打印

作者

来源

JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY,Vol.46,Issue6,P.647-672

语言

英文

关键字

death competence; occupational knowledge; labor ethnography; death and dying; Global aging; HEALTH-CARE ASSISTANTS; NURSING-HOME; AGED CARE; WORK; NURSES; ETHNOGRAPHY; POPULATION; RESIDENTS; DEMENTIA; FAMILIES

作者单位

[Erickson, Karla A.] Grinnell Coll, Sociol, Grinnell, IA 50112 USA. Erickson, KA (reprint author), Grinnell Coll, Grinnell, IA 50112 USA. E-Mail: ericksok@grinnell.edu

摘要

End-of-life workers, regardless of occupational status, work against a transformed culture of death and dying. Against that backdrop of technological brinkmanship, segregation of aging and dying from other aspects of life, and a cultural denial of death's inevitability, end-of-life workers develop competence and expertise; however, that competence varies, shaped by the training and occupational status of its purveyors. Based on three years of participant observation and interviews with end-of-life laborers, I identify two types of death competenceintimate and contextualthat develop at different levels of the occupational hierarchy. One situates death philosophically and morally, the other garners insight from the body to sustain elders' personhood in the face of diminishing capacities. These ways of knowing are valuable in a death-denying culture. Surfacing the less apparent expertise of nurse's aides also contributes to existing social theory about death competence and raises questions about occupational knowledge more generally.