Tag Archives: ethnography

Understanding hospital palliative care as an affective economy

If, like me, you are a citizen of the global North, the statistical probability is that you–after a protracted illness–will spend your last days and die in an acute-care hospital. Increasingly, a good death in these institutions calls for a specific form of medical expertise–palliative care. As a medical anthropologist, one of my main research… Continue reading

The challenges of hospital ethnography in a palliative care setting

What can ethnographic research contribute to our understanding of palliative care in institutional settings? In this podcast, medical anthropologists Dr Marian Krawczyk and Dr Shahaduz Zaman compare their experiences of undertaking hospital ethnographies in Western Canada and in Bangladesh. They talk about the challenges and strengths of ethnography, and discuss the ethical issues of undertaking… Continue reading