This study aimed to understand how the backcountry with cancer sees death. Three themes were interwoven in this research: death in its historical and psychological aspects; the historical and cultural realities of man's Northeast Backcountry of Brazil, and the person with cancer in society. A qualitive approach and the critical phenomenological method were used, having as instruments of data collection the participant observation and phenomenological interview. It was concluded that the backcountry perceives death with more familiarity, that permeate the ways of coping through faith, that the experience of illness is modulated by psychosocial and cultural aspects and traditional funeral rituals are being modified facing logic of merchantilizing of the death.
death; psycho-oncology; social psychology; phenomenology