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Roi Livne: Values at the End of Life: The Logic of Palliative Care

Datum
19. Novem­ber 2025 

Online Talk


„Val­ues at the End of Life: The Log­ic of Pal­lia­tive Care”
Online talk with Roi Livne
Orga­niz­er: the Social Stud­ies of Ethics, Moral­i­ty, and Val­ues Network
19 Novem­ber (4.30–5.30pm, UK time)
Reg­is­tra­tion: eventbrite link

This event will take place via Zoom. Please reg­is­ter via Eventbrite to receive a link to join the meeting.

Roi Livne will be talk­ing about his book, Val­ues at the End of Life: The Log­ic of Pal­lia­tive Care (Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press). All are warm­ly welcome!
Over the past fifty years, “the end of life” has become the cen­ter of exten­sive eco­nom­ic, pol­i­cy, eth­i­cal, and med­ical dis­cus­sions in the U.S. Health econ­o­mists mea­sure and eval­u­ate its cost; ethi­cists debate the moral­i­ty of var­i­ous approach­es to “end-of-life care”; pol­i­cy­mak­ers pon­der alter­na­tive “end of life”-related poli­cies; and clin­i­cians apply a spe­cial­ized approach (hos­pice and pal­lia­tive care) to treat patients whom they diag­nose as being at “the end of life.”
This talk sum­ma­rizes much of the argu­ment of “Val­ues at the End of Life” (Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2019). It ana­lyzes the pro­lif­er­a­tion of con­ver­sa­tions on “the end of life” as emblem­at­ic of a pecu­liar moment in human his­to­ry. Ours is a peri­od where mod­ern growth stag­nates and the main chal­lenge devel­oped soci­eties face becomes delin­eat­ing the lim­its of human agency and gov­ern­ing pop­u­la­tions with­in these lim­its. Draw­ing on a com­bi­na­tion of his­tor­i­cal and ethno­graph­ic analy­sis of the work of pal­lia­tive care clin­i­cians in three Cal­i­for­nia hos­pi­tals, I fol­low how the lim­its of what can be done, med­ical­ly and finan­cial­ly, to pro­long life are com­mu­ni­cat­ed to severe­ly ill patients and fam­i­lies. I use this empir­i­cal case to flesh out dif­fer­ent dimen­sions in the con­cept of econ­o­miza­tion, which has recent­ly attract­ed much the­o­ret­i­cal atten­tion in eco­nom­ic sociology.

About the speak­er: Roi Livne is an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Soci­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan. An eco­nom­ic soci­ol­o­gist at heart, he stud­ies every­day eco­nom­ic life and its inter­sec­tions with moral­i­ty. His has writ­ten about death and cap­i­tal­ism, the tech­no-pol­i­tics of sov­er­eign debts, and the first months of COVID-19. Present­ly, he is writ­ing about the moral econ­o­my of pric­ing hos­pi­tal care in the U.S., the notion of fini­tude in social the­o­ry, and the con­cept of economization.