Rhizomatic Assemblages: Connecting Climate Change to Nursing Action

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25071/2291-5796.113

Keywords:

climate action, climate justice, planetary health, nursing knowledge, Rhizomatic Assemblages

Abstract

Calls for nursing action to address climate change are resounding throughout the nursing community, yet many nurses feel ill-prepared to engage in climate action. As a collective practice discipline, we argue that nursings’ internalized a rigid view of what nursing is and, through self-disciplining practices, actively police our knowledge and practice to conform within a bounded domain that fails to view global issues, such as climate change, as being within the scope of nursing. To build nurses’ climate action capacity, we draw on Deleuze and Guarttari’s (1987) concept of rhizomatic assemblages to make an explicit connection between health and climate change, but also how climate action is a moral imperative in the scope of nursing education and practice. Using examples in the four domains of nursing - education, practice, research, and policy, we present how nurses can engage in coordinated and collaborative efforts both within and outside of ‘traditional’ nursing practice to address the connecting and complicated pathways of a changing climate. 

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Author Biographies

Lindsey Vold, University of Saskatchewan

Lindsey Vold is a doctoral candidate in the College of Nursing at the University of Saskatchewan. She is currently completing her doctoral research on community organizations addressing food security through technology and innovation. This work is underpinned by critical and sociopolitical approaches towards community food security and health. The broad foci of her research interests include public health and reducing health inequities, climate change, and systems thinking. 

Megan Meszaros, College of Nursing, University of Saskatchewan

Megan Meszaros is a Ph.D. candidate in the College of Nursing at the University of Saskatchewan who is currently completing her dissertation focused on antimicrobial resistance discourses on social media. Megan has a keen interest in exploring and addressing health misinformation on social media.

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Published

2021-12-18

How to Cite

Vold, L., & Meszaros, M. (2021). Rhizomatic Assemblages: Connecting Climate Change to Nursing Action. Witness: The Canadian Journal of Critical Nursing Discourse, 3(2), 18–35. https://doi.org/10.25071/2291-5796.113