Processes and partitions: Two logics of end‐of‐life care

This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork with palliative care teams in the UK to contrast two logics of end‐of‐life medical care: one oriented towards intervention, the other towards acceptance and accompaniment. Through a series of illustrative cases, the authors describe how each logic not only shapes what practitioners do, but how they imagine the object of their care. The article traces these contrasting practices to different conceptualizations of life itself: life as a possession, to be protected and preserved; or life as a process, in which the priority is to sustain interaction and responsiveness, even as capacities diminish.