ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on developing a critical sociology of the hospice as concurrently enabling but also significantly disabling in certain situations. It explores the tensions and complexities people can experience when entering the hospice environment to die, situating the analysis within broader sociological concerns around the medicalisation and sequestration of dying as manifest in the hospice movement. The major developments over of the twentieth century in care for the dying saw significant improvements in support, including more systematic control over pain and physiological suffering, but in turn raised important questions around the extent to which dying could be managed as a clinical problem. As a place for dying, hospice and specialist in patient palliative care is constantly evolving and has many forms across different countries and cultural contexts. The environment of the hospice in-patient unit also held a plethora of contradictions, presenting a space of hope and life, but also of complex emotions and struggles around authenticity and identity.
