ABSTRACT
In this chapter dying reveals much about our social and cultural understandings of and relationship to the body. The body has too often been sidelined in the sociology of health and illness. The palliative and hospice literature has tended to assume that the body is central at the end of life without actually exploring the social and cultural meanings ascribed to bodily decay, disintegration and loss of bodily control. In dying, and as embodied actors, we break down many of the ritual boundaries of social life, producing, as Waskul and van der Riet posit, humiliating moral connotations. The hospice patients regularly talked about how their bodies and symptoms impacted on visitors including family and friends. The hospice staff themselves were not always experienced by the participants as immune from the cultural sensibilities of, and desires for, bodily integrity labour cannot be disconnected from cultural practices.
