Early 21st-Century Canadian Nursing at a Theoretical Crossroads

This chapter sets the stage for the book’s argument by situating the author at the “theoretical crossroads” in the discipline of nursing in Canada in the early 21^st century. The author describes her sense of puzzlement when she initially reflected on two jarringly different kinds of theorizing in nursing: American nursing theory and British-Australian postmodern/post-structural theorizing. Significantly, only the former scholarship, American nursing theory, was touted in the textbooks as “nursing knowledge” while highly relevant and interesting postmodern and post-structural nursing work remained at the margins. The chapter then provides background on how American nursing theory, with its foundation in logical positivism and self-definition as a unique nursing science, makes rigorous postmodern and post-structural theorizing invisible and unintelligible. The chapter concludes by providing details about the structure of the book.