Constructing Death: The Sociology of Dying and BereavementCambridge University Press, 1998 M10 8 - 236 pages A basic motivation for social and cultural life is the problem of death. By analysing the experiences of dying and bereaved people, as well as institutional responses to death, Clive Seale shows its importance for understanding the place of embodiment in social life. He draws on a comprehensive review of sociological, anthropological and historical studies, including his own research, to demonstrate the great variability that exists in human social constructions for managing mortality. Far from living in a 'death denying' society, dying and bereaved people in contemporary culture are often able to assert membership of an imagined community, through the narrative reconstruction of personal biography, drawing on a variety of cultural scripts emanating from medicine, psychology, the media and other sources. These insights are used to argue that the maintenance of the human social bond in the face of death is a continual resurrective practice, permeating everyday life. |
Contents
Experiencing and representing the body | 11 |
Death embodiment and social structure | 34 |
The social aspect of death | 50 |
Representing death | 73 |
Medicine modernity and the risks of life | 75 |
The revival of death awareness | 91 |
Reporting death | 122 |
Experiencing death | 147 |
Falling from culture | 149 |
Awareness and control of dying | 172 |
Grief and resurrective practices | 193 |
212 | |
232 | |
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Common terms and phrases
accounts activity analysis anticipatory grief argued aware dying awareness of dying behaviour bodily body Bourdieu cancer carers chapter chronic Cicely Saunders context cultural scripts dead demonstrated denial of death Dennis Potter depiction described doctors dying and bereaved dying person dying role eating elderly embodiment emotional everyday example experience of dying feel genre Giddens grief hospice care hospice movement ideas imagined community individuals influence interview involved Journal late modern living London loss meaning membership modernist medicine mortality mortuary ritual narrative reconstruction normal nurses occurs ontological security open awareness organised pain palliative palliative care participation particular patients perspective professional psychological reflected relatives religious representations requests for euthanasia resurrective practice revivalist discourse routine Science and Medicine scientific Seale self-identity sense social bond social death social structure speakers St Christopher's Hospice studies suffering symbolic symbolic violence symptoms talk terminally ill theory tion understanding University Press