ABSTRACT
This chapter elaborates the complexity of dying as a social process and one that is heavily inflected by emerging social movements including those of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and self-care. It focuses on the experiences of cancer patients, although the analysis extends well beyond this particular disease. The chapter illustrates that while CAM practitioners and cancer 'gurus' may foster and facilitate biomedical prognostic resistance, such reframings may also pose new problems and reductive potential. CAM practitioners may promote and enhance certain processes within the context of advanced cancer care including facilitating self-actualisation, empowerment and promoting an active role in the healing process. There is an increasing array of ontological and epistemological dilemmas in cancer and around 'terminality' that also involve significant practitioner disagreements over who is dying and what possibilities exist for care and healing. As a general rule, CAM practitioners do not focus on the terminality of disease or indeed on biomedically-conceived survival chances.
