{"ops":[{"insert":"Friends, I am new to this online community and this is my first discussion posting to my first discussion group within this community.\n\n My background: nurse for 40 years, nurse educator for 25 years in public health, specialties include gerontology and home health nursing. I've also worked extensively in global health: Fulbright as visiting lecturer to graduate nursing students in Uganda twice and study abroad in Geneva, Switzerland each May for six years with a focus on global public health.\n\nI've browsed through many of online libraries and have enjoyed many of the publications a great deal. However, I did read something in Thinking Critically about Identities which gave me pause.\n\nOn page 3 of this article, the writer asserts what he has been building up to: that identities are socially constructed and not based in \"reality\" or a \"given.\" These identities include qualities like gender or race.\n\nWhile I believe there is ample evidence that our societies influence our identities and roles within the society, I question whether \"society\" is adequate to explain in a deterministic way the complexity of anyone's identity. \n\nThis seems to me to be the dogma of academia and the media today and I hear very little questioning of it.\n\nOne could argue that any human quality which exists on a continuum such as health, illness, richness, poorness, youngness, oldness, and all manner of handicaps has a significant social influence in their defining characteristics but I doubt that social influence is the only or even the most important influence in their definition.\n\nThank you for allowing me to share my concerns.\n\nRuby Dunlap\n\n\n\n\n"}]}