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Social Science Cultural

Social Palliation

Canadian Muslims' Storied Lives on Living and Dying

by (author) Parin Dossa

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Oct 2020
Category
Cultural, General, General
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781487505233
    Publish Date
    Oct 2020
    List Price
    $93.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781487525309
    Publish Date
    Oct 2020
    List Price
    $38.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781487531812
    Publish Date
    Oct 2020
    List Price
    $38.95

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Description

Social Palliation is a pioneering study on living and dying as articulated by first-generation Iranian and Ismaili Muslim communities in Canada. Using ethnographic narratives, Parin Dossa makes a case for a paradigm shift from palliative care to social palliation.

 

Experiences of displacement and resettlement reveal that life and death must be understood as an integrated unit if we are to appreciate what it is like to be awakened to our human existence. In the wake of structural exclusion and systemic suffering, social palliation brings to light displaced persons’ endeavours to restore the integrity of life and death. Dossa highlights the point that death conjoined with life is embedded within the socio-cultural and spiritual experience. Here, a caring society is not perceived in fragments, as is the case with traditional institutional care or care offered during end-of-life. Rather, Dossa draws attention to an organic form of caring, illustrated through the trajectories of storied lives. In exemplifying more humane aspects of social palliation, this book foregrounds sacred traditions to illustrate their potential to evoke deep-level conversations across socio-political boundaries on what it is like to live and die in the contemporary world.

About the author

Parin Dossa is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. She is the co-producer of two videos, New Voices: Ethnic Elders in Canada and Out of the Shadows: Narratives of Women with Development Disabilities, and has written extensively on migration, gender, and health.

Parin Dossa's profile page