The aim of this study was to uncover and critically examine hidden assumptions that underpin the findings of nurses’ unethical conduct arising from inquiries conducted by the Nurses Tribunal in New South Wales. This was a qualitative study located within a post-structural theoretical framework. Transcripts of five inquiries conducted between 1998 and 2003 were analysed using critical discourse analysis. The findings revealed two dominant discourses that were drawn upon in the inquiries to construct nurses’ conduct as unethical. These were discourses (...) of trust and accountability. The way the nurses were spoken about during the inquiries was shaped by normalising judgements that were used to discursively position the nurse through narrative. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to uncover and critically examine hidden assumptions that underpin the findings of nurses’ unethical conduct arising from inquiries conducted by the Nurses Tribunal in New South Wales. This was a qualitative study located within a post-structural theoretical framework. Transcripts of five inquiries conducted between 1998 and 2003 were analysed using critical discourse analysis. The findings revealed two dominant discourses that were drawn upon in the inquiries to construct nurses’ conduct as unethical. These were discourses (...) of trust and accountability. The way the nurses were spoken about during the inquiries was shaped by normalising judgements that were used to discursively position the nurse through narrative. (shrink)

This article critically interrogates contemporary forms of addiction medicine that are portrayed by policy-makers as providing a ‘rational’ or politically neutral approach to dealing with drug use and related social problems. In particular, it examines the historical origins of the biological facts that are today understood to provide a foundation for contemporary understandings of addiction as a ‘disease of the brain’. Drawing upon classic and contemporary work on ‘styles of thought’, it documents how, in the period between the mid-1960s and (...) the mid-1970s, such facts emerged in relation to new neurobiological styles of explaining and managing social problems associated with drug abuse, and an alliance between a relatively marginal group of researchers and American policy-makers who were launching the ‘War on Drugs’. Beyond illustrating the political and material conditions necessary for the rise of addiction neuroscience, the article highlights the productivity of neurobiological thought styles, by focusing on the new biological objects, treatments and hopes that have emerged within the field of addiction studies over the last several decades. (shrink)

Professionalism as ideology: a socio‐historical analysis of the discourse of professionalism in nursingFor most of this century, extensive and heated discourse has surrounded defining, conceptualizing, and implementing nursing professionalism. These discussions, for the most part, have approached professionalism as a set of universal, unchanging, objectively‐measured criteria. This study explores professionalism as an ideology; an image drat a social group gives of itself to itself, as a community with a history and identity. Analyses of eight decades of the American Journal of (...) Nursing identify ways that the language of professionalism gives meaning to changing and competing social structures through rationalization and legitimation. The study further identifies how change has often been illusionary, illuminating how the language of professionalism has served to legitimate, and conceal reality. Identifying and understanding how political, social, and economic domination and asymmetry are rationalized and legitimated through language and ideology will allow nursing to demystify constraints and coercion in the delivery of health care.School of Nursing Graduate Faculty, Kent State University, Kent OH 44242, USA. (shrink)