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Equality is a basic human right. However, LGBTQ individuals often have their human rights violated because of their gender identity or sexual orientation. They also experience discrimination because of homophobic and transphobic attitudes. They frequently deal with derisive attitudes at school, are discriminated against in the workplace and struggle to access health services. This paper aims to determine the discriminatory attitudes of nurses in their social and professional lives toward LGBTQ individuals.

This study involved 503 nurses and used a questionnaire to examine their views regarding members of the LGBTQ community. The questionnaire consisted of 24 questions. Ten experts from the fields of social psychology, sociology, and nursing provided the necessary inputs, which were subsequently incorporated into the questionnaire.

The nurses were found to have a negative attitude toward LGBTQ individuals; they felt that they should not be allowed to live in comfort in Turkey and that they disrupted the social order and compromised public morality. It was observed that married (in general), male (in particular), and have fewer nursing education nurses are much more likely to have a discriminatory attitude toward LGBTQ people, and they were more discriminatory in their society rather than in their professional lives.

According to the principles of justice and equality, which are a prominent part of the nursing code of ethics – “With the awareness that all people have equal rights, the nurse serves regardless of race, language, religion, age, gender, belief, social and economic status and political opinion” – nurses should not have a discriminatory attitude. This study reveals the inequality and the ethical problems that riddle Turkey’s health sector.

This paper is a critique of Western modernity and the problems and promises of postmodernism in (re)liberating disaster studies. It criticizes metanarratives and grand theories of Western discourses to advance postmodern discourses in disaster studies.

This paper outlines a conceptual domain through which approaches of postmodernism can be employed to (re)liberate disaster studies.

Metanarratives and grand theories frame the scope and focus of disaster studies. But the increasing number and the aggravated impacts of disasters and environmental challenges in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are proofs that our current “frames” do not capture the complexities of disasters. Postmodernism, in its diversity and various meanings, offers critical and complementary perspectives and approaches to capture the previously neglected dimensions of disasters.

Postmodernism offers ways forward to (re)liberate disaster studies through ontological pluralism, epistemological diversity and hybridity of knowledge.

The agenda of postmodernism in disaster studies is proposed in terms of the focus of inquiry, ontological and epistemological positionalities, research paradigm, methodologies and societal goals.