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Whiteness and difference in nursing.

Allen DG

Psychosocial and Community Health, University of Washington, Seattle, 98195, USA. dgallen@u.washington.edu

This paper uses a semiotic, performative theory of language and post-colonial theory to argue that nursing's representations of 'multiculturalism' need to be grounded in a theory of whiteness, an historicized understanding of how ethnic/cultural differences come to be represented in the ways they are and informed by Foucault's notions of power/knowledge. Using nursing education and 'cultural compentency' as examples, the paper draws on a range of literatures to suggest more critical and politically productive ways of approaching difference from within nursing's largely white interpretive framework.

Published 17 March 2006 in Nurs Philos, 7(2): 65-78.
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