Elements of a Sociology for Nursing: Considerations on Caregiving and Capitalism

Abstract

Four questions are raised about contemporary nursing. In exploring these, a particular sociological method is applied, that of preserving the presence of the nurse as subject throughout the analysis. The four questions are: 1) are nursing assistants nurses? 2) are foreign-trained nurses nurses? 3) are nurses the subject of the nursing shortage debate? 4) is nursing medicine? I start from examples of nurses' actual work situations, drawn from participant observation research, then discuss how in each example nursing work undergoes a transformation as it becomes defined by the administrative logic that surrounds it, particularly as it is placed into the terms of capitalist medicine. Answers to the questions are posed through the examination of two alternative approaches to the meaning of nursing in society, drawn from liberal and radical perspectives in sociology and feminist theory. They provide different answers to the questions. A sociology "for" nursing is discussed as one which offers nurses frame of reference in which to see their work in terms of both alternatives.