Author(s)

Fernando Aguiar, José A. Cerrillo, Rafael Serrano-del-Rosal

Institute for Advanced Social Studies (IESA-CSIC), Cordoba, Spain.

In this article we examine, through six focus groups, the various arguments put forth by social actors to defend or reject the right to choose how to die, including palliative sedation, euthanasia and even assisted suicide. This qualitative technique allows us to establish the relative weight of traditional, modern and neo-modern models of coping with death in the discourses of the Spanish subjects sampled within the study, how these models are reflected in specific cultural scripts and to what extent these scripts for a good death are the product of a reflexive project of identity

Assisted Suicide; Cultural Scripts; Euthanasia; Reflexive Identity; Spain

Aguiar, F. , Cerrillo, J. & Serrano-del-Rosal, R. (2013). Dying with Meaning: Social Identity and Cultural Scripts for a Good Death in Spain. Advances in Applied Sociology, 3, 124-130. doi: 10.4236/aasoci.2013.32016.