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Nursing's constructions of the body
Colin Holmes
Adjunct Professor of Nursing, School of Nursing Sciences, James Cook University, Townsville QLD
Abstract
I am pretty well, except gout, asthma, and pains in all the bones and flesh of my body. (Sydney Smith in a letter dated 5th September 1840)
Health care systems administer bodies - more or less sick, more or less alive. This administration is amenable to a bewildering and exciting variety of analyses, drawing upon increasingly sophisticated theoretical conceptions not only of the micropolitics of institutions but also of the body. Whilst it is recognized that disciplinary boundaries have not only become difficult to establish and maintain in the wake of poststructural and postmodern critique, but are also undesirable and unproductive, and at odds with the pragmatics of daily life, this paper focuses specifically on the body in nursing contexts. This is because, apart from the limitations upon the author's expertise, nurses participate in a quite unique way in the regimes of the body.
Following the pioneering work of Turner (1982, 1984) and others (Armstrong, 1983; Freund, 1982; O'Neill, 1985; Todd, 1983), the body is at last making its appearance not only in sociology of health contexts (Freund, 1990; Turner, 1992), but also in a number of health-related disciplines, such as health education, sports psychology, physiotherapy, nutrition, and nursing. It is not difficult to see why this trend should be particularly evident in Australia. Firstly, the body has played a key role in its cultural life and modern mythology, and Australia is perhaps the paradigm case of what Turner calls a `somatic society' (1992:12). Our cultural stereotypes, for example, have been distinguished primarily by their bodily form, whether it is the bronzed athletic type or the equally idealized pot-bellied indolent type. This somatic focus has been sustained and elaborated through the discursive practices of cultural and political institutions over many decades, and exerts an increasingly powerful hold over the Australian psyche. This may underlie the second factor in the Australian interest in the body, namely the vigour with which Australians have responded to the challenge of reinserting the body into academic discourse. Key events in this response include the appointment of Bryan Turner at Deakin University, and his creation there of the Centre for the Body and Society (Corpus, 1994).
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