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Mimetic desire and professional closure: toward a theory of intra/ inter-professional aggression

Isabelle St-Pierre1, Dave Holmes

  • 1University of Ottawa School of Nursing, Ontario, Canada. i.stpierre@sympatico.ca

Research and Theory for Nursing Practice
|June 17, 2010
PubMed

The purpose of this article is to present a renewed way to theorize intra/inter-professional aggression in nursing. To this end, René Girard's mimetic mechanism and Max Weber's conception of professional closure will be explored. More specifically mimetic mechanism, summarized as a sequence of four distinct but interdependent phases including mimetic desire, mimetic rivalry, mimetic (sacrificial) crisis, and scapegoat, will serve to broaden the understanding ofintra-professional aggression. For its part, professional closure, a strategy designed to limit and control the number of individuals admitted to a specific profession, will provide a fresh perspective to critically examine the issue of inter-professional aggression by drawing attention to hidden practices of dominance and control.

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