title: Mimetic desire and professional closure: toward a theory of intra/ inter-professional aggression.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: University of Ottawa School of Nursing, Ontario, Canada. i.stpierre@sympatico.ca
authors.forename: Isabelle
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: St-Pierre
authors.forename: Dave
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Holmes
mesh_terms: D000374:Aggression; D003163:Competitive Behavior; D004291:Dominance-Subordination; D005602:France; D005858:Germany; D006676:History of Nursing; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D009042:Motivation; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012539:Scapegoating; D012919:Social Behavior