Four Frames of Death in Modern Hospital

Abstract

In analyzing the different perspectives on death the concept of frame developed by Erving Goffmann, is very useful. Goffmann (1974) says that the way we have framed a certain situation influences strongly on how we define that situation. Frame refers to principles of organization governing events at hand and our subjective involvement in them. Anthony Giddens (1974) follows Goffmann and says that “frames are clusters of rules which help to constitute and regulate activities, defining them as activities of certain sort and as a subject to a given range of sanctions”. Frames consist of different kinds of explicit and implicit social rules, those of interpretation (constitutive rules) and normative, regulative ones. These rules make us see events around us from a certain perspective, and act respectively. As Spybey has noticed, any organization is likely to contain several frames. This is the case also in hospital.