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Dying with dignity.

T N Madan1

  • 1Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, India.

Social Science & Medicine (1982)
|August 1, 1992
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Traditional cultures viewed death positively, but Western societies medicalized it, transforming it into a secular, manipulated event. This shift diminished personal freedom and dignity, with medical jargon replacing everyday language and cultural attitudes towards dying.

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Area of Science:

  • Cultural Anthropology
  • Medical Sociology
  • Thanatology

Background:

  • Historically, diverse cultures, including Christian, Hindu, and Jain traditions, held positive or neutral attitudes toward death.
  • Death was not viewed dualistically as good/bad or desirable/undesirable, nor was pessimism prevalent.
  • A significant shift occurred in the West during the 18th century, desacralizing death and framing it as a secular, manageable event.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To analyze the historical paradigm shift in Western societies regarding the interpretation and management of death.
  • To examine the consequences of the medicalization of dying and death.
  • To explore the global spread and impact of Western medicalized death culture.

Main Methods:

  • Historical analysis of cultural and societal attitudes towards death.
Keywords:
Death and EuthanasiaJainism

Related Experiment Videos

  • Sociological examination of the medicalization process and its effects.
  • Cross-cultural comparison of death-related beliefs and practices.

    • Main Results:

    • The 18th-century Western paradigm shift transformed death into a secular, technologically managed event.
    • Medicalization led to hospitals replacing homes, specialists replacing families, and medical jargon supplanting traditional language.
    • The dying individual, once a subject, became an object of professional control, losing autonomy, self-assessment, freedom, and dignity.

    Conclusions:

    • The Western medical model of death, originating in the 18th century, has become globally pervasive.
    • This model subordinates diverse cultural knowledge and attitudes towards dying and death.
    • The process results in a loss of personal freedom and dignity for the dying individual.