China Studies Research Centre, La Trobe University
2:30-4:00pm, Thursday 13 June 2019
Room 318, Education 2 (ED2), La Trobe University
The administration of end of life care in China differs substantially from its organisation in the West. This presentation examines how the unequal distribution of health resources and increasing economisation of the medical industry in China creates problems for access to, and the quality of, end of life care. I suggest that we first need to recognise how the language of economisation suffuses relations between ageing patients, families and medical practitioners, before tracing how socioeconomic inequalities can lead to differential experiences of end of life care. This presentation thus explores how end of life care is becoming economised in China, and how patients themselves increasingly participate in an economy of ‘financialised human capital’.
About the Speaker
Dr Marc Trabsky is a Senior Lecturer at La Trobe Law School and the Deputy Director of the Centre for Health Law and Society, La Trobe University. He writes in the intersections of legal theory, history and the humanities. His research examines the theoretical, historical and institutional arrangements of law and death. His most recent monograph is titled Law and the Dead: Technology, Relations and Institutions (Routledge, 2019).