Hybrid Professionalism in Municipal Culture

This study examines how territorial scale conditions professionalism in fields that lack jurisdictional closure—a condition common to many public-sector occupations but largely unexamined in the literature on hybrid professionalism. It analyzes the case of municipal culture professionals in Galicia (Spain), a field contested by three occupational groups: social educators, cultural managers and sociocultural animators. A mixed-methods design combines a survey of 147 professionals across 313 municipalities with 16 interviews. The results reveal a highly qualified collective (85% with university degrees) but marked disciplinary dispersion, and a functional distribution in which managerial tasks (84.3%) far exceed sociocultural dynamization (29.9%); only 28.5% perceive correspondence between job title and actual functions. The study proposes the concept of territorial hybrid professionalism: municipalities with fewer resources paradoxically sustain closer socio-educational practice, showing that organizational scale, not resource endowment alone, shapes which forms of professional practice are possible.

cultural managers · cultural professionals · Galicia · municipal culture · organizational scale · professional identity · social educators · sociocultural animators · territorial scale · Education, sociology, and vocational training · Educational Practices and Policies · Public Policy and Administration Research