The (vanishing?) Role of Phronetic Professions Faced By New Public Management in Dealing with Political Problems: Doctors, Architects, Magistrates

This presentation will deal with a consequence of new public management and more generally bureaucratization of professional work which has not been much studied yet.

A former research shed light on the specificities of a kind of professions I named phronetic or prudential professions, using Aristotle’s concept of Phronesis (usually translated with “practical wisdom” or prudence). These professions deal with singular and complex problems which put the work under an irreducible uncertainty. Actually, any human activity can be fulfilled prudentially. But phronesis explains some peculiar traits of “prudential professions”. The main one is a high propensity of their members to get involved in debates or struggles to defend a peculiar normative conception of their work (for instance liberal vs. more authoritative educational patterns; palliative medicine vs. curative voluntarism; a justice for teenagers focused either on their education or on the protection of society etc.) This peculiar trait of some professions is a direct consequence of the large part phronesis plays in their work. As a consequence, the concept of Phronesis helps us to study further than usually the political commitments of professionals.

Identifying phronetic professions as a very specific sociological object makes new issues obvious in the debate about professions, peculiarly concerning the consequences of NPM. Professional work is or used to be an opportunity to launch societal debates. An issue is therefore the capacity of a society to be reflective about the ways of curing and caring, building the city or educate new generations.  The presentation aims at showing that the possibility for professionals to commit in debates about their practice is jeopardized by NPM and more generally speaking by the bureaucratization of their contexts of work. What was often (or at least could be) a critical and ethic activity becomes more and more a more a technical one.