“death Primarily Belongs to the Dying”: a Contribution to the Anthropology of Death and Dying

Through ethnography of the particular –– by analysis of the experience of dying parents and the experience lived through by offspring during the process of their dying –– this paper opens up certain issues regarding the contemporary stance towards illness, death, and the treatment and care of the sick. Within the framework of anthropological, historical and psychological literature, the author weighs the culturally constructed perceptions, the patterns and the emotions connected with particular diseases (cancer) and the question of the dying patient as the intimate Other within the family, but also ventures into certain relevant questions from the sphere of the medical and overall social treatment of patients and the dying, for example, that of the primacy of curative over the palliative medicine, of the de cit in holistic overview of the patient and his/her illness, and that of primary importance concerning the communication between patient and physician and the patient’’s family and the physician.