On the 20th anniversary of its publication, this classic manifesto is updated with an important new preface by the author. Freire reflects on the impact his book has had, and on many of the issues it raises for readers in the 1990s. These include the fundamental question of liberation and inclusive language as it relates to Freire's own insights and approaches.

CRUICKSHANK J. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 71–82 Positioning positivism, critical realism and social constructionism in the health sciences: a philosophical orientationThis article starts by considering the differences within the positivist tradition and then it moves on to compare two of the most prominent schools of postpositivism, namely critical realism and social constructionism. Critical realists hold, with positivism, that knowledge should be positively applied, but reject the positivist method for doing this, arguing that causal explanations have to be based not on (...) empirical regularities but on references to unobservable structures. Social constructionists take a different approach to postpositivism and endorse a relativist rejection of truth and hold that the task of research is to foster a scepticism that undermines any positive truth claim made. It is argued that social constructionism is a contradictory position. (shrink)

The unbearable whiteness of being (in nursing) My purpose in writing this paper is to uncover some of the ways in which nursing participates in, reproduces, and resists the detrimental practices associated with white cultural privilege and to share some instances of its personal and social costs. It draws upon the body of scholarship which interrogates racism as it is enacted through whiteness in North America. Whiteness is depicted not as a preordained biological property, but as a socially constructed category (...) of race, wherein non‐white people are racially designated, while whites escape such designation and occupy positions which allow them to carry on as if what they say is neutral, rather than historically and ideologically situated. While the concept of whiteness may not have much resonance in nursing, it offers another way to talk about racism, one that does not stop with the scrutiny of the racialized Other. The presumed neutrality of whiteness has been institutionalized so that its authority to define knowledge, membership, and language, as well as its ability to stipulate and enforce the rules and regulations of everyday concourse and discourse within nursing is concealed. (shrink)

Race difference and whiteness — key elements in the construction of my cultural identity — became a focus of my reflective practice that began over 5 years ago. This article reflects critically on the production of white identity from my social location as a white nurse. My attention focused on two aspects of whiteness: the social location from which I live and learn, and the hegemonic but unmarked discourse that informs the knowledge I read and create as a researcher. My (...) white identity is characterized by four features: the absent presence of whiteness; the need for an oppositional identity; the entitlement of choice and subjectivity; and the denial of a dominant position and relation to the racialized Other. Exploring these features is critically important at this juncture in global and professional history because of the persistence of neoliberalism and the popularity of culturalist approaches to diversity. Examining the process of my radicalization about race simultaneously calls attention to the historiography of ideas about whiteness and race difference and the institutionalization of beliefs and practices about race difference that continuously reproduce racialized identities and inform collective nursing practice and research. (shrink)

This provocative book paved the way for nursing research informed by f eminist scholarship, critical theory, and post-modern thought. Controv ersial then, relevant today.

How should nursing knowledge advance? This exploration contextualizes its evolution past and present. In addressing how it evolved in the past, a probable historical evolution of its development draws on the perspectives of Frank & Gills's World System Theory, Kuhn's treatise on Scientific Revolutions, and Foucault's notions of Discontinuities in scientific knowledge development. By describing plausible scenarios of how nursing knowledge evolved, I create a case for why nursing knowledge developers should adopt a post‐structural stance in prioritizing their research agenda(s). (...) Further, by adopting a post‐structural stance, I create a case on how nurses can advance their disciplinary knowledge using an engaging post‐colonial strategy. Given an interrupted history caused by influence(s) constraining nursing's knowledge development by power structures external, and internal, to nursing, knowledge development can evolve in the future by drawing on post‐structural interpretation, and post‐colonial strategy. The post‐structural writings of Deleuze & Guattari's understanding of ‘Nomadology’ as a subtle means to resist being constrained by existing knowledge development structures, might be a useful stance to understanding the urgency of why nursing knowledge should advance addressing the structural influences on its development. Furthermore, Bhabha's post‐colonial elucidation of ‘Hybridity’ as an equally discreet means to change the culture of those constraining structures is an appropriate strategy to enact how nursing knowledge developers can engage with existing power structures, and simultaneously influence that engagement. Taken together, ‘post‐structural stance’ and ‘post‐colonial strategy’ can refocus nursing scholarship to learn from its past, in order to develop relevant disciplinary knowledge in its future. (shrink)

In recent critical studies, according to Gibson, a sustained and profound critique of Fanon has been launched by feminist and postcolonialist theorists over the past decade, focusing on ‘Algeria Unveiled’. By and large, this critique explores what Fanon calls the ‘historical dynamism of the veil’: the ways in which women strategically donned or removed the veil to subvert French colonialism, and the role women played in the Algerian War. Some theorists criticize Fanon for eulogizing the retrograde tradition of the veil (...) and for ‘normalizing gender inequality’. Others reproach him for his Orientalizing views. A number of critics confuse his pronouncements on the impact of the war which revolutionized the Algerian society and gender relation with the reactionary policies implemented in post-independent Algeria. To fathom the political and ethical concerns raised by Fanon, concerns which such criticism eschews, I propose to read Fanon’s ‘Algeria Unveiled’ in tandem with Bourdieu’s Algeria 1960 against the physical and symbolic violence to which Algerian women were subjected as they were coerced to remove their veil. (shrink)

In recent critical studies, according to Gibson, a sustained and profound critique of Fanon has been launched by feminist and postcolonialist theorists over the past decade, focusing on ‘Algeria Unveiled’. By and large, this critique explores what Fanon calls the ‘historical dynamism of the veil’: the ways in which women strategically donned or removed the veil to subvert French colonialism, and the role women played in the Algerian War. Some theorists criticize Fanon for eulogizing the retrograde tradition of the veil (...) and for ‘normalizing gender inequality’. Others reproach him for his Orientalizing views. A number of critics confuse his pronouncements on the impact of the war which revolutionized the Algerian society and gender relation with the reactionary policies implemented in post-independent Algeria. To fathom the political and ethical concerns raised by Fanon, concerns which such criticism eschews, I propose to read Fanon’s ‘Algeria Unveiled’ in tandem with Bourdieu’s Algeria 1960 against the physical and symbolic violence to which Algerian women were subjected as they were coerced to remove their veil. (shrink)

The "Feminist Theory Reader" provides a revolutionary new approach to anthologizing the important works in feminist theory by incorporating the voices of women ...

This dissertation is a philosophical analysis of the discourse of nursing diagnosis in nursing literature. It is the general claim that the use of nursing diagnosis extends and reproduces conditions of social domination in our society. Specifically, its use functions in a way that constitutes individuals for themselves and others in an oppressive manner according to race, gender, and class. It is further claimed that the discourse of nursing diagnosis is based on social notions of normality, value and expertise that (...) reflect unfounded notions of science, professionalism, and social agency. ;Evidence is provided to support these claims based on the power perspective of discourse analysis from the work of Michel Foucault, and modified with reference to contemporary postmodern critical feminism. The source of text for this analysis is the body of nursing literature concerning nursing diagnosis since 1950. (shrink)