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Books by Amélie Perron

Ignorance is mostly framed as a void, a gap to be filled with appropriate knowledge. In nursing a... more Ignorance is mostly framed as a void, a gap to be filled with appropriate knowledge. In nursing and health care, concerns about ignorance fuel searches for knowledge expected to bring certainty to care provision, preventing risk, accidents, or mistakes. This unique volume turns the focus on ignorance as something productive in itself and works to understand how ignorance and its operations shape what we do and do not know.

Focusing explicitly on nursing practice and its organization within contemporary health settings, Perron and Rudge draw on contemporary interdisciplinary debates to discuss social processes informed by ignorance, ignorance’s temporal and spatial boundaries, and how ignorance defines what can be known by specific groups with differential access to power and social status. Using feminist, postcolonial and historical analyses, this book challenges dominant conceptualizations and discusses a range of "nonknowledges" in nursing and health work, including uncertainty, abjection, denial, deceit and taboo. It also explores the way dominant research and managerial practices perpetuate ignorance in healthcare organisations.

In health contexts, productive forms of ignorance can help to future-proof understandings about the management of healthy/sick bodies and those caring for them. Linking these considerations to nurses’ approaches to challenges in practice, this book helps to unpack the power situated in the use of ignorance and pays special attention to what is safe or unsafe to know, from both individual and organisational perspectives.

On the Politics of Ignorance in Nursing and Health Care is an innovative read for all students and researchers in nursing and the health sciences interested in understanding more about transactions between epistemologies, knowledge building practices and research in the health domain. It will also be of interest to scholars involved in the interdisciplinary study of ignorance.

Drawing on a broad range of approaches in the fields of sociology, anthropology, political scienc... more Drawing on a broad range of approaches in the fields of sociology, anthropology, political science, history, philosophy, medicine and nursing, Power and the Psychiatric Apparatus exposes psychiatric practices that are mobilized along the continuum of repression, transformation and assistance. It critically examines taken for granted psychiatric practices both past and current, shedding light on the often political nature of psychiatry and reconceptualizing its central and sensitive issues through the radical theory of figures such as Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Goffman, and Szasz. As such, this ground-breaking collection embraces a broad understanding of psychiatric practices and engages the reader in a critical understanding of their effects, challenging the discipline’s altruistic rhetoric of therapy and problematizing the ways in which this is operationalized in practice.

A comprehensive exploration of contested psychiatric practices in healthcare settings, this interdisciplinary volume brings together recent scholarship from the US, Canada, the UK, Europe and Australia, to provide a rich array of theoretical tools with which to engage with questions related to psychiatric power, discipline and control, while theorizing their workings in creative and imaginative ways.

Contents: Introduction: unmasking the psychiatric apparatus, Jean Daniel Jacob, Amélie Perron and Dave Holmes; Part I Repression: Varieties of psychiatric criticism, Thomas Szasz; Censoring violence: censorship and critical research in forensic psychiatry, Dave Holmes and Stuart J. Murray; The ‘rhetoric of rights’ in mental health: between equality, responsibility and solidarity, Emmanuelle Bernheim; Power, control and coercion: exploring hyper-masculine performativity by private guards in a psychiatric ward setting, Matthew S. Johnston and Jennifer M. Kilty; Containment practices in psychiatric care, Eimear Muir-Cochrane and Adam Gerace; Pediatric bipolar disorder: an object of study in the creation of an illness, David Healy and Joanna Le Noury; Delinquent life: forensic psychiatry and neoliberal biopolitics, Stuart J. Murray and Sarah Burgess. Part II Transformation: Structural othering: towards an understanding of place in the construction of disruptive subjectivities, Jean Daniel Jacob, Amélie Perron and Pascale Corneau; When you try to speak truth to power: what happens if the powerful turn off their hearing aids?, Paula J. Caplan; Mainstreaming the mentally ill, Jem Masters, Trudy Rudge and Sandra West; Legally-coerced consent to treatment in the criminal justice system, Jennifer A. Chandler; Psy policing: the borderlands of psychiatry and security, Rachel Jane Liebert. Part III Assistance: Twenty-first century ‘snake oil’ salesmanship: contemporary care of the suicidal person in formal mental health care, John R. Cutcliffe and Sanaz Riahi; Sex offender therapy: collusion, confession and game-playing, Dave Mercer; Shock therapies as intensification of the war against madness in Hamburg, Germany: 1930-1943, Thomas Foth; American medical psychiatry: a contemporary case of Lysenkoism, David H. Jacobs; The evolution of sex offender treatment: from confinement to consent, Natasha M. Knack and J. Paul Fedoroff.

This comprehensive volume explores various forms of violence in health care settings. Using a bro... more This comprehensive volume explores various forms of violence in health care settings. Using a broad range of critical approaches in the field of anthropology, cultural studies, gender studies, political philosophy and sociology, it examines violence following three definite yet interrelated streams: institutional and managerial violence against health care workers or patients; horizontal violence amongst health care providers and finally, patients' violence towards health care providers. Drawing together the latest research from Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US, (Re)Thinking Violence in Health Care Settings engages with the work of critical theorists such as Bourdieu, Butler, Foucault, Latour, and Žižek, amongst others, to address the issue of violence and theorise its workings in creative and controversial ways. As such, it will be of interest to sociologists and anthropologists with research expertise in health, medicine, violence and organisations, as well as to health care professionals.

Contents: Introduction: (re)thinking violence in health care settings, Dave Holmes, Trudy Rudge, Amélie Perron and Isabelle St-Pierre; Part I Institutional and Managerial Violence: A critical reflection on the use of behaviour modification programs in forensic psychiatry settings, Dave Holmes and Stuart J. Murray; The violence of tolerance in a multicultural workplace: examples from nursing, Trudy Rudge, Virginia Mapedzahama, Sandra West and Amélie Perron; Changing discourses of blame in nursing and healthcare, Hannah Cooke; Hospital policies regarding violence in the workplace: a discourse analysis, Penny Powers; Exploring violence in a forensic hospital: a theoretical experimentation, Amélie Perron and Trudy Rudge; Nurses' failure to report elder abuse in long-term care: an exploratory study, Gloria Hamel-Lauzon and Sylvie Lauzon. Part II Horizontal Violence: Foucault and the nexus between violence and power: the context of intra/inter professional aggression, Isabelle St-Pierre; Examining nurse-to-nurse horizontal violence and nurse-to-student vertical violence through the lens of phenomenology, Sandra P. Thomas; The rise of violence in HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns: a critical discourse analysis, Marilou Gagnon and Jean Daniel Jacob; Bullying in the workplace: a qualitative study of newly licensed registered nurses, Shellie Simons and Barbara Mawn; Sexual health nursing assessments: examining the violence of intimate exposures, Patrick O'Byrne and Cory Woodyatt; Bullying on the back-channels: everyday interpersonal communicative relations in telephone talk as a space for covert forms of professional manipulation, Jackie Cook and Colette Snowden. Part III Patients' Violence: Assessment of risk and special observations in mental health practice: a comparison of forensic and non-forensic settings, Elizabeth Mason-Whitehead and Tom Mason; Policing pornography in high-secure care: the discursive construction of gendered inequality, David Mercer; Warning – this job contains strong language and adult themes: do nurses require thick skins and broad shoulders to deal with encounters involving swearing?, Teresa Stone and Margaret McMillan; Prison nursing: managing the threats to caring, Elizabeth Walsh; The mentally ill and civil commitment: assessing dangerousness in law and psychiatry, Cary Federman; Working in a violent environment: the pitfall of integrating security imperatives into forensic psychiatry nursing, Jean Daniel Jacob.

Papers by Amélie Perron

Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions for aut hors and subscript ion informat ion: ht t... more Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions for aut hors and subscript ion informat ion: ht t p:/ / www.t andfonline.com/ loi/ rccm20

Amélie Perron et al., « Identification et gestion de la violence en psychiatrie : perceptions du ... more Amélie Perron et al., « Identification et gestion de la violence en psychiatrie : perceptions du personnel infirmier et des patients en matière de sécurité et dangerosité », Recherche en soins infirmiers 2015/1 (N° 120), p. 47-60.

Constructing mentally ill inmates: nurses' discursive practices in corrections The concepts of di... more Constructing mentally ill inmates: nurses' discursive practices in corrections The concepts of discourse, subjectivity and power allow for innovative explorations in nursing research. Discourse take many different forms and may be maintained, transmitted, even imposed, in various ways. Nursing practice makes possible many discursive spaces where discourses intersect. Using a Foucauldian perspective, were explored the ways in which forensic psychiatric nurses construct the subjectivity of mentally ill inmates. Progress notes and individual interviews constitute discursive spaces within which nurses construct patients' subjectivities. Progress notes provide a written (and permanent) form of discourse, while interviews set the space for a more fluid and contextual form of discourse. We identified five types of subjectivities -the (in)visible patient, the patient as risk, the deviant patient, the disturbed patient and the disciplined patient. These subjectivities were rooted in various types of discourses circulating in the selected setting. Despite the multiple discursive dimensions of forensic psychiatric nursing, progress notes remain the main formal source of information regarding nursing care even though it is not representative of the care provided nor is it representative of nurses' complex discursive practices in corrections.

The concept of citizenship is becoming more and more prominent in specific fields, such as psychi... more The concept of citizenship is becoming more and more prominent in specific fields, such as psychiatry/mental health, where it is constituted as a solution to the issues of exclusion, discrimination, and poverty often endured by the mentally ill. We argue that such discourse of citizenship represents a break in the history of psychiatry and constitutes a powerful strategy to counter the effects of equally powerful psychiatric labelling. However, we call into question the emancipatory promise of a citizenship agenda. Foucault's concept of governmentality is helpful in understanding the production of the citizen subject, its location within the 'art of government', as well as the ethical and political implications of citizenship in the context of mental health.

Les écrits de Goffman en regard des institutions totales évoquent les effets de celles-ci sur les... more Les écrits de Goffman en regard des institutions totales évoquent les effets de celles-ci sur les personnes qui y sont internées. En utilisant des données recueillies en milieux correctionnels français et canadien, nous démontrons dans quelle mesure les effets de mortification et de dépersonnalisation affectent également ceux qui y travaillent, notamment le personnel infirmier. Les écrits de Goffman sont utiles dans la compréhension des effets aliénants des institutions totales, et mettent en évidence leur ampleur en regard de professionnels dont le mandat initial est de soigner des populations captives.

In this paper, I discuss nurses' ongoing difficulty in engaging with politics and address the per... more In this paper, I discuss nurses' ongoing difficulty in engaging with politics and address the persistent belief that political positioning is antithetical to quality nursing care. I suggest that nurses are not faced with choosing either caring for their patients or engaging with politics. I base my discussion on the assumption that such dichotomy is meaningless and that engaging with issues of relationships firmly grounds nursing in the realm of politics. I argue that the ethical merit of nursing care relies instead on positioning nurses squarely at the centre of care activities, experiences, and functions. Such positioning makes possible what Foucault called 'practices of self-formation', that is, micro-level processes that balance out the ubiquitous economic, cultural, legal, and scientific technologies that steadily constitute subjects in this era of modernity. Nurses, then, become not a group that needs to be controlled and governed, but individuals who must care for their self before they may care for anyone else.

This article critically examines the incursion of the military in nursing education, practice, an... more This article critically examines the incursion of the military in nursing education, practice, and knowledge production. New funding programs, journals, and degrees in (bio)terrorism, emergency preparedness, and disaster management create a context of uncertainty, fear, and crisis, and nursing is portrayed as ideally positioned to protect the wider public from adverse (health-related) events, despite important ontological, epistemological, and ethical considerations. In this article, we discuss implications for nursing education and knowledge production. We posit that a critical pedagogy framework promotes critical reflection, resistance, and a renewed sense of agency not dependent upon external organizations such as the military, intelligence agencies and public health surveillance organizations.

This article aims to clarify the concept of change fatigue and deems further exploration of the c... more This article aims to clarify the concept of change fatigue and deems further exploration of the concept within the discipline of nursing is relevant and necessary. The concept of change fatigue has evolved from the discipline of management as a means to explore organization change and its associated triumphs and failures. Change fatigue has typically been described as one and the same as change resistance, with very little literature acknowledging that they are in fact distinct concepts. Concept clarification has highlighted the striking differences and few similarities that exist between the concepts of change fatigue and change resistance. Further exploration and subsequent research on the concept of change fatigue is needed within the discipline of nursing. The concept not only presents new and alternative perspectives on the processes of organization change, but provides opportunity for theory development that recognizes the impact organizational change has on nurses' work lives.

The purpose of this paper is to engage with the reader in a theoretical reflection regarding the ... more The purpose of this paper is to engage with the reader in a theoretical reflection regarding the use of the seclusion room as a punitive nursing intervention (behaviour modification technique for instance). To set the stage, we explore the internal structure and functioning (culture) of the psychiatric institution Á as total institution Á from a Goffmanian perspective. Then, drawing on the works of the late French philosopher Michel Foucault, we introduce the concept of sovereign power and explore how various forms of punishment (as manifestations of power) came into play at different moments in history. Through an exploration of seclusion and its use in the psychiatric domain, we critically examine this practice when used as a behaviour modification technique. Finally, the use of seclusion is discussed in terms of the concept of sovereign power with the purpose of highlighting the political forces surrounding such a coercive practice in psychiatric nursing.

Unmasking the predicament of cultural voyeurism: a postcolonial analysis of international nursing... more Unmasking the predicament of cultural voyeurism: a postcolonial analysis of international nursing placements The growing interest in international nursing placements cannot be left unnoticed. After 11 years into this twenty-first century, violations of human rights and freedom of speech, environmental disasters, and armed conflicts still create dire living conditions for men and women around the world. Nurses have an ethical duty to address issues of social justice and global health as a means to fulfil nursing's social mandate. However, international placements raise some concerns. Drawing on the works of postcolonial theorists in nursing and social sciences, we examine the risk of replicating colonialist practices and discourses of health in international clinical placements. Referring to Bakhtin's notions of dialogism and unfinalizability, we envision a culturally safe nursing practice arising from dialogical encounters between the Self as an Other and with the Other as an Other. We suggest that exploring the intricacies of cultural and race relations in everyday nursing practice are the premises upon which nurses can understand the broader historic, racial, gendered, political and economic contexts of global health issues. Finally, we make suggestions for developing culturally safe learning opportunities at the international level without minimizing the impact of dialogical cultural encounters occurring at the local and community levels.

Knoxville was attacked with the most volatile, incendiary language. Inaccurate, misleading, or ot... more Knoxville was attacked with the most volatile, incendiary language. Inaccurate, misleading, or otherwise erroneous statements were made about the program without any effort to verify the soundness of the authors' inferences. That the authors were allowed to put forward inadequately supported, unverified claims and conclusions is cause for concern.

This paper reports the findings of a qualitative research conducted in a Canadian medium-security... more This paper reports the findings of a qualitative research conducted in a Canadian medium-security forensic psychiatric institution. The purpose of the study was to explore the way patient subjectivities are shaped in the admissions unit of the selected facility, using nursing progress notes as a primary source of data. More detailed findings from this study were published elsewhere. In this paper, I wish to focus specifically on the way a patient's course through the admissions unit begins a particular subjectivity-forming process described by Goffman as moral career. This paper discusses evidence, in nursing progress notes, of the onset of the patient's moral career. It also explores the way disciplinary power, devised by Foucault, is useful in understanding the establishment and the unfolding of the forensic subject's moral career.