Book Reviews
Postmodern and Poststructural Approaches to Nursing Research
Julianne Cheek
ISBN: 07-61906-74-6 2000 130 pages Sage, Thousand Oaks
Colin Holmes
Adjunct Professor of Nursing, School of Nursing Sciences, James Cook University, Townsville QLD
It is always a pleasure to review a nursing book written from an Australian perspective, and Julianne Cheek’s fascinating contribution to nursing’s burgeoning response to the postmodern problematic is a delight to read. It is fluent and understandable without being condescending or trite, and manages to navigate the treacherous waters of postmodernism and poststructuralism without hitting too many rocks. The title is somewhat misleading because this is a useful text, not only for nurses, but for anyone conducting research in the health/illness arena, and I would love to see it being read by doctors and others to whom non-experimental research is a closed book. I would especially like it to be read by members of institutional ethics committees!
The purpose and structure of the book are carefully explained in advance, and the promises are faithfully pursued but, as in all texts, there are some disappointments and niggles along the way. The introduction to postmodernism is articulate, and new terms are clearly explained; but, it is very brief and the choice of Foucault as the exemplar is puzzling, particularly when many readers will not be aware of the sequential phases in Foucault’s thought, involving a transition from conventional Marxism to poststructuralism, then gradually to a highly idiosyncratic postmodernism.
It is also puzzling when the next chapter, on poststructuralism, begins with an account of ‘discourse analysis’, an approach strongly associated with Foucault. Some readers will be confused as to how Foucault can be both postmodernist and poststructuralist. This could have been avoided if the postmodern chapter had been placed after the poststructural one, rather than vice versa, and readers led through the historical progression that took many thinkers, like Foucault, from one to the other. The focus is exclusively on Ian Parker’s approach to discourse analysis, which is faithfully and clearly explained. There is no acknowledgement of the many other approaches to discourse analysis, or of its diverse theoretical pedigrees. The second part of the poststructuralism chapter, some 7 to 8 pages, outlines ‘deconstruction’ as a technique of inquiry, and is a paradigm of clarity, paying due respect to the work of Derrida without getting entangled in the intricacies. At the end of each chapter is a short annotated bibliography, and this is bound to be helpful to students.
The second section of the book details Cheek’s grant submission requesting funding for a discourse analytic study of the social construction of ‘toxic shock syndrome’. It is a step-by-step guide to ‘how we did it’, presented in great detail and enormous intellectual honesty, and I suspect it will be useful to readers about to apply for funding for the first time, but annoying to others. The complete submission is reproduced in the lengthy appendices, along with summaries of the data analysis. As someone not interested in toxic shock syndrome per se, I did find it rather tedious and a little repetitive. Personally, I would prefer the book to have had a balance between theory and method, with the example of the grant submission occupying a single chapter. Cheek is an exciting and articulate scholar and many readers, like me, will prefer to have engaged with her on such issues as how poststructuralism and postmodernism can be reconciled to the essentially modernist exercise that is funded research, where they each sit in relation to sociopolitical critique, and how the methods they suggest relate to those employed by other researchers working from critical social and feminist perspectives.
Lastly, despite an interesting and wide-ranging reference list, it is frankly disappointing that the extensive nursing/health literature drawing explicitly on postmodernism is largely ignored. Search terms in CINAHL ‘postmodernism’ and ‘poststructuralism’ yield references to over 30 articles; there is a also host of books, chapters, theses and conference papers, and a large proportion of the authors, like Cheek, are based in Australia, but only two papers listed are mentioned in the book. On the other hand, Cheek references 17 of her own works. This sort of thing is common among contributors to nursing literature, but even the most confident and independent scholar is expected to acknowledge, if not engage with, literature directly relevant to their topic, especially when it is authored by their colleagues. Perhaps Cheek is reluctant to express disagreement with her colleagues because disagreement is often interpreted in nursing as a form of ‘horizontal violence’, a kind of treachery toward the discipline. This is difficult to understand, however, since remaining silent because one does not wish to offend is a compromise with good scholarship and Cheek is an outstanding scholar.
In summary then, the style is engaging, the ideas are neatly expressed and the book addresses the politics of research in a refreshing no-nonsense way, but it is also infuriatingly brief on key issues, and leaves out huge swathes of intellectual history that an informed reader will feel are essential for newcomers to the topic. One last but important quibble is the cost! ‘Appendices’ and ‘tables’ aside, this is a slim paperback of about 130 pages, and at c. A$65 is likely to be beyond the pocket of its intended readership; namely, students and those approaching research for the first time. This is unfortunate because it deserves to be read and discussed among a wide readership.
eContent Home