The Organization of Life before Death in Two Québec Cultural Configurations

Abstract

This article is based on data from a doctoral thesis about the “anthropology of life-threatening, death and time.” [1] The interpretation is made from twelve life reviews set at homes of people who suffered a serious, but not necessarily fatal illness. Two-cultural configurations are chosen along the axis of rural-urban polarity. It focuses on three types of solidarity, facing the awareness of death: 1) the ethnographic position, in data gathering and analysis. Specific propositions are given concerning the subject and intersubjectivity, cultural generalization of personal experiences, and scientific criteria; 2) what helps cope with illness. Pre-death practices are structured on the basic concept of resistance to illness and preparation for death practices rely on a coherence “test.” The genealogy of practices emerge in six situational and seven historical factors; 3) the conditions of a new type of rite before death and its functions, beside the institutionalization of illness and death.