Entangled emplacement: Ethnographic reading of Canadian Muslims' engagement with the world of palliative care

Abstract

How do Canadian Muslims engage with the exclusive and ambiguous terrain of palliative care? An ethnographic response to this question requires addressing a systemic paradox, namely, patient-centered and compassionate care is contingent upon diagnoses of terminal illness. Drawing upon long-standing research among Muslims in metropolis Vancouver, this study uses the construct of entangled emplacement to show the multiple ways in which research participants engage with this paradox. Allied closely to the unconventional ethnographic methods of mindful walking, memory work, and imagining home, the construct of entangled emplacement captures the research participants' expansive understanding of palliative care; this includes the process of displacement and reimagining a diasporic "home", tangled elements of which come into play at the time of death. In the light of neoliberal restructuring of the Canadian health system, I explore the implications of research findings for deep-level conversations across socio-cultural and medicalized boundaries, and tangled pathways of what has come to be known as "palliative care".