Image, measure, figure: a critical discourse analysis of nursing practices that develop children

Abstract

Motivated by discourses that link early child development and health, nurses engage in seemingly benign surveillance of children. These practices are based on knowledge claims and technologies of developmental science, which remain anchored in assumptions of the child body as an incomplete form with a universal developmental trajectory and inherent potentiality. This paper engages in a critical discursive analysis, drawing on Donna Haraway's conceptualizations of technoscience and figuration. Using a contemporary developmental screening tool from nursing practice, this analysis traces the effects of this tool through production, transformation, distribution, and consumption. It reveals how the techniques of imaging, abstraction, and measurement collide to fix the open, transformative child body in a figuration of the developing child. This analysis also demonstrates how technobiopower infuses nurses' understandings of children and structures developmentally appropriate expectations for children, parents, and nurses. Furthermore, it describes how practices that claim to facilitate healthy child development may inversely deprive children of agency and foster the production of normal or ideal children. An alternative ontological perspective is offered as a challenge to the individualism of developmental models and other dominant ideologies of development, as well as practices associated with these ideologies. In summary, this analysis argues that nurses must pay closer attention to how technobiopower infuses practices that monitor and promote child development. Fostering a critical understanding of the harmful implications of these practices is warranted and offers the space to conceive of human development in alternate and exciting ways.

Physiotherapists Both Reproduce and Resist Biomedical Dominance when Working With People With Low Back Pain: A Qualitative Study Towards New Praxis

“…This ‘voluntary giving up’ can be interpreted as passivity, or conformity to ‘how things are’, but also shows the power of dominant norms and expectations to direct behaviour. This power acts on and through health professionals – doctors (Lupton, 2012), nurses (Einboden et al, 2013) and physiotherapists (Setchell, Nicholls et al, 2018) tend to act as implicitly expected. Power, therefore, orients physiotherapist-patient interactions, with an unequal distribution of power favouring healthcare professionals and treating patients’ bodies as objects of the clinical gaze.…”

Orienting child- and family-centered care toward equity

“…In recent years, a philosophical shift from "family-centered care 1 " to CFCC aligns with a growing recognition of children as social agents (Coyne et al, 2016;Einboden et al, 2013a;Einboden et al, 2013b) and international calls to uphold children's rights to participate 2 in health care decisions that affect them (Ehrich et al, 2015;Ford, 2017;Grahn et al, 2016). Key elements of CFCC include health care providers: (1) listening to and honoring families and children's perspectives and choices such that their knowledge, priorities, concerns, and beliefs are incorporated into the planning and delivery of care; (2) providing families and children with timely and accessible information in ways that are affirming and foster their participation in care and decision-making; and (3) supporting families and children's participation in care and decision-making at a level of their choosing (Byczkowski et al, 2015;Conway et al, 2006;Dennis et al, 2017;Ehrich et al, 2015;Institute for Patient-and Family-Centered Care, 2018;Kuo et al, 2012).…”

Governing families that care for a sick relative: the contributions of Donzelot’s theory for nursing

“…Donzelot's theoretical work on the family has been particularly influential in the social sciences, especially social work, sociology, political science and gender studies (Duschinsky & Rocha, 2012; Pestaña, 2012; Rose, 1993). The sociologist's writings are not widely known in nursing, however, although some researchers in the discipline have drawn on them (Dingwall & Allen, 2001; Einboden et al, 2013; Kelly & Symonds, 2003; Paradis‐Gagné et al, 2020; Peckover, 2002). We consider Donzelot's perspective to be very relevant to nursing, to analyse how healthcare professionals—nurses in particular—regulate (or govern) populations based on, and in keeping with, neoliberal principles.…”