Research with/in nursing: 'Troubling' the field
Kim Walker
Nursing (Applied Research), St Vincent's Private Hospital, Darlinghurst; Nursing Research Institute, St Vincent's and Mater Health Sydney; Australian Catholic University, Sydney NSW
PP: 162 - 168
Abstract
Nursing and research coexist in a 'troubled' relationship. The culture of nursing and the discourses of research together generate tensions and conflicts which often work to constrain nurses' attempts to engage in research activity.
In this paper I attempt to expose possible reasons why this might be so. Drawing on critical feminist post-structuralist theories and recent empirical research with clinical nurses some of the 'challenges' to thinking and doing research in nursing are given voice and brought to critical expression.
Keywords
feminism, culture, research
References
Allen DG (1985) Nursing research and social control: Alternative models that emphasise understanding and emancipation. Image: The Journal of Nursing Scholarship 2(Spring): 58-64.
Allen DG, Allman KK and Powers P (1991) Feminist research without gender. Advances in Nursing Science 13(3): 49-58.
Anderson JM (1991) Current directions in nursing research: Toward a post-structuralist and feminist epistemology. The Canadian Journal of Nursing Research 23(3): 1-3.
Barrett M and Phillips A (1992) Introduction. In Barrett M and Phillips A (eds) Destabilising theory: contemporary feminist debates. Polity Press, Cambridge.
Benner P (1984) From novice to expert: Excellence and power in clinical nursing. Addison-Wesley, Menlo Park.
Benner P and Wrubel J (1989) The primacy of caring: Stress and coping in health and illness. Addison-Wesley, Menlo Park.
Bernstein R (1983) Beyond objectivism and relativism: Science, hermeneutics, and praxis. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Britzman D (1991) Practice makes practice: A critical study of learning to teach. State University of New York Press, Albany.
Bruni N (1991) Nursing knowledge: Process of production. In Gray G and Pratt R (eds) Towards a discipline of nursing. Churchill Livingstone, Melbourne.
Bullock A, Stallybrass S and Trombley S (1988) The Fontana dictionary of modern thought. Fontana Press, London.
Cameron-Traub E (1991) An evolving discipline. In Gray G and Pratt R (eds) Towards a discipline of nursing. Churchill Livingstone, Melbourne.
Caputo J (1987) Radical hermeneutics: Repetition, deconstruction, and the hermeneutic project. University of Indiana Press, Bloomington.
Chambers I (1990) Border dialogues: journeys in postmodernity. Routledge, London.
Crosby C (1993) Dealing with differences. In Butler J and Scott JW (eds) Feminists theorise the political. Routledge, New York.
D'Amico R (1982) What is discourse? Humanities in Society 5(3/4): 201-212.
De Concini B (1990) Narrative remembering. University of America Press, Lanham.
de Certeau M (1984) The practice of everyday life. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Dickson GL (1989) The knowledge of menopause: An analysis of scientific and everyday discourses. Doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Dzurec LC (1989) The necessity for and evolution of multiple paradigms for nursing research: A post-structuralist perspective. Advances in Nursing Science 11(4): 69-77.
Eagleton T (1985)/1986 The subject of literature. Cultural Critique 2: 95-104.
Eagleton T (1991) Ideology: An introduction. Verso, London.
Ellesworth E (1992) Why doesn't this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. In Luke C and Gore J (eds) Feminisms and critical pedagogy. Routledge, New York.
Emden C (1991) Becoming a reflective practitioner. In Gray G and Pratt (eds) Towards a discipline of nursing. Churchill Livingstone, Melbourne.
Fay B (1975) Social theory and political practice. Allen & Unwin, London.
Fay B (1987) Critical social science. Cornell University Press, New York.
Fine A (1986) The shakey game: Einstein, realism and the quantum theory. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Foucault M (1979) Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Trans. Sheridan AM, Vintage/Random House, New York.
Foucault M (1980) Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings. Gordon C (ed) Pantheon, New York.
Foucault M (1982) After word: The subject and power. In Dreyfus HL and Rabinow P (eds) Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. The Harvester Press, Brighton.
Gatens M (1992) Power, bodies, difference. In Barrett M and Phillips A (eds) Destabilising theory: Contemporary feminist debates. Polity Press, Cambridge.
Giroux H (1985) Introduction. In Freire P The politics of education: Culture, power and liberation. Trans. Macedo D, Macmillan, England.
Gore J (1992) What we can do for you! What can 'we' do for 'you'? Struggling over empowerment in critical and feminist pedagogy. In Luke C and Gore J (eds) Feminisms and critical pedagogy. Routledge, New York.
Gore J (1993) The struggle for pedagogies: Critical and feminist discourses as regimes of truth. Routledge, New York.
Gunew S (1990) Feminist knowledge: Critique and construct. Routledge, London.
Habermas J (1983) Modernity-An incomplete project. In Foster H (ed) The anti-aesthetic: Essays on postmodern culture. Bay Press, Washington.
Habermas J (1987) The philosophical discourses of modernity. Polity Press, Cambridge.
Hekman SJ (1990) Gender and knowledge: Elements of a postmodern feminism. North Eastern Press, Boston.
Hennesey R (1993) Materialist feminism and the politics of discourse. Routledge, New York.
Holmes C (1991) Theory: where are we going and what have we missed along the way? In Gray G and Pratt R (eds) Towards a discipline of nursing. Churchill Livingstone, Melbourne.
Hutcheon (1988) A poetics of postmodernism: History, theory, fiction. Routledge, New York.
Johnson M (1987) The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination and reason. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Lather P (1991) Getting smart: Feminist research and pedagogy with/in the postmodern. Routledge, London.
Lather P (1993) 'The politics and ethics of feminist research: Researching the lives of women with HIV/AIDS'. Draft paper for the Ethnography and Education Research Forum, Philadelphia (unpublished).
Luke C and Gore J (eds) (1992) Feminisms and critical pedagogy. Routledge, New York.
Lumby J (1991) Threads of an emerging discipline: Praxis, reflection, rhetoric and research. In Gray G and Pratt R (eds) Towards a discipline of nursing. Churchill Livingstone, Melbourne.
Lyotard JF (1984) The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Trans. Bennington G and Massouri B, University of Minneapolis Press, Minneapolis.
Lyotard JF (1992) The postmodern explained to children: Correspondence 1982-1985. Trans. Pefanis J and Thomas M, Power Publications, Sydney.
McLaren P (1988) Language, social structure and the production of subjectivity. Critical Pedagogy Networker 1&2(May/ June): 1-10.
McLaren P (1991) Field relations and the discourse of the other: Collaboration in our own ruin. In Stebbins R and Shaffir S (eds) Experiencing fieldwork. SAGE Publications, Chicago.
McLaren P (1992) Collisions with otherness: 'travelling' theory, post-colonial criticism, and the politics of ethnographic practice-The mission of the wounded ethnographer. Qualitative Studies in Education 59(1): 77-92.
Moi T (1985) Sexual/textual politics: Feminist literary theory. Routledge, London.
Neyle D and West S (1991) In support of a scientific basis. In Gray G and Pratt R (eds) Towards a discipline of nursing. Churchill Livingstone, Melbourne.
Orner M (1992) Interrupting the calls for student voice in 'liberatory' education: A feminist post-structuralist perspective. In Luke C and Gore J (eds) Feminisms and critical pedagogy. Routledge, New York.
Robinson AL (1991) 'Collaboration in transformation: Action research in process'. Unpublished Master's thesis, La Trobe University, Melbourne.
Sarup M (1988) An introductory guide to poststructuralism and postmodernism. Harvester Wheatsheaf, London.
Speedy S (1989) Theory-practice debate: Setting the scene. The Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing 6(3): 12-20.
Spivak GC (1990) The post-colonial critic: Interviews, strategies and dialogues. Harasym S (ed) Routledge, New York.
Spivak GC (1991) Theory in the margin: Coetzee's Foe reading Defoe's Crusoe/Roxana. In Arac J and Johnson B (eds) The consequences of theory. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Spivak GC (1992) The politics of translation. In Barrett M and Phillips A (eds) Destabilising theory. Polity Press, New York.
Street A (1991) From image to action: Reflection in nursing practice. Deakin University Press, Geelong.
Street A (1992a) A critical ethnography of clinical nursing practice. State University of New York Press, New York.
Street A (1992b) Cultural practices in nursing. Deakin University Press, Geelong.
Swanson JM and Chenitz WC (1982) Why qualitative research in nursing? Nursing Outlook 2(April): 41-45.
Turkoski BB (1989) 'A critical analysis of the discourse of professionalism in nursing'. Unpublished doctoral dissertation University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Walker KN (1993) 'On what it might mean to be a nurse: A discursive ethnography'. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, La Trobe University, Melbourne.
Weedon C (1987) Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Wilshire D (1990) The uses of myth, image, and the female body in re-visioning knowledge. In Jaggar SM and Bordo SR (eds) Gender/body/knowledge: feminist reconstructions of being and knowing. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick.

eContent Home




