Review article Common or multiple futures for end of life care around the world? Ideas from the ‘waiting room of history’ Shahaduz Zaman * , Hamilton Inbadas, Alexander Whitelaw, David Clark School of Interdisciplinary Studies, The University of Glasgow, Crichton University Campus, Dumfries, DG1 4ZL, Scotland, UK article info Article history: Received 23 March 2016 Received in revised form 4 November 2016 Accepted 7 November 2016 Available online 9 November 2016 Keywords: End of life Global palliative care Global health Quality of death Death and dying Waiting room of history Post-colonial theory abstract Around the world there is growing interest in the manner in which care is delivered to people at the end of life. However, there is little unanimity on what constitutes a ‘good death’ and the appropriate societal responses to the issue of delivering culturally relevant and sustainable forms of end of life care in different settings are not subjects of broad agreement. In this critical conceptual paper we focus on the emerging narratives of global palliative care and offer an assessment of their implications. We relate this to calls to improve end of life care across jurisdictions and settings, attempts to map and grade the development of palliative care provision, and to the emergence of a widely recognised global ‘quality of death index’. We consider an alternative approach to framing this debate, drawn from a subaltern and post-colonial studies perspective and suggest that adopting a truly global perspective will require acceptance of the plurality of past and present local problems and issues relating to end of life care, as well as the plural possibilities of how they might be overcome. In that context, we would not aim to universalise or privilege one particular global future for end of life care. Instead of homogenising end of life interventions, we seek to be open to multiple futures for the care of the dying. © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 1. Introduction Global interest in end of life care is growing, for compelling demographic and epidemiological reasons (Cohen and Deliens, 2012). The population of the world is ageing and increasing. The number of people dying each year is set to rise. For many the process of dying will become more extended, as life threatening diseases transform into chronic conditions and the idea of a ‘ter- minal’ illness may mean death within years, rather than months, weeks or days. For others death may still come quickly e from new infectious diseases, natural disaster, and human made catastrophes of many kinds including war, mass migration, poverty and famine. There are many complexities in the challenge of providing appro- priate care at the end of life across so many unique circumstances and contexts. Yet how we die, what constitutes a ‘good death’ and the appropriate societal responses to the issue of delivering culturally relevant and sustainable forms of end of life care in different settings are not subjects of broad agreement. Rather, they can be seen as a ‘contested space’, where ideas, policies, practices and professions compete to define clear solutions. Decades back Rittel and Webber (1973) argued that in a pluralistic society there is nothing that constitutes the undisputable public good and it makes no sense to talk about ‘optimal solutions’. Yet the work of the modern hospice and palliative care movement seems often to be characterised in this light e as something self-evidently beneficial to all, indeed something that constitutes a human right. In this paper we examine the emerging narratives of global palliative care and offer a critical assessment of their implications. We relate this to calls to improve end of life care across jurisdictions and settings, attempts to map and grade the development of palliative care provision, and to the emergence of a widely recognised global ‘quality of death index’. We consider an alternative approach to framing these issues, drawn from a subaltern and post-colonial studies perspective. We conclude with some reflections on how the ‘field’ might more realistically tackle the problem of making appropriate end of life care available to all who seek it. Our work is based on a close and critical reading of published texts, papers, commentaries and reports. We also make use of a published interview and memoir in which two palliative care ac- tivists set out their experiences and views. * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: shahaduz.zaman@glasgow.ac.uk, zaman567@yahoo.com (S. Zaman), hamilton.inbadas@glasgow.ac.uk (H. Inbadas), alexander.whitelaw@ glasgow.ac.uk (A. Whitelaw), david.clark.2@glasgow.ac.uk (D. Clark). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Social Science & Medicine journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/socscimed http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.11.012 0277-9536/© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Social Science & Medicine 172 (2017) 72e79