Environmental ways forward in a postmodern (nursing) world
Carolyn Emden
Research Education Unit, School of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide SA
PP: 080 - 084
Abstract
In this paper I am interested in showing how nurses' concerns for environmental issues reflect larger shifts in modern/postmodern thinking. Changes through premodern, modern, and postmodern times are highlighted. Focus is especially upon the natural world and damage to it in the name of human progress-from which humans also ultimately suffer.
Nurses seeking to find environmentally sound ways forward in their practice are experiencing and enacting a postmodern 'mood', and by speaking out about the futility of perpetuating modernist environmental concepts, they are engaging in postmodern dialogue. Nurses recognise as well however, that when they challenge entrenched and environmentally damaging practices in their workplace, they open themselves to disturbing currents of change in which stability and meaning may readily be lost.
Keywords
environment, nursing, practice, postmodernism
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