ABSTRACT
Advances in medical technology are responsible for our increased life expectancy and, it is argued, for unique experiences of aging and dying as well. The criteria by which illness is diagnosed and people are assigned to the category of the dying are cultural constructs that have more to do with ideology than with physiology or medical technology. The response of people to the approaching death of a relative or friend has more to do with the perceived cause of death and the status of the dying person than with the society’s level of medical technology. Some Melanesians consider sleep, illness, and death to be transformations of each other, and death becomes a reversible process with boundaries that are contextually defined rather than an absolute and irreversible state. Our experience with death in a village community in Papua, New Guinea suggests to us that Lofland’s generalizations require modification.
