ISSN 104-9-2259
Spring 1998 Vol9 No2
RETHINKING TIlE REWRmNG OF NURSING HISTORY PATRICIA D'ANTONIO ,
RN , PHD
At first glance, Lhe eros -disciplinary reciprocity between nursing and ocial history seems pro found, nderstanding the work of nurses has reshaped hi torians ' sense of Lhe hospital. the treatmenl of disease. the birth of babies, and the role or women in their families and in their communities. And Lhere are now few storics told about nurses by nurses wiLhuut some reference, however fleeting . to the issue of' gender, class, race, and the politic or prafe siona lism , The problem, however, is thai Lhe " IWO way sln.;el" that lies at the heart of lilis reciprocity has seen m uch of its mcaningful int IIc<.:tual traffic slow to a crawl. Thl: publicati n of Barbara Mclosh ' , The Physician '.\ Hcmd in 191)2, Su an Reverby ' ,' Ordered 10 Care in 1987, and Darlene Clark Hinc ' , Black Women in White in 19S9, essentially establi hed the stil l domina nt interpretive paradib'TIl that pLaces work within lh health care system lit [he center of nUIsing women' , live. and then u e lhe tools of economic , class, and racial analysis to dissect its socially stnlcturcd conlradiGtions. Reverby's hard hitling analysis, for example, superbly illustrates nursing history's historical quest for an indepe ndent role in the home and h spilal. But her analy is works only if we continue LO p ilion nurses solely as labOl' market participants. The dominant paradigm may not fully capture the historical experien e of nursing, Mo. t women Ijved much Uleir lives outs ide the ne 'us of wage-based activities and most nursing women , in particu lar. le ft the workforce witltin len years of their graduation from training chooL. Even so, we are begin ning to und I' land thal the idea r work, if nOl wor\... it elf, still held significant salience for them, ThaI is, non-wage earning women looked both to their own experiences and to those of their neighbors and kin to construct an enduring identity for themselves as past or potential workers. There arc works that arc beginning to break Lhe "traffic jam" and suggest new ways of thinking about nur~ing hi 'lOry. They 'uggcst, on a very concrete Jevel, thnl the c nlradi tion faced by nul' eS were neither unnegoliable nor insurnlOuntable. More importanl, however. they offer a different way of thinking about t.he intercoon ctedness between the eviden e and its implications - e pecially at a point when the debate aboulthc role of gender, class, race, and mobility in nursing's past stiLI vcers unea ily b tween p Sili os celebrating the disciplin '5 transcendence and Lh se chiding its ri gidity, They suggest thaI rathe r than being passively defined by socially constructed stereotypes, women actively embraced the gendered meaning of nursing for the ease with which it allowed them to create work identities U1al remained connected to their pt:rsonal id ntilie., d\:spitc their formal rela1100 (uJl1li nuell
Center for The Study
INSIDE TIllS ISSUE
of
The History of Nursing CENTER DlRECTOR KARE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL OF NURSING
B UI ILER -WILKERSON'S VISIT TO JAPAN
( ,I't'('
page 5!
Drs . Buhler-Wi/keTlon Ilnd Ktlsakari in
Ky%. Japan
011
page 4)