This special issue puts sociology in conversation with burgeoning palliative care scholarship addressing questions of wellbeing. Biomedical approaches continue to dominate approaches to care and caregiving within palliative and end-of-life contexts. Although palliative care is broadly acknowledged to call for human-centred forms of practice and care, relationality and social aspects are often lowlighted with conversations dominated by questions of its modelling, measuring, and funding. This special issue poses sociological challenges and alternative approaches to practice in public health systems.
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Wellbeing in palliative care is receiving a renewed sense of urgency in the context of care of older people with complex health issues, new pharmaceuticals (e.g., medicinal cannabis), health and social care workforce challenges and digital health (e.g., remote monitoring, robotic assistive care). Voluntary Assisted Dying legislation, in some jurisdictions, and associated conversations creates debate over conceptualisations of quality of life and wellbeing, the notion of a ‘good death’ and how this relates to issues of wellbeing, identity, ethics, equity, and care.
Thus, this special issue aims to showcase sociological contributions examining the public provision of care (clinical, non-clinical), but also notions of compassionate communities and support for ‘third places’ of care. This might include manuscripts focusing on:
- How measurements of wellbeing constrain and/or open possibilities of care;
- Relational aspects of wellbeing including the socio-affective roles that patients may hold, and relations across patients, caregivers, clinicians, and communities;
- Death literacy in the community and among service providers;
- How policy rhetoric shapes and constructs understandings of wellbeing;
- Creative responses and practices that seek to challenge normative ways of thinking about living while dying;
- The self in living with a life-limiting diagnosis;
- Accommodating cultural safety and Indigenous approaches within palliative care;
- Considerations of aesthetic and arts-based aspects of care; and
- Organising future palliative care where wellbeing is centred, including care beyond the hospital.
In seeking alternate, sociological theory-informed ways of thinking through palliative care we invite papers that adopt a broad range of theoretical and methodological approaches, including but not limited to restorative, new materialist, post qualitative and ethnographic work.
Key dates
Submit abstracts by 13th February 2024
Submit full papers by June 12th 2024
Special issue publication in March 2025
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