[HPforGrownups] Jobs

[manawydan]

No: HPFGUIDX 108841

Mandy wrote:
>I just read some theories about how there seems to be an
>extraordinarily disproportionate number of witches and wizards
>working for the MoM (are you all impressed that I've got the hang of
>abbreviations already?!) and I have another viewpoint on this
>subject.

>And there are loads of other examples of jobs, just because they
>aren't explicitly mentioned does not mean they don't exist.  For the
>purpose of the stories it may be that the more attractive jobs have
>been outlined, or just ones that fit in with the general plot.

The question of  "what else do wizarding folk do for a living" is one which
comes up quite often and always leads to interesting perspectives on the
bits of life that go on behind the scenes of the books.

Here's another angle though which you might find interesting: just _why_ do
we see so many wizards working for the MoM?

First of all, I think it's because there _are_ a lot of wizards working for
the Ministry. The WW is a perfectly realised example of a bureaucracy: the
administration, the executive, the judiciary are all rolled into one. If you
want to go into politics, you join the Ministry. And the burdens of the
Statute of Separation mean that there's a large number of enforcers needed
to stamp on anything at all, magical artefacts getting into Muggledom,
magical creatures running amok, wizards being careless with magic, and so
on. And that's on top of the normal functions of public administration,
liaison with other countries, setting standards for quality, and so on. It's
a very big employer, as the description of the wizards arriving for work in
OoP makes clear.

But the other perspective is that we are seeing the books from the point of
view of students at Hogwarts. Where does the Ministry do its recruiting?
Hogwarts. Where do a large proportion of Hogwarts students go to work? The
Ministry. The school is turning out a large number of educated young wizards
with a common mindset to be the bureaucracy of the future (in a not
dissimilar way to the way that the English public schools turned out the
administrators of the British Empire!)

Meanwhile, for the rest of the WW (who many of us surmise do _not_ get a
Hogwarts education), there is probably a huge mental and cultural gap from
the Ministry wizards.

Cheers

Ffred

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