Reading between the lives: the sociality of volunteering in palliative care

An accepted assumption that permeates much of contemporary Western culture and especially research contexts is the need to solve, fix and/or surmount perceived ‘problems’. Generally speaking, the moral imperative that informs this attitude is that the resulting resolutions will improve people’s lives. In turn and unfortunately, a pragmatism of haste can often accompany this goal. Perhaps nowhere else is this paradigm clearer than in the realm of medical care; medical institutions making it their raison d'être to cure illness and overcome disease as quickly and efficiently as possible. The palliative setting poses a unique conundrum for this way of thinking insofar as the fate awaiting terminal patients is inevitable death: something that cannot be remedied or negotiated. Despite this, the ‘solutions-based’ logic outlined above tends to prevail in these spaces, often tied up in models of care that routinely assume what patients (and, indeed, carers) need, how their identities are forged and lived, what motivates them to act in particular ways and, importantly, who gives what to whom. Implicitly, this involves certain assumptions regarding the power relations animating interactions between patients and carers. This thesis will question the value of problem-solving ‘efficiencies’. It does so by examining power relations in end-of-life settings, contemplating alternative perspectives to traditional dichotomies of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ practice vis-à-vis carer and patient relations. This involves unsettling the presumption that there is only one truth – not only for end-of-life care but also for the project of social research itself. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s renderings of power, discourse and knowledge, I examine how patient or volunteer experiences can be read in myriad ways, with acts of care being written through time and across lives, often yielding surprising implications.I use a variety of sociological, anthropological and political texts, together with qualitative