Death in Different Societies Essay

social science viewpoint toward death can be valuable both for society and for individuals. In most societies, death plays a major role in how lives are shaped. Certainly, the way that death is handled in society can differ, and governs attitudes that society has towards death. Social sciences can help us to understand a little bit more about how societies deal with death, and we can understand the role that death plays in our lives. The author in particular notes that more or how we live and die is connected to our societal views about death, and illustrates this with example of the shift away from death as a religious experience that occurred in the 19th century, and how this change was coincidental to other changes in how we lived our lives and how we defined our lives.

The social sciences can also be valuable to help us understand our own views on death. At the beginning of the chapter the author asks the rhetorical question about why we should interrupt our lives to think about death. The reality is that this will happen regardless -- we will lose people and will one day fact death ourselves. Having a better sense of how people deal with death can help us when the time comes that we must face these issues ourselves. This means that the social sciences can help any individual prepare for dealing with these issues by understanding how others deal with them.

Journal 5

There are a few different reasons why many minority groups have had little to no access to hospice care. One is that hospice care is to some extent seen as a luxury, something for which a premium economic price is paid. That limits access to groups that have less financial wealth. But there are other factors that might be even more important. One is that other cultures may have a different relationship with death, one that is significantly less compatible with hospice care than our own culture. We see hospice care as a means of giving comfort as we move towards death, because this fits with our society's understanding of death as a cold and lonely experience, one that goes in hand with suffering, pain, loneliness and emptiness. If other societies do not experience death the same way, then the people in those societies may well not even think to seek out hospice care. Hospice care is, after all, an extension of Western European tradition.

The author also notes that modern hospice care has a set of implicit standards that do not adequately take into account cultural preferences or unique individual preferences. Anybody with an interest in dying as themselves, of who they are and where they come from, would not likely want to end their life in a hospice where their individual humanity is ignored or actively reduced. While in the situation where hospice care's cost shuts people out this is…