Anthropologists are well-known for their tendency to think small (by focusing on local communities), engage in what Clifford Geertz (1973) called “thick description,” and grasp for broader insights and conclusions. In this respect, Mara Buchbinder's ethnographic research on how patients, caregivers, health care providers, legislators, and activists have responded to Vermont's 2013 Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act is exemplary. As she explains, “One of the strengths of ethnography is its refusal to compromise between specificity and generality” (15). That is Buchbinder's rationale for studying Vermont as a “microcosm of a larger national story, offering insights into cultural ideals, fears, and debates that will resonate across the United States” (15). She interviewed 144 Vermonters and participated, as an observer, in advocacy and educational events and professional medical conferences. Her book uncovers layers of complexity and depth in the area of medical aid in dying, otherwise...
Scripting Death: Stories of Assisted Dying in America
Victor G. Rodwin is professor emeritus of health policy and management, Wagner School of Public Service, New York University, and codirector (with Michael Gusmano) of the World Cities Project, a collaborative venture that studies health systems and population health among and within New York, Paris, London, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, and more recently among global cities in Brazil, Russia, India, and China. He has studied French national health insurance and worked within that system before obtaining a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Investigator Award to initiate the World Cities Project. His most recent areas of research focus on comparative analysis of health systems, health systems performance, the Swiss health care system, and the use of price controls to contain the growth of health care costs in France, Germany, and Japan. victor.rodwin@nyu.edu
Victor G. Rodwin; Scripting Death: Stories of Assisted Dying in America. J Health Polit Policy Law 1 June 2023; 48 (3): 457–461. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-10358710
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