Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Death & Dying

Although today in France church attendance is minimal, when death occurs many families still cling to religious rites. In exploring this common reaction to one of the most painful aspects of existence, Thomas Kselman turns to nineteenth-century French beliefs about death and the afterlife not only to show how deeply rooted the cult of the dead is in one Western society, but how death and the behavior of mourners have been politicized in the modern world. Drawing on sermons preached in rural and urban parishes, folktales, and accounts of seances, the author vividly re-creates the social and...

The Greek philosopher Diogenes said that when he died his body should be tossed over the city walls for beasts to scavenge. Why should he or anyone else care what became of his corpse? In The Work of the Dead, acclaimed cultural historian Thomas Laqueur examines why humanity has universally rejected Diogenes's argument. No culture has been indifferent to mortal remains. Even in our supposedly disenchanted scientific age, the dead body still matters--for individuals, communities, and nations. A remarkably ambitious history, The Work of the Dead offers a compelling and richly...

As death rates continue to rise, this collection brings together scholars engaged in policy associated with death to analyse the challenges these trends present. Examining a range of issues including inheritance, palliative care, euthanasia, funeral costs and marginalised deaths, this unique volumes portrays how death factors in social policy.

In Hidden History, Lynn Rainville travels through the forgotten African American cemeteries of central Virginia to recover information crucial to the stories of the black families who lived and worked there for over two hundred years. The subjects of Rainville's research are not statesmen or plantation elites; they are hidden residents, people who are typically underrepresented in historical research but whose stories are essential for a complete understanding of our national past.

Rainville studied above-ground funerary remains in over 150 historic African American...

The Internet has reinvented the paradigm of life and death: social media enables a discourse with loved ones long after their deaths, while gaming sites provide opportunities for multiple lives and life forms. In this thought-provoking work, author Kevin O'Neill examines America's concept of afterlife as imagined in cyberspace and considers how technologies designed to emulate immortality present serious challenges to our ideas about human identity and to our religious beliefs about heaven and hell.

The first part of the work covering the period between 1840 and 1860 addresses...