Exploring feminist political economy and feminist critical discourse analysis as methodologies in critical nursing research

AIMS

This paper explores two critical feminist methodologies for nursing research: feminist political economy and feminist critical discourse analysis. The aim was to appreciate varied methodological approaches available for nurses to understand complexities in healthcare environments, above and beyond socially normative ways of knowing.

DESIGN

Discursive paper.

DATA SOURCES

Published articles from nursing databases (CINAHL and ProQuest; no date restrictions) and interdisciplinary databases (Women's Studies International, Sociological Abstracts and Ovid MEDLINE; publication dates between 2017 and 2022).

METHODS

A discursive paper exploring and critically synthesizing the literature on feminist political economy and feminist critical discourse analysis to demonstrate how each methodological approach can be used in nursing.

RESULTS

The findings of this discursive paper suggest there is an opportunity to draw on interdisciplinary studies for creative insights into how these methodologies may be helpful for nurses' scholarship and programmes of research. Although few nursing studies explicitly name a feminist political economy or feminist critical discourse analysis approach, several studies apply principles of these methodological approaches.

CONCLUSION

There is an opportunity for these methodologies to be applied within the same project when there is a fit between the research questions and aims of both methodologies (studies where notions of gender and power are considered central and there are potential insights from exploring social progress, structures and the material, along with the social relations of discourses).

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PROFESSION AND/OR PATIENT CARE

Feminist political economy and feminist critical discourse analysis offer novel options for methodological analyses.

IMPACT

Application of these methodologies may benefit critical nursing scholars looking for diverse critical methodological avenues to explore and to broaden nursing's methodological toolbox towards meeting social justice aims.

PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION

No patient or public contribution.

Bricolage as an expression of self and of cultural and familial foodways among people living in prison-'You make what you can with anything you can get'

In this article, we use Lévi-Strauss's (1962, The savage mind, University of Chicago Press) concept of 'bricolage' to explore informal food preparation among men in Scottish prisons. The art of 'making do with whatever is at hand', in innovative and creative ways, to give new functions to everyday items has recently been reimagined and applied to the field of food. It has been used to explore the practice of informal food networks in resource poor environments; investigate how small food businesses come up with new and innovative recipes ideas; and study the way Michelin-starred chefs responded to the COVID-19 pandemic through philanthropic activities. Our aim is to use bricolage as a lens through which to answer questions about whether more autonomy over food might contribute to overall health and wellbeing in prisons. Drawing on in-depth empirical data from qualitative interviews with 20 men in Scottish prisons, we explore how bricolage is used to escape the monotony of prison-issued meals and the tedium of the prison regime; counter threats to self and identity; create and maintain social relationships through joint enterprise and commensality; and create culinary experiences that afford a sense of control and normality in an environment synonymous with 'spoiled identity' (Goffman, 1961, Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates, Penguin.).

Glossolalalararium Pandemiconium: A Meaningfully Irreverent, Queerelously Autoethnographic Essamblage for Trying Times

If there is any throughline to COVID-19, it lies within a narrative of capriciousness. To explore the paradox of the pandemic as proliferation meets obliteration, I alternate randomization with redaction within a riotous essamblage combining essayistic principles of "prepositional thinking" with bricolage. Neologisms meet textracts of responses to the 21 prompts of the Massive and Micro experiment. Glossolalalararium Pandemiconium comes with a helping of "lala" in a froth of babble, doubt, rage, and whimsy. It is a textual grappling with the shock and awe of the everyday, girded by a notion of "meaningful irreverence" that underpins my current research.

Activating Embodied Imagination During COVID-19: A Performative Reflexive Autoethnography

Embodied imagination is a learning theory that reverses the accepted Western "think first, then act" learning sequence though movement improvisation followed by reflection and reflective methods across verbal and nonverbal, including embodied-kinesthetic, modalities. Healing the Cartesian divide might have positive effects on world cultures and people across socioeconomic strata, especially urgent during the COVID-19 pandemic as multiple disruptions to daily life have quickly increased uncertainty and stress, compromising health and well-being, especially of traditionally marginalized excluded People of Color. Expanding the performative reflexive autoethnographic project through embodied imagination broadens and deepens this global, transcultural, transdisciplinary effort through the human body, traditionally not considered human thinking's locus. Benefits across global societies include greater self-care, the ability to act effectively quickly in response to a world with exponentially increasing complexity, and awareness that creativity is a global communitarian human birthright, not a rarity relegated to exceptional people.

Spiritual Inspiration of Village Cadres and Inclusive Innovation of Bricolage in Rural Autonomy in China

In the rural autonomous context of China, inclusive innovation of bricolage is a widespread phenomenon. However, the existing research rarely considers villagers as the main actors of innovation. In a research survey of 23 provinces in China, we studied the internal mechanism of inclusive innovation of bricolage. We found that the spiritual inspiration of the village cadres is positively related to inclusive innovation of bricolage behavior of villagers. Moreover, the results revealed that affective commitment to the village of the villagers plays a mediating role in the relationship between the spiritual inspiration of the village cadres and inclusive innovation of bricolage behavior of villagers. In addition, our findings reveal that resilience of villagers plays a moderating role in the relationship between the spiritual inspiration of the village cadres and inclusive innovation of bricolage behavior of villagers.

An examination of salesperson bricolage during a critical sales disruption: Selling during the Covid-19 pandemic

COVID-19 has proven to be a disruptive and world-altering event often forcing professional salespeople to rapidly change the manner in which they do business. Thereby, this pandemic illuminates the importance of understanding salesperson characteristics and behaviors that enable sales success in disruptive environments. This study identifies COVID-19 as a Critical Sales Event and introduces the concept of “bricolage” to the larger body of sales literature. Bricolage is a combination of “making do” under environmental conditions of resource constraint. Bricolage characterizes a salesperson's ability to utilize available resources effectively by assessing available resources and working to reconfigure them in order to meet new challenges and create opportunities. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative research from professional salespeople, this study identifies a salesperson's creativity, learning-orientation, and grit as three important antecedents to salesperson bricolage. Moreover, this study shows that salesperson bricolage relates positively to sales performance under conditions shaped by the COVID-19 disruption; with salesperson bricolage becoming more strongly related to sales performance when sales environments are more highly disrupted by the pandemic.

Personality traits and bricolage as drivers of sustainable social responsibility in family SMEs: A COVID‐19 perspective

Motivated by the social and environmental challenges resulting from the COVID‐19 pandemic, this research examines the influence of the “big five” personality traits; extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism on sustainable social responsibility with a mediating role of bricolage. We collected empirical evidence from 245 family‐owned SMEs. The results indicate that the personality traits do not directly influence sustainable social responsibility, although the traits (except extroversion) influence bricolage. Moreover, we found that open, conscious, and agreeable personalities indirectly contribute to sustainable social responsibility, with bricolage as a mediator. Our findings encourage enterprises to focus on those personality traits during crises (especially COVID‐19) that empower people to effectively manage existing resources (e.g., bricolage) and protect their stakeholders. Family‐owned SMEs need to assign resource utilization tasks to family members having personalities of openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism because these kinds of people have high capacities for bricolage.

An ethnographic exploration of the social organisation of general practice nurses' knowledge use: more than 'mindlines'?

Aim

To explore contextual, organisational and educational issues impacting on access to, and application of knowledge to everyday practice by general practice nurses, working in two rural primary-care practices in the UK.

Background

Changes in primary-care healthcare delivery have resulted in substantive changes to practice nurses' roles. Practice nurses have taken on enhanced roles for which they were not prepared for in their initial training, little is known about how they access and apply knowledge.

Methods

Ethnographic methods were used to gather data.

Results

Practice nurses take a blended approach to knowledge use, using elements of evidence-based practice to support professional judgement. This is subject to several contextual influences, organisational, educational and from individual patients. Tensions exist between the position in which general practice nurses are situated and the nature in which knowledge is disseminated and used in primary care. Whilst examples of clinical mindlines were evident, these differed to those previously observed in general practitioners, practice nurses did not always have the mindline on which to draw and used an approach to practice that resembled 'bricoleur activity'.

Conclusions

The way in which general practice is structured results in variance in organisational structural arrangements for sharing and disseminating of knowledge. Despite a supportive organisational culture towards knowledge sharing, the position in which practice nurses are situated limits opportunities for discussion and reformulation of knowledge. Practice nurses are, however, prepared to adapt knowledge to meet the needs of individual patients.

The emergency patient's participation in medical decision-making

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

The purpose of this research was to explore the medical decision-making processes of patients in emergency departments.

BACKGROUND

Studies indicate that patients should be given enough time to acquire relevant information and receive adequate support when they need to make medical decisions. It is difficult to satisfy these requirements in emergency situations. Limited research has addressed the topic of decision-making among emergency patients.

DESIGN

This qualitative study used a broadly defined grounded theory approach to explore decision-making in an emergency department in Taiwan.

METHODS

Thirty emergency patients were recruited between June and December 2011 for semi-structured interviews that were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim.

RESULTS

The study identified three stages in medical decision-making by emergency patients: predecision (interpreting the problem); decision (a balancing act) and postdecision (reclaiming the self). Transference was identified as the core category and pattern of behaviour through which patients resolved their main concerns. This transference around decision-making represents a type of bricolage.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings fill a gap in knowledge about the decision-making process among emergency patients.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE

The results inform emergency professionals seeking to support patients faced with complex medical decision-making and suggest an emphasis on informed patient decision-making, advocacy, patient-centred care and in-service education of health staff.

The Day-to-Day Co-Production of Ageing in Place

We report findings from a study that set out to explore the experience of older people living with assisted living technologies and care services. We find that successful ‘ageing in place’ is socially and collaboratively accomplished – ‘co-produced’ – day-to-day by the efforts of older people, and their formal and informal networks of carers (e.g. family, friends, neighbours). First, we reveal how ‘bricolage’ allows care recipients and family members to customise assisted living technologies to individual needs. We argue that making customisation easier through better design must be part of making assisted living technologies ‘work’. Second, we draw attention to the importance of formal and informal carers establishing and maintaining mutual awareness of the older person’s circumstances day-to-day so they can act in a concerted and coordinated way when problems arise. Unfortunately, neither the design of most current assisted living technologies, nor the ways care services are typically configured, acknowledges these realities of ageing in place. We conclude that rather than more ‘advanced’ technologies, the success of ageing in place programmes will depend on effortful alignments in the technical, organisational and social configuration of support.