Title：The Morality of decision making in cancer treatment
Speaker：Tanya Stivers (Professor of Sociology, UCLA)
Chair：Chen-Shuo Hong（Assistant Professor of Sociology, NTU）
Time：March 26, 2026 (Thu.) 12:30–14:00
Venue：Department of Sociology and Social Work R319
About the Speech
American health care involves expanding medical technologies and innovations in treatment to improve health outcomes and longevity. Social scientists have argued that this is explained by cultural attitudes towards imperatives to treat, pointing to the U.S. health care system as one that rewards “curing” rather than “caring.” In this article, we seek to understand how patients come to be on life-extending treatment even at late stages of cancer care. To address this larger question, our interest is in relatively early-stage and mid-stage cancer where patients come to understand the culture and approach of care and where they make choices about the continuation of care, respectively. We use conversation analysis to identify behaviors used across interactants that support choosing or persisting with life-extending treatment and how this might help explain the continuation of this treatment throughout a patient’s cancer journey. Ultimately, we find that physicians, patients, and their families orient to patients having a moral responsibility to extend their lives as much as possible through aggressive treatment even when that entails unpleasant side effects, risks, or substantial time investments.
About the Speaker
Tanya Stivers is Professor of Sociology at UCLA. She is a conversation analyst with an interest in social interaction in ordinary and healthcare settings. She is the author of Prescribing under Pressure: Parent-Physician Conversations and Antibiotics and The Book of Answers: Alignment, Autonomy, and Affiliation in Social Interaction and is co-editor of the Handbook of Conversation Analysis (with Jack Sidnell). In medicine, her primary interest has been in how physicians and patients negotiate treatment decisions.
