that’s not the right word… it gives me little more—I say a little more gravitas because I am slightly more knowledgeable than my neighbors.” Regardless of her shying away from the word “power,” in terms of professionalization, power is exactly what many stewards felt they gained through the training. The training is technical enough, so that many stewards felt like their neighbors would defer to them on watershed issues. Being more knowledgeable was an important distinction for WSA participants when describing how their training sets them apart. Pete, a MWS from Anne Arundel county WSA, felt the work he did through the program and the work he did in his community made him well known as a person that can be trusted as an authority on 82 watershed issues. Speaking of the title MWS and the program, he said, “I’ve used it enough in my community that they know I went through a rigorous program. There are 150 homes in my community and I’ll bet more than half of them know my name, associate me as an activist that is credentialed with, you know, a program that I’ve been through that gives me a legitimacy.” Again, stewards felt that the training bestowed some level of expertise, however stewards were aware the expertise granted are limited. While the title of MWS may sound impressive, volunteers were quick to point out they were not experts per se, just more knowledgeable than their neighbors. Jeff, a participant of the National Capital Region WSA, described the WSA training as “a really good, complete program,” yet he was quick to qualify the compliments he paid the training. Speaking of working with his community he said, “[The WSAs] do a good job in giving you those basic tools and the foundation for speaking about the issues. And these are low-impact development sites, so we’re not talking large engineering projects but things that are easy to describe to community members and when you have that background, it’s just easier to do that and I think it divides you from the general community.” Like Jeff, Ron, a MWS of Howard county with a professional background, paid the WSAs compliments, but not without reservations. Ron, speaking frankly about the training: You’re certainly more informed but you’re about a chapter ahead of the general public on this, and the idea is if you have this certificate because you’ve completed this training, it gives you some cache to be able to go out and talk to others in the neighborhood and become a civilian leader, or a civic leader, on the topic, and maybe influence better practices in your neighborhood. So, I think it’s good training, and its relevant, and really it kind of invests you with some knowledge and experiences you can share with others. Ron stresses that the training prepares volunteers to be leaders of their communities, 83 albeit volunteers are “about a chapter ahead.” And while their skills and abilities are honed to working with a specific, target community, as Ron described, the focus on working from within neighborhoods, and with neighbors, is purposeful and by design. In contrast to the majority of those interviewed, Henry, another MWS from Howard County, felt using the title, or letting people know he was a MWS, would be counterproductive in some situations. He spoke positively of the training, but for him, the title did not mean much: “ [M]aintaining the title, what goes along with that is the requirement to reach out to folks and to work with other folks… training other folks, letting them know about the program, letting them know what they can do in their neighborhood to slow the flow and to prevent storm water damage.” What Henry confirms as he and other participants describe their sense of credibility on watershed issues is that title of MWS is secondary to engaging with their neighbors. In other words, WSA participants believed their legitimacy is gained through becoming fluent in speaking about watershed issues, not through the confirmation of a certificate or degree. The partner organizations provided a very similar story of volunteers who were trained well to work within neighborhoods and communities but with limitations. “Some Things Were Just a Little Too Deep” The partner organizations overwhelmingly viewed the training in a positive light. Like the stewards interviewed, organizations felt the training provided volunteers with the knowledge to work at the community level. However, they were certainly more critical of the WSAs. Some partner organization wished the WSAs went a step further and prepared volunteers to take on larger projects and took more 84 time to prepare them for writing grants. In that way, partner organizations felt the stewards were doing great work, but saw potential for them to do more. Dale, who works for an organization that does a lot of storm water runoff remediation, saw the WSAs as a great model for training volunteers, not just in terms of working on projects, but for advocacy and education as well. In his words, “I think everybody has heard of Master Gardeners and that is a lot more widespread in the state and the surrounding states. And to me this seems like it is emerging as perhaps an even more important role in terms of the influence and what can be done. So it is nice to see it popping up in more counties.” While Dale was paying a compliment to the WSAs, it is revealing that he still saw potential for what could be done and not necessarily what the WSAs and their volunteers have done. What that potential may be is vague the way Dale described it, however the notion of unfulfilled potential was a recurring theme in the interviews with organizations. Yet, so was the notion that they did good work. Olivia, a representative of a state level organization that worked on watershed issues, said she was not familiar with the minutiae of the training, but she did know the WSAs and their work. She said, from what she knows, “[the training] is very practical on the on-the-ground knowledge that people are putting to work. Almost instantaneously… I think there are lots and lots of training programs that are out there that exist in our sector and many others that are classroom based and never require you to implement what you have supposedly learned.” The way that she describes it, the training is reminiscent of Ron’s description that training puts volunteers one 85 chapter ahead of the public. Yet, it becomes clear that one chapter ahead doesn’t go far enough in terms of gaining skills for watershed restoration. Cheryl, a young woman from Anne Arundel County who works for an organization that provides funding to organizations like the WSAs, knows a number of stewards, and shared their passion for improving the health of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Knowing a number of stewards, and having worked with them firsthand, she said of the volunteers, “What we’re seeing, is they just don’t have the capacity to write the grants for these medium-sized projects, they just don’t have the skill set to write the grants, to plan out the grants, and to manage the funds, and hire the contractors. So, they’re doing little things here and there… Advocacy, getting out the message, [and] they’re great, but when it comes to actual restoration beyond a really tiny project, I just think that’s where their limit is.” Cheryl felt that stewards were serving an important role, but from her perspective in an organization that funds the work of the volunteers, she thought they were ill-equipped to work on large-scale projects. Holly works for another organization that is in a position to provide resources to organizations like the WSAs. Working with the WSAs in the past, she was aware of what the volunteers knew and what they did not know. Holly speaking of her experience of working with the stewards said, “[M]ost of them don’t have the technical training. The class has served as their, sort of, foothold into understanding some of the technical pieces, but ultimately most of them have still needed to hire consultants for the engineering or the construction management.” Holly continued, stating she knew that to get volunteers to a point where they did not have to defer to 86 engineers and other consultants was “definitely a bigger ask.” And yet, according to Holly, “[A]t this point I think it is great that they are able to at least serve the facilitator role of getting the interested parties at the table. So, if you need to… contact the county about a ‘Right of Way’ permit they know who to talk to. If you need to see a Board President about getting approval for the process you know who to go to. So, I think they are serving a great facilitator role for getting projects moving.” Holly, while somewhat critical of the WSAs, echoes what other organizations said, which was that the WSAs’ training and volunteers had the potential to do more, but the work they were engaged in was useful and it was making an impact. In addition, the perspectives organizations shared in the interviews resoundingly mirrored what volunteers said about their own work and the training: they are well equipped to do work in residential communities and neighborhoods, and to advocate for environmental issues. In sum, WSA participants occupy a position where they are effective at the community level on small-scale projects and acting as facilitators for larger projects. Their training prepares them for watershed restoration that separates them from the public, but not so much that they are elevated to a “professional” status. Instead, WSA participants rely on a hands-on approach to their work to reinforce their role as an environmental steward. Unlike traditional professionals, WSA participants cannot rely on a title or credential to be recognized as an authority on a particular area of labor. The following details how this limitation of technical training and the focus on the local level may be an advantage in working with their communities and neighbors. 87 “It’s Like a Form of Social Marketing” In the way that volunteers do not become subject-matter experts, volunteers maintain a status that is amateurish. To elaborate, volunteers maintain a level of familiarity and an ease of access to those they are trying to reach with their advocacy, namely their neighbors. In this section, I present results from interviews with volunteers and the organizations to illustrate how the standing of volunteers and their training puts them in a unique position to influence their communities and neighbors. Returning to when Henry revealed he felt the title doesn’t mean much on its own, he elaborated how the title itself may be counterproductive to working with others in his neighborhood. He said, “[Some of my neighbors] don’t even know what a watershed is. It doesn’t do any good to say, ‘Hey, I’m a Master Watershed Steward. Listen to me.’ It just doesn’t work. In fact, a lot of my close friends would be annoyed if I were to approach them in that way.” Instead, as he described previously, doing the work and being an advocate is what helps make change in the minds of his neighbors. Henry explained in the interview that, “showing them where we’ve been successful,” and, “solving problems for them,” is what enables him to mobilize and work with members of his community. Joy, a volunteer from the National Capital Region, felt the intention of the WSAs was for stewards to be trained so that they could interact with their neighbors and speak to them about watershed issues in a way that their neighbors could relate. As Joy put it: I think certainly the concept is pretty powerful… It’s like a form of social marketing where they can start talking to people and saying things about what they can do on their properties, and, you know, I do things on my property and people at my property and people ask me about it and it’s just an opportunity to try and kind of engage about 88 various things from rain barrels to rain gardens to, you know, pervious pavement, etcetera. Through this model of engaging neighbors, Joy thought that it was like planting seeds, which would spread: she would see improvement to the watershed over time as knowledge spread from one person to another. Dale, from the storm water remediation business, also thought the WSAs’ reach was enhanced by taking the approach of training volunteers to work at the community level. He said, “[W]hen you start extending the trainings to individuals, which is the people who are going through the WSAs, you can just reach so much further that way.” For Dale, he felt like being seen as ‘having an agenda’ would keep advocates from engaging the way that WSA stewards do. Dale continued, “Also if they are going into the community… if you are somebody’s neighbor you might have a different angle or they could in some ways be more influential because it’s just another person in the neighborhood… not everybody in the neighborhood wants to hear the message from what they might see as an environmentalist.” Similar to Henry’s perspective, the title wasn’t recognized, when a few of the other stewards talked about why that often didn’t matter, it was because explaining what a MWS was provided an opportunity to talk about their work as volunteers. Mary, one of the stewards who felt the title wasn’t widely recognized said, “[I]f I mention that I am a Master Watershed Steward from Anne Arundel County, the next question is what does that mean?” And more often than not, stewards said that based on the name of MWS, neighbors they spoke with related what they do as volunteers to Master Gardeners. Donna, a volunteer from Anne Arundel County, provided an example that resonated with other respondents’ experiences. She 89 described that when she shares the title of MWS, it often tips some people off as to what she may do as a volunteer and it leads to a conversation focused on what exactly what a MWS does, as she stated, “[P]eople are familiar with the Master Gardener program so they understand, sort of, what the watershed steward designation is, and it doesn’t take much explaining, so people in the neighborhood come to me, and if I don’t know the answer, then I contact someone in the consortium or put them in touch with someone who can help them.” This supports the notion that volunteers maintain an amateurish position, emphasizing the face-to-face interactions with neighbors, as opposed to relying upon a recognized name that carries with it a publicly recognized set of expertise. These findings demonstrate that stewards and organizations alike saw volunteers successfully working at the local level, often refraining from the use of titles. Volunteers talked to their neighbors about their experiences as a MWS as a way of advocating for watershed issues, not necessarily talking to their neighbors and identifying themselves as MWSs. This demonstrates that unlike a professional, who would often rely on a title or exercise a title to demonstrate mastery over an area of labor, volunteers sometimes use the lack of recognition to their advantage to gain access to their neighbors’ attention. In the same way that the interviews demonstrated volunteers led projects and used worksites in their neighborhoods as a way to create a place to talk to their neighbors and demonstrate what they could do as environmental stewards, there was also the recognition among many in the sample that there was a not a clear alumni network of people who went through the WSA training. 90 “Keeping Those People to Stay Involved” Joy, who pointed out that the volunteers are trained to engage their neighbors through a sort of social marketing, was one of the first to describe the lack of network of alumni and a missed opportunity for stewards. When asked about the challenges the WSAs faced in being successful in their mission, she talked about some of the weaknesses of the WSA she had been through. She remarked, “I think it could be strengthened if… we had an alumni network, some sort of resource to tap into, so I could see who else from my community has been through this training.” To this end, she felt the lack of a network prevented her from being able to do more in her community or for the watershed. She continued, describing the missed opportunity, “And maybe we could get together and brainstorm ideas, and do something bigger, or do our own local training, or, you know, stuff like that. Just having more access to folks who have graduated, who are in the communities, would be really helpful.” Joy certainly was not alone, and many of the organizations interviewed recognized the same issue. For example, Gregory represented an organization that engages in environmental work and helps stewards to implement projects. Speaking of his experience working with stewards, “They will come out really supercharged, the [organization] will help them get a grant, they will finish their capstone project, and then, most of them, we don’t really hear from them again. So, that’s one of the biggest challenges moving forward…you have got this great energy moving up, so why aren’t we seeing the same people coming back to us every year for a grant?” Gregory elaborated in the interview that keeping volunteers engaged was the major 91 challenge, and while he did not explicitly say the lack of a network was a problem, it is likely that the ability to reach out to alumni through a network would be a solution to the circumstances Gregory described. Mirroring Gregory’s comments, Cheryl stated, “They have a great training program, they find great people, which is keeping those people current or keeping those people to stay involved and that is the tricky part. It’s like, you know they’re doing good work, you know, but sometimes it’s just hard to find a steward who’s still active and who still wants to be involved.” Cheryl differed from Gregory, however, in that she offered the idea of establishing a network to keep alumni more engaged. She lamented that the WSAs spend so much time training volunteers, but as of right now, really fail to get volunteers to be active beyond one to two years. She said that while the WSAs do send out emails periodically, approximately once every few months, and hold an annual conference, it simply was not enough. Thus, according to a little less than half of the WSA participants, the volunteers lack an association or an active network that keeps the active stewards engaged in the volunteer work and in touch with one another. According to the literature on professions, this would mean the WSA participants would lack a formal or informal means of peer review, support, or communication, which in turn prevents a presentation of uniform practice and presentation of values. The lack of a network presupposes the notion that standards of practice and the requirements for maintaining membership can be effectively enforced amongst an occupational group or, in the case of WSA participants, amongst a group trained volunteers. 92 Conclusion This research has explored the ways in which volunteers who undergo a formal training reproduce or fail to reproduce the qualities of professionals. As the findings of this research demonstrate, the WSA participants can be understood as “professional-amateurs” (Andreassen et al. 2014), given that there is a combination of qualities that they do and do not share with professions that separate them from the general public, yet keep them from becoming recognized as experts. Organizations like the WSAs are designed to take advantage of a corps of volunteers that have an altruistic view of environmental work and to give them the tools needed to affect change. These volunteers participate in an in-depth training course, learning about watershed restoration, the environmental science of watershed issues, and community outreach. Looking at these organizations from a sociological perspective raises questions as to what degree does this process parallel projects of professionalization seen in occupational groups? And does it produce similar results? The findings of this research contribute to understanding a current trend in volunteer organizations, the professionalization of volunteer work, and the implications for non-profit organizations should this trend continue. The first finding of this research confirms that volunteers who participate in organizations like the WSAs are socioeconomically like those in other environmental organizations (Schlozman et al. 2012; Verba et al. 2003), as well as volunteers who work as environmental stewards more specifically (Fisher et al. 2015). This result confirms the first hypothesis: volunteers possess skills and demonstrate the ability of specialization, which makes the opportunities to participate in this kind of volunteer 93 work more competitive. While there is no causal inference to be made, this finding does support the notion that training programs such as WSAs may have the effect of producing a subtle form of social closure. The demographic composition of the WSAs and their differences in comparison to the general public suggest that there may be barriers to participating in the WSAs, like financial constraints, vocational ability, or time commitments. While this observation can suggest there is social closure due to the exceptional composition of WSA participants, based on the findings here it may also be explained by the existing literature on who tends to participate in environmental stewardship. As one may expect, these volunteers overwhelmingly hold an altruistic view of the environment, confirming the second hypothesis of this research. Interestingly, as the literature suggests, an altruistic view of the environment is not mutually exclusive from personal reasons for participation, such as participating in the training to advance their own job prospects (Lichterman 1995; Wuthnow 1991, 1998). As discussed in the literature, a professional’s work, although it may enrich themselves financially or egotistically, is guided by a value structure organized around the belief their work is done in the service of others (Abbott 1998; Evetts 2003, 2013; Freidson 1986, 1994, 2001; Greenwood 1957; Ritzer and Walczk 1986; Wilenksy 1964). While the initial survey revealed that volunteers became involved largely to improve the environment, volunteers also joined the WSAs to gain the means and technical knowledge to work in their neighborhoods. As the interviews revealed, the volunteers in this study could not rely on the certification awarded by the training, the title of MWS, like a traditional profession 94 uses a certification or degree. Instead, like other occupational groups that cannot rely on credentials and association affiliations for legitimation (George 2008; Maroto 2011; McCann et al. 2013), volunteers in this study rely a great deal on the tacit knowledge they received through WSAs’ training and the interactions with those they serve to enact a sense of professionalism. Furthermore, volunteers believe there is a sense of distinction and distance from the public on issues of watershed restoration. The work they do in their neighborhoods provides volunteers with the opportunity to exercise that knowledge and leverage their distinction as a MWS, in ways similar to occupational groups exercising their own knowledge bases to improve their status (Burri 2008; Chiarello 2011; Gieryn 1983). The distinction between volunteers and the public, to a degree, is confirmed by the numerous organizations praising the limited success volunteers have at the community level, however those distinctions are limited by their reliance on their interactions with the public and tacit knowledge. Highlighted by stewards and organizations alike, the training of volunteers was limited to the extent that they performed small-scale watershed restoration projects and volunteers relied on the advice of others or played the role of facilitator to help them perform larger, more difficult tasks. The findings would suggest that an attempt to professionalize the volunteer work would be negated on account of not having a monopoly over the knowledge and work of watershed restoration (Abbott 1988; Freidson 2001; Gorman and Sandefur 2011). Of course, there is no evidence of an attempt to establish a monopoly over the volunteer work of watershed restoration, but the observations of volunteers and organizations note that, in some cases, technical competencies were found wanting. This finding confirms the third 95 hypothesis based on the small literature on the professionalization of volunteer work, which maintains that volunteers occupy an intermediary place between those they serve and the organizations they represent as volunteers. Similarly, volunteers and organizations noted the lack of association and networking necessary to keep volunteers active in watershed restoration as alumni of the training, which provides evidence against the fourth hypothesis for a strong sense of professionalism and discipline amongst volunteers. The literature on occupational and professional associations points out that such organizations are necessary to sustain standards of work, support structures, and means of self-regulation (Chiarello 2011; Fournier 1999; Freidson 1994; Maroto 2011; McGuire 2007; Osnowitz 2006; Saks 2010). Should volunteers undergo a more extensive training and organize an association, current research suggests volunteers would face intensified competition amongst one another and make the costs of entry into that volunteer work more prohibitive (Brown and Green 2015). In the same way that the work of professionals has become increasingly subject to large corporate employers (Aldridge and Evetts 2003; Evetts 2003, 2013; Muzio et al. 2011), the current trend of non-profit organizations to train volunteers to perform a service through a systematic curriculum is becoming more popular (Andreassen et al. 2014). Following a call for research that evaluates the mechanisms of professionalization and professionalism (Evetts 2013; George 2008; Gorman and Sandefur 2011; Maroto 2011; McCann et al. 2013; Saks 2010), this research evaluates the understudied professionalization of volunteer work with a focus on how that 96 professionalization and professionalism is played out on the front-line of the volunteer work itself. The training of the WSAs resembles a traditional project of professionalization with a formal training and credentialing program (Larson 1977; Maroto 2011; Muzio et al. 2011; Ritzer 1975), however the interviews with volunteers and organizations reveal that volunteers have not reached social closure with the effect of monopolizing the volunteer work and the resources that make that work possible (Abbott 1998; Freidson 1994; Saks 2010; Timmermans 2008). Instead, volunteers maintained a “professional-amateur” status (Andreassen et al. 2014), advocating that their neighbors and communities adopt behavior changes and take on landscaping projects to improve the health of their watersheds. This research reveals that for non-profit and social movement organizations, training volunteers and professionalizing the volunteer work takes advantage of altruistic attitudes and provides a means of access to the community level that may not be accessible to other professionals. In terms of professionalization and professionalism, this work adds to the growing body of literature that takes the empirically testable qualities of a profession and applies them to the study of other labor groups, demonstrating these ideas are useful elsewhere outside of the traditional professions. 97 Chapter 4: Overstating the Pressures on Professionalism: Faculty Members’ Perspectives of Teaching Online Abstract This study investigates the maintenance and exercise of professionalism in the context of changing external economic and bureaucratic arrangements. While the operation of expert knowledge workers within bureaucracies and corporations has recently gained more attention in scholarly research, relatively little attention has been paid to how well-established professional groups may see their professional power diminish as a consequence of bureaucratic and institutional change. Using faculty of higher education as a case study, this research is contextualized by bureaucratic and institutional change at universities and colleges in the US where enrollments and the adoption of online technologies for course instruction have increased year after year. By surveying faculty about their professional background, practice, and views of teaching online, this study poses the question: are professional values and identity reflected in attitudes toward strategies of online education? And if so, how? The intent of this analysis is to demonstrate how professionalism is exercised in defining the problems posed by external forces as problems to be solved via their expertise. The results reveal an occupational group with a resilient sense of professional identity and how engagement with the problem posed by external forces fosters disciplinary discourse and redefinition. Keywords: professionalism, deprofessionalization, expert knowledge 98 Introduction Year after year, developed countries around the world have experienced increasing rates of enrollment at institutions of higher education (Schofer and Meyer 2005; Marginson 2016). In turn, universities and places of higher education have to turned to innovation, changing and adopting pedagogies to expand the use of digital education to have a broader reach and accommodate the swell of enrollments (Belleflamme and Jacqmin 2016). In the U.S., institutions of higher learning have adopted online and hybrid courses in their course offerings for credit, continuing the trend of growing online course instruction at an even greater rate than enrollments in general (Allen and Seaman 2013; Allen, Seaman, Poulin, and Straut 2016). Yet, criticisms of online education have been concomitant with its adoption in higher education (Hassan 2017), despite the fact that these criticisms have largely come without substantial evidence to demonstrate negative learning outcomes (Bergstrand and Savage 2013; Lack 2013). Against this backdrop in higher education, this study examines the professional practice and attitudes of faculty members toward online learning strategies. Reservations about online education may not be a surprise to the reader, given that as early as the late 1970’s scholars posited the growth and development of online technologies for higher education would threaten the professional nature of academic work (Lyotard 1979/1984 referred to the process as computerization; Olssen and Peters 2005). Still, colleges and universities experiment with various means of teaching and educating online without any standards established, leading to an uneven development and adoption of online platforms, course designs, and means of support 99 for faculty across colleges and universities in the US (Alevizou 2015; see Belleflamme and Jacqmin 2016 for a review of US and European differences in the use of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)]).13 Thus, in a general way, there are two dynamics regarding online education in tension: the expansion and adoption of online higher education versus the skepticism and criticism of educators and academics. Several well-developed criticisms of higher education are germane to the concerns about online education, namely the massification of higher education (see Attewell and Lavin 2011 for an explication of massification of higher education) and the pressures of neo-liberalism that are seen as weakening the quality of higher education (Alevizou 2015; Hassan 2017). In the vein of alleged deprofessionalization (Haug 1972; 1975), and, more accurately, the complexity of competing forces in contemporary professional workplaces (Kolsaker 2014; Muzio et al. 2013; Park, Sine, and Tolbert 2011), this study investigates how faculty of higher education view the adoption of digital tools for teaching courses and critically evaluates the hypothesis of a profession in crisis. In particular, this research is interested in how professional perspectives and attitudes come to bear on the practice of teaching online courses and whether or not a discourse of control is discernable in the views of faculty members. Based on the literature reviewed in the following pages, this research examines how previous 13 According to, “Change, but How Substantive?” published April 24, 2015 on Inside Higher Ed, Arizona State University planned to offer Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to students for credit in the fall semester of 2015. The planned and proposed program known as the Global Freshman Academy came to be offered through a partnership with the MOOC provider edX. As of December 2017, Arizona State University’s website, https://asuonline.asu.edu/, boasts more 30,000 students have enrolled in their program, ranked #4 in undergraduate online programs (ahead of Penn State and Ohio State tied at #8) according to U.S. News & World Report. 100 teaching experience using online technologies and professional attitudes plays a role in the outlook of faculty members toward online teaching for college credit. Growing Enrollments, Growing Professional Pressures The literature reviewed here connects the broader shifts in higher education and the tantamount external pressures on the practice of professional work. The intersection of these two areas emphasize the precarious and increasingly complex positions academics navigate. To draw these areas of research together, I begin with a discussion of the modern shifts in higher education that accompany the adoption of online technologies for course instruction. After highlighting the implications of adopting online courses, I focus on the current climate of professional practice for a number of occupations that increasingly find themselves operating within the structures of bureaucracies and corporations. Specifically, I situate faculty members within a bureaucratic system and detail the external forces that influence their practice as teachers. Highlighting the parallel developments that faculty in higher education and other professions face in a post-industrial, digital era, the last section makes clear that faculty in higher education are facing the same developments many professions are wrestling with in their own milieu of work. Changes in Higher Education Taking higher education as an object of research in its own right is in part due to the increasingly central role that higher education plays in social and economic life as enrollments and public funding have consistently grown year after year (Brennan 101 and Teichler 2008). Referred to as the massification of higher education earlier in this study, the rapid expansion of higher education over the last 50 years has led to a number of questions about the value of a college education, assuming a decline in the standards of admission, the quality of students produced, and rigor of canonical teachings (Schofer and Meyer 2005; Attewell and Lavin 2011; Marginson 2016). It is in this context of neoliberalism that some scholars assert a transition is underway in higher education; a transition from open intellectual debate amongst academics to standardization that makes measures of outputs and performativity intelligible to state funders and businesses (Harland 2009; Mulveon and Robinson 2014; Olssen and Peters 2005). While some scholars have debated what could be considered proper measures, or whether it is possible let alone appropriate, to gauge success in higher education in terms of economic impact of earning a college degree or other metrics (Harvey and Green 1993; Tam 2001), others have argued it is an opportunity to reframe education in non-utilitarian terms (Alexander 2000). As Harland writes of this transition between new management (neoliberal policies) and the traditional liberal mission of higher education, “In today’s institutions many of the original values of the liberal ideal hold fast, even though changes to organization and control may be hostile to this type of activity. Both new management and liberal values seem to have their place” (Harland 2009:519). The simultaneous developments of neoliberal pressures and pressures to increase enrollments has been accompanied by the rise of online learning strategies (Allen and Seaman 2013; Allen et al, 2016; Lack 2013). 102 As a consequence of the concomitant developments, the adoption of online technologies for course instruction is not free of the criticism associated with the neoliberal transition in higher education; posing the quandary of whether or not such developments present the broadening of a public good or the expansion of a consumer commodity (Alevizou 2015; Hassan 2017). In support of this trend, online education promises flexibility and self-direction for students (Chess and Booth 2014; Larreamendy-Joerns and Leinhardt 2006), offers an innovative means of presenting and engaging with educational materials (Aagaard 2017; Luo and Franklin 2015; Paulin and Haythornthwaite 2016), and affords administrations the ability to increase their enrollments and be less reliant on public funding (Belleflamme and Jacqmin 2016; Byrd and Mixon 2012). On the other hand, it is well documented that online courses are met with some skepticism in terms of their quality and efficacy, even if for the most part this skepticism is not supported by rigorous empirical study (see especially Allen and Seaman 2013; see also Allen et al. 2016; Bergstrand and Savage 2013; Lack 2013;). Further, as mentioned previously, it is alleged that the adoption of online courses poses a problem for the future of higher education due to challenges and questions of standardization (Alevizou 2015; Hassan 2017). In this way, there is an implied deskilling, or more specifically, deprofessionalization of faculty members. Deprofessionalization and Operating Within Bureaucracies Deprofessionalization, popularized by Haug (1972; 1975), refers to when professions lose their ability to exercise control over a particular area of labor and dictate how their work is done (Ritzer and Walczak 1986). To grasp fully the context of deprofessionalization, one must understand the theoretical connotation of the term 103 “profession.” A profession entails a very specific set of characteristics that create social closure for the occupational group (Weber [1922] 1978). To elaborate, professional groups exercise an exclusive jurisdiction over an area of labor (Abbott 1988), which creates a monopoly over the practice (Timmermans 2008). This exclusive jurisdiction is supported structurally through professional associations (Greenwood, Suddaby, and Hinings 2002), an appeal to altruism that wins over public trust (Fournier 1999), publicly recognized systems of credentialing (Ritzer 1975; Saks 2010), and control over the formal knowledge that sets professionals apart from the public (Freidson 1986; Freidson 1994). Professional practice and values are reinforced through networking, peer-regulation, and an ideology of professionalism that guides the actions of individual professionals and professional groups (Chiarello 2011; Evetts 2003; Evetts 2013; Freidson 2001; Osnowitz 2006). All of the above- mentioned qualities and standards of practice taken with public and state support (i.e., legal requirements to practice a type of labor), solidify a professional status (Abbott 1988; Freidson 2001). Of course, professions are highly variable in quality and kind, possessing various manners of these qualities and abilities to exercise exclusive jurisdiction (Gorman and Sandefur 2011). Many professions operate within bureaucracies and institutions, exercising their professional practice while simultaneously navigating the structures they operate within and maintaining control over their work (Evetts 2003; Muzio and Kirkpatrick 2011; Muzio et al. 2011; Muzio et al. 2013). In fact, a number of studies have provided examples of occupational groups that enacted a discourse of professionalism to delineate a body of knowledge as theirs, which serves as the primary source of 104 discipline in their work in day-to-day experience—despite operating within corporations, bureaucracies, or institutions, including journalists (Aldridge and Evetts 2003), certified public accountants (CPAs) (Greenwood et al. 2002), ambulance workers (McCann et al. 2013), and project management and consultants (Hodgson 2002; Muzio et al. 2011). Instead of occupational groups ceding their claim to their work and their adopted best practices, each of these studies demonstrates how deprofessionalization is largely overstated or how professional organizations adapt to change and shift their jurisdictional claims to accommodate organizational environments (Gorman and Sandefur 2011). In fact, these professional organizations tend to operate in nearly the same ways as traditional professions. For example, the study of CPAs finds professional associations were important for legitimating what a profession does and what it can be in the wake of institutional change, especially within the confines of a highly institutionalized organizational field (Greenwood et al. 2002). Several studies have demonstrated similar findings for faculty members at institutions of higher learning. For example, Kolsaker (2008:522-523) finds, “Far from becoming disenchanted by the impact of managerialism upon their daily life, they appear, on the whole, to be making sense of and adapting to the changing environment whilst retaining a strong sense of professional identity.” Similarly, in Kolsaker’s (2014) later work, she finds that academics maintain a strong sense of professional identity, despite feelings of deprofessionalization due to managerial forces—feelings of increased emphasis on measurable outputs and less freedom to prioritize their own work. Also focusing on the maintenance of professionalism for 105 faculty within the confines of a larger organization (the campus administration), Park and colleagues (2011) demonstrate professional academic groups were able to establish the institution of the tenure system almost universally in the U.S., protecting membership to the professoriate. However, this then provided incentives for administrations to employ non-tenure track faculty and “special appointments” that could be exempt from those guidelines (Park et al. 2011). Taking these studies together, no professional group is completely without some form of compromise with their respective organizational environments, yet they endeavor to maintain professional practice. In sum, for occupational groups embedded in other organizations, the maintenance of best practices is articulated with the idea that, “The protection of clients and consumers from poor products and services remains one of the most important practical aspects of professionalism” (Švarc 2016:393). Additionally, the protection of intellectuals and highly skilled workers and professionals from precarious, uncertain positions is the next critical reason for exploring the role and position of contemporary professions. A cursory review of the literature that evaluates online teaching strategies and platforms reveals methods of evaluation are still in development, and, as a consequence, meaningful comparisons of online and face-to-face courses are relatively few (Bergstrand and Savage 2013; Lack 2013; Tallent-Runnels et al. 2006). Thus, rather than detail the merits of online courses, the study here is more concerned with perceptions of online courses and how they inform our understanding about attitudes toward teaching online. As such, germane to the questions being posed here, a recent survey of chief academic officers, faculty responsible for directing their 106 respective academic programs, at 2,2820 academic institutions found that it, “…remains clear academic leaders at institutions with online offerings have a much more favorable opinion of the learning outcomes in online courses and programs than those at institutions without online offerings” (Allen and Seaman 2013:25). So, while faculty familiar with teaching online may have more favorable opinions of online learning outcomes, those with experience of teaching online are also more likely to believe an online course takes more effort to create and support (Allen and Seaman 2013:23). Thus, it would stand to reason that, in terms of best practices, previous research has found teaching online requires reflection on pedagogical practices that may be otherwise routine or done without much thought, so experience and engaging with online platforms is necessary to developing courses online (Bergstrand and Savage 2013; Larreamendy-Joerns and Leinhardt 2006; Norton and Hathaway 2015). Based on the research outlined above, in general, I expect to find that faculty are actively thinking through how online technologies may be of benefit and strengthened, as opposed to outright dismissing the use of online teaching technologies or presuming online teaching strategies represent an attack on the quality of higher education. In other words, faculty will be more likely to assert a professional discourse of improvement versus a discourse that reflects deprofessionalization. The following section details the case selection for this study before going into further detail about how this study evaluates the questions, “Are professional values and identity reflected in attitudes toward strategies of online education? And if so, how?” Based on these survey findings and the research outlined above, I expect that, contrary to the assumption that teaching online is diminishing 107 faculty’s professional practice, resistance to teaching online is largely a matter of ambiguity and lack of experience with the format of online teaching. I also expect that faculty with experience teaching a course using online technologies are more likely to express their concerns with online teaching in terms of concrete needs for improving the format of online teaching Case Selection This study uses a purposive convenience sample, focusing on a large public university in the mid-Atlantic: the University of Maryland (UMD). By concentrating on only one institution, as opposed to sampling multiple institutions, variance that would be introduced by different levels of institutional support and training offered to faculty for teaching online and blended/hybrid courses is minimized. Furthermore, the case selection is purposive based on the known administrative steps that UMD has taken to support teaching online in all of its forms, including blended, online and MOOCs, in addition to the number of course offerings available in each of those online formats14. In addition, a survey of faculty members at UMD was conducted in 2013, providing some means of comparison over time with regard to the experiences and attitudes toward blended and online teaching at the university (La Voy, Bowsher, David, and Taliaferro 2013). 14 While it is not the focus of the study, there are important differences between blended and online courses and MOOCs. Blended (or hybrid) courses refer to courses that use a combination of online and offline course instruction, often utilizing online instruction to decrease the amount of time spent meeting offline. Online courses hold all course instruction online (with some exceptions made for testing and exams), but these are of typical class size, whereas MOOCs are free online courses that are open to anyone (rarely for credit). 108 The survey revealed that the majority of faculty who participated would teach a blended version of a course they already teach, and, like the literature reviewed above would suggest, those that had experience teaching a blended course were more likely to disagree that their overall engagement would be lower in a blended course in comparison to a traditional course (La Voy et al. 2013: 8-10). The survey also revealed that faculty were split on whether or not high-quality teaching could be achieved in a blended environment, however most faculty would teach a blended course with institutional support despite a majority of faculty not being confident that UMD would provide the support necessary (La Voy et al. 2013: 12). In line with the research reviewed above, faculty felt that blended courses would take more time to do in comparison to traditional courses (La Voy et al. 2013: 16). Findings from the survey of full-time faculty conducted during the spring semester of 2013 at UMD described above (La Voy et al. 2013), and additional analyses of open-ended responses not included in the report, served as the basis for several goals and recommendations published by the Provost’s Office that the university has taken steps to achieve. These recommendations included the appointment of an administrator to oversee the adoption of online technologies, providing funding streams and infrastructure for development, and developing well-recognized MOOCs (University of Maryland 2013). Since the commission’s findings were made public, UMD has dedicated a center to training faculty and student instructors, which offers a variety of meetings, presentations, workshops, seminars, and courses ranging in topics from best practices in the classroom to available technologies. Further, grants and fellowships have been 109 offered through the center to faculty members to pilot and evaluate the efficacy of online and hybrid courses. By the end of 2017, UMD had created 30 MOOCs, two of which have been placed in the top ten of Online Course Report’s “The 50 Most Popular MOOCs of All Time” (University of Maryland 2017a). Taking these developments and prior knowledge of UMD faulty into account, it can be argued that interested faculty members and instructors would be able to learn more about teaching online and learn more about the tools and resources made available to them to teaching online and blended courses. Further, those that are not interested in pursuing these platforms are made at least aware that resources are available. In the fall of 2017, UMD enrolled 28,472 students, touting a 17 to 1 student to teacher ratio, and the university ranked in top 25 of U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of public research institutions (University of Maryland 2017b). During that same semester, nearly one-quarter of departments and programs offered at least one undergraduate course that was classified as an online or blended course.15 With a moderate rate of adoption for online and blended teaching, plus a significant institutionalized support system in place, complete with a full-time staff and fiscal and monetary incentives, it is likely that most UMD faculty are, at the very least, aware of online and blended courses being adopted and proctored on campus. While the experience of UMD may not be completely generalizable to all faculty everywhere, it presents a good case to understand the relationship between 15 43 different departments and programs offered 114 unique undergraduate courses with 321sections at the UMD that were either blended or online (69 and 48, respectively), with some courses having as many as 22 sections. In the spring semester of 2018, the numbers decrease slightly, but remain relatively constant with 40 different departments and programs offering online or blended courses (44 and 68 courses in total, respectively). Retrieved from https://ntst.umd.edu/soc/. 110 professionalism and teaching online course for credit as faculty around the US increasingly engage in various forms of teaching online. Methods This study employs a survey that includes a combination of closed and open-ended questions to explore the views of faculty members at UMD. Specifically, the survey is designed to provide insights into respondents’ institutional, professional, and employment backgrounds,16 and to gain an understanding of faculty members’ attitudes toward and experiences of teaching courses online. The following describes the survey design, an overview of the questions asked, and the sampling procedures utilized for this study. This section ends with the method of analysis for the quantitative and qualitative data. The survey instrument is separated into several sections, each composed to gain unique, but related insights.17 Drawing on Norton and Hathaway’s (2015) work on faculty’s online teaching experience, data collection includes both quantitative and qualitative data to gain a deeper understanding of the research questions. The first section details respondents’ personal backgrounds, employment and education histories, and their departmental and program affiliations at the University of Maryland. The second section asks faculty members about their teaching experience, and, if they have taught any courses recently, whether or not those classes could be considered an online or hybrid course. 16 List of academic programs and departments included in the survey found here: https://www.umd.edu/academic-departments-and-programs. 17 The survey instrument can be found in the Appendix, titled “Survey Instrument for Case Study Three.” 111 The second half of the survey begins with questions specifically about professional beliefs. Based on previous work by Hall (1968), Snizek (1972), and Kolsaker (2014), this section asks a series of questions designed to understand better faculty member’s sense of professional identity and belonging to their respective field in academia. The last section of the survey concerns faculty members’ views of online courses. First, faculty members were asked, “Given the opportunity, along with ample time and technical support to prepare, would you volunteer to teach a course in your department online? Why or why not?” Responses to this question were coded into one of three categories, yes, no, or unsure (a response that made clear they were unsure or would “maybe” teach an online course). Concluding the survey, faculty were asked to provide their thoughts about the most promising aspects of courses being taught online for credit, and then to provide the most problematic. Each of these three questions are open-ended forms, allowing faculty to elaborate as much or as little as they saw fit. This project uses a non-probability sampling method, in an effort to capture the most responses as possible from faculty at the University of Maryland. Email addresses were gathered from department webpages, duplicates were dropped, and misspelled or incorrect email addresses were also dropped from the sample. In total, 3,50718 faculty members were invited to participate in the survey, via an online questionnaire program, Qualtrics. All valid email addresses were included. Faculty were not discriminated against based upon teaching experience or department status, 18 According to the Office of Institutional Research, Planning & Assessment, there were 3,575 full- time, salaried faculty as of the fall 2016 semester. By this estimate, there is approximately a 1.9% coverage error in soliciting participation. Source: https://www.irpa.umd.edu/CampusCounts/Employees/employeesumm.pdf. 112 so the sampling frame includes the entire population of faculty members at UMD, which is designed to produce the greatest amount of data possible. Invitations to participate in the survey were sent out several times over the course of a 6-week period beginning in May of 2017. Faculty members had the option of opting-out of the survey through a link that would automatically drop them from the survey system. In total, 531 faculty participated in the survey, and 443 faculty members completed the survey in its entirety. The analysis then is based on a survey participation rate of 15.1% and a 12.6% completion rate.19 Respondents were permitted to decline answering questions where they saw fit, and therefore some measures have more complete information than others. Quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS to compute demographics and other relevant descriptors for faculty members. Qualitative data were analyzed using NVivo 11, a software programed to analyze textual data. The qualitative data were coded systematically for themes based on the literature review above, in addition to coding for emergent themes in the open-ended responses that faculty submitted (Bowen 2006; Mitchell 2014; Seibold 2002; Strauss and Corbin 1990). Working through the qualitative data this way allowed for identifying the dominant patterns and categories of meaning for respondents. Results In the following discussion of results, I begin with a description of faculty’s background information, including the demographic composition of the sample and 19 Comparing the index of qualitative variation scores for the distribution of survey invites and the distribution of responses by department and program, IQV = 0.992. 113 the teaching experience of faculty at UMD. The analysis then turns to faculty’s sense of professionalism, drawing on a number of quantitative measures to examine how respondents think of their profession, as well as their commitment to and identification with their professional field. Last, the analysis presents the qualitative data associated with respondents’ attitudes toward and experience of teaching courses online. Demographic and Instructional Background This sample of respondents are largely white, permanent and adjunct faculty members, who are approaching retirement age. According to the survey results, faculty have spent an average of 12.6 years in their respective positions, yet with a standard deviation of 11.2 the amount of time spent in their current position was highly variable. The average self-reported age of faculty members is 51.7 years. As pictured in Table 4.1, based on a non-mutually exclusive measure of race and ethnicity, the majority of respondents, 85.7% of 428, identified as white, whereas only 5.8% identified as black, 6.8% as Asian, and 3.0% identifying as other. These proportions are fairly consistent with La Voy et al. (2013), where white respondents are overrepresented and Asian respondents are underrepresented in comparison to the faculty population as its described in the Fall 2017 edition of Campus Counts (University of Maryland 2017c). The sample of faculty, by far, is primarily comprised of permanent faculty members, accounting for about 59.7% of the sample of faculty to participate in the survey. Adjunct faculty made up for about one in five respondents, while Research and Emeritus faculty made up 7.2% and 6.3% of the sample, respectively. The remaining 5.4% of the sample was divided almost evenly 114 Table 4.1: Respondents' Self-Reported Background Information Frequency Percent Position n % Visiting Faculty 12 2.8% Postdoctoral Researcher 11 2.6% Research Faculty 31 7.2% Adjunct Faculty 92 21.4% Permanent Faculty 256 59.7% Emeritus Faculty 27 6.3% Race White 367 857% Black 25 5.8% Asian 29 6.8% Other 13 3.0% between Visiting and Postdoctoral faculty at the UMD, as shown in Table 4.1. In the past four academic years, (including the spring semester of 2017 at the time of this survey), 85.3% of faculty taught at least one course. In comparison to the composition of UMD’s faculty, this sample of faculty members overrepresents white, permanent faculty members (University of Maryland 2017c). On average, faculty members reported having taught nearly 11 courses over the past four-years, teaching at least one course per semester. A small minority, about 1 out of 20 faculty members, who taught in the past 4 years reported they taught more than 30 courses in that time. Courses taught by respondents in the past four academic years are primarily undergraduate courses (89.9% of respondents taught an undergraduate course) and 39% of respondents had not taught a graduate course. Furthermore, respondents indicated that they taught about an average of 9 undergraduate courses versus an average of about 4 graduate level courses in 4 years. Consistent with La Voy and colleagues (2013), 17.5% of respondents had taught at 115 least 1 hybrid course. Similarly, only 14.8% of respondents taught an online course and almost half of those who had taught an online course in the past four academic years only taught one or two online courses—suggesting online courses, once taught, may not be a regular occurrence. Still, according to the survey respondents here, a greater proportion of faculty taught an online course in comparison to the approximate 4% of faculty reported in the 2013 survey of UMD faculty by La Voy and colleagues (2013). Sense of Professionalism To gauge faculty members’ sense of professionalism and strength of professional identity, the survey instrument asked a series of questions based on Hall’s work (1968), subsequent evaluations of Hall’s survey instrument (Snizek 1972), and other works measuring professionalism (Kolsaker 2014), to measure professionals’ perception of autonomy, sense of calling to the field, belief in service to the public, the use and reliance on a professional organization, and the belief in self-regulation. More than four out of five faculty members, about 83% of respondents, said they were a member of a professional association. And more than two out of three of those faculty members who reported being a member of a professional association claimed to have been an active member in their respective associations—not just as a passive member but serving in some capacity for the organization. Affiliation with professional associations are important for fostering group identity, self-regulation, and collegial support networks (McGuire 2007; Osnowitz 2006). With the intent of better understanding to what degree faculty members are engaged in peer regulation and review, faculty were asked if they’ve ever reviewed an article or served on an 116 editorial board for a journal and about 80% of faculty members claimed to engage in this work. Figure 3.1. Histogram of Faculty’s Index Score for Sense of Professionalism Based on the work of Hall (1968) and Snizek (1972), this section of the survey that explicitly asks about professional identity, faculty were asked a series of questions to discern their sense of professionalism.20 Those ten questions are aggregated into an index variable to show variation in the aggregate, that is, the strength of professional identity across all measures. Scaled from zero to forty, the 20 The proportional distribution of responses across the series of ten questions based on Hall’s (1968) and Snizek’s (1972) can be found in Table A of the Appendix. 117 majority of respondents exhibited a strong sense of agreement with the various measures of professional identity, with an overall mean of 33.0. These results demonstrate strong evidence to discount deprofessionalization, as defined by Haug (1972; 1975) or in its more contemporary applications like those found in the work of Kolsaker (2008; 2014), and that any assumed infringement on professional identity is overstated. In fact, faculty surveyed here indicate a strong sense of professional identity and control over their work, just as other studies of professions operating within larger organizations have found (Greenwood et al. 2002; Hodgson 2002; Muzio et al. 2011). Opinions of Teaching Online To interrogate how professional identity or deprofessionalization may be reflected in faculty’s practice, respondents were asked several questions about online courses offered for credit. Slightly more than half of faculty indicated they would volunteer to teach an online course, about 55% of all respondents. In comparison, more than one out of three respondents, about 37%, said they would not teach an online course, whereas the remaining faculty members submitted that they were unsure whether they would teach an online course or not. Of those who said they would volunteer to teach an online class, some offered more than one reason as to why they would volunteer, whereas others declined an explanation altogether (nearly 12% of respondents declined). 118 Table 4.2. Dominant Themes in Response to First Open-Ended Question on Teaching Online Category of Response and Respective Dominant Themes Percentage Yes (n=218) 54.5% Based on Previous Experience Teaching Online 29.4% Reaching Non-Traditional Students 15.1% Teaching Online Will be Prominent in Future 12.4% More Effective for Specific Courses 10.1% Professional Development 8.3% Monetary Incentives/Needs of their Department 7.8% Time and Scheduling Flexibility 6.4% Experiment and Explore Possibilities of Teaching Online 3.7% Expressed Reservations 12.4% No Reason 11.9% No (n=149) 37.3% Loss of Face-to-Face Interaction 57.7% Not Conducive to Subject 16.8% Too Much Time Investment 16.8% Standards and Quality 8.7% Experience 6.7% Unsure (n=33) 8.3% Some expressed reservations or doubts about the quality of online courses despite saying they would teach one (slightly more than 12% of respondents). Many respondents in the latter category submitted something similar to, “Sure. I wouldn't mind doing it, but I don't think I would enjoy it as much as the in-person instruction,” or, “I would but am unsure that there is clear evidence these courses are beneficial for student learning.” When reasons were coded for why faculty would teach an online course, eight distinct reasons for why respondents would volunteer and five for why 119 they would not emerged in the analysis. Table 4.2 presents the distribution of the emergent themes of reasons for and against teaching online. The greatest proportion of faculty to say they would volunteer did so on the basis of having previous experience with teaching or designing a hybrid or online course. Many offered that teaching an online course was no longer “intimidating” once they’ve gone through the process of developing and teaching a course. To test whether previous teaching experience actually has a profound effect on whether or not a faculty member would volunteer to teach an online course, analyses were conducted to find if there is a statistically significant relationship between previous experience teaching a hybrid or online course and willingness to volunteer. Table 4.3: Association of Previous Experience Teaching a Hybrid Course and Volunteering to Teach Online Would Volunteer No Yes n Row % n Row % Did Not Teach Hybrid 148 54.81% 122 45.19% Did Teach Hybrid 12 16.67% 60 83.33% 𝜒2=33.23 (p < .001) Table 4.3 shows the relationship between previous experience teaching a hybrid course and volunteering to teach online, which demonstrates that while a majority of faculty who did not teach a hybrid course previously would not volunteer to teach an online course, a majority of faculty who have previously taught a hybrid course would volunteer to teach an online course. This change in proportion was dramatic enough to be statistically significant. Similarly, in Table 4.4, pictured below, 120 the same relationship is pictured. Those with previous experience teaching online are more likely to say they would volunteer, while those that have not taught an online course were more likely to decline the opportunity to teach an online course. The difference in proportions for this comparison of groups was statistically significant as well. In both instances, the difference of proportions is found to be statistically significant, demonstrating that there is an association between previous experience teaching either a hybrid or online course and the willingness to volunteer to teach an online course. These findings support what other studies have found, that experience and familiarity with teaching courses that make use of online technologies is associated with more positive views of the teaching strategies (Allen and Seaman 2013; Norton and Hathaway 2015). Table 4.4: Association of Previous Experience Teaching an Online Course and Volunteering to Teach Online Would Volunteer No Yes n Row % n Row % Did Not Teach Online 153 53.87% 131 46.13% Did Teach Online 8 13.11% 53 86.89% 𝜒2=33.52 (p < .001) The second most frequently cited reason to volunteer was the ability to reach out to non-traditional students, students that would not be physically able to attend the campus or students with other time commitments that prevent them from participating as a traditional student. It is important to consider that this mode of reasoning employs an altruistic vision of what could be gained by teaching online—a service 121 orientation is a central component of professionalism (Abbott 1988; Freidson 2001; Ritzer and Walczak 1988). In fact, the remaining reasons to volunteer to teach an online course, with the exception of flexibility in class schedules due to asynchronous learning, listed in Table 4.2 are all reasons that echoed a professional service orientation. The same can be said for the most common reasons given for declining to volunteer to teach: the loss of face-to-face interaction with students, their concern that their subject-matter did not translate to an online setting, that online courses require too burdensome of a time commitment to work effectively, concerns with quality and standards in general, and their experience with or lack thereof with online courses. Faculty members’ reasons for not volunteering related to their concerns about their ability or inability of the platform to deliver the quality of course instruction they would deem acceptable. At no point did faculty raise concerns about the administration forcing online courses on faculty or that online courses are necessarily threatening the ability of faculty to work as they saw fit. In this way, faculty maintain a discourse about their work that reflects a service orientation, a concern for the quality of the product (the delivery of knowledge) despite potential incentives, and sees the developments in course instruction as an opportunity to expand their professional practice. Foreshadowing the analysis of the remaining qualitative data, faculty employ a discourse of professionalism, as defined in the above review of literature (Chiarello 2011; Evetts 2003; Evetts 2013; Freidson 2001), when discussing the pro’s and con’s of online course instruction. 122 Defining Professional Practice When asked what is most promising about online courses, responses tend to fall into one of two categories. By far, faculty members shared that the ability to reach non- traditional students was the most promising aspect of course instruction for credit online. Nearly half of respondents, about 46% of faculty members, felt reaching non- traditional students was most promising. One non-permanent faculty member who had experience teaching online submitted a more detailed and cogent answer than most of their counterparts, but managed to capture many faculty member’s sentiment when they wrote: Online course instruction allows more individuals to obtain a college education or graduate degree. Traditional course instruction at the university level often excludes individuals who have to work and those who may have children. This means that only a select portion of the population is able to enroll in higher education. The ability to participate in higher education without being physically present on a college campus make it possible for individuals from all backgrounds and situations (single mothers, working mothers, etc.) to complete their education. This is what is most promising about online course instruction. Although costs still limit who is able to attend college, online learning removes one of the most restrictive barriers. Hand in hand with the having a broader reach to attract non-traditional students, the flexibility of teaching online is another appealing facet of online teaching. About one in three faculty members (a little more than 35% of respondents) raised the point that the asynchronistic structure of online classes presents a level of convenience to students or faculty, or both. This flexibility was recognized by faculty to let students or faculty work from home, to allow students to review materials as they would like for practice, for students to work at their own pace, or for faculty to provide quicker feedback. The remaining aspects that faculty found promising were 123 not submitted in nearly the same numbers. However, it is worth noting a minority of respondents, less than 10%, chose to voice their criticisms of online teaching, as opposed to offering anything promising about online teaching. Representative of those submissions, one faculty member cogently submitted, “It might save on ‘drive- time and parking’ as well as the ‘carbon-footprint’ from an ecological standpoint but personally I find On-Line or Distance Education a racket to make money and shallow when communicating educational values and serious research.” Put more bluntly, another wrote, “subpar!” Following up, soliciting negative feedback, faculty were asked to share what they felt was troubling about online courses. Very few faculty members submitted they were unsure about what they felt to be an issue with online courses. By and large, the lack of in-person interaction was considered to be the most problematic aspect of teaching online, possessing the greatest proportion of respondents (52%). Specifically, many respondents felt that the in-person interactions are an essential part of teaching and without that interaction, something essential is lost in the process of instruction. Without the ability to see facial expressions and other body language, many felt students would be robbed of the opportunity for faculty to interrogate and clarify course material. Closely related, slightly more than 18% of faculty felt engaging students— getting them interested, giving them feedback on assignments, generating meaningful discussions—was something difficult or unlikely to be achieved in an online classroom. While these two answers are closely related, it is important to emphasize the conceptual difference; the difference being that engagement, as it was recognized in these data, refers directly to cultivating interest and engendering participation in 124 the course, i.e., engagement with the course material. In-person interaction directly refers to the loss of a physical space and the challenges faculty perceive without the use of the physical space. For some faculty, the latter was described as losing the essential quality what makes teaching special, what separates the transmission of information and tailoring a personalized, classroom-specific learning experience. In other words, the worry about the loss of face-to-face interaction is a complaint about the structure of online courses, whereas a concern about engagement is centered on questions of pedagogical practice. Still, these concepts were often intermingled in the responses of faculty members. As one respondent, a permanent faculty member with a great deal of teaching experience offline but none online or in a hybrid classroom, summarized, “That students miss out on the facetoface interaction. I use the in-person interactions to get students physically and emotionally engaged with the course material and each other. I send them outside for group work and activities. We move around in the classroom and brainstorm.” Other concerns included academic integrity, where about 18% of faculty reported feeling concerned about the difficulty or outright inability to guarantee the validity of testing and assessments. Faculty also reported a concern about the motivation of students who would participate in a course that was not held in a physical classroom, suspecting students would not take the courses seriously. Related, about one-in-fifteen of faculty members were concerned about attrition rates— students simply would not be motivated to do the work and would subsequently drop the course or perform poorly. In more general terms, about 8% of faculty felt that a lack of support for teaching an online course was a major issue. 125 Nearly one in twelve faculty members, submitted the most or one of the most problematic aspects of teaching online was the lack of infrastructure and training for faculty members to make the transition. As one faculty member who previously taught an online course wrote, “[I]n my case, there was not much if any support for conducting the course. I did not believe the students got out of the course what they might have gotten if it was in class or last least hybrid.” More specifically, almost 6% of faculty felt too much labor and time is required in comparison to a traditional course, that the amount of effort to organize and execute well is too great. Concerns about a lack of training support and the time intensity are legitimate concerns as previous research has demonstrated hands-on experience and careful consideration of taken for granted methods of teaching is needed to be successful in a digital environment (Bergstrand and Savage 2013; Larreamendy-Joerns and Leinhardt 2006; Norton and Hathaway 2015). Despite the number of resources and steps the University has taken to support faculty members, a number of these faculty spoke from experience. Still in the minority, about one-in-thirteen faculty members of the sample felt that, “The assumption that online learning is the same as in-person learning is problematic. I'm not saying one or the other is always better, but depending on the subject matter and goals of a course, there are times when on-line learning is appropriate and times when it is not so appropriate.” In other words, some faculty members pointed out the most problematic aspect of teaching online was that other faculty were unaware they would need support and training to develop their pedagogies. For many, the culmination of these perceived obstacles result in, putting it simply, an inferior means of teaching. 126 As one of the 18.1% of faculty who submitted that online education is lacking in quality wrote, “Too much of it is churn and burn. I frankly am not sold on MOOCS. You might as well buy the great lectures tapes or watch content on youtube. ‘Instruction’ is a bilateral thing, and I am not sure we have really achieved the same thing in online environments that you get in the classroom.” As the submission alludes, some felt lower quality went together with a trend to diminish the quality of higher education at all, and if these opinions were widespread, this would confirm tensions between professional practice and outside interference—that is, deprofessionalization (Haug 1972; Haug 1975). From a more critical perspective, some faculty believed that teaching online represented the undermining or ruin of higher education. The minority of faculty members, about 5% of respondents, believed teaching online is tantamount to, “The commodification and water down of complex and sophisticated topics, specific in the Humanities. It also helps to the corporatist agenda that is destroying Academia across the world.” It is worth noting, however, most of these types of responses came from faculty who did not have experience outside of the traditional classroom. Most submissions of this vein conveyed criticisms in terms of “reducing labor costs” or reducing students to “customers.” Given the minority of criticisms conveying deprofessionalization, it can be argued that notions of faculty conceding control over their work is overstated. To further examine how professionalism is exhibited in the discourse that faculty members employ, the following examines the association between experience teaching a hybrid or online course with the emergent patterns of what faculty identified as most problematic with teaching online courses. 127 Table 4.5: Association of Belief in Most Problematic Aspects of Online Teaching and Previous Experience Teaching an Online or Hybrid Course Experience Problematic Aspects No Yes n Row % n Row % Lack of Support - Yes 6 24.0% 19 76.0% Lack of Support - No 230 75.4% 75 24.6% 𝜒2=29.978 ( p < .001) False Equivalence - Yes 16 66.7% 8 33.3% False Equivalence - No 220 71.9% 86 28.1% 𝜒2=0.299 (p = .585) Loss of Engagement - Yes 37 62.7% 22 37.3% Loss of Engagement - No 199 73.4% 72 26.6% 𝜒2=2.733 ( p = .098) Academic Integrity - Yes 49 75.4% 16 24.6% Academic Integrity - No 187 70.6% 78 29.4% 𝜒2=0.595 ( p = .441) n Row % n Row % Attrition - Yes 13 61.9%% 8 38.1% Attrition - No 223 72.2 % 86 27.8% 𝜒2=1.017 ( p = .313) Loss of Interaction - Yes 144 83.2% 29 16.8%% Loss of Interaction - No 92 58.6 % 65 41.4% 𝜒2=24.527 ( p < .001) In performing this analysis, displayed in Table 4.5 above, the findings highlight how faculty members are actively engaged in shaping the limits and boundaries of their work, what they do and do not define as problem. More specifically, the analyses presented in Table 4.5 allow for the identification of differences and similarities in how issues and concerns with online courses are defined based on previous experience of teaching a hybrid or online course. First, 128 there are no significant differences for recognizing false equivalence (mistaking the pedagogies of online and offline course instruction as the same thing), academic integrity, attrition, or loss of engagement as worrisome aspects when comparing recognition and experience. However, there is a statistically significant association between recognizing the loss of interaction in the classroom as problematic and previous experience, which highlights how those with experience are less concerned about the loss of interaction than their counterparts without experience. On the other hand, experience is statistically significantly associated with identifying a lack of support as the most problematic aspect of teaching online. In sum, these analyses provide evidence that obstacles such as attrition and academic integrity remain troublesome in the opinion of faculty regardless of experience, whereas the worry about a loss of interaction is assuaged with experience but experience brings with it a concern for the lack of support and training. Conclusion Ultimately, this study found faculty members of the same institutional background were roughly split between whether or not they would volunteer to teach an online course, with just a slight edge given to the affirmative. While many recognize the appeal of reaching out to non-traditional students, others held reservations about the quality of online courses. More specifically, many were concerned about the impacts of losing face-to-face interactions that take place in traditional classrooms and the perceived (and actual) lack of support to make online courses successful. The findings from the mixed methods-approach of analysis supports the notion that, despite notions of deprofessionalization or pressures to commodify higher education, 129 faculty are taking the changes posed by new formats of course instruction seriously and concerning themselves with how to best develop professional pedagogical strategies in online environments. In short, notions of deprofessionalization and its association with online teaching and the rapid expansion of higher education appear to be overstated. More importantly, such views ignore the ability of occupational groups to adapt to changes in organizational arrangements, creating new opportunities for occupational groups to employ a discourse of professionalism that redefines jurisdictional boundaries and the normative practices of the occupational members to take into account new problems and tasks of their professional practice. The results of this study are consistent with the work of Hall (1968: 97), so, “This suggests that professionals working in large organizations are not, by definition, confronted with situations which reduce the level of professionalization.” In other words, the supposed threat to autonomy and control over professionals’ work is largely overstated, echoing the findings of Kolsaker’s (2008; 2014) studies of deprofessionalizing faculty in higher education in the UK. Further, the findings of this study support the idea that faculty employ a discourse that frames the problematics of their work, defines the relevant aspects of their professional practice, disciplines the normative behaviors and expectations for their work, and they employ this discourse at their own discretion. In sum, these findings reflect much of the same results other studies have found of occupations exercising professionalism while operating within bureaucracies, where those occupations have adapted to change, redefined the boundaries of their work, and continued to exercise a discourse of self-discipline and control (for an overview of these processes see Gorman and Sandefur 2011; Aldridge 130 and Evetts 2003; Greenwood et al. 2002; Hodgson 2002; McCann et al. 2013; Muzio et al. 2011). Comparing the results of La Voy and colleagues’ (2013) survey of full-time faculty members at the UMD four years previous to this study, still a slight majority of faculty surveyed here would volunteer to teach an online course. Also consistent between the two surveys, the majority of respondents still felt the most problematic aspect of teaching online was the loss of interaction that takes place, face-to-face, in the classroom. The proportion of respondents who teach blended courses stayed nearly the same (18% in 2013 versus 20.5% in 2017) while the proportion of respondents to teach an online course increased from about 4% in 2013 to 17.6% in 2017, reflecting a dramatic increase in teaching online courses. While it is not known how much of an increase was intended by the administration of the university since the survey was conducted in 2013, increasing the engagement of faculty in teaching online courses has clearly been successful. Based on the open-ended responses to the most problematic aspects of online courses offered for credit, the findings here demonstrate that nearly one in five faculty members feel online courses are inferior in comparison to traditional courses, comparable to national-level surveys that found 9.3% of faculty believe online course are inferior and another 19.3% believe they are somewhat inferior (Allen et al. 2016:48). Just as the extant research for online course design has suggested, online courses require a knowledge of the tools at a faculty member’s disposal (Bergstrand and Savage 2013; Larreamendy-Joerns and Leinhardt 2006; Norton and Hathaway 2015). When faculty were surveyed about whether or not they would volunteer and 131 why, a large contingent indicated they would do so based on past experience. To put it succinctly, one would expect a negative impact on the likelihood to volunteer to teach an online course if previous experience teaching of an online or blended course were such a demeaning and deprofessionalizing experience. In that light, experience with teaching online courses encourages further participation in teaching online. In terms of professional identity, as the literature suggests for professionals operating within other organizations or bureaucracies, including studies specific to higher education (Kolsaker 2008; Kolsaker 2014; Park et al. 2011), the findings of this study demonstrate faculty have a strong identification with professional qualities and traits, including high rates of membership in professional associations and participation in the review of peer’s work and contributions to their respective fields of study. Similarly, in terms of professional practice, nearly one-in-ten faculty mentioned on their own accord, without suggestion or priming, that they would teach an online course because they felt that was the future of teaching in higher education. A slightly smaller proportion of faculty offered they would teach an online course for their own professional development because doing so may enhance their own pedagogical practice, as some research has suggested faculty may find when venturing into teaching online courses (Larreamendy-Joerns and Leinhardt 2006; Norton and Hathaway 2015). The findings reveal that faculty who participated in this study broach the topic of online teaching with a service orientation, displaying a specific and distinct concern for the quality of teaching (Švarc 2016). As opposed to a substantial denouncement of online teaching, faculty felt the largest promise of online teaching 132 was to reach non-traditional students. While professionals are not free of selfish motivations, their actions are still largely guided by ideals of altruism (Fournier 1999; Ritzer 1975). Adding to this notion that faculty expressed a discourse of service- orientation, nearly one in ten faculty members felt teaching an online course presented the opportunity to create a more engaging course environment. Responses submitted by faculty presents evidence that their claims to professionalism are supported in their views of teaching online and expected practice should they have the opportunity to teach online, thus demonstrating a connection between practice and ideology (Chiarello 2011). The findings here echo Kolsaker’s (2008) conclusion that despite external pressures and discourses of managerialism, “…academics themselves consider it important to contribute proactively to sustaining professionalism; this entails a commitment to ongoing professional development and a willingness to adhere to external mechanisms that assure professional practice” (522). While survey instruments based on Hall’s (1968) work may demonstrate how professional or what aspects of professionalism may be important to some occupational groups, for highly professionalized groups, like the faculty members surveyed here, it may be an inappropriate tool for analyzing differences in professional attitudes and perspective. Still, the intent of this study was to demonstrate that professional perspectives and opinions would be reflected in attitudes toward teaching online, reflecting an active shaping of protocols and guidelines for the adoption of online teaching, as opposed to the deprofessionalization of faculty who were unable to manage and stipulate the terms of their occupational practice. Some faculty raised the concern that online education was a vehicle for 133 diminishing the overall quality of higher education, however answers to both questions of what is promising and problematic about online courses reveal well- thought out, informed concerns that were actionable—answers that reflect an exercise of expert and professional perspectives on a subject that is still largely in development despite its popularity. This study is limited in that the survey is done of faculty at one institution alone, and one that was done without the institutional support needed to achieve a greater cache with respondents. In expanding a revised version of the survey instrument, it would be possible to begin analyses that may account for the qualitative differences between institutions’ history of support and adoption of online technologies to help explain the variation in professional attitudes towards teaching online. Further research on this topic would also be well-served to conduct a more in- depth qualitative study of faculty members to explore the topics to emerge in the research here. Namely, what teaching backgrounds are associated with a concern for revising and developing online courses as opposed to faculty believing online teaching represents the destruction of online teaching? And what are the cognitive frames that justify those positions? 134 Chapter 5: Conclusion This dissertation examines how occupational groups assert control and exercise power of specific areas of labor. More specifically, I examine how the tools and theoretical perspectives developed in the sociological study of the professions may be applied to more contemporary economic arrangements and positions of occupational groups to understand the exercise of power and its relationship to expert knowledge. In this work, I ask, how can the concepts of professionalism and professionalization be applied to occupational groups well outside traditional definitions of a profession to better understand the exercise of power and control over an area of labor? And how might current uses of professionalism and professionalization be updated to better understand operations of power over an area of labor? Summary of the Three Case Studies Three cases, tattoo artists, an environmental stewardship group of volunteers, and faculty members, were chosen purposely on the basis that each are uniquely positioned to contribute to current studies of expert knowledge. In the following, I go into detail about each of the individual studies’ findings, provide a summation of the studies’ contributions to sociological research on expert knowledge, and complete the dissertation with outstanding questions raised by these studies and future lines of inquiry. Professionalization of Tattooing Building on the work of Maroto (2011), this study aims to contribute to a theoretical framework that conceptualizes occupation control in two spheres: membership and 135 standards. In this framework, concrete mechanisms, those that go beyond discourse, that help to produce social closure for an occupational group are the focus of this study and explicitly incorporated into the framework as means of control (Maroto 2011:102). It is argued that when these mechanisms are formalized in either sphere of control, they constitute strategies of professionalization as they move an occupational group closer to the ideal-typical concept of a profession as defined by Abbott (1988). Thus, licensing procedures, like those documented by the works of Freidson (1970;1994) and Abbott (1988), demonstrate how obtaining the formalized support of the state narrows competition of labor and restricts membership. Similarly, regulating the practice of a certain occupation through the institutionalization of laws has the effect of restricting the labor supply (Chairello 2011; Pescosolido et al. 2001). Taking service workers engaged in body art as a case study, Maroto’s (2011) work sought to establish how certain normative, informal means of control could give way to formal controls when occupational groups sought to remedy perceived outside threats and competition, employing strategies of professionalization. Through my own empirical work based on interviews with tattoo artists and visiting tattoo conventions for more than a year, I found that the framework lacked an important sphere of control—control over consumers. In all of the definitions and conceptions of social closure, each address or mention convincing a target audience, clientele, or public of an occupation’s expertise. In my work, I came to find that there are both informal and formal mechanisms of control that tattoo artists would exercise in order to convince the general public, those perusing tattoo convention floors or potential customers, that tattoo artists were the experts when it came to the labor of 136 tattooing. These strategies of professionalization for control over the consumer were, contrary to Maroto’s (2011:102) assumption, more than just discourse. In identifying these mechanisms of control over the consumer, I followed the work of Welsh and colleagues that asserts social closure goes “beyond outlining traits and attributes needed to professionalize” (2004:219). So, I concentrated on the way artists presented themselves individually and as a group, identifying the concrete mechanisms that tattoo artists produced and used to communicate the discourse tattoo artists constructed as a discipline. By building on the spheres of control framework, my intent was to demonstrate the importance and centrality of the intended audience or public when legitimating any means of control. Put another way, explicit consideration for the ways that occupational groups seek to convince their public(s) of their legitimacy were essential to understanding how social closure was achieved. Without establishing a shared language of expertise between the professional and a public, it is difficult to account for how support for formal controls, such as licensing procedures, are achieved. Thus, strategies of professionalization that address control over the consumer, must be concomitant with strategies of professionalization that seek to establish control over standards or members and vice versa. These processes are not easily divisible from one another, and as the theoretical framework that guides this dissertation would imply, each of these three spheres of control are all part of the same continuum of professional practice. With the research on tattoo artists and the following case I will discuss, I attempted to answer the call for researchers to apply the theoretical frames of expert knowledge and professional practice to occupational 137 groups that would not have been considered previously (McCann et al. 2013), as well as following the effects of occupational groups employing the terminology and service-orientation of professionalism to their benefit (Watson 2002). Professionalization of Volunteer Work The second case study in my dissertation focused on a volunteer environmental stewardship organization. To date, very little research has been done on the professionalization of volunteer work that employs the terminology associated with processes of professionalization in a systematic way. Previous research on the professionalization of volunteer work typically has elaborated structural changes to social movement organizations and the consequences of those changes (McCarthy and Zald 1973, 1977; Skocpol 2003; Staggenborg 1988), but their discussions of professionalization do not address the steps undertaken by an occupational group to assert control over an area of labor—how professionalization is typically defined in the study of professions (Abbott 1988; Larson 1977; Muzio et al. 2011; Ritzer 1975; Saks 2010). Instead, those works used the term without deploying it as researchers of professions and professionalization would. Thus, the second case study of this dissertation sought to empirically investigate the professionalization of volunteer work to address this gap in the literature. To the best of my knowledge, only one study has systematically applied the concept of professionalization to volunteer work, and that work introduced the concept of the “professional-amatuer” (Andreassen et al. 2014). In their study, Andreassen and colleagues found that for volunteers, despite going through a formalized training that gave them a specialized, in-depth understanding their 138 volunteer labor, they remained amateurish because often times they were most effective in relating instructions to clientele through their own experiences on a personal and familiar level. Therefore, setting aside the issue of paid compensation for their work, volunteers were largely unsuccessful in gaining clients’ trust via their professionalization, and instead relied on their anecdotal experiences and position as mediary to best guide clientele in the course of their volunteer work. This difference, which Fredison (1986; 1994; 2001) has highlighted in his work, is one of the most important qualities of professionalism and professional power, the ability to exert control over an area of labor, is produced through the trust of the public and becoming identified as an expert over a formal and technical knowledge. In my study of the Watershed Stewards Academies of Maryland (WSAs), I found that while the WSAs exhibit and practice many professional qualities, such as a formalized standard training, a system of credentialing, group membership, and a sense of altruism in their work (Greenwood 1957; Ritzer and Walczk 1986; Wilenksy 1964), they fail to be recognized by their organizational peers or the public for their expertise. As noted above, recognition is a central part of exercising control, and recognition would enable them to fully “professionalize” their volunteer labor and guarantee them exclusive jurisdiction (Abbott 1998; Evetts 2003, 2013; Freidson 1986, 1994, 2001). While a lack of exposure in the public eye was to blame for their inability to attain recognition in part, a lack of networking and active member associations among current and alumni members of the volunteer organizations was also found to impede the ability of WSA volunteers to leverage control over their volunteer labor. As previous research has demonstrated, the use of both formal 139 associations and informal networks are important for peer and self-regulation, establishing group membership, staving off competition, and fostering support networks (Chiarello 2011; Maroto 2011; Osnowitz 2006; Timmermans 2008). Without public recognition and a membership association that fosters an active network of volunteers, the WSA volunteers never achieved a professional or expert status, however volunteers’ training and knowledge did lend them a distinction from the general public that allowed them to operate in a unique space and remain effective in their mission of mobilizing neighbors and communities in watershed restoration. The WSAs’ shortcomings for achieving an ideal-typical profession status notwithstanding, volunteers are intentionally not leveraging a professional status to maintain the strategic position of amateurishness, which grants them the ability to engage with their neighbors and communities from a vantage point that gives them easier access. In contributing to the sociological study of professions and expert knowledge, this work demonstrates one case of where strategies of professionalization may be chosen purposefully and strategically, in this case to most effectively mobilize a corps of volunteers in watershed restoration. Implications for this research merit further investigation of this “professional-amatuer” concept, as volunteering programs that invest training and time into motivated individuals may be a more popular practice than previously thought (Yagatich et al. 2018). While this research project utilized a group of laborers that were not even paid, and thus far removed from previous considerations of expert knowledge, the next research project locates a profession that, in the scholarly literature, is coming to be better understood 140 as work pays closer attention to modern complexities of economic and labor arrangements (Švarc 2016). Professionalism of Faculty: Adapting to External Pressures The last case study focused on a well-established professional group: faculty members of higher education. While the previous two case studies examined the professionalization of marginal occupational groups, this case study examined how the institutional arrangements of professions within bureaucratic organizations may have an impact on established professional practice in the wake of external changes (Gorman and Sandefur 2011; Muzio et al. 2013). Within the context of growing enrollments that may be to the detriment of higher education (Schofer and Meyer 2005; Attewell and Lavin 2011; Marginson 2016), coupled with growing rates of using online platforms for education (Allen and Seaman 2013), this research project evaluates the effects of external pressures on the professional practice of faculty members. Evaluating the presumed deprofessionalization of faculty in higher education, that is the loss of control over their area of labor (Haug 1972; 1975; Ritzer 1988), the first finding of this case study echoes previous works that looked at how professional groups were able to maintain control over their wok despite operating within corporations (Aldridge and Evetts 2003; Muzio and Kirkpatrick 2011; Muzio et al. 2011) and bureaucracies (Muzio et al. 2013; Park 2011). This work also arrives at a similar conclusion as those that have explicitly looked at the changing sense of professionalism amongst faculty of higher education—that while there is evidence to suggest faculty are wrestling with changes, they still hold strong professional 141 identities (Kolsaker 2008; Kolsaker 2014). While survey results were able to confirm this across a number of measures that examined professional identity, analysis of faculty members’ opinions of teaching online for course credit revealed a discourse of professionalism—again, reaffirming the “problem” of teaching online is framed in terms of professional practice and not externalized as an inconvenienced imposed by an outside force. The discourse used by faculty members highlights an engaged, insightful group of teachers who have reflexively thought about their pedagogical practices and the implications for those practices should they teach online. Analysis of discursive themes reveals faculty exhibit professionalism in their service orientation toward their work, their explication of online teaching is something to be be solved following their professional principles, and one that reinforces the discipline of their work to themselves and others ensuring their exclusive jurisdiction (Chiarello 2011; Evetts 2013; Fournier 1999; Fredison 2001; Greenwood et al. 2002; Hodgson 2002). Taking these analyses together, the conclusion is to outright dismiss theories of deprofessionalization (Haug 1972; Haug 1975; Ritzer 1988), which would dictate that faculty feel they are losing control of their work, that they are being told how to perform their duties, and they are facing competition over their area of expertise from outside occupational groups. Joining a relatively small group of literature that has examined faculty in the context professionalism and professional practice from a sociological perspective (Kolsaker 2008; Kolsaker 2014; Park 2011), this work demonstrates one example of how an occupational group with a strong sense of professional identity will respond and maintain a discourse of professionalism in the 142 wake of bureaucratic change and external influence that requires an adaptation in professional practice. Contributions to the Study of Expert Knowledge This dissertation has taken on the task of using the theoretical frameworks inherited from traditional studies of professions to evaluate the efforts of various occupational groups to define and control their work. Through the three case studies presented here, I have shown how a marginalized, some might say even deviant, occupational group, a volunteer organization, and an established profession can be empirically evaluated using the tools crafted for the exploration of expert knowledge—developed to study professions, professionalism, and professionalization. While each contributed to or expanded upon existing frameworks, overall, what is the larger contribution to sociological research? The following ties each of the three case studies together, then moves to a discussion of implications for future research. Said to have passed its ‘Golden Age,’ with social scientists finding the theory and the questions it presents no longer interesting (Gorman and Sandefur 2011: 277), current research on topics of professionalism and professionalization have given way to new lines of inquiry and scholarship that focus on the study of expert knowledge, competing ideologies and discourses for defining social orders (Evetts 2013; Freidson 2001; Saks 2010; Švarc 2016). The focus on expert knowledge draws upon a number of the theoretical tools and concepts developed in the study of professions but, perhaps most importantly, the focus of analysis shifts from a concentration on occupational traits and characteristics to relations of power, discourse, and the 143 exercise of professionalism to assert control over an area of labor (Fournier 1999). This approach sidesteps a great deal of consternation and debate over what characteristics are most important (see especially Barber 1963 for a glimpse of early debate or Sciulli 2005; Torstendahl 2005; or for insights into more current debate around definitions Saks 2010; Evetts 2013; Gorman and Sandefur 2011). The shift in focus to expert knowledge ultimately means that questions of control over an area of labor are opened to occupational groups that would not have been considered professions in the traditional sense of the word (Freidson 1986; Freidson 2001; Gorman and Sandefur 2011; Hodgson 2002; Reed 1996). Thus, the theoretical tools, the identification of strategies or means to attain control over an area of labor and the deployment of discourse creates a space for research where, “this new perspective permits them to be treated as variables in need of explanation— thereby opening the door to many intriguing questions that were previously ruled out of bounds (Gorman and Sandefur 2011: 291). It is in that vein that this dissertation deploys its case studies and research questions. In that vein, like other scholars, I have chosen to focus on expert knowledge and the power that flows from embodying professionalism (Chiarello 2011; Evetts 2013; Gorman and Sandefur 2011; Fournier 1999; Freidson 2001; Hodgson 2002), and I have made the conscious decision to focus on the processes, led by both individuals and institutions, that occupational groups exercise, or at least attempt, to assert control over an area of labor. To do so, I highlighted the discourses used by those groups, given that claims about the professional’s identity implies the professional’s control over their labor and vice versa (Chiarello 2011:310). Put more 144 simply, in the Foucauldian tradition, I assume, “knowledge and power directly imply one another” (Foucault [1975] 1995:23). By assuming that knowledge and power directly imply one another, I also assert that an occupational group’s ability to establish exclusive jurisdiction (Abbott 1988; a concept built on Max Weber’s [1922/1978] notion of social closure), the ability to monopolize an area of labor and hoard the rewards through state regulations, networking, and (or) self-regulation (Osnowitz 2006, Timmermans 2008), is tied to an occupational group’s ability to convince significant others (the public, state, other occupational groups, or co- workers) of their legitimacy to define an area of labor and its practice (Abbott 2005; Freidson 2001; Pescosolido et al. 2001; Ritzer and Walczak 1986). Drawing on the study of expert knowledge, I join a growing chorus of loosely collected research that attempts to make sense of how occupational groups assert, maintain, and delineate control over an area of labor utilizing a discourse of professionalism or strategies of professionalization (some examples include ambulance drivers [McCann et al. 2013], personal trainers [George 2008], body artists [Maroto 2011], journalists [Aldridge and Evetts 2003], volunteers [Andreassen et al. 2014], and project management [Hodgon 2002]). By drawing on the strengths of each theoretical perspective, between professionalism, professionalization, and the professions, I sought the linkages that were common throughout, to avoid the problems often associated with conflicting definitions and a lack of regularity of connotations from one work to another (Barber 1963; Evetts 2003; Evetts 2013; Švarc 2016; Watson 2002). That is not to say that professionalization and professionalism lack important conceptual distinctions, but, instead, it was my aim to demonstrate that 145 each has its place and each can be used in tandem to produce rich empirical analyses that help us to better understand the effects of occupational groups’ attempts to define their work—how that work is performed, who can do that work, and why the work should be done. Conclusion: Implications and Future Research Implications of this research should foster further sociological inquiries into how occupational groups, even those that may be far removed from the traditional ideal professions, establish control over practices, membership, and their respective audiences. As Švarc (2016:403) notes in a recent review of work on the professions, “the sociology of professions remains a vibrant scientific discipline although the focus has shifted from pursuing canons of classical professions to addressing new forms of occupations. These reflect new and emergent configurations of work, employment and the labour market in the globalized service economy.” I have little doubt the continued interest in the sociology of professions will continue, especially as a result of the ability to produce, distribute, and consume information becomes more commonplace and diffuse amongst all sectors of society. In my opinion, I believe the ability to produce information and communicate expertise has real and lasting consequences, regardless of the legitimacy of those expertise in any traditional sense. Given the current political climate, namely concerted campaigns of misinformation and charges of fake news, social scientists should increasingly find themselves challenged with making sense of how specific sources of information present themselves as experts on particular topics and how they are successful in gaining recognition as expert. More specifically, the current 146 climate begs the question of how an occupational group like journalists may respond to somewhat unique public affronts to their area of expertise. Building on this social problem of challenged expertise, it would appear that the means of controlling the image and presentation of knowledge as expert is becoming increasingly important, superseding the emphasis that has been placed on controlling how knowledge has been produced and who gets to participate in the process of knowledge production, or professional practice and membership, respectively. Even more intriguing are questions of how various groups, occupational or otherwise, vie over the definition of a body of knowledge. 147 Appendix Interview Protocol for Study One 1. How long have you been working in the tattoo industry? 2. What is your background in the tattoo industry? 3. What other forms of employment have you had in the past? 4. Why did you choose to become a part of the tattoo industry? 5. How would you describe the state of tattooing’s popularity? 6. What do you think has contributed to the rise in popularity of tattooing? 7. How have you seen the tattoo industry change? 8. Is there a difference in the way tattoos are done from one shop compared to another? How are they different? 9. What makes a tattoo parlor successful? 10. What makes a tattoo artist successful? 11. Is it important to gain exposure in tattoo affiliated publications? 12. Is it important to gain exposure at all? 13. What kind of marketing strategies does your business utilize, i.e., the internet, billboards, magazines, etc.? 14. Do shows such as Miami Ink or LA Ink capture the essence of a tattoo shop? 15. What kind of work does you shop primarily do? Custom work, flash, etc? 16. Does anyone in your shops custom make any of their tattoo equipment or pigments? 17. What kind of tattoo machine do you/the artists use? 148 18. What kind of pigment do you/the artists use? 19. Do any of your artists attempt other mediums of art? 20. Do any of your artists produce flash for use by other artists? 21. Does the parlor use a primary provider of tattooing equipment or is primarily up to the artist? 22. Does the shop have one policy for sterilization or is it individual? 23. What are your methods of sterilization? 24. What kind of additional procedures do you take to ensure the cleanliness of the shop? 25. What kind of practices does your shop encourage? Do they encourage advanced appointments, high number of walk-ins, etc.? 26. What do you like about your shop? 27. What do you dislike or what would you change? 28. Do you use any forms of book-keeping to track revenue, such as accounting software or an organized filing system? 29. What kind of information do you keep on file about your clients/customers? 30. Do you use this information in marketing strategies? 31. Have the prices of tattoos increased with the rest of prices in general or do you think it is related to their popularity? Or on the other hand, are they cheaper now than in the past? 32. How has tattoo, as an art, changed? For the better or worse? 149 33. Recently, tattoo shops have begun to branch out with additional locations and have even expanded to locations such as within a shopping mall. What is your take on this? 34. Can you classify or describe the majority of your clients? 35. Does the shop play one particular type of music or is it up to the artist? 36. Do you think when artists are working they should be in direct of view of other customers or hidden from view? 37. How important is the appearance of the shop to you? 38. Have you considered expanding the business? 39. Would you consider franchising your business or incorporating with others? 40. Do you carry any additional products related to tattooing such as clothing or after-tattoo care products? 41. What are the turnover rates of your artists? 42. How are you/the artists employed, such as working for commission, paying a fee to maintain a position, etc.? 43. Is your business/parlor a member of any tattoo affiliated organizations or clubs? 44. Do you/the artists attend conventions or travel to tattoo? 45. Do you feel your parlor/business is unique as place of work from other occupational settings? How are they similar? 46. Is there any other additional information you would wish to contribute that would give more insight into the business practices of your parlor? 150 Interview Protocol for Case Study Two Interview Protocol for WSA Participants 1. To start off, can you introduce yourself briefly and describe how you got involved with the Watershed Stewards Academies? a. Which WSA(s) in particular? b. How long have you been working the WSA(s)? c. What types of activities do you participate in as part of your work with the WSA(s)? 2. How would you describe the Master Watershed Certification Training to someone who wasn’t familiar with the Watershed Stewards Academies? 3. What goals did you have when you joined the Watershed Stewards Academy? a. Have your goals changed during the time you have been involved with the WSA(s)? b. Has working with the WSA(s) helped you to achieve those goals? How? 4. What does the title of Master Steward mean to you? Do you feel that this title improves your ability to work with and mobilize members of your community? 5. What role do you see the Watershed Stewards Academies playing in the State of Maryland? a. What role do they play in watershed and environmental issues? b. What role do WSA leaders play in this? 151 6. From your perspective, are there any challenges that the Watershed Stewards Academies face in achieving their goals? Interview Protocol for Partner Organizations 1. To start off, can you introduce yourself briefly and describe your role here at [name of organization]? Can you tell us about your organization’s mission overall? 2. Please describe your experience working with the Watershed Stewards Academies? a. Which WSA(s) in particular? b. How long have you been working with the WSA(s)? c. Does your organization provide support to the WSA(s)? What types? (e.g. funding/grants, in kind support, expertise, training, office space, volunteers, etc.) 3. What role do you see the Watershed Stewards Academies playing in the State of Maryland? What role do they play in watershed and environmental issues? 4. In what settings do you see the Watershed Stewards Academies being most effective? a. How, specifically? 5. One of the primary goals of the WSAs is to train community members to become Master Watershed Stewards who take action in their communities on 152 watershed education and restoration projects. What is your perspective on these training programs? 6. Do you see any challenges that the Watershed Stewards Academies face in achieving their goals? 153 Survey Instrument for Case Study Three The first section of this survey asks for general background information. Please answer the following as accurately as possible. B1. What is your age? B2. What race do you identify as? Please select all that apply. ▢ White ▢ Black or African American ▢ American Indian or Alaska Native ▢ Asian ▢ Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander ▢ Other Race(s) ▢ Please enter other race(s) here: B3. At what college or university have you most recently earned a degree? B4. What degree did you most recently obtain at [Answer to B3]? o PhD o JD o EdD o MD o MA o MBA o MPhil o LLM o MRes o MFA o MS o BA o BS B5. Which best describes your current position at the University of Maryland, College Park? o Visiting Faculty o Postdoctoral Researcher o Research Faculty o Adjunct Faculty o Permanent Faculty o Emeritus Faculty B6. What department(s) and/or program(s) support(s) your current position? ▢ Accounting 154 ▢ Aerospace Engineering ▢ African American Studies ▢ Agricultural and Resource Economics ▢ Air Force ROTC ▢ American Studies ▢ Animal and Avian Sciences ▢ Anthropology ▢ Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computation Program ▢ Arabic Studies ▢ Architecture ▢ Army ROTC ▢ Art ▢ Art History and Archaeology ▢ Asian American Studies ▢ Astronomy ▢ Atmospheric and Oceanic Science ▢ Behavioral and Community Health ▢ Biochemistry ▢ Bioengineering ▢ Biological Sciences Undergraduate Program ▢ Biology ▢ Biophysics ▢ Business ▢ Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics ▢ Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering ▢ Chemical Physics Program ▢ Chemistry and Biochemistry ▢ Chinese Language and Culture ▢ Civil and Environmental Engineering ▢ Classics ▢ Communication ▢ Comparative Literature Program ▢ Computer Science ▢ Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education ▢ Counseling Psychology, School Psychology, and Counselor Education ▢ Criminology and Criminal Justice ▢ Dance ▢ Decision, Operations & Information Technologies ▢ Economics ▢ Education, Curriculum and Instruction 155 ▢ Education Policy Studies ▢ Electrical and Computer Engineering ▢ English Language and Literature ▢ Entomology ▢ Environmental Science and Policy Program ▢ Environmental Science and Technology Program ▢ Epidemiology and Biostatistics ▢ Executive Programs ▢ Family Science ▢ Film Studies ▢ Finance ▢ Fire Protection Engineering ▢ Fischell Dept. of Bioengineering ▢ French Studies ▢ Geography ▢ Geology ▢ Germanic Studies ▢ Government and Politics ▢ Health Services Administration ▢ Hearing and Speech Sciences ▢ Higher Education, Student Affairs, and International Education Policy ▢ Historic Preservation Program ▢ History ▢ Human Development and Quantitative Methodology ▢ Individual Studies Program ▢ Institute of Applied Agriculture ▢ Italian Language and Literature ▢ Japanese Language and Culture ▢ Jewish Studies Program ▢ Joint Program in Survey Methodology ▢ Journalism ▢ Kinesiology ▢ Korean Language and Culture ▢ Landscape Architecture ▢ Latin American Studies Center ▢ Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Studies Program ▢ Letters and Sciences ▢ Linguistics ▢ Logistics, Business and Public Policy ▢ Management and Organization 156 ▢ Marine Estuarine Environmental Sciences ▢ Marketing ▢ Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health ▢ Materials Science and Engineering ▢ Mathematics ▢ Measurement, Statistics and Evaluation ▢ Mechanical Engineering ▢ Music ▢ National Persian Flagship Program ▢ Natural Resources Management Program ▢ Naval ROTC ▢ Networking and Telecommunications Services ▢ Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program ▢ Nutrition and Food Science ▢ Persian Studies ▢ Philosophy ▢ Physics ▢ Plant Sciences and Landscape Architecture ▢ Psychology ▢ Real Estate Development Program ▢ Reliability Engineering ▢ Russian Language and Culture ▢ School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures ▢ Second Language Acquisition ▢ Sociology ▢ Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures ▢ Special Education ▢ Statistics Program ▢ Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology (CONS) ▢ Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership ▢ Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies ▢ Theatre ▢ Urban Studies and Planning ▢ Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine ▢ Women's Studies B7. You selected [Choices from B6]. Is that correct? o Yes o No 157 B8. How many years have you been at your current position? B9. Were you employed elsewhere prior to working at the University of Maryland, College Park? o Yes o No [Shown if answer to B9 is “Yes”] B10. Where and what kind of work did you have before your employment at the University of Maryland, College Park? o Where ________________________________________________ o Type of Work ________________________________________________ In the next section, the following questions will ask you about your teaching experience at the University of Maryland, College Park. TE1. Dating back to the Fall 2013 semester, have you taught a course at the University of Maryland, College Park? o Yes o No [Shown if answer TE1 is “Yes”] TE2. How many courses have you taught since the Fall 2013 semester, including courses you are currently teaching? [Shown if answer TE1 is “Yes”] TE3. How many of those courses that you taught were undergraduate courses? [Shown if answer TE1 is “Yes”] TE4. How many of those courses that you taught were graduate courses? [Shown if answer TE1 is “Yes”] O1. Of the courses you have taught since the Fall 2013 semester, or are currently teaching, are any of those courses considered an online course? An online course does all instruction, class meetings, and assessments online. o Yes o No [Shown if answer O1 is “Yes”] O2. How many of those [Answer to TE2] courses were an online course? [Shown if answer O1 is “Yes”] O3. How would you describe the design of your online course(s)? ________________________________________________________________ 158 [Shown if answer TE1 is “Yes”] H1. Of the courses you have taught since the Fall 2013 semester, or are currently teaching, are any of those courses considered a hybrid course? A hybrid course uses a combination of online and in-person instruction and assessments, substituting some in-person meeting times for online interaction. o Yes o No [Shown if answer to H1 is “Yes”] H2. How many of those [Answer to TE2] courses were a hybrid course? [Shown if answer to H1 is “Yes”] H3. How would you describe the design your hybrid course(s)? ________________________________________________________________ The following section will ask about your use of digital communication and social media, in general, and how you typically use them. OCT-1. Typically, how often do you use the following digital communication and social media platforms to view, create, communicate, or comment? At least Once a Several At least Never once a week Times a once a day month week E-mail o o o o o Text Messaging o o o o o Facebook o o o o o Twitter o o o o o Google Plus o o o o o LinkedIn o o o o o Instagram o o o o o Snapchat o o o o o Pintrest o o o o o Tumblr o o o o o 159 YouTube o o o o o Skype o o o o o Vimeo o o o o o Google Hangouts o o o o o Producteev o o o o o Slack o o o o o Flow o o o o o Personal Website o o o o o Blogging o o o o o Other o o o o o Other o o o o o [Carry Forward all choices selected in OCT-1 not equal to “Never.”] OCT-2. Of the digital communication and social media platforms you chose, do you typically use them for professional or personal reasons? Or both? [Shown if answer to TE1 is “Yes.”] OCT-3. Have you used any of those digital communication and social media platforms in your teaching? o Yes o No [Shown if answer to OCT-3 is “Yes.”] [Carry Forward all choices selected in OCT-1 not equal to “Never.”] OCT-4. Which of those digital communication and social media platforms have you used for teaching? Please check all that apply. ▢ E-mail ▢ Text Messaging ▢ Facebook ▢ Twitter 160 ▢ Google Plus ▢ LinkedIn ▢ Instagram ▢ Snapchat ▢ Pintrest ▢ Tumblr ▢ YouTube ▢ Skype ▢ Vimeo ▢ Google Hangouts ▢ Producteev ▢ Slack ▢ Flow ▢ Personal Website ▢ Blogging ▢ Other ________________________________________________ ▢ Other ________________________________________________ [Shown if answer to OCT-3 is “Yes.”] OCT-5. How would you describe your typical use of those digital communication and social media platforms in your teaching? ________________________________________________________________ This section will ask you about your work and your views of the occupational group to which you belong. Please answer the following questions honestly and to the best of your knowledge. PRO-1. Do you belong to any professional associations? o Yes o No [Shown if answer to PRO-1 is “Yes.”] PRO-2. Have you served in any capacity for those organizations beyond solely being a member? o Yes o No PRO-3. Have you ever reviewed articles or been a member of an editorial board for a professional journal in your field of work? o Yes o No 161 PRO-4. Below are a number of statements that are meant to describe a profession and an individual's work. Drawing on your own opinion and experiences, how well do each of these statements describe your own work and profession? Using a scale ranging from Very Poorly to Very Well, please rate each of the following statements. Very Poorly Neutral Well Very Well Poorly I feel a great deal of o o o o o control over my own work. My work and the work of o o o o o my peers is governed by a distinct set of professional ethics. I feel it is important to o o o o o be active in professional associations affiliated with my area of work. My work and the work of o o o o o my peers is done only by those who have the proper credentials. I feel a calling to my o o o o o area of work, and so do my peers. My work is held o o o o o accountable by the 162 judgment of my peers. I perform my work with the o o o o o intent of benefiting others. How I perform my o o o o o work is guided by widely held standards in my profession. My work takes a great o o o o o deal of knowledge and training to perform. It is important to o o o o o maintain a professional and social network of peers in my field of work. This section will ask you your opinion of online courses. Please answer the following questions honestly and to the best of your knowledge. OOC1. Given the opportunity, along with ample time and technical support to prepare, would you volunteer to teach a course in your department online? Why or why not? ________________________________________________________________ OOC2. In your professional opinion, what is most promising about course instruction being offered online for credit at college campuses? ________________________________________________________________ OOC3. In your professional opinion, what is most problematic about course instruction being offered online for credit at college campuses? ________________________________________________________________ 163 FI. Would you be willing to participate in a follow-up interview? o Yes o No [Shown if answer to FI is “Yes.”] FI-1 Please provide your contact information. o Title ________________________________________________ o First Name ________________________________________________ o Last Name ________________________________________________ o Email Address ________________________________________________ 164 Table A: Faculty’s Agreement with Statements Measuring Professional Identity and Attitudes Very Poorly Poorly Neutral Well Very Statement Well (n) I feel a great deal of control over my own work 0.5% 1.8% 8.0% 39.8% 49.9% 435 My work and the work of my peers is governed by a distinct set of professional ethics 0.7% 0.9% 12.7% 39.9% 45.9% 434 I feel it is important to be active in professional associations affiliated with my area of work 1.8% 2.5% 21.5% 36.7% 37.4% 433 My work and the work of my peers is done only by those who have the proper credentials 1.8% 6.2% 25.4% 42.5% 24.0% 433 I feel a calling to my area of work, and so do my peers 0.7% 1.6% 13.5% 40.7% 43.5% 430 My work is held accountable by the judgment of my peers 0.7% 3.0% 12.3% 38.5% 45.5% 431 I perform my work with the intent of benefiting others 0.0% 0.7% 9.1% 28.8% 61.4% 430 How I perform my work is guided by widely held standards in my profession 0.2% 1.8% 10.2% 34.6% 53.1% 433 My work takes a great deal of knowledge and training to perform 0.0% 0.2% 5.1% 27.3% 67.4% 433 It is important to maintain a professional and social network 0.5% 1.4% 7.4% 33.4% 57.3% 431 of peers in my field of work 165 Works Cited Abbott, Andrew. 1988. 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