ABSTRACT
It has been something of an enduring curiosity to us that the scholarship of nursing continues to reflect what one of us (MEP) nearly a quarter of a century ago described as an absence of the social. Nursing’s raison d’être arises from its enact - ment of skilled, knowledgeable practices in aid of the sick. And so, it might be thought that those activities constituting the knowledgeable practices of nurses – and the processes through which those practices are produced and reproduced – would have occasioned more interest than continues to be evident in our disciplinary literature. There are certainly some notable exceptions to this critique, and we will explore some of those in this chapter. The opportunity posed by this volume is for us to articulate – again – a philosophical foundation upon which such scholarship might rest, to illustrate the knowledge produced from such philo - sophical approaches to practice and to outline a pathway forward whereby such scholarship might thrive. This will be our task.
