Autonomy and caring: towards a Marxist understanding of nursing work

The aim of this paper is to re‐examine nursing work from a Marxist perspective by means of a critique of two key concepts within nursing: autonomy and caring. Although Marx wrote over 150 years ago, many see continuing relevance to his theories. His concepts of capital, ideology and class antagonism are employed in this paper. Nursing's historical insertion into the developing hospital system is seen in terms of a loss of autonomy covered over by the development of cults of loyalty toward those institutions, while the concept of emotional labour is used to re‐examine nursing's high valuing of “caring” and to understand it as potentially exploitative of nurses. Raising awareness of this alternative way of understanding nursing work can become a first step toward change

Market competition in upper secondary education: : Perceived effects on teachers’ work

The development and expansion of market solutions is one of the mostimportant changes in Swedish education in the last 30 years. The aim of the article is todescribe and analyse how students and staff in upper secondary schools perceive the impactof market competition on teachers’ work. Three groups of actors in two Swedish regionswere interviewed: students, teachers and principals. The interviews were carried out at eightschools in five municipalities, at both public and independent schools. The results show thatcompetition relations are more complex than is often assumed. Intensification of teachers’work is a common theme in the interviews. Traditional professional values and identities arechallenged by the market competition and a market-oriented teacher is shaped – whetherthe teachers like it or not. The extension of teachers’ tasks is increasingly about marketing. Anew type of service-minded and flexible teacher is created. Regarding the effects ofcompetition on teacher performance, the results are contradictory. The quality discourse isproblematised as there is no evident link between winners in the school competition and thequality of teaching and student outcomes. The Swedish case is interesting in theinternational literature as an example of a rapidly growing upper secondary school marketwhich is closer to the logic of the market than many other nations’ school systems