This paper explores the professionalization project of paramedics, based on an ethnographic study of UK National Health Service (NHS) ambulance personnel. Drawing on concepts derived from institutional theory and the sociology of professions, we argue that the project is enacted at two levels,...

1. Introduction : critical social theory and the end of work -- 2. The beginning of the end of work -- 3. Industrialism, utopia, and the end of work -- 4. Marx and the end of work -- 5. Marcuse : needs and potentialities in the age of automation -- 6. The future of work and leisure -- 7. Andre...