"Like it or not, all of us who live in modern society are organization men and women. We tend to be caught in the traditional patterns of dominance and subordination. This book is both pessimistic and hopeful. With devastating thoroughness, the author shows how pervasive these patterns of relationship are in our work lives and personal lives, and how deep they run -- into the very language of the organization and of ordinary life. This is not a book about how (...) women can succeed in business, but a criticism of books like those success manuals and notions like that idea of success. The author sees bureaucrats and clients as the 'second sex'. To fit in properly, they just learn the skills necessary to cope with subordinate status, skills that women have always learned as part of their 'femininity'. Liberal reforms -- placing more women in management positions, for example -- are not enough. What is required is the emergence of an alternative voice, one grounded in the experience and perceptions of women, that will challenge the patterns of control found in every aspect of modern life. Public discourse today is not the language of women even when women speak it. In this brilliant synthesis of the feminist literature and the literature on organizational theory and practice, the author suggests how a feminist discourse could interject into public debate a reformulation of the basic political questions of power, reason, and organization and thereby legitimate a concern of both autonomy and community. In the face of the massive incursions of bureaucracy into daily life, this is an important contribution to the project of human liberation."--Publisher description. (shrink)

The Primacy of Caring is unique and remarkable, not only because it eludes classification within the curricular and practice arenas of professional nursing, but also because it offers a totally new view of stress, coping, and caring. The authors define and describe the essence of nursing practice, and make visible and powerful the hidden expertise of that practice.

An Introduction to the Biology of Marine Life, Ninth Edition, engages students in the excitement and challenge of understanding marine organisms and the environment in which they live. Selected groups of marine organisms are examined within a framework of basic biological principles and processes that are fundamental to all forms of life in the seas including taxonomy, evolution, ecology, behavior, and physiology.

The development of nursing ethics as a field of inquiry has largely relied on theories of medical ethics that use autonomy, beneficence, and/or justice as foundational ethical principles. Such theories espouse a masculine approach to moral decision-making and ethical analysis. This paper challenges the presumption of medical ethics and its associated system of moral justification as an appropriate model for nursing ethics. It argues that the value foundations of nursing ethics are located within the existential phenomenon of human caring within (...) the nurse/patient relationship instead of in models of patient good or rights-based notions of autonomy as articulated in prominent theories of medical ethics. Models of caring are analyzed and a moral-point-of-view (MPV) theory with caring as a fundamental value is proposed for the development of a theory of nursing ethics. This type of theory is supportive to feminist medical ethics because it focuses on the subscription to, and not merely the acceptance of, a particular view of morality. (shrink)

This paper examines the crisis in the nursing profession in Western industrial societies in the light of Max Weber's theory of rationalisation. The domination of instrumental rational action in modern industrial societies in evident in the field of modern medicine. The burgeoning mechanistic approach to the human body and health makes modern health care services increasingly devoid of human values. Although the nursing profession has been influenced by various changes that took place in health care during the last few decades (...) (for example greater reliance on technology), the underlying values of the nursing profession still emphasise a broad definition of the well-being of patients. Hence, in recent years the irrational consequences of growing technological medicine in North America has resulted in a serious crisis in the nursing profession. To resolve this crisis the authors propose a reorganisation of modern health care services on the basis of a new paradigm which is compatible with both the health care needs of the people and the main emphasis in education and training of the nursing profession. (shrink)

Ethics in nursing: continuity and change -- Cultural issues, methods and approaches to nursing ethics -- Nursing ethics: what do we mean by 'ethics'? -- Becoming a nurse and member of the profession -- Power and responsibility in nursing practice and management -- Professional responsibility and accountability in nursing -- Classical areas of controversy in nursing and biomedical ethics -- Direct responsibility in nurse/patient relationships -- Conflicting demands in nursing groups of patients -- Ethics in healthcare management: research, evaluation and (...) performance management -- The political ethics of healthcare: health policies and resource allocation -- Corporate ethics in healthcare: strategic planning and ethical policy development -- Making moral decisions and being able to justify our actions -- The relevance of moral theory: justifying our ethical policies. (shrink)

How is feminism changing the way women and men think, feel, and act? Virginia Held explores how feminist theory is changing contemporary views of moral choice. She proposes a comprehensive philosophy of feminist ethics, arguing persuasively for reconceptualizations of the self of relations between the self and others and of images of birth and death, nurturing and violence. Held shows how social, political, and cultural institutions have traditionally been founded upon masculine ideals of morality. She then identifies a distinct feminist (...) morality that moves beyond culturally embedded notions about motherhood and female emotionality. Examining the effects of this alternative moral and ethical system on changing social values, Held discusses its far-reaching implications for altering standards of freedom, democracy, equality, and personal development. Ultimately, she concludes, the culture of feminism could provide a fresh perspective on--even solutions to--contemporary social problems. Feminist Morality makes a vital contribution to the ongoing debate in feminist theory on the importance of motherhood. For philosophers and other readers outside feminist theory, it offers a feminist moral and social critique in clear and accessible terms. (shrink)

Written by a nurse and a philosopher, Ethics in Nursing blends the concrete detail of recurring problems in nursing practice with the perspectives, methods, and resources of philosophical ethics. It stresses the aspects of the nurses role and relations with others -- physicians, patients, administrators, other nurses -- that give ethical problems in nursing their special focus. Among the issues addressed are deception, parentalism, confidentiality, conscientious refusal, nurse autonomy, compromise, and personal responsibility for institutional and public policy. The third edition (...) has been enlarged with new cases and case discussions related to AIDS and an additional chapter on the expanding scope of nursing ethics as it addresses issues related to scarce resources, cost containment, justice, and the possibilities of health care rationing. (shrink)

Looks at ethical procedure in the choices and decisions made by nurses with regard to such questions as obeying doctors, covering up of a colleague's mistakes, recent developments in foetal surgery and whether the nurse's advocate role is tenable in practice. These questions are taken from the personal case studies recounted by 450 nurses in Britain and North America. The issues are to be found in many hospital situations and are faced in day-to-day practice by student and qualified nurses. A (...) commentary is provided on the ethical principles involved. (shrink)

In this lively and accessible book Lorraine Code addresses one of the most controversial questions in contemporary theory of knowledge, a question of fundamental concern for feminist theory as well: Is the sex of the knower epistemologically significant? Responding in the affirmative, Code offers a radical alterantive to mainstream philosophy's terms for what counts as knowledge and how it is to be evaluated. Code first reviews the literature of established epistemologies and unmasks the prevailing assumption in Anglo-American philosophy that "the (...) knower" is a value-free and ideologically neutral abstraction. Approaching knowledge as a social construct produced and validated through critical dialogue, she defines the knower in light of a conception of subjectivity based on a personal relational model. Code maps out the relevance of the particular people involved in knowing: their historical specificity, the kinds of relationships they have, the effects of social position and power on those relationships, and the ways in which knowledge can change both knower and known. In an exploration of the politics of knowledge that mainstream epistemologies sustain, she examines such issues as the function of knowledge in shaping institutions and the unequal distribution of cognitive resources. What Can She Know? will raise the level of debate concerning epistemological issues among philosophers, political and social scientists, and anyone interested in feminist theory. (shrink)

Nel Noddings argues that hers is not an ethics of agape. I want to argue, on the contrary, that it is, and that this is a problem. My central thesis is that the unidirectional nature of the analysis of one-caring reinforces oppressive institutions.

Die Beiträge der Aufsatzsammlung versuchen auf theoretischer und auch auf praktischer Ebene das Konzept des "caring" (Care = umfassende oder auch ganzheitliche Pflege im Gegensatz zur medizinischen Assistenz) als notwendigen Bestandteil der Krankenpflege zu etablieren. Im Vordergrund stehen dabei kulturell differente Ansätze der umfassenden Pflege.

Recent discussions concerning the ethics of nursing care have gained added impetus from articulations of die so‐called ‘ethic of carersquo; in moral philosophy. This paper addresses the question of recognizing and elaborating the ethics of nursing care by exploring the problems and the possibilities of diese intersecting discourses. In the first part of the paper it is argued that appropriation of ‘the ethic of care’ by nursing theorists as the central value of nursing, in contradistinction to other moral values such (...) as beneficence or justice, runs the risk of reinforcing the conventional approaches to ethics that ‘the ethic of care’ seeks to overturn. Central to ‘the ethic of care’ is the recognition that caring entails a focus on the particularities and context of the relationships in which it is expressed. Accordingly die application of a unitary concept of care to the context of nursing relations may seriously distort dieir diverse and complex‐specific ediical possibilities. The dynamic complexity of nursing ethics may be more adequately understood by working through an array of specific examples of nursing practice highlighting the differences and similarities between them and other ethical practices of care. Experience of a set of examples in this way will draw attention to the multiplicity, ambiguity, and particularity of the ethics of nursing while facilitating the ability to recognize how other practices may or may not be understood as examples of ediical nursing care. In the second part of the paper a beginning is made on this project by addressing the work of several different theorists of care who have examined different practices of nursing from the overlapping perspectives of nurses, patients and the socio‐historical construction of their relationships. (shrink)

Hearing the difference between a patriarchal voice and a relational voice defines a paradigm shift: a change in the conception of the human world. Theorizing connection as primary and fundamental in human life leads to a new psychology, which shifts the grounds for philosophy and political theory. A crucial distinction is made between a feminine ethic of care and a feminist ethic of care. Voice, relationship, resistance, and women become central rather than peripheral in this reframing of the human world.

Book reviewed in this article: Case Studies in Nursing Ethics. By Robert M. Veatch and Sara T. Fry.

In _Caring_, Peta Bowden extends and challenges recent debates on feminist ethics. She takes issue with accounts of the ethics of care that focus on alleged principles of caring rather than analysing caring in practice. Caring, Bowden argues, must be understood by 'working through examples'. Following this approach, Bowden explores four main caring practices: mothering, friendship, nursing and citizenship. Her analysis of the differences and similarities in these practices - their varying degrees of intimacy and reciprocity, formality and informality, vulnerability (...) and choice - reveals the practical complexity of the ethics of care. _Caring_ recognizes that ethical practices constantly outrun the theories that attempt to explain them, and Bowden's unique approach provides major new insights into the nature of care without resorting to indiscriminate unitary models. It will be essential reading for all those interested in ethics, gender studies, nursing and the caring professions. (shrink)

The authors discuss findings from a qualitative research project concerning applied ethics that was undertaken at a general family counseling agency in southern Ontario. Interview data suggested that workers need to dialogue about ethical dilemmas, but that such dialogue demands a high level of risk taking that feels unsafe in the organization. This finding led the researchers to examine their own sense of "breaking rules" by suggesting an intersubjective view of ethics that requires a "safe space" for ethical dialogue. The (...) authors critique the individualistic tendency of professional ethics as an effect of power that is tied to the history of professionalism, and discuss the role of bureaucracies in diminishing a central role for ethics in helping services. The authors call for elaboration of critical perspectives on ethics in order to promote the centrality of ethics in the helping professions. (shrink)

This long-awaited book sets out the implications of Habermas's theory of communicative action for moral theory. "Discourse ethics" attempts to reconstruct a moral point of view from which normative claims can be impartially judged. The theory of justice it develops replaces Kant's categorical imperative with a procedure of justification based on reasoned agreement among participants in practical discourse.Habermas connects communicative ethics to the theory of social action via an examination of research in the social psychology of moral and interpersonal development. (...) He aims to show that our basic moral intuitions spring from something deeper and more universal than contingent features of our tradition, namely from normative presuppositions of social interaction that belong to the repertoire of competent agents in any society. Jürgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. (shrink)

Virginia Held's Feminist Morality defends the idea that it is possible to transform the "public" sphere by remaking it on the model of existing "private" relationships such as families. This paper challenges Held's optimism. It is argued that feminist moral inquiry can aid in transforming the public sphere only by showing just how much the allegedly "private" realms of families and personal relationships are shaped-and often misshapen-by public demands and concerns.

Western civilization has probably reached an impasse, expressed as a crisis on all fronts: economic, technological, environmental and political. This is experienced on the cultural level as a moral crisis or an ethical deficit. Somehow, the means we have always assumed as being adequate to the task of achieving human welfare, health and peace, are failing us. Have we lost sight of the primacy of human ends? Governments still push for economic growth and technological advances, but many are now asking: (...) economic growth for what, technology for what? Health care and nursing are caught up in the same inversion of human priorities. Professionals, such as nurses and midwives, need to take on social responsibilities and a collective civic voice, and play their part in a moral regeneration of society. This involves carrying civic rights and duties into the workplace. (shrink)

This paper is a response to Peter Allmark's thesis that 'there can be no "caring" ethics'. It argues that the current preoccupation in nursing to define an ethics of care is a direct result of breaking nursing tradition. Subsequent attempts to find a moral basis for care, whether from subjective experimental perspectives such as described by Noddings, or from rational and detached approaches derived from Kant, are inevitably flawed. Writers may still implicitly presuppose a concept of care drawn from the (...) Judaeo-Christian tradition but without explicit recourse to its moral basis nursing is left rudderless and potentially without purpose. The very concept of 'care' cut off from its roots becomes a meaningless term without either normative or descriptive content. (shrink)

Essays discuss the division of household labor, anti-semitism, violence against women, reproductive freedom, parenting, friendship between women, and feminist theology.

Feminist epistemologists who attempt to refigure epistemology must wrestle with a number of dualisms. This essay examines the ways Lorraine Code, Sandra Harding, and Susan Hekman reconceptualize the relationship between self/other, nature/culture, and subject/object as they struggle to reformulate objectivity and knowledge.

A regular feature in Nursing Ethics will be the 'Codes and declarations' section. Suggestions and/or contributions from readers are welcome and should be sent to the editor, Verena Tschudin, at the address shown on the inside cover.