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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research on organ donation and transplantation in Bulgaria, this paper examines how modern institutions (mis)manage death. It also reflects on the conditions that enable anthropologists to work in morally difficult domains in close proximity to death.

Paper long abstract

As large religious narratives lose their public authority, death is increasingly pushed to the margins of social life, while modern ethics emphasises individual autonomy and rational choice. These frameworks prove insufficient at the threshold where death must be collectively recognised and acted upon.

This paper examines organ donation and transplantation as a site where modern institutions confront the epistemological and moral limits of death, and the strength of the surrounding taboos. Drawing on ethnographic research in Bulgarian hospitals and interviews with medical professionals, it argues that apart from technical coordination healthcare systems should allow socially recognised ways of crossing the boundary between life and death.

Anthropology, with its capacity to analyse both institutional practices and symbolic orders while suspending moral judgement, offers a particularly powerful approach to understanding the “dark” zones in proximity to death where moral responsibility, cultural meaning, and institutional action intersect. This research was made possible also by a specific disciplinary trajectory, prior professional experience in psychological crisis management. It provided practical familiarity with situations structured by death and loss.

The paper raises a question about the absence of cultural forms of “death education.” Where societies lack shared ways of learning to confront death, both institutions and researchers encounter significant barriers when approaching situations structured by it. Without a shared narrative that situates death within the continuity of life, societies lose not only symbolic orientation toward the invisible but also a common horizon of the future.