Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Death & Dying

Except for the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, there are no U.S. laws that allow physicians to assist patients in hastening death. Many who support physician-assisted suicide ask, "Why not?" After all, the Netherlands permits both euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, and polls suggest that many Americans want that choice available to them.

"Euthanasia: A Reference Handbook, Second Edition" explores that question through a balanced, thoughtful discussion of the legal, medical, and spiritual components of end-of-life questions. What are the potential pitfalls of legalizing assisted...

Western culture has always been obsessed with death, but now death has taken on a new, anonymous form. The twentieth century saw the mass production of corpses through war and the triumph of technology over the human body. The new millennium has opened with global terrorism and the suspension of human rights in far-flung prison camps.We live in an age of panic, when the fear of death at any time and in any place is present. And we live in an age of apathy towards both science and institutional politics, an age which has sanctioned the rise of techno-medical and political powers which can...

- 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...

The death of the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci in China in 1610 was the occasion for demonstrations of European rituals appropriate for a Catholic priest and also of Chinese rituals appropriate to the country hosting the Jesuit community. Rather than burying Ricci immediately in a plain coffin near the church, according to their European practice, the Jesuits followed Chinese custom and kept Ricci's body for nearly a year in an air-tight Chinese-style coffin and asked the emperor for burial ground outside the city walls. Moreover, at Ricci's funeral itself, on their own initiative the...

Grave Matters follows families who found in "green" burial a more natural, more economic, and ultimately more meaningful alternative to the tired and toxic send-off on offer at the local funeral parlor.

Eschewing chemical embalming and fancy caskets, elaborate and costly funerals, they have embraced a range of natural options, new and old, that are...

This book focuses on how the US could adapt its foreign policy initiatives to fit in with the growing aspirations of a multipolar world for a more balanced international order.

Written by leading scholars, such as Joseph Nye, Eric Hobsbawm and Akira Iriye, the volume examines if the absence of a superpower status would lead to anarchy, or if an alternative is possible. In view of the globalization process and the changing perceptions of US hegemony in the various regions of the world, it addresses the possibility of re-examining and redefining the nineteenth century classical...

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...

For some of the most influential figures in history, death marked the start of a new adventure. The famous deceased have been stolen, burned, sold, pickled, frozen, stuffed, impersonated, and even filed away in a lawyer's office. Their fingers, teeth, toes, arms, legs, skulls, hearts, lungs, and nether regions have embarked on voyages that crisscross the globe and stretch the imagination.

Counterfeiters tried to steal Lincoln's corpse. Einstein's brain...