Who Says I'm Dead? Understanding Social Death and its Intersection with Bioethics

Abstract: Social death is a term used and accepted in various academic disciplines and is generally defined as when someone is treated as if they were already dead even though they are alive. According to Erica Borgstrom, a professor of medical anthropology and sociology, social death is used in a variety of circumstances across illness and dying to understand how certain older, marginalized groups are treated. Conversely, sociologist Daniel Sundow says that social death in the hospital “is marked by that point at which a patient is treated essentially as a corpse,” despite being alive in the biological sense. The usage of social death has led to discussions of language and care surrounding older adults and the dying not only in hospitals but also in social situations and circumstances. While the nuance is helpful, bioethics does not have a definition or framework to center the use of social death in the literature.
In this paper, I will connect the concept of social death to the bioethics literature to argue for the usefulness of the term in current bioethics literature. I will first consider various perspectives on social death and how this concept illuminates existing conversations in clinical ethics, specifically in death and dying and discussions of long-term care. Then, I will argue that social death gives a name to attitudes and behaviors that are cultivated in not only clinical but also interpersonal spaces. I then will provide examples of its relevance for issues such as personhood, nursing homes, and bedside decision-making.