Renegade stories : a study of deathworkers using social approaches to dying, death and loss in Australia

  • Kerrie Noonan

Western Sydney University thesis: Doctoral thesis

Abstract

In Australia, our population is ageing, our morbidity rates are low, and our health and aged care services are under pressure to modernise. This is a very particular and urgent time to critically examine the care and support available to people who are dying, and their families. It is a period of revival and innovation on the one hand (Swerissen & Ducket, 2014; Walter, 1994) and a space that continues to be dominated by a conservative and largely professionalised death system on the other. Despite the best efforts of the reformers and activists you will meet in this research, end-of-life care and deathcare has not fundamentally changed since the last critical turn, the modern hospice movement began in the late 1960s. Renegade Stories is a qualitative and critical examination of the lived experiences of 12 deathworkers in Australia who, despite the dominant biomedical paradigm, are guided by a social approach to dying, death and loss. In examining their lived experiences, this thesis embodies the change that is occurring about how people experience death. It does this by asking: What are the stories and experiences of deathworkers who have a social approach to death, dying and loss? How is this deathwork shaped and influenced? And, How are they making a difference? Renegades, like many other activists in the end-of-life and deathcare space are struggling to find ways to have their perspective and experiences heard above the dominant approach toward death and dying. This thesis, in a small way, provides a space for their experiences to be heard.
Date of Award2018
Original languageEnglish

Keywords

  • death
  • social aspects
  • terminal care
  • palliative treatment
  • conduct of life
  • attitudes
  • social change
  • Australia

Cite this

'