Not Innocent: Relationships Between Knowers and Knowledge

Abstract

Discussions about nursing knowledge have tended to focus on determining what kinds of knowledge are the most appropriate or most useful kinds for nursing. Should our methods be primarily empirical? What is the place of interpretive work? What kind of knowledge should have ascendancy in nursing? Framed in this way, these questions seem unanswerable. However, if we shift the terms of the discussion from appropriate kinds of knowledge and consider instead the relationship between knowledge and knowers, we can reflect on how we, as knowers, are related to what we think we know. Considering the relationship between knowers and knowledge foregrounds the situation of the knower, and questions about appropriate nursing knowledge can be seen to also always be questions of ethics and politics, value and power.