Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Half Title -- Series -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Notes on contributors -- Introduction: ageing matters: a constructivist perspective -- Part 1 Theories and narratives of ageing and old age -- 1 The philosophic homework of later life: on narrative, wisdom, and the positive potential of growing old -- 2 Gerontophobia: the cultural roots of the old-age anxiety in contemporary society -- 3 Cougars and crones: maverick archetypes for older women -- 4 Visual representations of older persons: current discourses and their historical roots -- 5 'Positive ageing happens in the West': ageing perceptions and active ageing policy implementation among Romanian general practitioners -- Part 2 Ageing and old age in different spaces -- 6 'It's okay to color outside the lines': living, ageing, and dying in a hospice 'home' -- 7 Ageing behind locked doors: growing older in secure mental healthcare and prison settings -- 8 Providing elderly care in precarious settings: a case study in Lima, Peru -- 9 Risks and promises of being old in social media -- 10 Beauty in later life: voices from older Korean women in New Zealand -- Index.

In contemporary societies' perception of children, death plays an incredibly insignificant role. This role goes from being ornamental, a weak reminder that our civilisation has overcome the times of children's high mortality rates, to being some other society's concern. Despite both medical improvements and cultural constructions of the child as an immanent and social transcendence, children can and do die. Although an increasing number of recent studies disclose and legitimise children's preoccupation with death and dying in the context of a popular culture fascinated with death, studies interested in the representations of death and dying in children are rather scant. In this article, we investigate the social and political stakes in discussing children's cancer in today's Romanian media, aiming to make visible how the illustrations of the connections between children, death and illness are never ethically neutral. We begin with the observation that, during recent years, there has been a growing media focus on childhood cancer in Romania. Adopting a qualitative approach and resorting to comparative analysis, we analyse what lies beneath the intentions of criticising troublesome socio-political or medical realities of childhood cancer, revealing the mechanisms through which childhood cancer is transformed into a social illness and the cultural implications for the acceptance of death as an inherent part of life both for children and the population as a whole.

"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"--

This book features the second selection of the most representative papers presented at the international conference ""Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe"" (ABDD), a traditional scientific event organized every year in Alba Iulia, Romania. The book invites the reader on a fascinating journey across the last three centuries of Europe, using the concept of death as a guide. The past and present realities of the complex phenomena of death and dying in Romania, the United Kingdom, Lithuani