Huli yu shehui: Kuajie de duihua yu chuangxin 護理與社會—跨界的對話與創新 [Nursing and Society: The Transdisciplinary Dialogue and Innovation] ed. by Zxy-Yann Lu, Hsien-Hsien Chiang, Yiping Lin (review)

Huli yu shehui: Kuajie de duihua yu chuangxin 護理與社會—跨界的對話與創新 (Nursing and Society: The Transdisciplinary Dialogue and Innovation) considers how nursing in Taiwan intersects with various disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, history, and STS. This book includes fifteen case studies that are divided into four broader themes: “Techniques and Nursing,” “Gender and Body,” “Mental Health and Society,” and “Ethics and Policymaking.” These themes show the highly dynamic relationships among nursing, health, and a broader social context. The case studies also engage with the work of critical theorists such as Michel Foucault, Bruno Latour, and Susan Bordo.

The power relationships surrounding health are the book’s main concern, and each of the four parts explores a specific dimension of that dynamic. The first part focuses on the new challenges that the nursing profession is confronting in Taiwan, no doubt part of a trend affecting many other countries. According to the chapter titled “Nursing, Technology, and Professional Identities: A Historical Analysis,” nursing practice is now heavily influenced by the intensive use of technology in health care. As such, it increasingly becomes technologically and bureaucratically based. At the same time, emotional labor, crucial to nursing throughout its history, remains a significant part of nursing work. The chapter “The Labor Market in Nursing” points to the failure of Taiwanese policy makers to protect the professional rights of nurses. This situation is exacerbated by a health care system that is increasingly privatized. Both the job security and the general well-being of nurses have suffered. Another chapter looks at how nurses forced to take care of patients with SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) were offered little protection in a Taipei hospital where the virus infected many patients and health care workers. This case study makes clear that during emergencies nurses’ health is gravely imperiled.

The studies in the book’s first part also address the tendency to think of a “woman in white” upon hearing the word nursing, the so-called profession of women. Not only is the profession affected by such preconceptions, but the health issues that nurses address are also affected by gender politics. The second part of the book deals with the gender aspects of health. A study of osteoporosis screening shows how it has become a technology of normalization, in the Foucauldian sense, reinforcing the medicalization of menopause. And the chapter “The Body Politics of Taiwanese Menopausal Women” emphasizes women’s diverse responses to the medical messages that tend to pathologize their menopausal bodies, lingering on their critical reflections on these messages. “The Technical Transformation of Abortion in the Postwar Period” shows how women’s options regarding abortion have been increasingly limited. The author warns that limiting women in need of abortions to a surgical procedure threatens them with increased health risks and a comparatively invasive treatment. Another chapter, “A History of Hysterectomy: Medical Knowledge, Gender, and Women’s Experiences,” refuses to view women as passive victims as the frequency of hysterectomies climbs. Instead, it emphasizes that improved risk knowledge convinces more women to seek to maintain their well-being by undergoing surgery.

While the second part of the book connects gender and health, the third part addresses other forms of inequality in health care, such as that between aboriginal people and Taiwanese of Han descent, and those between poorer countries and richer countries. “Social Change and Cross-Cultural Therapy for Mental Health” discusses mental disorder in the Tao community, an aboriginal group living on Lanyu Island. By comparing the experiences of different generations, the author connects mental health to changing social circumstances. While the older Tao enjoy strong family bonds and work that seldom involved the crushing repetition of factories, both of which help the older generation cope with mental disorders, the younger generation faces a different world. Interactions with mainstream Taiwanese society...