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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Death & dying > General

The Work of the Dead - A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (Paperback): Thomas W. Laqueur The Work of the Dead - A Cultural History of Mortal Remains (Paperback)
Thomas W. Laqueur
R808 Discovery Miles 8 080 Ships in 9 - 17 working days

The meaning of our concern for mortal remains-from antiquity through the twentieth century 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 detailed account of how and why the living have cared for the dead, from antiquity to the twentieth century. The book draws on a vast range of sources-from mortuary archaeology, medical tracts, letters, songs, poems, and novels to painting and landscapes in order to recover the work that the dead do for the living: making human communities that connect the past and the future. Laqueur shows how the churchyard became the dominant resting place of the dead during the Middle Ages and why the cemetery largely supplanted it during the modern period. He traces how and why since the nineteenth century we have come to gather the names of the dead on great lists and memorials and why being buried without a name has become so disturbing. And finally, he tells how modern cremation, begun as a fantasy of stripping death of its history, ultimately failed-and how even the ashes of the victims of the Holocaust have been preserved in culture. A fascinating chronicle of how we shape the dead and are in turn shaped by them, this is a landmark work of cultural history.

Final Drafts - Suicides of World-Famous Authors (Paperback): Mark Seinfelt Final Drafts - Suicides of World-Famous Authors (Paperback)
Mark Seinfelt
R780 R672 Discovery Miles 6 720 Save R108 (14%) Ships in 9 - 17 working days

Some of the greatest writers in the history of the art-Hart Crane, Ernest Hemingway, Jerzy Kosinski, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Virginia Woolf-all chose to silence themselves by suicide, leaving their families and friends with heartbreak and the world of literature with gaping holes. Their reasons for killing themselves, when known, were varied and, quite often, unreasonable. Some were plagued by depression or self-doubt, and others by frustration and helplessness in a world they could neither change nor tolerate. Profoundly moving and morbidly attractive, Final Drafts is a necessary historical record, biographical treatment, and psychological examination of the authors who left this "cruel world" by their own hands, either instantly or over long periods of relentless self-destructive behavior. It is also a devoted examination of references to suicide in literature, both by those who took their own lives and those who decided to live. Mark Seinfelt has selected many well-known (mostly fiction) writers, from those whose work dates to over a century ago-when the medical community was ill-equipped to deal with substance abuse and depression-to more recent writers such as Kosinski, Michael Dorris, and Eugene Izzi, who have left a puzzled literary community with a sad legacy. Seinfelt reveals that many authors contemplated ending their lives in their work; were obsessed with destroying themselves; were unable-in the case of the Holocaust-to live with the fact that their contemporaries had been killed; believed death to be a freedom from the horrors that forced them to create; and, sometimes, were simply unable to withstand rejection or criticism of their work. Other noted authors discussed in this volume include John Berryman, Ambrose Bierce, Harry Crosby, John Davidson, William Inge, Randall Jarrell, Arthur Koestler, T.E. Lawrence, Primo Levi, Jack London, Jay Anthony Lukas, Tom McHale, Yukio Mishima, Henry de Montherlant, Seth Morgan, George Sterling, Sara Teasdale, Ernst Toller, John Kennedy Toole, Sergey Yesenin, and many others

The Struggle Against Mourning (Paperback): Ilany Kogan The Struggle Against Mourning (Paperback)
Ilany Kogan
R1,872 Discovery Miles 18 720 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

The main questions raised in this book are: How does the analyst help the patient to be in touch with pain and mourning? Is the relinquishment of defenses always desirable? And what is the analyst's role in the mourning process-should the analyst struggle to help patients relinquish defenses against pain and mourning, which they may experience as vital to their precarious psychic survival? Or should he or she accompany patients on their way to self-discovery, which may or may not result in the patients letting go of their defenses when faced with the pain and mourning inherent in trauma? the utilization of various defenses and the resulting unresolved mourning reflect the magnitude of the anxiety and pain that is found on the road to mourning. The ability to mourn and the capacity to bear some helplessness while still finding life meaningful are the objectives of the analytic work in this book.

Musical Morphine - Transforming Pain One Note at a Time (Paperback, First Softcover ed.): Robin Russell Gaiser Musical Morphine - Transforming Pain One Note at a Time (Paperback, First Softcover ed.)
Robin Russell Gaiser
R418 R392 Discovery Miles 3 920 Save R26 (6%) Ships in 18 - 22 working days
Making Sense of Suicide Missions (Paperback, Expanded & Upda): Diego Gambetta Making Sense of Suicide Missions (Paperback, Expanded & Upda)
Diego Gambetta
R1,337 Discovery Miles 13 370 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Suicide attacks have become the defining act of political violence of our age. From New York City to Baghdad, from Sri Lanka to Israel, few can doubt that they are a pervasive and terrifying feature of an increasing number of violent conflicts. Since 1981, approximately thirty organizations throughout the world - some of them secular and others affiliated to radical Islam - have carried out more than 500 suicide missions. Although a tiny fraction of the overall number of guerrilla and terrorist attacks occurring in the same period, the results have proved infinitely more lethal. This book is the first to shed real light on these extraordinary acts, and provide answers to the questions we all ask. Are these the actions of aggressive religious zealots and unbridled, irrational radicals or is there a logic driving those behind them? Are their motivations religious or has Islam provided a language to express essentially political causes? How can the perpetrators remain so lucidly effective in the face of certain death? And do these disparate attacks have something like a common cause? For more than two years, this team of internationally distinguished scholars has pursued an unprejudiced inquiry, investigating organizers and perpetrators alike of this extraordinary social phenomenon. Close comparisons between a whole range of cases raise challenging further questions: If suicide missions are so effective, why are they not more common? If killing is what matters, why not stick to 'ordinary' violent means? Or, if dying is what matters, why kill in the process? Making Sense of Suicide Missions contains a wealth of original information and cutting-edge analysis which furthers our understanding of this chilling feature of the contemporary world in radically new and unexpected ways.

War Dead - Western Societies and the Casualties of War (Paperback): Luc Capdevila, Daniele Voldman War Dead - Western Societies and the Casualties of War (Paperback)
Luc Capdevila, Daniele Voldman; Translated by Richard Veasey
R1,214 Discovery Miles 12 140 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

Wars in the industrial age kill large numbers of people. What do societies involved in these conflicts do with all the corpses? How do they show them respect? How do they dispose of them? What is their attitude to the bodies of the enemies? In the 19th century, those who died on the battlefield were pushed into mass graves, their identities unknown. Today, their remains are held in such high esteem that they are tracked down in order that last respects might be paid. As a historical account of the way in which war and death intersect, this book describes the complex attitude societies have towards death. Lured by the concept of eternal youth, tempted to deny death as well as physical decay, faced with longer life expectancy, we retain the hope of going off to war without loss of life. But does not our own expectation of zero death" imply "more deaths" for the other side?"

Dying for Ideas - The Dangerous Lives of the Philosophers (Hardcover): Costica Bradatan Dying for Ideas - The Dangerous Lives of the Philosophers (Hardcover)
Costica Bradatan
R1,309 R1,235 Discovery Miles 12 350 Save R74 (6%) Ships in 18 - 22 working days

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

A Beginner's Guide to the End - How to Live Life to the Full and Die a Good Death (Hardcover): B.J. Miller, Shoshana Berger A Beginner's Guide to the End - How to Live Life to the Full and Die a Good Death (Hardcover)
B.J. Miller, Shoshana Berger
R724 R630 Discovery Miles 6 300 Save R94 (13%) Ships in 9 - 17 working days

"I wish I'd had this book when I needed it. Death and dying are not subjects that many people are comfortable talking about, but it's hugely important to be as prepared as you can be - emotionally, physically, practically, financially, and spiritually. This book may be the most important guide you could have." - Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love ___________ The end of a life can often feel like a traumatic, chaotic and inhuman experience. In this reassuring and inspiring book, palliative care physician Dr BJ Miller and writer Shoshana Berger provide a vision for rethinking and navigating this universal process. There are plenty of self-help books for mourners, but nothing in the way of a modern, approachable and above all useful field guide for the living. And all of us - young, old, sick and well - could use the help. After all, pregnant couples have ample resources available to them as they prepare to bring a new life into the world: Lamaze courses, elaborate birth plans, tons of manuals. Why don't we have a What to Expect When You're Expecting to Die book? An accessible, beautifully designed and illustrated companion, A Beginner's Guide to the End offers a clear-eyed and compassionate survey of the most pressing issues that come up when one is dying, and will bring optimism and practical guidance to empower readers with the knowledge, resources and tools they'll need to die better, maybe even with triumph.

Between Women and Generations - Legacies of Dignity (Paperback, New edition): Drucilla Cornell Between Women and Generations - Legacies of Dignity (Paperback, New edition)
Drucilla Cornell
R1,546 Discovery Miles 15 460 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

Before Drucilla Cornell's mother died, she asked her daughter to write a book, "that would bear witness to the dignity of her death" and that "her bridge class would be able to understand." Shortly thereafter, Cornell's mother, who had degenerative disease, decided to claim her right to die. Forceful, honest, and unsentimental, this is the book that Cornell promised to write. The fundamental argument of Between Women and Generations is that all women have dignity: we must ensure that they have the conditions under which they can claim that dignity in their own lives; even if they are physically harmed or morally wronged, their dignity cannot be lost. Cornell uses the personal as a springboard to discuss contemporary issues concerning women today. She engages with the difficult nature of intergenerational relationships between women by writing about her relationship to her own mother. In telling the story of her adoption of Sarita Graciela Kellow Cornell, her Paraguayan daughter, and of her relationship with UNITY, a cooperative of house cleaners in Long island, New York, Cornelll creates a powerful picture of the legacies of dignity between women and generations.

Death and the Migrant - Bodies, Borders and Care (Paperback): Yasmin Gunaratnam Death and the Migrant - Bodies, Borders and Care (Paperback)
Yasmin Gunaratnam
R1,469 Discovery Miles 14 690 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Death and the Migrant is a sociological account of transnational dying and care in British cities. It chronicles two decades of the ageing and dying of the UK's cohort of post-war migrants, as well as more recent arrivals. Chapters of oral history and close ethnographic observation, enriched by photographs, take the reader into the submerged worlds of end-of-life care in hospices, hospitals and homes. While honouring singular lives and storytelling, Death and the Migrant explores the social, economic and cultural landscapes that surround the migrant deathbed in the twenty-first century. Here, everyday challenges - the struggle to belong, relieve pain, love well, and maintain dignity and faith - provide a fresh perspective on concerns and debates about the vulnerability of the body, transnationalism, care and hospitality. Blending narrative accounts from dying people and care professionals with insights from philosophy and feminist and critical race scholars, Yasmin Gunaratnam shows how the care of vulnerable strangers tests the substance of a community. From a radical new interpretation of the history of the contemporary hospice movement and its 'total pain' approach, to the charting of the global care chain and the affective and sensual demands of intercultural care, Gunaratnam offers a unique perspective on how migration endows and replenishes national cultures and care. Far from being a marginal concern, Death and the Migrant shows that transnational dying is very much a predicament of our time, raising questions and concerns that are relevant to all of us.

What Remains - Bringing America's Missing Home from the Vietnam War (Hardcover): Sarah E. Wagner What Remains - Bringing America's Missing Home from the Vietnam War (Hardcover)
Sarah E. Wagner
R757 Discovery Miles 7 570 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

Winner of the 2020 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing Nearly 1,600 Americans are still unaccounted for and presumed dead from the Vietnam War. These are the stories of those who mourn and continue to search for them. For many families the Vietnam War remains unsettled. Nearly 1,600 Americans-and more than 300,000 Vietnamese-involved in the conflict are still unaccounted for. In What Remains, Sarah E. Wagner tells the stories of America's missing service members and the families and communities that continue to search for them. From the scientists who work to identify the dead using bits of bone unearthed in Vietnamese jungles to the relatives who press government officials to find the remains of their loved ones, Wagner introduces us to the men and women who seek to bring the missing back home. Through their experiences she examines the ongoing toll of America's most fraught war. Every generation has known the uncertainties of war. Collective memorials, such as the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery, testify to the many service members who never return, their fates still unresolved. But advances in forensic science have provided new and powerful tools to identify the remains of the missing, often from the merest trace-a tooth or other fragment. These new techniques have enabled military experts to recover, repatriate, identify, and return the remains of lost service members. So promising are these scientific developments that they have raised the expectations of military families hoping to locate their missing. As Wagner shows, the possibility of such homecomings compels Americans to wrestle anew with their memories, as with the weight of their loved ones' sacrifices, and to reevaluate what it means to wage war and die on behalf of the nation.

Death Work - Police, Trauma and the Psychology of Survival (Hardcover): Vincent E Henry Death Work - Police, Trauma and the Psychology of Survival (Hardcover)
Vincent E Henry
R1,940 Discovery Miles 19 400 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

In this fascinating new book, Vincent Henry (a 21-year veteran of the NYPD who recently retired to become a university professor) explores the psychological transformations and adaptations that result from police officers' encounters with death. Police can encounter death frequently in the course of their duties, and these encounters may range from casual contacts with the deaths of others to the most profound and personally consequential confrontations with their own mortality. Using the 'survivor psychology' model as its theoretical base, this insightful and provocative research ventures into a previously unexplored area of police psychology to illuminate and explore the new modes of adaptation, thought, and feeling that result from various types of death encounters in police work.
The psychology of survival asserts that the psychological world of the survivor--one who has come in close physical or psychic contact with death but nevertheless managed to live--is characterized by five themes: psychic numbing, death guilt, the death imprint, suspicion of counterfeit nurturance, and the struggle to make meaning. These themes become manifest in the survivor's behavior, permeating his or her lifestyle and worldview.
Drawing on extensive interviews with police officers in five nominal categories--rookie officers, patrol sergeants, crime scene technicians, homicide detectives, and officers who survived a mortal combat situation in which an assailant or another officer died--Henry identifies the impact such death encounters have upon the individual, the police organization, and the occupational culture of policing. He has produced a comprehensive and highly textured interpretation ofpolice psychology and police behavior, bolstered by the unique insights that come from his personal experience as an officer, his intimate familiarity with the subtleties and nuances of the police culture's value and belief systems, and his meticulous research and rigorous method. Death Work provides a unique prism through which to view the individual, organizational, and social dynamics of contemporary urban policing. With a foreword by Robert Jay Lifton and a chapter devoted to the local police response to the World Trade Center attacks, Death Work will be of interest to psychologists and criminal justice experts, as well as police officers eager to gain insight into their unique relationship to death.

Death and Dying - A Reader (Paperback): Thomas A. Shannon Death and Dying - A Reader (Paperback)
Thomas A. Shannon; Contributions by Paul B Bascom, David DeGrazia, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Kathleen Foley, …
R1,152 Discovery Miles 11 520 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

Over a decade ago the field of bioethics was established in response to the increased control over the design of living organisms afforded by both medical genetics and biotechnology. Since its introduction, bioethics has become established as an academic discipline with journals and professional societies, is covered regularly in the media, and affects people everyday around the globe. In response to the increasing need for information about medical genetics and biotechnology as well as the ethical issues these fields raise, Sheed & Ward proudly presents the Readings in Bioethics Series. Edited by Thomas A. Shannon, the series provides anthologies of critical essays and reflections by leading ethicists in four pivotal areas: reproductive technologies, genetic technologies, death and dying, and health care policy. The goal of this series is twofold: first, to provide a set of readers on thematic topics for introductory or survey courses in bioethics or for courses with a particular theme or time limitation. Second, each of the readers in this series is designed to help students focus more thoroughly and effectively on specific topics that flesh out the ethical issues at the core of bioethics. The series is also highly accessible to general readers interested in bioethics. This volume collects critical essays by leading scholars on the definition of death, consciousness, quality of life, tube feeding, pallative care, physician-assisted suicide and the debate on euthanasia. Included in this volume are works by Paul B. Bascom, David DeGrazia, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Kathleen Foley, Herbert Hendin, Michael Panicola, Stephen G. Post, Thomas A. Shannon, Charles F. von Gunten, Susan W. Tolle.

Things You Can Do When You're Dead! - True Accounts of After Death Communication (Paperback): Tricia J Robertson Things You Can Do When You're Dead! - True Accounts of After Death Communication (Paperback)
Tricia J Robertson
R439 Discovery Miles 4 390 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

"Things You Can do When You're Dead!" by Tricia Robertson is the long awaited book from one of Scotland's foremost psychical researchers. In this book the author shares some of her thirty-year research into mediumship, reincarnation, psychic healing, apparitions, poltergeists, and after death communications. Tricia's refreshing no-nonsense approach to the subject makes for compelling reading and should interest skeptics, believers, and anyone who wants to know what you can do when you're dead!

Confessions of a Funeral Director - How Death Saved My Life (Paperback): Caleb Wilde Confessions of a Funeral Director - How Death Saved My Life (Paperback)
Caleb Wilde
R421 Discovery Miles 4 210 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

"I tremble to say there's good in death, because I've looked in the eyes of the grieving mother and I've seen the heartbreak of the stricken widow, but I've also seen something more in death, something good. Death's hands aren't all bony and cold."-from Confessions of a Funeral Director We are a people who deeply fear death. While humans are biologically wired to evade death for as long as possible, we have become too adept at hiding from it, vilifying it, and-when it can be avoided no longer-letting the professionals take over. Sixth-generation funeral director Caleb Wilde understands this reticence and fear. He had planned to get as far away from the family business as possible. He wanted to make a difference in the world, and how could he do that if all the people he worked with were . . . dead? Slowly, he discovered that caring for the deceased and their loved ones was making a difference-in other people's lives to be sure, but it also seemed to be saving his own. A spirituality of death began to emerge as he observed: * The family who lovingly dressed their deceased father for his burial * The act of embalming a little girl that offered a gift back to her grieving family * The nursing home that honored a woman's life by standing in procession as her body was taken away * The funeral that united a conflicted community Through stories like these, told with equal parts humor and poignancy, Wilde offers an intimate look into the business and a new perspective on living and dying.

Parental Grief and Photographic Remembrance - A Historical Account of Undying Love (Paperback): Felicity T. C. Hamer Parental Grief and Photographic Remembrance - A Historical Account of Undying Love (Paperback)
Felicity T. C. Hamer
R1,436 Discovery Miles 14 360 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

Winner of the 2020 Stand-Out Graduate Research Award Winner of the August 2020 Fonds de recherche du Quebec - Societe et culture (FRQSC) Prix Releve etoile Paul-Gerin-Lajoie Photographic portraits of those who have passed have the potential to become valuable sites of remembrance. Across North America and Western Europe, parents are increasingly unfamiliar with death; lacking the rituals and tools that have historically eased the bereavement process. This book shines a light on how semi-private social media groups enable the bereaved parents of today to navigate their grief in the modern world. The author explores how creative, and sometimes contested, incorporations of photography within these online spaces demonstrate a revival and renegotiation of historic practices. By shining a light on recurrent tendencies and their evolution within new media this book offers an opportunity to observe the complex relationships grief can prompt some individuals to form with the portraits of absent loved ones. As social networking sites continue to enable the reinsertion of death within the social realm, the author looks ahead: might we begin to see a revival and increased openness towards end-of-life, post-mortem and funerary photography? As bereavement increasingly becomes something communicated in an online context, what new types of embellishments to the photographic portrait might we encounter?

Sacrificing the Self - Martyrdom and Religion (Paperback): Margaret Cormack Sacrificing the Self - Martyrdom and Religion (Paperback)
Margaret Cormack
R981 Discovery Miles 9 810 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Though considered by devotees to be perhaps the most potent expression of religious faith, dying for one's God is also one of the most difficult concepts for modern observers of religion to understand. This is especially true in the West, where martyrdom has all but disapeared and martyrs in other cultures are often viewed skeptically and dismissed as fanatics. This book seeks to foster a greater understanding of these acts of religious devotion by explaining how martyrdom has historically been viewed in the world's major religions. It provides the first sustained, cross-cultural examination of this fascinating aspect of religious life. Spanning 4000 years of history and ranging from Saul in the Hebrew Bible to Sati immolations in present-day India, this book provides a wealth of insight into an often noted but rarely understood cultural phenomenon.

'This Rash Act' - Suicide Across the Life Cycle in the Victorian City (Paperback): Victor Bailey 'This Rash Act' - Suicide Across the Life Cycle in the Victorian City (Paperback)
Victor Bailey
R733 Discovery Miles 7 330 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

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).

The Good Death - An Exploration of Dying in America (Paperback): Ann Neumann The Good Death - An Exploration of Dying in America (Paperback)
Ann Neumann
R461 Discovery Miles 4 610 Ships in 10 - 15 working days
Approaches to Death and Dying - Bioethical and Cultural Perspectives (Paperback): Jan Piasecki, Marta Szabat Approaches to Death and Dying - Bioethical and Cultural Perspectives (Paperback)
Jan Piasecki, Marta Szabat
R1,184 R1,117 Discovery Miles 11 170 Save R67 (6%) Ships in 9 - 17 working days

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.

Leaving - A Narrative of Assisted Suicide (Paperback): Anthony Stavrianakis Leaving - A Narrative of Assisted Suicide (Paperback)
Anthony Stavrianakis
R891 Discovery Miles 8 910 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

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.

Claiming Disability - Knowledge and Identity (Paperback, New): Simi Linton Claiming Disability - Knowledge and Identity (Paperback, New)
Simi Linton
R951 Discovery Miles 9 510 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

A comprehensive assessment of the field of Disability Studies that presents beyond the medical to dig into the meaning From public transportation and education to adequate access to buildings, the social impact of disability has been felt everywhere since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. And a remarkable groundswell of activism and critical literature has followed in this wake. Claiming Disability is the first comprehensive examination of Disability Studies as a field of inquiry. Disability Studies is not simply about the variations that exist in human behavior, appearance, functioning, sensory acuity, and cognitive processing but the meaning we make of those variations. With vivid imagery and numerous examples, Simi Linton explores the divisions society creates-the normal versus the pathological, the competent citizen versus the ward of the state. Map and manifesto, Claiming Disability overturns medicalized versions of disability and establishes disabled people and their allies as the rightful claimants to this territory.

Bad Call - A Summer Job on a New York Ambulance (Hardcover): Mike Scardino Bad Call - A Summer Job on a New York Ambulance (Hardcover)
Mike Scardino
R599 Discovery Miles 5 990 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

"A compulsively readable, totally unforgettable memoir that recounts a sensitive college student's experience working on an emergency ambulance in hell, aka New York City." -- James Patterson In 1967, Mike Scardino was an eighteen year-old pre-med student with a problem - his parents couldn't afford to pay his college tuition. Luckily, Mike's dad hooked him up with a lucrative, albeit unusual, summer job, one he's never forgotten. Bad Call is Mike's visceral, fast-moving, and mordantly funny account of the summers he spent working as an "ambulance attendant" on the mean streets of late 1960s New York, at a time when emergency medicine looked nothing like it does today. Fueled by adrenaline and Sabrett's hot dogs, he crossed third rails to pick up injured trainmen, encountered a woman attacked by rats, attended to victims of a plane crash at JFK airport, was nearly murdered, and got an early and indelible education in the impermanence of life. But his work also afforded moments of rare beauty, hope, and everyday heroism, and it changed the course of Mike's life as well as the way he saw the world. Action-packed, poignant, and rich with details that bring Mike's world to life, Bad Call is a gritty portrait of a bygone era as well as a thrilling tale of one man's coming of age.

Night Falls Fast - Understanding Suicide (Paperback): Kay Redfield Jamison Night Falls Fast - Understanding Suicide (Paperback)
Kay Redfield Jamison
R593 R534 Discovery Miles 5 340 Save R59 (10%) Ships in 9 - 17 working days

Suicide is the third major killer of young people in the Western world, and in the closing decades of the twentieth century it reached epidemic proportions: around the world there has been a frightening surge in suicides committed by children, adolescents and young adults. Kay Redfield Jamison is herself a survivor of a nearly lethal suicide attempt which came after years of battling manic depression. Her survival marked the beginning of a life's work to investigate mental illness and self-inflicted death, and she is now an internationally recognized authority on the depressive illnesses. In Night Falls Fast Dr. Jamison dispels the silence and shame that surround the subject of suicide and provides a better understanding of the suicidal mind and a chance to recognize the person at risk. She brings to the book not only wide scientific knowledge and clinical experience but also great compassion. In tracing the network of reasons underlying the phenomenon, she gives us astonishing examples and a startling look at the journals, drawings and farewell notes of people who have chosen to kill themselves. She also provides vivid insight into the most recent findings from hospitals and laboratories across the world; the critical biological and psychological factors that interact to cause suicide; and the new strategies being evolved to combat them. Night Falls Fast is a sensitive and penetrating analysis that helps us to comprehend the profound and disturbing sense of loss created in those left behind. It is the first major book on the subject in a quarter of a century and stands to become a classic account of one of the most devastating and destructive causes of death of our time.

Death, Memorialization and Deviant Spaces (Paperback): Matthew Spokes, Jack Denham, Benedikt Lehmann Death, Memorialization and Deviant Spaces (Paperback)
Matthew Spokes, Jack Denham, Benedikt Lehmann
R1,740 Discovery Miles 17 400 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

This book offers an ethnographic exploration of three sites of infamous atrocity and their differing memorialization. 'Dark tourism' research has studied the consumerization of spaces associated with death and barbarity, whilst 'difficult heritage' has looked at politicized, national debates that surround the preservation of death. This book contributes to these debates by applying spatial theory on a scalar level, particularly through the work of Henri Lefebvre. It uses escalating case studies to situate memorialization, and the multifarious demands of politics, consumption and community, within a framework that rearticulates 'lived', 'perceived' and 'conceived' aspects of deviant spaces ranging from the small (a bench) to the very large (a city). The first case study, the Tyburn gallows site in York, uses Lefebvre's notion of 'theatrical space' to contextualize the role of performativity in memorialization. The second, Number 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester, builds on this by exploring the absence of memorialization through Lefebvre's concept of 'contradictory space' and the impact this has on consumption. The third expands to consider the city as a problematic memorial, here focusing on the political subjectivities of Dresden - rebuilt following the devastation of the Second World War - and its contemporary associations with neo-Nazi and anti-fascist protests. Ultimately, by examining the issue of scale in heritage, the book seeks to develop a new way of unpacking and understanding the heteroglossic nature of deviant space and memorialization.

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