| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
| Senescence, decline and the quest for a good death: contemporary dilemmas and historical antecedents | | Author(s) | Sharon R Kaufman |
| Journal title | Journal of Aging Studies, vol 14, no 1, March 2000 |
| Pages | pp 1-24 |
| Keywords | Death ; Biological ageing ; Hospital services ; Histories. |
| Annotation | Discussion of the problem of death in America is widespread and focuses on the cultural ideal of death with dignity in tension with the pain, suffering, and lack of autonomy thought to be brought about by hospital technologies that prolong dying. Despite the public discourse on age, ethical care, and rationing, age itself is not invoked in the cultural conversation about the problem of dying. This paper draws attention to age to explore, first, why contemporary practices underlying the idea of death with dignity are so hard to achieve and, second, how historical conceptualisations of normal and pathological ageing have contributed to the contemporary problem. Two case examples drawn from an ethnographic study of how death occurs in the hospital are used to illustrate the confounding of old age and disease and the difficulty of disentangling pathology from normal decline in later life. (AKM). |
| Accession Number | CPA-000522248 A |
| Classmark | CW: BH: LD: 6A |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|