The global spread of palliative care: how models, ideas, and practices travel

Palliative care organisations and services have been developing in many countries around the world. The ideology, expertise, and practices of palliative care have been travelling between highly diverse cultural, socio-economic, and institutional contexts. Drawing theoretical insights from the anthropology of globalisation and cultural studies, which has been concerned with the flow and exchange of knowledge and ideas, this chapter examines the processes of transfer and embedding of palliative care across cultures and resource settings. Focusing on the case of Brazil, the chapter discusses the development of palliative care as characterised by a range of encounters, events, and exchanges between people, institutions, and discourses that have occurred in parallel to one another. In doing so, the chapter sheds light on this multifaceted development and some of the key aspects that have enabled it in its particular place and time.