1st Edition
Critical Approaches to Death, Dying and Bereavement
Critical Approaches to Death Dying and Bereavement is the first of its kind to examine key topics in death, dying and bereavement through a critical lens, highlighting how the understanding and experience of death can vary considerably, based on social, cultural, historical, political, and medical contexts. It looks at the complex ways in which death and dying are managed, from the political level down to end of life care, and the inequalities that surround and impact experiences of death, dying and bereavement.
Readers are introduced to key theories such as the medicalisation, as well as contemporary issues, such as social movements, pandemics, and assisted dying. The book stresses how death is not only a biological process or event, but rather shaped by a range of intersecting factors. Issues of inequalities in health, inequities in support, and intersectional analyses are to the fore, and each chapter is dedicated to an issue that has interdisciplinary resonance, thus showcasing the wider socio-cultural and political factors that impact this time of life.
It is valuable reading for scholars in thanatology and death studies, and for those in related fields such as sociology of health, medical and social anthropology and interdisciplinary social science courses.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Section 1: Populations, Politics and Society
Chapter 2: Thinking with and beyond mortality statistics
Chapter 3: Policy and Death
Chapter 4: Mass death events and shifting death practices
Chapter 5: Social movements and death
Section 2: Dying
Chapter 6: Medicalisation of dying
Chapter 7: Palliative Care and the Modern Hospice Movement
Chapter 8: Assisted dying
Chapter 9: Disenfranchised dying
Section 3: The aftermath of death
Chapter 10: The dead body and disposal practices
Chapter 11: Grief theories and therapies
Chapter 12: Suicide
Chapter 13: Conclusion
Biography
Erica Borgstrom is Professor of Medical Anthropology at The Open University in the United Kingdom. She leads Open Thanatology, the Open University's interdisciplinary research group for the study and education of death, dying, loss and grief across the life course, and is co-editor in chief for the interdisciplinary journal Mortality and Bristol University Press book series Death and Culture.
Renske Visser is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oulu in Finland. She runs blog Dead Good Reading (www.deadgoodreading.com) featuring books about death, dying and loss. She also co-hosts The Death Studies Podcast. She was previously the administrator for the Association for the Study of Death and Society (ASDS).
"Looking at how power operates through government, law, media, professions and social movements to shape how we die and grieve, validating some deaths and discounting others, this book provides a much needed critical edge to death studies."
--Professor Tony Walter, University of Bath, UK
“Borgstrom and Visser expertly chart how death, dying, and bereavement are considered as health matters, and as social processes. They shine much-needed light on the ways in which culture, power, and inequality influence the management and experience of loss. Compulsory reading for the death studies curriculum."
--Emma Kirby, PhD. Professor of Sociology at UNSW Sydney, Australia
