At the cutting edge? Modernization and nostalgia in a hospital operating theatre department

Attempts by government to 'modernize' the British National Health Service involve constructing previous working practices and forms of organization as dysfunctional, whilst at the same time selectively drawing on nostalgic images of the NHS in an attempt to win public support for and employee commitment to modernization. The use of nostalgic and nostophobic discourses by government can be interpreted as an attempt not merely to adjust working patterns, but to mobilize particular individual and organizational identities and present alternative identities as illegitimate. This article draws on interviews and observations in a hospital operating theatre department to explore the ways in which hospital doctors use nostalgia to present an alternative, competing version of the world which challenge the discourse of modernization. We interpret the findings in the context of literatures concerned with nostalgia and identity.