Kaufman, Sharon R.

PERSONAL: Married. Education: Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Office—University of California, San Francisco, Institute for Health & Aging, LHts #340, Box 0646, San Francisco, CA 94143. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Educator, cultural and social anthropologist, and writer. University of California, San Francisco, professor of medical anthropology at Institute for Health and Aging, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine.

WRITINGS:

The Ageless Self: Sources of Meaning in Late Life, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 1986.

The Healer's Tale: Transforming Medicine and Culture, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 1993.

And a Time to Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life, Scribner (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to professional journals, including Annual Reviews in Anthropology, Gerontologist, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society; Journal of Aging Studies, American Anthropologist, and Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry. Contributor to books, including Qualitative Gerontology, edited by S. Reinharz and G. Rowles, Springer (New York, NY), 1987; Qualitative Methods in Aging Research, edited by J. Gubrium and A. Sankar, Sage (Newbury Park, CA), 1994; Older Adults' Decision-Making Capacity and the Law, edited by M. Smyer and K.W. Schaie, Springer (New York, NY), 1996; Bioethics in Social Context, edited Barry Hoffmaster, Temple University Press, 2001; Encyclopedia of Aging, edited by D.J. Ekerdt and others, Macmillan (New York, NY), 2002; Qualitative Gerontology: A Contemporary Perspective, edited by G. Rowles and N. Schoenberg, Springer, 2002; Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology, edited by C. Ember and M. Ember. Kluwer/Plenum (Boston, MA), 2003; Thinking about Dementia: Culture, Loss, and the Anthropology of Senility, edited by L. Cohen and A. Leibing, Rutgers University Press.

SIDELIGHTS: Sharon R. Kaufman is an expert on medical anthropology with interests in areas such as the culture of medicine and identity and how it is produced, contested, and negotiated. In her book The Healer's Tale: Transforming Medicine and Culture, for example, Kaufman recounts the personal narratives of seven doctors who, in their eighties, look back on how the practice of medicine has altered over the years within the context of a changing medical and social culture. Writing in Lancet, Roland Littlewood noted that "these reminiscences are not intended simply as folk history or nostalgia. Kaufman argues that they provide a model for examining our current concerns over bioethics, with our changing conceptions of life, death, and the individual."

In And a Time to Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life, the author focuses on how hospital patients die and also discusses what doctors, nurses, and families experience during the process. Of primary concern to Kaufman is the hospital system itself and the set ways in which it moves patients through the process of dying. The author points out that some sixty percent of people now die in hospitals and discusses hospital bureaucracies and the ethical dilemmas faced by families and professionals as they try to guide the patient through the death process in the best way possible. Writing in Library Journal, Ellen G. Detlefsen noted that author presents case reports that feature "stories of dying that read as small dramas of everyday life." The reviewer also noted that the author "lets readers interpret which case ends well or badly." In a review in Booklist, Donna Chavez commented that the author "exposes … the clash of dying patients and their families with the only institutional resources available to them." As a Publishers Weekly contributor wrote, "This deeply probing study lays bare the cultural and institutional assumptions and rhetoric that frame our search for 'a good death.'" Writing in Kirkus Reviews, a contributor commented: "These stories of individual patients illustrate the strains and tensions inherent for everyone revolved and demonstrate why the goal of 'death with dignity' is so illusive."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 1, 2005, Donna Chavez, review of And a Time to Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life, p. 1118.

Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2005, review of And a Time to Die, p. 36.

Lancet, July 31, 1993, Roland Littlewood, review of The Healer's Tale: Transforming Medicine and Culture, p. 290.

Library Journal, March 1, 2005, Ellen G. Detlefsen, review of And a Time to Die, p. 104.

Psychology Today, March-April, 2005, review of And a Time to Die, p. 36.

Publishers Weekly, February 14, 2005, review of And a Time to Die, p. 65.

ONLINE

University of California, San Francisco Institute for Health and Aging Web site, http://nurseweb.ucsf.edu/iha/ (July 6, 2005), faculty profile of author.