23 February 2022
Event Date(s)/Period(s)
23 February 2022
Organised by
Centre for the Humanities and Medicine
The Spirit Ambulance (University of California Press 2020) is a journey into decision-making at the end of life in Thailand, where families attempt to craft good deaths for their elders in the face of clashing ethical frameworks generated by high-tech medical care, human-rights politics, and Buddhist metaphysics. Scott Stonington’s gripping ethnography documents how Thai families attempt to pay back a ‘debt of life’ to their elders through intensive medical care, followed by a medically assisted rush from the hospital to home to ensure a spiritually advantageous last breath. The result is a powerful exploration of the nature of death and the complexities arising from the globalization of biomedical expertise and ethics around the world.
Speaker:
Dr Scott Stonington, Assistant Professor of Anthropology & Internal Medicine, University of Michigan
Discussant:
Dr Jean Langford, Professor Emerita of Cultural Anthropology, University of Minnesota
Moderator: Dr Priscilla Song （宋柏萱）, Associate Professor, Centre for the Humanities and Medicine, HKU
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