A classic text that documents the "work" of everyday life in a nursing home. In 1973 sociologist Jaber F. Gubrium spent several months at a nursing home as a participant-observer. Through his observations, interviews, and transcriptions, Gubrium recounts case studies of clients, doctors, the dynamics between them, patient socialization, and the intimacies of daily hygiene.
Using data drawn from interviews with nursing home residents, Gubrium explores the quality of long-term care they receive and the resulting quality of their lives. In their own voices, these “long-stayers” reveal themselves to be biographically active and widely diverse in their concern and involvement with home, family, life history, dependence, isolation and self-worth. The resulting text provides conceptual, methodological and personal lessons as offered by storytellers whose special circumstances continue to have meaning even at the very end of life.
This book presents reflexive first-hand accounts from the authors of major book-length ethnographies, recounting how they generated their key ideas in the practice of field research. This volume provides a fresh approach to teaching qualitative research by encouraging students to think creatively and theoretically in the field.
The fortieth-anniversary edition of a classic and prescient work on death and dying. Much of today's literature on end-of-life issues overlooks the importance of 1970s social movements in shaping our understanding of death, dying, and the dead body. This anniversary edition of Lyn Lofland's The Craft of Dying begins to repair this omission. Lofland identifies, critiques, and theorizes 1970s death movements, including the Death Acceptance Movement, the Death with Dignity Movement, and the Natural Death movement. All these groups attempted to transform death into a “positive experience,” anticipating much of today's death and dying activism. Lofland turns a sociologist's eye on the era's increased interest in death, considering, among other things, the components of the modern “face of death” and the “craft of dying,” the construction of a dying role or identity by those who are dying, and the constraints on their freedom to do this. Lofland wrote just before the AIDS epidemic transformed the landscape of death and dying in the West; many of the trends she identified became the building blocks of AIDS activism in the 1980s and 1990s. The Craft of Dying will help readers understand contemporary death social movements' historical relationships to questions of race, class, gender, and sexuality and is a book that everyone interested in end-of-life politics should read.
“A fascinating attempt to marry personal experience with academic analysis to help us all reconceive of one option for later-life living.” —The Huffington Post When her husband’s ill health forces them to move into an assisted living facility, Anne M. Wyatt-Brown suddenly finds herself surrounded by elderly residents. In this lively and provocative collection, other distinguished gerontologists reflect on Anne’s moving account of her transition to becoming a member of a vibrant and sociable community that offers care-giving support, while encouraging her to pursue her own interests, including exercising, reviewing articles for scholarly journals, serving on committees, and singing. By redefining notions of care and community, undoing the stigmas of aging, and valuing the psychological factors involved in accepting assistance, this volume provides a bold new framework for thinking about aging, continuing care, making the big move to a retirement community, and living with vitality in the new environment. “We have very few accounts of gerontologists who have grown old, and never before a memoir by a gerontologist who moved into a long-term care facility. This book is not only a first, but is a remarkable and riveting account of challenges all of us must contemplate . . . memorable and compelling.” —Rick Moody, retired Vice President for Academic Affairs, AARP “Readers will be drawn to this book for its clarity and candidness. It will appeal to people of all ages, but especially to the large cohort of readers aging into later life and facing important choices about their own care and that of their partners.” —Barbara Frey Waxman, author of To Live in the Center of the Moment
In the fourth edition of his best-selling textbook, David Silverman provides a step-by-step guide to planning and conducting qualitative research. Using real examples from real postgraduate students, the book makes it easy to link theory to methods and shows how to move from understanding the principles of qualitative research to doing it yourself. The new edition has been fully updated and now includes: - a brand new chapter on formulating a research question appropriate for qualitative research - an expanded discussion of the role of theory in research - extended discussion of case study research and the number of cases needed for effective qualitative research - further coverage of focus groups and analysing internet data - new student examples from around the world - a new section on the common pitfalls encountered in qualitative research - an expanded companion website with more student examples and videos. Filled with exercises to test your understanding and develop your skills, as well as David's own tips for research success based on years of experience, this book is essential reading for anyone doing qualitative research. Available with Perusall—an eBook that makes it easier to prepare for class Perusall is an award-winning eBook platform featuring social annotation tools that allow students and instructors to collaboratively mark up and discuss their SAGE textbook. Backed by research and supported by technological innovations developed at Harvard University, this process of learning through collaborative annotation keeps your students engaged and makes teaching easier and more effective. Learn more.
How do Americans cope with death? Do our feelings about dying influence the way we live? How are our ideas of death different from those of our ancestors? These questions and others are addressed in this innovative new book -- a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to the processes, practices, and experiences concerning death and dying in the United States. Drawing on sociology and psychology as well as history and literature, John S. Stephenson surveys the range of individual and social responses to death -- from our very conception of its meaning to the complex ethical dilemmas surrounding suicide and euthanasia. Stephenson synthesizes a theoretical perspective of death from the contributions of such important thinkers as Freud, Jung, Ernest Becker, and Robert Jay Lifton. He reviews the evolution of American attitudes and behaviors toward death -- from the Puritan era to the present, and charts the significance of such organizations for the dying as hospitals, hospices, and nursing homes. Bereavement as both personal reaction (grief) and social convention (mourning) is also discussed, as is the denial of death as a coping mechanism for individuals and institutions alike. In his final chapters, Stephenson analyzes the ceremonies of death (including gravestones as social indicators) and provides a psychosocial overview of suicide as a final, desperate attempt to assert control. He concludes by exploring the implications of euthanasia at a time when technology can extend life dramatically but is not always capable of assuring its quality. Throughout, authentic case examples -- many drawn from Stephenson's own clinical work -- illustrate the multi-faceted imagery and experiences that comprise the American way of death. Stephenson's book will be welcomed by sociologists, psychologists, social workers, religious leaders, nurses, and others concerned with caring for the dying and the bereaved. It is a brilliant and elegantly written work that crosses disciplinary boundaries to provide a valuable synthesis of existing knowledge and offer educators and professionals a firm foundation for teaching, practice, and research.
Davies' study of institutional life is multi-textured, informed by social and architectural theory while telling us much about daily life in these facilities. We learn about angry rebellion and harsh discipline, fun and festivals, death and compassion. And we see how the twentieth century witnessed the gradual withdrawal of these institutions from the life of the community, further enhancing the marginal place of the old age home in our society. Chronicling the evolution of professional ideas about residential care facilities and an innovative program to move elderly patients out of acute care hospital beds, Into the House of Old provides a context for understanding this problematic institution as both an offspring of the poor law and a product of the post-Second World War expansion of state medical services.
Our experiences of dying have been shaped by ancient ideas about death and social responsibility at the end of life. From Stone Age ideas about dying as otherworld journey to the contemporary Cosmopolitan Age of dying in nursing homes, Allan Kellehear takes the reader on a 2 million year journey of discovery that covers the major challenges we will all eventually face: anticipating, preparing, taming and timing for our eventual deaths. This book, first published in 2007, is a major review of the human and clinical sciences literature about human dying conduct. The historical approach of this book places our recent images of cancer dying and medical care in broader historical, epidemiological and global context. Professor Kellehear argues that we are witnessing a rise in shameful forms of dying. It is not cancer, heart disease or medical science that presents modern dying conduct with its greatest moral tests, but rather poverty, ageing and social exclusion.
