摘要
本文以从医院获得的田野材料为基础,与关于死亡的社会理论及人类学研究对话,揭示了"日常医学"与"生活质量"两种社会想象的拉扯如何主导当代中国家庭面对死亡的日常道德实践,其中,生活质量话语是召唤家庭主体行动的主要动力。日常实践中的生活质量论述形成了一个交互话语时空,标指着不同阶层家庭各异的"经济道德"展演,呈现了"并在之歧出"的阶层化道德形貌。尽管日常实践存在阶层差异,家庭本身却成为共同的价值依靠,"家庭生活"成为面对死亡的规范性道德剧场,这种阈限状态的道德实践体现了当代中国家庭在社会经济变迁中对确定性的追求与探索。
This ethnographical study argues that in dealing with death, contemporary Chinese families are often conflicted between the two leading social imaginaries of“Ordinary Medicine”and“Life Quality”.“Ordinary Medicine,”a term borrowed from American medical anthropologist Sharon Kaufman,is defined in this study as the institutionalized radical life-sustaining treatments that may prolong and increase patients’ suffering.“Life Quality”refers to the efforts by families to give as much normality and enjoyment of life as possible to their terminally ill loved ones. In common practices,both“Ordinary Medicine”and“Life Quality”act as default moral rationality,and“Life Quality”particularly calls for the initiatives of the patient families.“Life Quality”in practices illustrates the class distinction and structural inequality of contemporary China at multiple levels from affluent families facing the moral decision of prolonging life or ending suffering,to poor families facing the dilemma of economic ruin and moral duty,to the everyday moral and economic decisions of treatment and/or suffering,livelihood and/or dignity that the majority of ordinary families have to face. All this helps shape a class differentiated picture of morality in dealing with death that is “constant yet different”in contemporary China. Despite the discrepancies in what and how to have life quality among the different classes,faith in family has become a common value dependence. To have a good“family life”in its best at the end of one’s life has become a shared normative moral practice in China,reflecting the search for certainty of contemporary Chinese families in the great uncertainty of social transformation.
作者
方洪鑫
FANG Hongxin(School of Social and Public Administration,East China University of Science and Technology)
出处
《社会》
CSSCI
北大核心
2021年第4期182-215,共34页
Chinese Journal of Sociology
关键词
死亡
道德
社会想象
阶层区隔
家庭
death
moral
social imaginary
class distinction
family
