Search results

The Evolution of Funerary Ritual in Urbanizing China -- Belief in Karma and Mokṣa at the End of Life in India- Death and the Afterlife in Japan -- Return to Nature? Secularism and Politics of Death Space in Hong Kong -- Death and Dying: Belief, Fear and Ritual in Vietnamese Culture -- Negotiating Traditions and Modernity: Chinese Death Rituals in Singapore -- The Bureaucratic Professionalization of Funeral Rites in Tehran's Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery -- Death and Burial Practices in Contemporary Zulu Culture, South Africa -- Death in Botswana: Life Among the Ashes -- Ancestors and Death: From West Africa to Southwest Europe -- Living Coffins and Death Among the Ga of Ghana -- The Yoruba of Nigeria and the Ontology of Death and Burial -- Transformation of Funeral Rituals in Togo -- Rituals Around Life and Death in Mexico; The Day of the Dead -- Continuity and Ruptures in Brazilian Funeral Rites -- The Right to a Dignified Death in Argentina -- Superstar-Saints and Wandering Souls: The Cemetery as a Cultural Hotspot in Latin American Cities -- He taonga tuku iho: Indigenous End of Life and Death Care Customs of New Zealand Māori -- Communicating with the Dead in an Australian Aboriginal Culture: The Tiwi from Melville and Bathurst Islands -- Death and Dying in American Indian Cultures -- The Beauty of the Afterlife Among the Inuit of Nunavut -- Eternity Calling: Modernity and the Revival of Death and the Afterlife

The Latin root of the English word culture ties together both worship and the tilling of the soil. In both interpretations the outcome is the same: a rightly-directed culture produces either a bountiful harvest or falls short of the mark, materially or spiritually. This volume offers a critical examination of the nature and depth of our contemporary cultural crisis, focused on its lack of traditional orientation and moral understanding.

Includes bibliographical references

In the past, culture was a kind of vital consciousness that constantly rejuvenated and revivified everyday reality. Now it is largely a mechanism of distraction and entertainment. Notes on the Death of Culture is an examination and indictment of this transformation - penned by none other than the Nobel winner Mario Vargas Llosa, who is not only one of our finest novelists but one of the keenest social critics at work today. Taking his cues from T. S. Eliot - whose treatise Notes Towards the Definition of Culture is a touchstone precisely because the culture Eliot aimed to describe has since vanished - Vargas Llosa traces a decline whose ill effects have only just begun to be felt. He mourns, in particular, the figure of the intellectual: for most of the twentieth century, men and women of letters drove political, aesthetic, and moral conversations; today they have all but disappeared from public debate. But Vargas Llosa stubbornly refuses to fade into the background. He is not content to merely sign a petition; he will not bite his tongue. A necessary provocateur, here vividly translated by John King, provides an impassioned and essential critique of our time and culture.

Portrayals of death and the dead are everywhere within popular culture revealing much about contemporary society's engagement with mortality. Drawing upon celebrity posthumous careers, organ transplantation mythology and the fictional dead, this book considers how representations of the dead in popular culture exert powerful agency

"With intense and violent portrayals of death becoming ever more common on television and in cinema and the growth of death-centric movies, series, texts, songs and video clips attracting a wide and enthusiastic global reception, we might well ask whether death has ceased to be a taboo. What makes thanatic themes so desirable in popular culture? Do representations of the macabre and gore perpetuate or sublimate violent desires? Has contemporary popular culture removed our unease with death? Can social media help us to cope with our mortality, or can music and art present death as an aesthetic phenomenon? This volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the discussion of the social, cultural, aesthetic and theoretical aspects of the ways in which in popular culture understands, represents and manages death, bringing together contributions from around the world focused on television, cinema, popular literature, social media and the internet, art, music and advertising"--

"All societies have their own customs and beliefs surrounding death. In the West, traditional ways of mourning are disappearing, and although Western science has had a major impact on how people die, it has taught us little about the way to die or to grieve. Many whose work brings them into contact with the dying and the bereaved from Western and other cultures are at a loss to know how to offer appropriate and sensitive support. Death and Bereavement Across Cultures 2nd Edition is a handbook which meets the needs of doctors, nurses, social workers, hospital chaplains, counsellors and volunteers caring for patients with life-threatening illness and their families before and after bereavement. It is a practical guide explaining the religious and other differences commonly met with in multi-cultural societies when someone is dying or bereaved. In doing so readers may be surprised to find how much we can learn from other cultures about our own attitudes and assumptions about death. Written by international experts in the field the book: - Describes the rituals and beliefs of major world religions; - Explains their psychological and historical context; - Shows how customs are changed by contact with the West; - Considers the implications for the future The second edition includes new chapters that: explore how members of the health care professions perform roles formerly conducted by priests and shamans, can cross the cultural gaps between different cultures and religions; consider the relevance of attitudes and assumptions about death for our understanding of religious and nationalist extremism and its consequences; discuss the Buddhist, Islamic and Christian ways of death"--