|
|
Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Death & dying > General
In response to increased academic interest in the fields of death
studies, memorial studies, and human and animal studies, Skin,
Meaning and Symbolism in Pet Memorials examines the mourning
rituals which exist between people and their domestic pets. Paying
close attention to the changing role and increased prominence of
the companion animal in the domestic setting, each chapter
considers a different form of companion animal memorialization,
linking modern practices such as tattooing to historical examples
of animal focused memento mori, particularly taxidermy. The final
chapter adopts a forward focus in its provision of a framework for
future studies related to how death and memorialization rituals are
increasingly coming to occupy the digital space. While skin and
touch are the focal points of many encounters explored in the text,
what becomes evident is how the virtual realm is increasingly
intruding into the touch experience. As a result, the posthumous,
online afterlives of pets are set to become a social issue of
increasing significance to the death and mourning experience. This
work meets the needs of academics, post-graduate students and
general readers alike, appealing to anyone with an interest in
death studies, popular culture, tattooing and human and animal
studies.
Since the rise in deaths through Covid-19, there has been an
increase in the need for personal, heartfelt ceremonies to
celebrate the end of life. More and more people are questioning
traditional ideas and realising that there are choices out there.
Drawing upon her years of experience in working in the funeral
industry, Sarah Chapman uniquely collates all the key information
needed into a single comprehensive resource. This must-have guide
will holistically support you from the moment someone dies to their
funeral, while also empowering you to plan your own end-of-life
care and ceremony. This step-by-step guide will take away the fear
and uncertainty you may feel when faced with arranging the funeral
of a loved one. It gives you back control in creating a fitting
ceremony to celebrate their life, while also providing you with the
tools to plan your own funeral in a way that is unique to you. It
will help you to decide on the legacy you would like to leave for
future generations, and you may even decide to plan your own living
ceremony before you die.
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.
The elaborate and inventive slaughter of humans and animals in the arena fed an insatiable desire for violent spectacle among the Roman people. Donald G. Kyle combines the words of ancient authors with current scholarly research and cross-cultural perspectives, as he explores * the origins and historical development of the games * who the victims were and why they were chosen * how the Romans disposed of the thousands of resulting corpses * the complex religious and ritual aspects of institutionalised violence * the particularly savage treatment given to defiant Christians. This lively and original work provides compelling, sometimes controversial, perspectives on the bloody entertainments of ancient Rome, which continue to fascinate us to this day.
As read on BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week
'Moving, intellectual and unsentimental. I think it will become a classic' Melvyn Bragg
'Thoughtful, subtle, elegantly clever and oddly joyous, Every Third Thought is beautiful' - Kate Mosse
In 1995, at the age of forty-two, Robert McCrum suffered a dramatic and near-fatal stroke. Since that life-changing event, McCrum has lived in the shadow of death, unavoidably aware of his own mortality. And now, in his sixties, he is noticing a change: his friends are joining him there. Death has become his contemporaries’ every third thought.
And so, with the words of McCrum’s favourite authors as travel companions, Every Third Thought takes us on a journey towards death itself. This is a deeply personal book of reflection and conversation – with brain surgeons, psychologists, hospice workers and patients, writers and poets, and it confronts an existential question: in a world where we have learnt to live well at all costs, can we make peace with dying?
Breaking Free from Death examines how Russian writers respond to
the burden of living with anxieties about their creative outputs,
and, ultimately, about their own inevitable finitude. What
contributes to creative death are not just crippling diseases that
make man defenseless in the face of death, and not just the
arguably universal fear of death but, equally important, the
innumerable impositions on the part of various outsiders. Many
conflicts in the lives of Rylkova's subjects arose not from their
opposition to the existing political regimes but from their
interactions with like-minded and supporting intellectuals,
friends, and relatives. The book describes the lives and choices
that concrete individuals and-by extrapolation-their literary
characters must face in order to preserve their singularity and
integrity while attempting to achieve fame, greatness, and success.
A mesmerizing trip across America to investigate the changing face
of death in contemporary life Death in the United States is
undergoing a quiet revolution. You can have your body frozen,
dissected, composted, dissolved, or tanned. Your family can
incorporate your remains into jewelry, shotgun shells,
paperweights, and artwork. Cremations have more than doubled, and
DIY home funerals and green burials are on the rise. American
Afterlives is Shannon Lee Dawdy's lyrical and compassionate account
of changing death practices in America as people face their own
mortality and search for a different kind of afterlife. As an
anthropologist and archaeologist, Dawdy knows that how a society
treats its dead yields powerful clues about its beliefs and values.
As someone who has experienced loss herself, she knows there is no
way to tell this story without also reexamining her own views about
death and dying. In this meditative and gently humorous book, Dawdy
embarks on a transformative journey across the United States,
talking to funeral directors, death-care entrepreneurs, designers,
cemetery owners, death doulas, and ordinary people from all walks
of life. What she discovers is that, by reinventing death,
Americans are reworking their ideas about personhood, ritual, and
connection across generations. She also confronts the seeming
contradiction that American death is becoming at the same time more
materialistic and more spiritual. Written in conjunction with a
documentary film project, American Afterlives features images by
cinematographer Daniel Zox that provide their own testament to our
rapidly changing attitudes toward death and the afterlife.
What do Socrates, Hypatia, Giordano Bruno, Thomas More, and Jan
Patocka have in common? First, they were all faced one day with the
most difficult of choices: stay faithful to your ideas and die or
renounce them and stay alive. Second, they all chose to die. Their
spectacular deaths have become not only an integral part of their
biographies, but they are also inseparable from their work. A death
for ideas is a piece of philosophical work in its own right;
Socrates may have never written a line, but his death is one of the
greatest philosophical best-sellers of all time. Dying for Ideas
explores the limit-situation in which philosophers find themselves
when the only means of persuasion they can use is their own dying
bodies and the public spectacle of their death. Silenced by brute
force, they cannot argue anymore and have to turn philosophy into
bodily performance. The phenomenology of this unique situation is
as fascinating as it has been neglected.In the manner of a dramatic
narrative, the book tells the story of the philosopher's encounter
with death as seen from several angles: the tradition of philosophy
as a way of life; the body as the locus of fundamental human
experiences; death of a classical philosophical topic; fear of
death as a torturer of philosophical minds; finally, the
philosophers' scapegoating and their live performance of a martyr's
death, followed by apotheosis and disappearance into myth. While
rooted in the history of philosophy, Dying for Ideas is an exercise
in challenging and breaking disciplinary boundaries. This is a book
about Socrates and Heidegger, but also about Gandhi's fasting unto
death and self-immolation as political protest; about Girard and
Passolini, and still about self-fashioning and the art of the
essay; Boethius and Montaigne are discussed, and so are Bergman's
Seventh Seal and Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilyich
Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides? looks at several of the most
contentious issues in many societies. The book asks, whose rights
are protected? How do these rights and protections change over
time, and who makes those decisions? This book explores the
fundamentally sociological processes which underlie the quest for
morality and justice in human societies. The author sheds light on
the social movements and social processes at the root of these
seemingly personal moral questions. The third edition contains a
new chapter on torture entitled, "Taking Life and Inflicting
Suffering."
The unmarked mass graves left by war and acts of terror are lasting
traces of violence in communities traumatized by fear, conflict,
and unfinished mourning. Like silent testimonies to the wounds of
history, these graves continue to inflict harm on communities and
families that wish to bury or memorialize their lost kin. Changing
political circumstances can reveal the location of mass graves or
facilitate their exhumation, but the challenge of identifying and
recovering the dead is only the beginning of a complex process that
brings the rights and wishes of a bereaved society onto a
transnational stage. Necropolitics: Mass Graves and Exhumations in
the Age of Human Rights examines the political and social
implications of this sensitive undertaking in specific local and
national contexts. International forensic methods, local-level
claims, national political developments, and transnational human
rights discourse converge in detailed case studies from the United
States, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Spain, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Greece,
Rwanda, Cambodia, and Korea. Contributors analyze the role of
exhumations in transitional justice from the steps of interviewing
eyewitnesses and survivors to the painstaking forensic recovery and
comparison of DNA profiles. This innovative volume demonstrates
that contemporary exhumations are as much a source of personal,
historical, and criminal evidence as instruments of redress for
victims through legal accountability and memory politics.
Contributors: Zoe Crossland, Francisco Ferrandiz, Luis Fondebrider,
Iosif Kovras, Heonik Kwon, Isaias Rojas-Perez, Antonius C. G. M.
Robben, Elena Lesley, Katerina Stefatos, Francesc Torres, Sarah
Wagner, Richard Ashby Wilson.
 |
Those Who Remained
(Paperback)
Zsuzsa F Varkonyi; Translated by Peter Czipott; Edited by Patty Howell
|
R977
R836
Discovery Miles 8 360
Save R141 (14%)
|
Ships in 18 - 22 working days
|
|
|
We live in a society where people struggle to look death in the
eye. Death has become the territory of professionals and we rarely
see a dead body, unless it is someone very close to us. Death has
become hidden, and so more traumatic. This book shows that, if we
start talking openly about death, it can change the way we live. It
is a collection of stories and images about death, dying and
bereavement. People from all walks of life share their experiences
and what they have learned from accompanying others. Heartbreaking,
angry, questioning and contradictory - laugh-aloud funny, even -
the stories illuminate, inspire, reassure and inform. They are
accompanied by commentaries from professionals working in
end-of-life planning, health, bereavement and funeral care.
This unique book recounts the experience of facing one's death
solely from the dying person's point of view rather than from the
perspective of caregivers, survivors, or rescuers. Such unmediated
access challenges assumptions about the emotional and spiritual
dimensions of dying, showing readers that -- along with suffering,
loss, anger, sadness, and fear -- we can also feel courage, love,
hope, reminiscence, transcendence, transformation, and even
happiness as we die. A work that is at once psychological,
sociological, and philosophical, this book brings together
testimonies of those dying from terminal illness, old age, sudden
injury or trauma, acts of war, and the consequences of natural
disasters and terrorism. It also includes statements from
individuals who are on death row, in death camps, or planning
suicide. Each form of dying addressed highlights an important set
of emotions and narratives that often eclipses stereotypical
renderings of dying and reflects the numerous contexts in which
this journey can occur outside of hospitals, nursing homes, and
hospices.Chapters focus on common emotional themes linked to dying,
expanding and challenging them through first-person accounts and
analyses of relevant academic and clinical literature in
psycho-oncology, palliative care, gerontology, military history,
anthropology, sociology, cultural and religious studies, poetry,
and fiction. The result is an all-encompassing investigation into
an experience that will eventually include us all and is more
surprising and profound than anyone can imagine.
 |
Mortality
(Paperback)
Christopher Hitchens
|
R402
R367
Discovery Miles 3 670
Save R35 (9%)
|
Ships in 18 - 22 working days
|
|
|
On June 8, 2010, while on a book tour for his bestselling memoir,
"Hitch-22," Christopher Hitchens was stricken in his New York hotel
room with excruciating pain in his chest and thorax. As he would
later write in the first of a series of award-winning columns for
Vanity Fair, he suddenly found himself being deported "from the
country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the
land of malady." Over the next eighteen months, until his death in
Houston on December 15, 2011, he wrote constantly and brilliantly
on politics and culture, astonishing readers with his capacity for
superior work even in extremis.
Throughout the course of his ordeal battling esophageal cancer,
Hitchens adamantly and bravely refused the solace of religion,
preferring to confront death with both eyes open. In this riveting
account of his affliction, Hitchens poignantly describes the
torments of illness, discusses its taboos, and explores how disease
transforms experience and changes our relationship to the world
around us. By turns personal and philosophical, Hitchens embraces
the full panoply of human emotions as cancer invades his body and
compels him to grapple with the enigma of death.
MORTALITY is the exemplary story of one man's refusal to cower in
the face of the unknown, as well as a searching look at the human
predicament. Crisp and vivid, veined throughout with penetrating
intelligence, Hitchens's testament is a courageous and lucid work
of literature, an affirmation of the dignity and worth of
man.
In the febrile religious and political climate of late
sixteenth-century England, when the grip of the Reformation was as
yet fragile and insecure, and underground papism still perceived to
be rife, Lancashire was felt by the Protestant authorities to be a
sinister corner of superstition, lawlessness and popery. And it was
around Pendle Hill, a sombre ridge that looms over the intersecting
pastures, meadows and moorland of the Ribble Valley, that their
suspicions took infamous shape. The arraignment of the Lancashire
witches in the assizes of Lancaster during 1612 is England's most
notorious witch-trial. The women who lived in the vicinity of
Pendle, who were accused alongside the so-called Samlesbury
Witches, then convicted and hanged, were more than just wicked
sorcerers whose malign incantations caused others harm. They were
reputed to be part of a dense network of devilry and mischief that
revealed itself as much in hidden celebration of the Mass as in
malevolent magic. They had to be eliminated to set an example to
others. In this remarkable and authoritative treatment, published
to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the case of the
Lancashire witches, Philip C Almond evokes all the fear, drama and
paranoia of those volatile times: the bleak story of the storm over
Pendle
If ever there was an area requiring that the research-practice
gap be bridged, surely it occurs where thanatologists engage with
people dealing with human mortality and loss. The field of
thanatology the study of death and dying is a complex,
multidisciplinary area that encompases the range of human
experiences, emotions, expectations, and realities. The Handbook of
Thanatology is the most authoritative volume in the field,
providing a single source of up-to-date scholarship, research, and
practice implications. The handbook is the recommended resource for
preparation for the prestigious certificate in thanatology (CT) and
fellow in thanatology (FT) credentials, which are administered and
granted by ADEC."
Dying at the Margins: Reflections on Justice and Healing for
Inner-City Poor gives voice to the most vulnerable and disempowered
population-the urban dying poor- and connects them to the voices of
leaders in end-of-life-care. Chapters written by these experts in
the field discuss the issues that challenge patients and their
loved ones, as well as offering insights into how to improve the
quality of their lives. In an illuminating and timely follow up to
Dancing with Broken Bones, all discussions revolve around the
actual experiences of the patients previously documented,
encouraging a greater understanding about the needs of the dying
poor, advocating for them, and developing best practices in caring.
Demystifying stereotypes that surround poverty, Moller illuminates
how faith, remarkable optimism, and an unassailable spirit provide
strength and courage to the dying poor.Dying at the Margins serves
as a rallying call for not only end-of-life professionals, but
compassionate individuals everywhere, to understand and respond to
the needs of the especially vulnerable, yet inspiring, people who
comprise the world of the inner city dying poor.
The Spirit Ambulance is a journey into decision-making at the end
of life in Thailand, where families attempt to craft good deaths
for their elders in the face of clashing ethical frameworks, from a
rapidly developing universal medical system, to national and global
human-rights politics, to contemporary movements in Buddhist
metaphysics. Scott Stonington's gripping ethnography documents how
Thai families attempt to pay back a "debt of life" to their elders
through intensive medical care, followed by a medically assisted
rush from the hospital to home to ensure a spiritually advantageous
last breath. The result is a powerful exploration of the nature of
death and the complexities arising from the globalization of
biomedical expertise and ethics around the world.
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.
Political, economic, social, cultural and technological changes
have led to profound transformations in the ways that death and
loss are perceived and managed in contemporary society. Over the
last few decades, the long term shift to chronic illness as a major
causal factor has significantly increased the time scale of dying.
Most people die in institutions and 'care' is typically medical.
Many communities and ordinary citizens now relinquish control and
involvement to experts in the last stages of life.
At global and local levels, however, new arrangements are emerging
to govern the changing face of death, and a reorientation model is
being developed to counter claims of the 'creeping medicalisation'
of death and dying. With an international authorship and scope,
this book illustrates the interlinking nature of society, death and
loss, and it gives examples of governance that promotes the
empowerment, participation and the increasing need for the
involvement of ordinary people and communities in differing social
and cultural contexts.
Chapters come from collaborations of academics and practitioners in
end of life care - from sociologists, anthropologists or the arts
but also from nursing, social work, or medicine. The result is a
reflective, academic and practical discussion of the outline of the
problem we face in the contemporary governance of death, and an
exploration of the critical, theoretical and practice-based ways
forward for us all.
|
|