Magali Sarfatti Larson and Anne Witz: Professional Projects, Class and Gender

One of the key problematics in the sociological study of health and healthcare is the stratification of the healthcare division of labour, with the profession of medicine holding a dominant position: a feature particularly notable in Anglo/American societies. How this was achieved historically and what have been and continue to be the consequences of these dynamics has been the focus of many sociological treatises and scholars from Talcott Parsons (1951) to Everett Hughes (1958) to Eliot Freidson (1970) and others. Two key theorists who address this problematic in a particularly novel way are Magali Sarfatti Larson and Anne Witz. They do so by drawing on the neighbouring literature of the sociology of professions and advancing the concept of professional projects.