Introduction to Illness, Crisis and Loss

Abstract

This collection of papers highlights some of the key cultural and social interpretations of illness, crisis, and loss across different personal and institutional spaces—the ways that values, beliefs, behavior, emotions, and institutional arrangements concerning chronic illness, bereavement, and professional practice are structured by social environments and contexts. Although illness and death are universal human experiences, societal responses vary according to cultural attitudes, as well as contextual factors including the primary causes of illness and death, and normative age at which illness and death occurs. In this issue of the journal, researchers, social scientists, policy makers, practitioners, and students will be learning about topics of direct relevance to understanding the world in which we live.