Sociology 2179A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: The Slippery Slope, Nazi Eugenics, Medical Investigation
16 Apr 2016
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Thus: death is typically experienced at the end of a long life, experience of dying is linked to the experience of being old, changing paterns of disease in wealthier countries. Death from chronic disease (cancer, heart disease, stroke) rather than from infecious and parasiic diseases. Rising incidence of demenia and thus rise in social care needs of people near death. Social exclusion of elderly people into care homes. Increasingly subject to professional management and insituions -> more deaths in hospitals and less at home. Parsons: modern socieies are death airming; efecively organized to control death. Thus, cultural authority of medicine over the meaning of modern dying. Awareness of dying (glaser and strauss 1965): four awareness contexts in which dying can occur: Closed: dying person is unaware that they are dying, but relaives and caregivers are aware. Suspicion: dying person suspects what others know, and atempts to conirm or invalidate that suspicion.
