Biomedicalization of Death: The Social Impact of Life Support Technology in Bangladesh. (360G-Wellcome-105005_Z_14_Z)

This project aims to understand the biomedicalization (Clarke et al 2003) of death in the cultural context of contemporary Bangladesh. This study will carry out by ethnographic research to explore biomedical and social practices in four hospitals in Chittagong and Dharka. Recent developments in biotechnology have resulted in the production of new forms of life and death. Life-prolonging technologies encompass the possibility to modify elementary processes of life leading to redefinitions of he alth, illness, and death and also have made the determination and definition of death difficult and controversial. A seemingly insoluble tension exists in relation to the life prolonging technologys relationship to the dying patients family members. This research will explore how family members manage the end-of-life decision of close kin who are on life support in hospitals and how do class, gender, religion and morality impact on this decision-making? This research also focuses on how econom ic status affects access to different levels of technological intervention and therefore shapes different experiences of death.