Constructing death: the sociology of dying and bereavement

Intro -- Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of tables -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Part I Social and material worlds -- 1 Experiencing and representing the body -- The social construction of bodies and minds -- Experiencing the body -- Attempted resolutions -- Narrative reconstruction -- Talk as ritual -- Conclusion -- 2 Death, embodiment and social structure -- The death of the body -- Social structure, the distribution of death and patternsof ageing -- The dying role -- Conclusion -- 3 The social aspect of death -- Death and social organisation -- Death and the problem of meaning -- Mortuary ritual -- Conclusion -- Part II Representing death -- 4 Medicine, modernity and the risks of life -- Locating death in the body -- Regulating the population -- The sacred body -- Conclusion and critique -- 5 The revival of death awareness -- Colonisation of the life-world by the psychologicalcomplex -- Awareness of dying -- Hospice and palliative care -- Conclusion -- 6 Reporting death -- Television and news media -- The research medium -- Qualitative research -- Conclusion -- Part III Experiencing death -- 7 Falling from culture -- Living alone towards the end of life -- Food, drink and dying -- Conclusion -- 8 Awareness and control of dying -- The social distribution of awareness -- Symbolic violence -- Euthanasia -- Conclusion -- 9 Grief and resurrective practices -- Survivor theories -- The social construction of grief -- Resurrection -- Accounting for living and dying alone -- Conclusion -- References -- Index

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