In this illuminating collection of oral-history style interviews, Casey Jarman talks to a funeral industry watchdog about the (often shady) history of the death trade; he hears how songwriter David Bazan lost his faith while trying to hold on to his family; he learns about cartoonist Art Spiegelman using his college LSD trips to explain death to his children; and he gets to know his own grandparents, posthumously. These are stories of loss, rebuilding, wonder, and wild speculation featuring everyone from philosophers to former death row wardens and hospice volunteers. In these moving, enlightening, and often funny conversations, the end is only the beginning.

The latest volume in this multidisciplinary series on key topics in evolutionary studies, Evolutionary Perspectives on Death provides an evolutionary analysis of mortality and the consideration of death. Bringing together noted experts from a variety of fields, the books emanate from conferences held at Oakland University, and are dedicated to providing wide ranging and occasionally provocative views of human evolution. The volume on death covers topics from biology, anthropology, psychology, sociology and philosophy, with contributors addressing how evolution informs the process of comprehending, grieving, depicting, celebrating, and accepting death. Among the topics covered: Evolutionary perspectives on the loss of a twin Nonhuman primate responses to death Death in literature Witnessing and representing the death of pets The role of human decomposition facilities in shaping American perspectives on death This insightful volume showcases groundbreaking empirical and theoretical research addressing death and mortality from an evolutionary perspective, demonstrating the intellectual value of an interdisciplinary approach to understanding psychological processes and behavior. Chapter 6 of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

When a family member or close friend dies, it can be difficult to know how best to help the children and teenagers involved. Someone Very Important Has Just Died is a practical book written for those caring for children and teenagers suffering a close bereavement. Intended for use immediately or soon after the death has occurred, this book gives practical and detailed guidance on what adults might say and do to help children.;This much-needed resource tackles the sensitive issues of what to tell children, how far to include them in the events immediately after the death, and how to tend to their physical and emotional needs. The material is suitable for anyone regardless of their background and beliefs, and is supplemented with information on where to go to obtain longer term bereavement support.;Someone Very Important Has Just Died is an ideal resource for professionals in all areas of work relating to bereavement. It is designed to be given to adults with children in their care at the time of a death.

At the end of life, our comfort lies mainly in relationships. In this book, Daniel Miller, one of the world's leading anthropologists, examines the social worlds of people suffering from terminal or long-term illness. Threading together a series of personal stories, based on interviews conducted with patients of an English hospice, Miller draws out the implications of these narratives for our understanding of community, friendship, and kinship, but also loneliness and isolation. This is a book about people's lives, not their deaths: about the hospice patients rather than the hospice. It focuses on the comfort given by friends, carers and relatives through both face-to-face relations and, increasingly, online communication. Miller asks whether the loneliness and isolation he uncovers is the result of a decline of English patterns of socialising, or their continuation. This moving and deeply humane book combines warmth and sharp observation with anthropological insight and practical suggestions for the use of media by the hospice. It will be of interest not only to students and scholars of anthropology, sociology, social policy and media and cultural studies, but also to healthcare professionals and, indeed, to anyone who would like to know more about the role of relationships in the final stage of our lives.

Major religious traditions of the world contain perspectives of perennial importance on the topic of death and afterlife. Such concepts and beliefs are not only reflected directly in mortuary and funerary practices, but also inform patterns of beliefs and rituals that shape human lifestyles. Though evidenced in sacred texts, they cannot be fully understood in isolation by textual study alone. Rather, they must be explored in terms of a comprehensive understanding of the given religious system as rooted in an overall culture. Here thirteen scholars, each a specialist in a particular religious tradition, outline the beliefs, myths, and practices relating to death and afterlife. The volume introduction provides a framework for understanding the evolutionary relationships among world religions and the unity as well as the diversity of their quest for overcoming death. Part I comprises chapters on African religions representing the nonliterate religious experience and on ancient religions of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece. Studies of these religions serve as background for comprehending concepts relating to death and afterlife in the major world religions, which are dealt with in Part II, on Western religions, and Part III, on Eastern religions. The particular method of approach to each tradition is determined by the nature of the material. With death and afterlife as the common focus, this group of scholars has brought to bear its diverse expertise in anthropology, classics, archaeology, biblical studies, history, and theology. The result is a text important for comparative religion courses and, beyond that, a book extending our understanding of human thoughts and aspirations. It offers aglobal perspective from which an individual can ponder his or her own personal issues concerning death and afterlife.

Funerary Practices in Serbia is the first book to offer a concise yet highly informative study of the historical development and current state of funerary practices in Serbia. Situated in a constant dynamic struggle between traditional cultural customs and modern legislation, funerary practices in Serbia represent a particularly interesting field of research. In this study, Pavicevic combines an investigation of long-term developments and recent changes to place contemporary practices in their wider historical context, emphasizing the complicated geo-political, demographic and cultural factors that have shaped funeral traditions in Serbia over time. In particular, she demonstrates how the country's frequent changing of borders and life under the rule of two great empires - the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman - fostered the emergence of colorful funerary traditions, such as open-casket burial and vigils around the body, that persist to this day in spite of government attempts to modernize funerary practice since the end of the 19th century. The book also provides illuminating insights into the legal framework surrounding current funerary practices in Serbia, the relationship between the state and private sectors, the ownership of cemeteries and gravesites, the role of churches and religious communities, religious and ethnic variations in funerary culture and traditions, and the development of modern cremation practices in Serbia. This book provides a useful and original resource for policymakers and practitioners interested in the historic, legal, technical and professional aspects of the Serbian funerary industry, and to researchers in cultural anthropology, history, sociology and cultural management.

This insightful study examines the deeply personal and heart-wrenching tensions among financial considerations, emotional attachments, and moral arguments that motivate end-of-life decisions. America's health care system was built on the principle that life should be prolonged whenever possible, regardless of the costs. This commitment has often meant that patients spend their last days suffering from heroic interventions that extend their life by only weeks or months. Increasingly, this approach to end-of-life care is coming under scrutiny, from a moral as well as a financial perspective. Sociologist Roi Livne documents the rise and effectiveness of hospice and palliative care, and growing acceptance of the idea that a life consumed by suffering may not be worth living. Values at the End of Life combines an in-depth historical analysis with an extensive study conducted in three hospitals, where Livne observed terminally ill patients, their families, and caregivers negotiating treatment. Livne describes the ambivalent, conflicted moments when people articulate and act on their moral intuitions about dying. Interviews with medical staff allowed him to isolate the strategies clinicians use to help families understand their options. As Livne discovered, clinicians are advancing the idea that invasive, expensive hospital procedures often compound a patient's suffering. Affluent, educated families were more readily persuaded by this moral calculus than those of less means. Once defiant of death-or even in denial-many American families and professionals in the health care system are beginning to embrace the notion that less treatment in the end may be better treatment.

'Insightful and refreshing.' - Professor Dennis Klass, Webster University Religion Department, St. Louis, USA
'A tour de force.' - Dr Colin Murray Parkes, OBE, MD, FRCPsych, President of CRUSE
Some societies and some individuals find a place for their dead, others leave them behind. In recent years, researchers, professionals and bereaved people themselves have struggled with this. Should the bond with the dead be continued or broken? What is clear is that the grieving individual is not left in a social vacuum but has to struggle with expectations from self, family, friends, professionals and academic theorists.
This ground-breaking book looks at the social position of the bereaved. They find themselves caught between the living and the dead, sometimes searching for guidelines in a de-ritualized society that has few to offer, sometimes finding their grief inappropriately pathologised and policed. At its best, bereavement care offers reassurance, validation, and freedom to talk where the client has previously encountered judgmentalism.
In this unique book, Tony Walter applies sociological insights to one of the most personal of human situations. On Bereavement is aimed at students on medical, nursing, counselling and social work courses that include bereavement as a topic. It will also appeal to sociology students with an interest in death, dying and mortality.

What should states do with the bodies of suicide bombers and other jihadists who die while perpetrating terrorist attacks? This original and unsettling book explores the host of ethical and political questions raised by this dilemma, from (non-) legitimisation of the 'enemy' and their cause to the non-territorial identity of individuals who identified in life with a global community of believers. Because states do not recognise suicide bombers as enemy combatants, governments must decide individually what to do with their remains. Riva Kastoryano offers a window onto this challenging predicament through the responses of the American, Spanish, British and French governments after the Al-Qaeda suicide attacks in New York, Madrid and London, and Islamic State's attacks on Paris in 2015. Interviewing officials, religious and local leaders and jihadists' families, both in their countries of origin and in the target nations, she has traced the terrorists' travel history, discovering unexpected connections between their itineraries and the handling of their burials. This fascinating book reveals how states' approaches to a seemingly practical issue are closely shaped by territory, culture, globalisation and identity.

Death Across Cultures: Death and Dying in Non-Western Cultures, explores death practices and beliefs, before and after death, around the non-Western world. It includes chapters on countries in Africa, Asia, South America, as well as indigenous people in Australia and North America. These chapters address changes in death rituals and beliefs, medicalization and the industry of death, and the different ways cultures mediate the impacts of modernity. Comparative studies with the west and among countries are included. This book brings together global research conducted by anthropologists, social scientists and scholars who work closely with individuals from the cultures they are writing about.

Photography represents a medium in which the moment of death can be captured and preserved, the image becoming a mechanism through which audiences are beguiled by the certainty of their own mortality. Examining a spectrum of post-mortem images, Photography and Death considers various ways in which the death image has been framed and what these styles communicate about changing social attitudes related to dying, mourning and the afterlife. Presenting a fresh perspective on how we might view death photography in the context of our contemporary cultural milieu, this book brings together a range of historical examples to create a richer narrative of how we see, understand and discuss death in both the private and public forum. Building upon existing publications which relate explicitly to the study of death, dying and cultures of mourning, the book discusses topics such as post-mortem portraiture, the Civil War, Spiritualism and lynching. These are positioned alongside contemporary representations of death, as seen in celebrity death images and forensic photography. Uncovering an important historical contrast, in which modern notions of death are a comment on ownership or an emotionless, clinical state, Harris highlights the various ways that the deceased body is a site of contestation and fascination. An engaging read for students and researchers with an interest in death studies, this book represents a unique account of the various ways that attitudes about death have been shaped through the photographic image.

What made some 700 men and women in the Yorkshire town of Kingston-upon-Hull, in the years 1837 to 1900, decide to suffer no longer "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and take their own lives? In this study, the author seeks to uncover the experiences that drove people to suicide; to analyze how suicide was understood by victims, by their families and friends, and by legal and medical authorities; to study how the presumed causes of suicide and the meanings of suicide changed over time and in response to changed social circumstances; and to see what "suicide narratives" elicited by coroners' inquests can tell us about Victorian life, beliefs, and values in general.
The book is based on an unprecedentedly complete and comprehensive collection of inquest files covering the entire Victorian era in Hull (most coroners' files have not survived or exist only in fragmentary form). Hitherto, suicide in the Victorian period has been examined only on a national basis; where local evidence has been used, it has come chiefly from London. Through the testimony of relatives, neighbors, friends, and even the deceased (by means of suicide notes), the author has been able to get closer to the experience of suicide and its social construction than has been possible in any previous study.
The framework within which the author evaluates the paths to suicide is the life cycle. By placing each suicide in its local socioeconomic context, and by examining each stage in the life course for each sex and for different social levels, the author has been able to assess causation factors with great confidence. He establishes arguments (such as the importance of declining wages and job security for older men and the loss of a marital partner for either sex) more securely than have earlier studies, and puts some new arguments on the agenda (such as the importance of the presence or absence of interpersonal ties and the influence of Poor Law policy).

Social Palliation is a pioneering study on living and dying as articulated by first-generation Iranian and Ismaili Muslim communities in Canada. Using ethnographic narratives, Parin Dossa makes a case for a paradigm shift from palliative care to social palliation. Experiences of displacement and resettlement reveal that life and death must be understood as an integrated unit if we are to appreciate what it is like to be awakened to our human existence. In the wake of structural exclusion and systemic suffering, social palliation brings to light displaced persons' endeavours to restore the integrity of life and death. Dossa highlights the point that death conjoined with life is embedded within the socio-cultural and spiritual experience. Here, a caring society is not perceived in fragments, as is the case with traditional institutional care or care offered during end-of-life. Rather, Dossa draws attention to an organic form of caring, illustrated through the trajectories of storied lives. In exemplifying more humane aspects of social palliation, this book foregrounds sacred traditions to illustrate their potential to evoke deep-level conversations across socio-political boundaries on what it is like to live and die in the contemporary world.

A Columbia University physician comes across a popular medieval text on dying well written after the horror of the Black Plague and discovers ancient wisdom for rethinking death and gaining insight today on how we can learn the lost art of dying well in this wise, clear-eyed book that is as compelling and soulful as Being Mortal, When Breath Becomes Air, and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. As a specialist in both medical ethics and the treatment of older patients, Dr. L. S. Dugdale knows a great deal about the end of life. Far too many of us die poorly, she argues. Our culture has overly medicalized death: dying is often institutional and sterile, prolonged by unnecessary resuscitations and other intrusive interventions. We are not going gently into that good night--our reliance on modern medicine can actually prolong suffering and strip us of our dignity. Yet our lives do not have to end this way. Centuries ago, in the wake of the Black Plague, a text was published offering advice to help the living prepare for a good death. Written during the late Middle Ages, ars moriendi--The Art of Dying--made clear that to die well, one first had to live well and described what practices best help us prepare. When Dugdale discovered this Medieval book, it was a revelation. Inspired by its holistic approach to the final stage we must all one day face, she draws from this forgotten work, combining its wisdom with the knowledge she has gleaned from her long medical career. The Lost Art of Dying is a twenty-first century ars moriendi, filled with much-needed insight and thoughtful guidance that will change our perceptions. By recovering our sense of finitude, confronting our fears, accepting how our bodies age, developing meaningful rituals, and involving our communities in end-of-life care, we can discover what it means to both live and die well. And like the original ars moriendi, The Lost Art of Dying includes nine black-and-white drawings from artist Michael W. Dugger. Dr. Dugdale offers a hopeful perspective on death and dying as she shows us how to adapt the wisdom from the past to our lives today. The Lost Art of Dying is a vital, affecting book that reconsiders death, death culture, and how we can transform how we live each day, including our last.

A mass fatalities response goes far beyond returning the remains of a loved one to surviving family members. Those charged with this grim but critical responsibility will find themselves immersed in multiple tasks involving diverse individuals, organizations, and priorities. Mass Fatalities: Managing the Community Response examines multiple complex issues while providing practical guidance to communities and responders as they plan for, respond to, and recover from a mass fatalities incident. This book explores the immense array of tasks such as: Managing resources and personnel Protecting a potential crime scene Conducting a comprehensive search and recovery of the remains Identifying and returning the remains and personal effects Ensuring family members of the deceased are treated with compassion, dignity, and respect Making sure responders have the proper tools to complete their responsibilities Providing family members, responders, and the impacted community the necessary support to cope with the physical, spiritual, and emotional stressors of a mass fatalities incident The book explains in detail the functions performed at the mass fatalities operational sites, including the Disaster Site, Victim Identification Center, Family Assistance Center, and Staff Processing Center. It provides organizational charts with job descriptions detailing the roles and responsibilities for an effective leadership team and describes the management of the disaster site, presenting step-by-step procedures for search and recovery. The book also discusses the registration, initial interview, and Notification of Death for family members at the Family Assistance Center and covers best practices for the Victim Identification Center operations. Throughout, chapters emphasize the need for mental health services-exploring the essential elements of providing effective and compassionate support to surviving family members (including children), to responders and their families, and to the community. An increase in catastrophic disasters in recent years has highlighted the need for sound guidance outlining the protocol for handling these events. Mass Fatalities: Managing the Community Response is an indispensable resource for this formidable task. Peter Teahen discusses the book in a video on the CRC Press YouTube channel.

The book Approaches to Death and Dying: Bioethical and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Marta Szabat and Jan Piasecki, is part of a still too narrow catalogue of works devoted to end-of-life themes. The volume consists of eleven articles arranged in four parts corresponding to a broad range of issues: law, ethics, philosophy, and cultural studies. The arrangement of the book is thus constructed around various perspectives upon which any reflection on death and dying must be based. This is perhaps indicative of how difficult it is to adopt an unambiguous attitude towards death-modernity, which introduces a multitude of possible choices and decisions regarding our own bodies, has enhanced individualism but at the same time done away with the order provided by old customs, cultural arrangements, strategies towards the inevitable and the power exerted by that order.

Help and Hope for an Unexpected JourneyDo real Christians commit suicide? Yes, they do. And for those left behind, the journey following such a tragedy is unbearably painful. Finding Your Way after the Suicide of Someone You Love is a compassionate and practical guide that addresses the intensely personal issues of survivors of suicide (SOS). This gentle and faith-affirming resource helps survivors know what to expect, especially during the first year following a suicide. It includes personal stories of survivors and suggestions on how to move beyond survival to live life again. Designed for use by individuals, couples, and SOS groups, this book offers help for parents, siblings, friends, and extended families, as well as practical guidelines for pastors, Christian counselors, and other church leaders. Topics include: * What to do in the immediate aftermath of a suicide* Handling guilt and understanding the role of depression in suicides * Dealing with questions of faith and meaning * Creating a support system* Choosing a Christian therapist* Trusted resources and websites

What drives a person to take his or her own life? Why would an individual be willing to strap a bomb to himself and walk into a crowded marketplace, blowing himself up at the same time as he kills and maims the people around him? Does suicide or voluntary death have the same meaning today as it had in earlier centuries, and does it have the same significance in China, India and the Middle East as it has in the West? How should we understand this distressing, often puzzling phenomenon and how can we explain its patterns and variations over time? In this wide-ranging comparative study, Barbagli examines suicide as a socio-cultural, religious and political phenomenon, exploring the reasons that underlie it and the meanings it has acquired in different cultures throughout the world. Drawing on a vast body of research carried out by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists and psychologists, Barbagli shows that a satisfactory theory of suicide cannot limit itself to considering the two causes that were highlighted by the great French sociologist Emile Durkheim namely, social integration and regulation. Barbagli proposes a new account of suicide that links the motives for and significance attributed to individual actions with the people for whom and against whom individuals take their lives. This new study of suicide sheds fresh light on the cultural differences between East and West and greatly increases our understanding of an often-misunderstood act. It will be the definitive history of suicide for many years to come.

On June 28, 1987, four Dallas-based Christian leaders were killed in an airplane crash as they were returning from a Focus on the Family retreat in Montana: George L. Clark, chairman of the board and CEO of MBank; Dr. Trevor E. Mabery, a surgeon who helped found Humana Hospital-Medical City; Hugo W. Schoelkopf III, an entrepreneur and sporting goods manufacturer; and Creath Davis, founder and director of Christian Concern Foundation.

Among the losses their families shared, Creath's wife, Verdell, also lost part of her identity: No longer was she a pastor's wife, and no longer was she sure what she believed. This deeply moving book, gleaned from parts of journals that she kept during the loss of her husband, offers a source of hope and healing for anyone experiencing grief. With remarkable honesty, courage, and generosity, she shares how to examine grief and ultimately find healing in the process.

Book & CD-ROM. International comparisons of mortality aimed at revealing age-specific and time-specific differences in survival between Denmark and nine developed countries have been carried out by estimating surfaces of ratios of death rates in the last decades. To gain deeper insights into this phenomenon comparative analyses of death rates by causes of death for Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Japan have been performed. The book is accompanied by a CD-ROM including colour Lexis maps, graphs of trends in death rates by causes of death, animated graphs of common survival indicators and a Lexis program for producing Lexis maps.

In this interfaith book Lucinda Mosher investigates different understandings of destiny, loss, death, and remembrance in America's many religions. Using stories and interviews with a variety of religious adherents and health professionals, the book wrestles with questions such as: how can our religion guide us in making decisions about certain kinds of medical treatment options? What religion-related issues would it be helpful for a healthcare provider to know? How do different religious traditions help manage our grief? In a globalized society religious traditions sit alongside each other as never before, and the need for religious literacy and multifaith chaplaincy is increasingly recognized. By looking at multireligious America, this book provides an essential exploration of different attitudes to death, helping members of all faith communities to become more literate with each other's religious traditions.

The first book length anthropological study of voluntary assisted dying in Switzerland, Leaving is a narrative account of five people who ended their lives with assistance. Stavrianakis places his observations of the judgment to end life in this way within a larger inquiry about how to approach and understand the practice of assisted suicide, which he characterizes as operating in a political, legal, and medical "parazone," adjacent to medical care and expertise. Frequently, observers too rapidly integrate assisted suicide into moral positions that reflect sociological and psychological commonplaces about individual choice and its social determinants. Leaving engages with core early twentieth-century psychoanalytic and sociological texts arguing for a contemporary approach to the phenomenon of voluntary death, seeking to learn from such conceptual repertoires, as well as to acknowledge their limits. Leaving concludes on the anthropological question of how to account for the ethics of assistance with suicide: to grasp the actuality and composition of the ethical work that goes on in the configuration of a subject, one who is making a judgment about dying, with other participants and observers, the anthropologist included.