November 2010 (UTC)
I understand Eliot Freidson to be an excellent source, and she is cited by Larson as well (e.g. see page 7 & 8 for a direct quotations for her 1977 essay Health and the Division of Labour):
"..ideal type constructions do not tell us what a profession is, only what it intends to be...my intention is to show how the occupations we call professions organized themselves to attain market power."
I think we can still use Larson, because her book provides more than sufficient coverage to extend the defintion to include these points. So if we extend the defintion further using the content of pages x and xi of her book , we get:
"A profession is an in a service oriented occupation that is centered on a body of knowledge, techniques or skills that have been mastered through training, whose members form a community who share a relatively permanent affiliation through professional associations, professional schools, and a self-administered code of ethics. The specific attributes of an ideal type profession may vary, but the characteristics that make it a distinctive from other occupation are the privalege of autonomy derived from self-regulation and the prestige of having special competence."
Of course we cannot cover all the bases in the lead paragraph - this is simply the starting point, and these characteristics will be expanded upon subsequently. The choice of wording for this summary of Larson is my own, but this can be changed if it defective in any way. Perhaps we could split the definition between Larson and Freidson or even throw Perks into the mix. Again, I am open to suggestions on this defintion can be improved upon.  (talk|contribs) 10:57, 3