The purpose of this study is to explore how students’ nurse identity has developed over the years and the particular role that disciplinary power has had in shaping it. The research focus was the School of Nursing in Jersey from 1924-2015. The study site included the wider social space where nurse education occurred at the School of Nursing; that is the classroom, the practice area and the nurses’ home. The study attempts to fill a gap in local nursing history by creating a unique record while also considering the wider social influences on how students develop a nurse identity. The primary data comprises interviews with fifteen (n=15) participants who provide an historical account of their experiences as students. Interview transcripts and diary narratives with a further four (n=4) former nursing students from the earlier period are also included. These are supplemented with documentary archive material in the form of hospital student nurse records, newspaper archives, Societe Jersiaise archives, personal correspondence and photographs.

Foucault’s (1979) concept of panopticism was used to explore how the functioning of disciplinary power promoted the notion of docility and shaped the developing nurse identity of students. The Foucauldian framework provided a sociological analysis of disciplinary power and how the unconscious conditioning of students created the “docile body”. The main themes identified relate to freedom (or not) of choice in choosing a career, shifting modes of control, control through the use of time, knowing your place, sister’s “gaze” as a panoptical figure, living and working by the rules, fear of punishment, the gendered nature of nursing as an occupation, medical dominance, and the support from fellow students. The technologies of surveillance, normalising judgement and examination were employed to understand how, as student nurses, the participants internalised the values, beliefs and behaviours experienced in the School of Nursing. Tracing these technologies of discipline from the beginnings of the School of Nursing to its present day amounts to what in Foucauldian terms is a history of the objectification of the present.

Findings indicate that discipline was a means of constructing experience and served to shape the identity of the participants as student nurses. It was easier to recognise Foucault’s (1979, 1995) concept of panopticism in the traditional nurses’ accounts; how this applied to the contemporary setting was less obvious but nonetheless apparent. While there has been more discreet monitoring of students in recent years, the methods of surveillance remain rooted in Foucault’s (1979, 1995) representation of panopticism and the construction of the “docile body”. Control was exerted over their lives in the classroom and on the wards. As students the participants began to regulate their own behaviour and discipline themselves. The historical perceptions of what it means to be a “good nurse” impacted on their developing identity across the years. The unconscious conditioning of the students served to create the “docile body” of the student nurse and this impacted on the development of an identity. Having identified the importance of the influence of disciplinary power, further research exploring this among student nurses in the contemporary university setting could make a positive contribution to understanding how this moulds a nurse identity.

Disciplinary power and nurse identity: A Foucauldian analysis of student nurse education in Jersey from 1924-2015

The thesis acknowledges how women contest domination and challenges us to re-examine the subjects of our history. It centres the stories of 21 African women, who remember a popular uprising on St. Kitts in 1935. Their stories explore how these embodied narrators reconstruct a defining moment in the island’s history for insertion into the gaping holes of history that had been left for the imagination, conjecture, and a hegemonic discursive shaped by archival records. Their stories are worth remembering, demand examining and not just to be recorded for posterity. They must be accorded equal value as academic knowledge. The use of storytelling as a methodological approach introduces the Kittitian language to text, removes the burden of colonized linguistic syntax and grounds the epistemological context of the findings and analysis. It provides new evidence of the invasiveness of coloniality and how it interlocks with Caribbean rebel consciousness to usurp decolonial exertions, discursively and institutionally. The work does not claim to provide a representative sample of the hundreds of protestors in 1935, nor do the women speak for all the citizens who were impacted by the social

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Decolonizing Narratives:Kittitian Women, Knowledge Production and Protest

Background: During the 8 years of Iran-Iraq war, the work of Iranian nurses was essential and efficiently performed, and played a very important role in maintaining the wellbeing of the forces. A review of nurses' activities reveals their experiences and the nature of their activities, an area of study that has not been given due consideration. Method: By adopting the oral history method and in-depth interviews with the participating nurses it was possible to demonstrate the significance and humanistic nature of their work. Findings: The majority of the health care assistants and nurses who joined the armed forces, despite not having prior training in this area of nursing, were able to adapt themselves to the situation very quickly and perform their task successfully. Conclusion: Nurses' efforts and experiences and their outstanding achievement, contributes to our understanding of wartime nursing.

The wartime experience of civilian nurses in Iran-Iraq war, 1980-1988: An historical research

Aims: This study aimed to study the effects of imposed war on nursing in Iran, in the mid-

The Effects of Imposed War on Iran's Nursing: A Historical Research

Pastoral societies in dryland Africa continue to face changes to their systems. These systems are influenced by a range of historical factors, but little use is made of this information to design policies that suit pastoralists’ landscapes. This article provides a synthesis of historical perspectives on pastoral land use and tenure transformations in Ngamiland, south of the Okavango Delta, Botswana. Little documentation of herders’ historical perspectives exists and less is known about how past experiences can be applied to sustainable pastoralism policies. In this article, current land use pressing issues are examined and analysed within the context of past experiences. We use a series of oral histories with key informants, focus group discussions, expert interviews and rangeland field observations. Results show that Nagamiland’s pastoral landscape has been shaped by a variety of factors: livestock diseases, human-wildlife conflicts, droughts, land tenure transformations associated with rangeland policies and the pastoral identity of the Ovaherero/Ovambanderu ethnic groups. Pastoralists have followed unique trajectories, specific to their rangeland conditions and socio-cultural context. Resilience to climate shocks and diseases has been weakened by inequitable patterns of control over rangeland resources. We recommend institutional diversity such that from experiences of the past, lessons can be drawn of processes and institutions required for pastoralism policies targeted pastoralists’ adaptations. Using pastoralists to provide information, especially in the area of indigenous knowledge, strategies can be developed to link conservation of wildlife and rangelands with pastoral production by developing ecologically sensitive low-volume tourism that pastoral communities can tap to diversify their livelihoods.

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Historical perspectives on pastoralism and land tenure transformation in Ngamiland, Botswana: what are the policy and institutional lessons?

This paper discusses a pragmatic and innovative approach to the data analysis of oral testimonies when used within a methodological framework of Historiography. Oral testimony is increasingly perceived as an exciting research method within the nursing discipline. However, the availability of a clear method to guide the researcher in their analysis of oral testimonies as the primary data for a Historiography is limited. A practical approach to the interpretation of oral testimony is needed to ensure the continued and successful use of Historiography as a valued research methodology in nursing science. The primary discussion revolves around the explication of a four-stage method proposed as a pragmatic tool for the analysis of oral testimonies. Theoretical literature from the Historian, Paul Thompson and Pragmatist Philosopher, Richard Rorty is drawn upon to bring validity and reliability to the proposed method of analysis. This new technique can be easily used by nurses and many other disciplines in their efforts to efficiently analyse the qualitative data obtained from oral testimonies.

Suzanne Robinson-Malt

Papers

Analysing oral history: a new approach when linking method to methodology