Culture, needs and nursing: a critical theory approach.

Abstract

This paper will bring the critique of culture, notably that undertaken by the Frankfurt School of Critical Social Science, to bear on the problem of needs, and expose its significance for the practice and discipline of nursing. The paper begins by reviewing ways in which the idea of 'needs' has been depicted in nursing literature, and it is suggested that this depiction is inadequate in fundamental ways. The critique of existing culture is then outlined and the implications for nursing are suggested in terms of the dissolution of hegemonic practices and the development of a concept of need built around the notion of 'praxis'.