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

Annemarie Samuels gives guest lecture on Medical Anthropology in Banda Aceh, Indonesia

June 8, 2022 No Comments

Friday 10 June 2022 Annemarie Samuels will give a guest lecture on Medical Anthropology: Culture, Care & Illness. In this Lecture in the Guest Lecture Series of the International Center of Aceh and Indian Ocean Studies in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, Annemarie Samuels will speak about Medical Anthropology. She will discuss how medical anthropologists study the ways in which people understand illness, care and the body; approach medicine as a cultural practice; and develop critical theory about the unequal distribution of health.

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Lemos Dekker invited speaker on Symposium ‘For the time being’ in Aarhus, Denmark

April 29, 2022 No Comments

In the symposium ‘For the time being – temporality, ethics, aging: Conversations between anthropology, art and philosophy’ the main question is: How do temporal perspectives on lived time and time left change with old age and what are the roles of inter-and intra-generational dynamics in elderly’s perspectives on past, present and future life challenges and horizons? In her presentation, Natashe Lemos Dekker shed light on the divergent temporalities that are at play in requesting euthanasia with dementia in the Netherlands. Particularly, she addresses the use of written statements that describe the wish for euthanasia of the person with dementia as a tool to resolve temporal dissonances and transfer responsibility to family members. 

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Annemarie Samuels argues in Dutch newspaper Trouw for better conversations about death

March 25, 2022 No Comments

In the opinion article ‘Maak praten over de dood niet tot een morele plicht’ (Don’t turn talking about death into a moral obligation) Annemarie Samuels argues together with Liesbeth van Vliet, Marike de Meij and Sander de Hosson that it is important to have conversations about death and dying but that we need to be careful not to make talking about death a moral obligation. The article (in Dutch) is published in the Dutch newspaper Trouw on 25 March 2022.

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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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