Anticipatory Dying: Reflections Upon End of Life Experiences in a Thai Buddhist Hospice

Bruce L. Arnold

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.2.2.03

Authors

Bruce L. Arnold University of Calgary, Canada

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.2.2.03

Keywords:

Autoethnography, autobiography, palliative care, cognitive sociology, death and dying

Abstract

Death and dying offer an important paradox for investigation. Both are feared and to be avoided but also generate considerable reverence, curiosity and mystery. The latter is investigated through thick ethnographic data collected in a Thai Buddhist hospice and the following pages provide some description of an alternative cultural-spiritual framing of anticipating death. The former part of this paradox is explored using detailed autoethnographic-autobiographical data arising from the cognitiveemotional conflict between the researcher’s cultural schemata and the phenomena in which the research process is embedded. Sociological speculations are offered as to the value and insights of this methodological approach and to anticipating dying as an important phenomenon for further inquiry into everyday social life.

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Author Biography

Bruce L. Arnold, University of Calgary, Canada

Bruce Arnold (PhD) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. With a background in quantitative sociology and anthropology, his current research interests questions are located within sociological social cognition, sociology of emotions, and death and dying drawing from phenomenological, autoethnographic and narrative analysis methodologies. Current research includes death and dying, phenomenology of self, and emotion and small groups dynamics.

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