https://www.reddit.com/r/CriticalTheory/comments/1i2366f/critical_theory_of_nursing_and_healthcare/
created by condolezzaspice on 15/01/2025 at 17:48 UTC
12 upvotes, 6 top-level comments (showing 6)
I'm in the process of becoming a nurse and am desperate for some social, historical, critical, or otherwise generally philosophical engagement with nursing but also healthcare as a whole.
Are there any good books or papers to help push me in the right direction, preferably ones with robust bibliographies so I can keep reading?
Comment by PsychologicalCut5360 at 16/01/2025 at 07:16 UTC
10 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Not sure if this will interest you, but I've been reading about theory of 'care' by Nancy Fraser in the past few months. Care in this case includes everything from childcare, eldercare, both at an institutional level (so say nurses) and at a personal level (caregivers for young or adult family members). Fraser is a part of the third generation of the Frankfurt school comes at it from a Marxist feminist critique of the co-opting of care work by capitalism. She has written extensively about how capitalism has reified the gendered and racialized division of care work (predominantly women and people of colour engage in institutional and personal care work), how it erodes social reproduction of care work, and why it is either unpaid or paid so litte.
This article is a good palce to start -- https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii100/articles/nancy-fraser-contradictions-of-capital-and-care[1][2]
1: https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii100/articles/nancy-fraser-contradictions-of-capital-and-care
2: https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii100/articles/nancy-fraser-contradictions-of-capital-and-care
If you want to delve deeper into it I would also recommend her book *Cannibal Capitalism,* specifically the chapters on care.
Comment by Fragment51 at 15/01/2025 at 18:35 UTC
6 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Also Sameena Mulla’s The Violence of Care is an amazing study of forensic nurses and sexual violence. A tough read but really fascinating:
https://nyupress.org/9781479867219/the-violence-of-care/
Comment by wake_anxious at 15/01/2025 at 23:04 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
The book "Critical Approaches in Nursing Theory and Nursing Research" by Foth et al. gives a good overview of the topic and - like the title implies - different critical approaches in nursing science. It also gives an overview to various authors I would mostly recommend for some further readings.
Comment by KingImaginary1683 at 16/01/2025 at 07:04 UTC
5 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Look into Michel Foucault the history of sexuality and subsequent foucauldian discourse analyses on nursing
Comment by luckyamenbreak at 19/01/2025 at 05:42 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I would put emphasis on disability studies and fat studies, both of which have a lot to say about the history of nursing and center the point of view of dangerously vulnerablized patient populations. I'm far from an expert, but I found Health Communism to contain super contextualizing summaries of important historical moments, and I must recommend Belly of the Beast by Da'Shaun L Harrison. Both have a 'state of the field' vibe and beefy biblios.
Comment by Any-Side-9200 at 20/01/2025 at 00:23 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This might not be centrally about "medical" care but it's definitely a critical analysis of care: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4lhR4ObvAQ[1][2]