The hospice movement: the example of conflict between the process of personalized and rationalized institutionalization

The hospice movement: the example of conflict between the process of personalized and rationalized institutionalization. The article presents the problems of hospice movement in the context of the individualistic social organization, which becomes the predominant pattern of social life in the modern societies. The hospice vision focuses on the interest in the individual and his or her quality of life in the end-of-life phase, which fits the principles of individualism. The analysis of the process of institutionalization of hospice movement shows the conflict between the idealistic aim and the consequences of rationalized medical praxis. The situation of the individual as a matter of public interests is followed by temporal relationships of the hospice workers and the patient and his or her family, breaking the continuity of the natural social bonds, de-privatization the dying, fragmentation of one's life's course and isolation of terminally ill people. These contradictions seem to be the integral part of the individualistic social organization, and as such irresolvable. Sociologia 2010, Vol. 42 (No. 3: 237-254)