Globalizing Palliative Care

About Us

Palliative care services are increasingly emerging in diverse cultural settings around the globe. Given the large cultural diversity in end-of-life care practices, we ask: How do global palliative care practices translate to various cultural contexts? How do they impact local notions of death and dying? And how, in turn, do culturally diverse practices of end-of-life care shape the practice of palliative care? This project studies the globalization and cultural mediation of palliative care practices, policies and discourses. Our ethnographic research focuses on three countries that are currently building a system of professional palliative care provisions:

Palliative care services are increasingly emerging in diverse cultural settings around the globe. Given the large cultural diversity in end-of-life care practices, we ask: How do global palliative care practices translate to various cultural contexts?

How do they impact local notions of death and dying? And how, in turn, do culturally diverse practices of end-of-life care shape the practice of palliative care?

This project studies the globalization and cultural mediation of palliative care practices, policies and discourses. Our ethnographic research focuses on three countries that are currently building a system of professional palliative care provisions:
Icon Indonesia_128x128px_web
Indonesia
India
Brazil

In Indonesia palliative care is most developed in a few large tertiary hospitals, but is currently including a growing number professional initiatives across the archipelago. Ethnographic research will focus mainly on Jakarta and Banda Aceh.

India has multiple promising palliative care programmes and initiatives, amongst others a successful community-based palliative care system in Kerala. Research for this project focuses on end-of-life care in the capital of India: New Delhi.

In Brazil, palliative care units and initiatives are concentrated in urban centers and mostly located in hospitals. The research will both take place in institutions and follow families in the home setting. Fieldwork will be carried out in the metropolitan context of Sao Paulo and smaller towns in southern Brazil.

News & Events

Bookcover The Occupied Clinic

7 june Online Book Talk ‘The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir’

May 17, 2021 No Comments

Dr. Saiba Varma (University of California, San Diego) will introduce her new book The Occupied Clinic: Militarism and Care in Kashmir (Duke University Press 2020) on Monday 7 June. This event is co-organized by the Leiden Institute of Area Studies, and the Asia Research Cluster and ERC Globalizing Palliative Care project at the Leiden University Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology.

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21 May Online Book Talk ‘Silence and Sacrifice’ by Dr. Merav Shohet

April 13, 2021 No Comments

Dr. Merav Shohet (Boston University) will discuss her new book: Silence and Sacrifice: Family Stories of Care and the Limits of Love in Vietnam (University of California Press, April 2021) during the next online Book Talk on Friday 21 May 2021. This engaging ethnographic monograph makes a powerful contribution to psychological, medical and linguistic anthropology and Vietnam studies. 

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Institute of Cultural Anthropology 

and Development Sociology

 

Leiden University
Wassenaarseweg 52
2333 AK Leiden
The Netherlands
a.samuels@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
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