Funerary Culture and the Limits of Secularization in Denmark PDF Download

Author: Anne Kjaersgaard
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
ISBN: 3643909640
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 191

View

Book Description
Considered one of the most irreligious countries in the world, in spite of continued religious affiliation of the majority of the population, Denmark is an important case to explore the limits of secularization. This study challenges the secularization thesis from the perspective of lived religion, innovatively examining death-related behaviour and hitherto overlooked religion in relation to organ donation, churchyard design, grave visiting rituals, and graveyard photographs. Dissertation. (Series: Death Studies. Nijmegen Studies in Thanatology, Vol. 4) [Subject: Danish Studies, Religious Studies, Death Studies]

Author: Dr Avril Maddrell
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409488837
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

View

Book Description
Death is at once a universal and everyday, but also an extraordinary experience in the lives of those affected. Death and bereavement are thereby intensified at (and frequently contained within) certain sites and regulated spaces, such as the hospital, the cemetery and the mortuary. However, death also affects and unfolds in many other spaces: the home, public spaces and places of worship, sites of accident, tragedy and violence. Such spaces, or Deathscapes, are intensely private and personal places, while often simultaneously being shared, collective, sites of experience and remembrance; each place mediated through the intersections of emotion, body, belief, culture, society and the state. Bringing together geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, cultural studies academics and historians among others, this book focuses on the relationships between space/place and death/ bereavement in 'western' societies. Addressing three broad themes: the place of death; the place of final disposition; and spaces of remembrance and representation, the chapters reflect a variety of scales ranging from the mapping of bereavement on the individual or in private domestic space, through to sites of accident, battle, burial, cremation and remembrance in public space. The book also examines social and cultural changes in death and bereavement practices, including personalisation and secularisation. Other social trends are addressed by chapters on green and garden burial, negotiating emotion in public/ private space, remembrance of violence and disaster, and virtual space. A meshing of material and 'more-than-representational' approaches consider the nature, culture, economy and politics of Deathscapes - what are in effect some of the most significant places in human society.

Author: Eric Venbrux
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521479134
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

View

Book Description
This compelling book is an extended case study of the social and legal ramifications of a homicide in a Tiwi community. The author gives a detailed account of the life of the victim and the events surrounding his murder, and describes the cycle of mortuary and seasonal rituals with their elaborate songs and dances. He also looks at the dramatic changes in Tiwi society over the last 100 years, and examines how the Tiwi have responded to the intervention of Western culture. In many areas, he finds, they have adapted and retained their own value system. Venbrux's account of the investigation and trial following the homicide provides timely and important insights into the issue of Aboriginal People, traditional law and the Australian criminal justice system. Through the strong narrative thread of this book we are presented with an incisive picture of a culture amid conflict and change.

Author: Peter Bjerregaard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781138336643
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 256

View

Book Description
'Passing' is a common euphemism for the death of a person, as he or she is said to 'pass away' or 'pass on'. This open-ended saying has at its heart a notion of transformation from one state to another, which in turn grants the possibility of grasping or approximating the passage of time and the materiality of death and decay. This book begins with the idea that since all material things - whether animals, human beings, objects or buildings - undergo some form of passing, then the specific transformation in these passages and the materiality actively given to it can offer us a grasp of otherwise precarious temporalities. It examines how human beings strive to relate to the temporal dimension of death and decay, by giving new shape and direction to being and by examining its natural transformations. Focusing on the materiality of passing, and thereby the relationship between embodiment, temporality and death, Materialities of Passing offers rich case studies from Europe, Papua New Guinea, South Africa and the Russian Far East for exploring the material, spatial and directional aspects of the very interface between life and death. As such, it will appeal to scholars of anthropology, death studies, archaeology, philosophy and cultural studies.

Author: Antonius C. G. M. Robben
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 111922229X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 541

View

Book Description
A thought-provoking examination of death, dying, and the afterlife Prominent scholars present their most recent work about mortuary rituals, grief and mourning, genocide, cyclical processes of life and death, biomedical developments, and the materiality of human corpses in this unique and illuminating book. Interrogating our most common practices surrounding death, the authors ask such questions as: How does the state wrest away control over the dead from bereaved relatives? Why do many mourners refuse to cut their emotional ties to the dead and nurture lasting bonds? Is death a final condition or can human remains acquire agency? The book is a refreshing reassessment of these issues and practices, a source of theoretical inspiration in the study of death. With contributions written by an international team of experts in their fields, A Companion to the Anthropology of Death is presented in six parts and covers such subjects as: Governing the Dead in Guatemala; After Death Communications (ADCs) in North America; Cryonic Suspension in the Secular Age; Blood and Organ Donation in China; The Fragility of Biomedicine; and more. A Companion to the Anthropology of Death is a comprehensive and accessible volume and an ideal resource for senior undergraduate and graduate students in courses such as Anthropology of Death, Medical Anthropology, Anthropology of Violence, Anthropology of the Body, and Political Anthropology. Written by leading international scholars in their fields A comprehensive survey of the most recent empirical research in the anthropology of death A fundamental critique of the early 20th century founding fathers of the anthropology of death Cross-cultural texts from tribal and industrial societies The collection is of interest to anyone concerned with the consequences of the state and massive violence on life and death

Author: Elizabeth Hallam
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000184196
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

View

Book Description
- How do the living maintain ongoing relationships with the dead in Western societies? - How have the residual belongings of the dead been used to evoke memories? - Why has the body and its material environment remained so important in memory-making? Objects, images, practices, and places remind us of the deaths of others and of our own mortality. At the time of death, embodied persons disappear from view, their relationships with others come under threat and their influence may cease. Emotionally, socially, politically, much is at stake at the time of death. In this context, memories and memory-making can be highly charged, and often provide the dead with a social presence amongst the living. Memories of the dead are a bulwark against the terror of forgetting, as well as an inescapable outcome of a life's ending. Objects in attics, gardens, museums, streets and cemeteries can tell us much about the processes of remembering. This unusual and absorbing book develops perspectives in anthropology and cultural history to reveal the importance of material objects in experiences of grief, mourning and memorializing. Far from being ‘invisible', the authors show how past generations, dead friends and lovers remain manifest - through well-worn garments, letters, photographs, flowers, residual drops of perfume, funerary sculpture. Tracing the rituals, gestures and materials that have been used to shape and preserve memories of personal loss, Hallam and Hockey show how material culture provides the deceased with a powerful presence within the here and now.

Author: Philip Bachelor
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351841688
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 194

View

Book Description
Sorrow and Solace focuses on the importance of cemeteries in the lives of everyday mourners, and ways in which our bereaved give meaning to and draw value from their commemorative activities. The death of someone dear to us is among the most momentous life event that we experience. In many societies, visiting the grave or memorial is a common behavioural response to bereavement. Memorial sites provide vital connections to our deceased loved ones with whom we wish to maintain ongoing social bonds, and cemeteries are crucial places of deep healing and growth. Millions of visits are made to cemeteries every day, but the extent of this activity and its value to those who mourn - the topics of this volume - have long remained largely unrecognised. Large urban memorial parks are hives of activity for recently bereaved persons, and are among the most visited places in Western communities. Some cemeteries, hosting millions of annual visits, are more popular than many major tourist attractions. Cemetery visitation is a high-participatory, value-laden, expressive activity, and a most significant observable behaviour of the recently bereaved. This work will be invaluable to those seeking a scholarly understanding of bereavement, mourning, and commemoration. Written principally for professionals with a tertiary educational interest in related fields, such as grief educators, nurses, palliative carers, and social workers, it is also an important resource for the further education of other carers and service providers, including psychologists, physicians, counsellors, clergy, funeral directors, cemetery administrators, and monumental masons. The book is also a significant contribution to the field of social anthropology.

Author: Doris Francis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000213552
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 272

View

Book Description
Burial sites have long been recognized as a way to understand past civilizations. Yet, the meanings of our present day cemeteries have been virtually ignored, even though they reveal much about our cultures. Exploring an extraordinarily diverse range of memorial practice - Greek Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish, Roman Catholic and Anglican, as well as the unchurched - The Secret Cemetery is an intriguing study of what these places of death mean to the living. Most of us experience cemeteries at a ritualized moment of loss. What we forget is that these are often places to which we return either as a general space in which to contemplate or as a specific site to be tended. These are also places where different communities can reinforce boundaries and even recreate a sense of homeland. Over time, ritual, artefact and place shape an intensely personal landscape of memory and mourning, a landscape more alive, more actively engaged with than many of the other places we inhabit.

Author: Phil Zuckerman
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814797237
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

View

Book Description
Are lawyers, by their very nature, agents of the state, of capital, of institutions of power? Or are there ways in which they can work constructively or transformatively for the disempowered, the working class, the underprivileged? Lawyers in a Postmodern World explores how lawyers actively create the forms of power which they and others deploy. Through engaging case studies, the book examines how lawyers work within and for powerful institutions and provides suggestions--both general and practical--for ways in which the practice of law can be made to work with and for the powerless. Individuals chapters address such subjects as the contradictions of radical law practice; legal work in South Africa; the economics and politics of negotiating justice; feminist legal scholarship and women's gendered lives; the overlapping worlds of law, business, and politics; theories of legal practice; and how lawyers are constitutive of gender relations. Contributing to the book are Maureen Cain (University of West Indies), Yves Dezalay (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France), Martha Fineman (Columbia University), Sue Lees (University of North London), Doreen McBarnet (Wolfson College, Oxford), Frank Munger (SUNY, Buffalo), Wilfried Scharf (University of Cape Town), Stuart Scheingold (University of Washington), David Sugarman (Lancaster University), and Sally Wheeler (University of Nottingham).

Author: Tony Walter
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1447337360
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 144

View

Book Description
Although death is universal, how we respond to it--how we ready ourselves for death and how we grieve--depends on when and where we live. New preparations for dying, new kinds of funerals, new ways of handling grief, and new ways to memorialize are continually evolving, and with them come new challenges. Bringing to bear twenty-five years of work on the sociology of death and dying, Tony Walter engages critically with key questions such as: should we talk about death more and plan in advance? How possible is advance planning as more people suffer frailty and dementia? How do physical migration and digital connection affect the irreducibly material process of dying? Is the traditional funeral still relevant? Can burial and cremation be ecological? And how should we grieve: quietly, openly, or even online?