Public Reforms and Professional Autonomy: How Segments May Play In

This socio-historical study of museum curators in France since 1945 shows that not only is professional independence negotiated between professional associations and the state, it is also determined by interactions between intraprofessional segments. Struggles between local and national museum curators—respectively, “territorial” civil servants and “state” civil servants—actually increased the impact of collective curator action on the course of public decision-making in the 1990s. The group of museum curators became more unified in terms of status and careers, and extended its prerogatives. How segments “played in” to this reform process is itself a symbolic process in the interactionist sense. The article both contributes to recent research on relations between professions and civil service and public administration reform and, in the conclusion, argues for reconsidering the classic antinomy between profession unity and diversity.