Absztrakt

Since the democratic political transition in 1989–1990, there have been several debates in Hungary concerning the autonomy, self-representation, and monopolistic position of certain professions. In other cases controversies were sparked about the contents and purpose of professional education. Much less work has been done about the real meaning of professional self-representation, associations and vocational higher education. Whereas in North-Atlantic societies the process of professionalization generated ongoing disputes, and remained a steady issue in social scientific discourse for several decades after World War II, the same debates were largely absent in Hungary before 1990. This was partly due to the socialist regime which objected to autonomies of any kind, including the autonomy of occupational groups; scholarly discourse about the professions was thus discouraged, and attention was mostly focused on intellectuals. The relatively low interest in professionalization was also a consequence of the fact that the professions had never been as centrally important in Hungarian social stratification as they were in Northwestern European and American societies. Following a brief history of professionalization theories and an overview of recent international and Hungarian sociological and historical literature, the classical essay of Harold L. Wilensky is introduced to the Hungarian public.