Reading Wendell Berry on Health for Nursing Education

• In Event: Pedagogies of Responsibility as Relationships of Healing: Wendell Berry, Eco-Justice, and Education

Abstract

The concept health is constructed within socioeconomic, political, cultural, and ecological contexts that affect how personnel in the nursing fields practice. Practicing nurses and nurse educators define health as the absence of illness. In contrast to the dominant perspectives of health in nursing, Wendell Berry argued for a definition of health from an essential interdependence with the Earth.
Grounded in Berry’s vision this paper discusses a case study of seven nurse educator/scholars whose work exemplifies aspects of this broad ecological vision.

Author

• Kristi Wilson, University of Michigan - Flint