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  1. Home
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  3. Constructing Death
  • Cited by 339
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
October 2009
Print publication year:
1998
Online ISBN:
9780511583421
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511583421
Subjects:
Social Theory, Anthropology: General Interest, Anthropology, Sociology
Information

Book description

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.

Reviews

‘… a stimulating and lucid volume … a book that will be of wide interest to … social scientists, students of health and illness and the body’.

Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement

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