Nursing History and the Politics of Welfare (Paperback)

Nursing history has become a reflective area of scholarship, which recognizes the inescapable social, political, economic and cultural factors infuencing the profession. This volume highlights the significant contribution that researching nursing history has to make in settling a new intellectual and political agenda for nurses. Reflecting the international scale of current research, 17 contributors look at nursing from different perspectives, as it has developed under different regimes and ideologies and at different points in time in America, Australia, Britain, Germany, India, the Phillipines and South Africa. They examine the ways in which the nursing workforce is segmented and stratified along race, class and gender lines and how differences of culture undermine attempts to theorise nursing and healh care in universal terms. Comparing the problems and potential of the equal rights and difference approaches, they propose strategies for achieving greater recognition for nursing, to bring it into line with other related, yet male-dominated professions within the health care arena.