Lectures by Professor Jun JING (Tsinghua University)

Based on a study of nursing homes at seven monasteries, the Chinese Buddhist approach to death and dying can be described as an antithesis to terminal care in clinical settings, as it advises against exhaustive attempts to prolong life through technology. Instead, it emphasizes an assisted process of dying aimed at rebirth in the Buddhist paradise. Assistance in this sense is given in four steps.

First, co-believers encourage the critically ill to cherish their life's achievements. Second, co-believers help the dying chant the name of Amitabha Buddha by murmuring or listening. Third, they continue the chant for the deceased, sometimes for 48 hours. Whether these practices constitute what Philippe Ariès might have characterized as "tame death" will be addressed.

 

 

Why are artworks of intrauterine devices attracting a great deal of public attention in China? How have hundreds of art students across China designed posters concerned with elderly people's health? What can we learn through the eyes of migrant children in Beijing about a healthy lifestyle? While these questions could lead to discussions in different directions, a focus on their relations with health promotion has been tentatively chosen.

 

A typical approach in social research on palliative care and broadly defined end-of-life care centers on the support provided by medical professionals and family caregivers. However, social relations are sometimes reversed by critically ill individuals who try to look after not only the well-being of their families or close friends but also the interests of fellow patients, medical workers, and even society in general.

Through an analysis of 149 interviews during the Covid-19 crisis, we have come to believe that the concept of reverse care offers a fundamentally different perspective on interpersonal relations in terminal care situations.

 

Émile Durkheim significantly influenced the early development of sociology in China through Chinese scholars who studied in France from the 1910s to the 1940s, leading to the translation of almost all his works into Chinese. However, his work on suicide was omitted until the 1990s. This omission can be examined by revisiting the perspectives of Mao Zedong, Li Dazhao, and Wu Zhixin on female suicide in China, alongside the accounts by Jacques Peuchet that inspired Karl Marx to pay attention to female suicide in Paris.