Contributors: Deborah Lindell and Peggy Chinn
Updated January 19, 2024

Blogs related to emancipatory and sociopolitical knowing

Emancipatory knowing is “The human capacity to be aware of and critically reflect on the social, cultural, and political status quo and to figure out how and why it came to be that way” (Chinn, P. , 2017, p. 143).  Emancipatory knowing focuses on the knowledge required to remove barriers that make health and well-being difficult or impossible for those who are disadvantaged and create environments that promote health and well-being for all.  Emancipatory knowing is integral to empirical, ethical, personal, and aesthetic knowing. 

Sociopolitical knowing focuses specifically on the environment of care – the policies and  institutional practices that influence nursing practice.  Structural competence, a concept that arose out of medicine, has parallels to emancipatory and sociopolitical knowing in nursing.  Structural competence posits that, “if clinicians are to impact stigma-related health inequalities”, they must “shift their gaze from an exclusive focus on the individual encounter to include the organization of institutions and policies, as well as of neighborhoods and cities” (Metzl & Hansen, 2014, p. 3). 

Emancipatory knowing addresses the following questions:

• Who benefits? 
• What is wrong with this picture?
• What are the barriers to freedom?
• What changes are needed?

Nurses who engage in emancipatory and sociopolitical knowing recognize the interdependence of humans, health, and the environment as well as the critical impact of the social determinants on health of individuals, families, communities, and the world. Although it is always necessary to advocate for individual patients, nurses must take action to collaborate with other healthcare professionals and community leaders to promote equity in all aspects of society, particularly access to health care and health outcomes. 

Resources

Nurse Manifest: A Call to Conscience and Action. https://nursemanifest.com/

Nursology.net blog posts related to emancipatory and sociopolitical knowing – https://nursology.net/category/emancipatory-nursing/

Anderson, Joan. (2014). Foreword: Social Justice: Continuing the Dialogue. In Paula N. Kagan, Marlaine C. Smith, & Peggy L. Chinn (Eds.), Philosophies And Practices Of Emancipatory Nursing: Social Justice As Praxis (pp. xi – xvi). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Chinn, P. (2017). Critical Theory and Emancipatory Knowing in Butts, J. & Rich, K.,  Philosophies and theories for advanced nursing practice (3rd. ed., pp. 143-162).  Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Chinn, Peggy L., Kramer, Maeona K., & Sitzman, Kathleen. (2022). Knowledge Development in Nursing: Theory and Process (11th ed.). Elsevier.

Georges, Jane. (2014). Compassion, Biopower and Nursing. In Paula Kagan, Marlaine Smith, & Peggy L. Chinn (Eds.), Philosophies and Practices of Emancipatory Nursing: Social Justice as Praxis. Routledge.

Hartrick-Doane, Gweneth. (2014). Cultivating relational consciousness in social justice practice. In Paula N. Kagan, Marlaine C. Smith, & Peggy L. Chinn (Eds.), Philosophies and practices of emancipatory nursing: Social justice as praxis. Routledge.

Kagan, Paula N., Smith, Marlaine C., & Chinn, Peggy L. (2014a). Introduction. In Paula N. Kagan, Marlaine C. Smith, & Peggy L. Chinn (Eds.), Philosophies And Practices Of Emancipatory Nursing: Social Justice As Praxis (pp. 1–20). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Kagan, Paula N., Smith, Marlaine C., & Chinn, Peggy L. (Eds.). (2014b). Philosophies and Practices of Emancipatory Nursing: Social Justice as Praxis. Routledge.

Kagan, Paula N., Smith, Marlaine C., Cowling, W. Richard, & Chinn, Peggy L. (2009). A Nursing Manifesto: An Emancipatory Call for Knowledge Development, Conscience, and Praxis. Nursing Philosophy: An International Journal for Healthcare Professionals, 11, 67–84. DOI: 10.1111/j.1466-769X.2009.00422.x

Metzel, J. & Hanson, H. (2014). Structural competency: Theorizing a new medical engagement with stigma and inequality. Soc Sci Med. 103: 126–133. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.06.032.

Thorne, Sally. (2014). Nursing as Social Justice: A Case for Emancipatory Disciplinary Theorizing. In Paula Kagan, Marlaine Smith, & Peggy L. Chinn (Eds.), Philosophies and Practices of Emancipatory Nursing: Social Justice as Praxis (pp. 79–90). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

White, Jill. (1995). Patterns of knowing: Review, critique, and update. ANS. Advances in Nursing Science, 17, 73–86.

White, Jill. (2014). Through a Socio-political Lens: The relationship of practice, education, research and policy to social justice. In Paula N. Kagan, Peggy L. Chinn, & Marlaine C. Smith (Eds.), Philosophies and Practices of Emancipatory Nursing: Social Justice as Praxis (pp. 298–308). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Willis, Danny G., Perry, Donna, LaCoursiere-Zucchero, Terri, & Grace, Pamela. (2014). Facilitating Humanization: Liberating the Profession of Nursing from Institutional Confinement on Behalf of Social Justice. In Paula Kagan, Marlaine Smith, & Peggy Chinn (Eds.), Philosophies and Practices of Emancipatory Nursing: Social Justice as Praxis (pp. 251–265). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.