Approaches to death

1
Approaches to death dying
2
Davies

• Humans are self-conscious with language as a key
  medium
• Death a challenge to self-consciousness
  language crucial response
• Funerals frame verbal response, with additional
  features. Once survived bereavement better
  adapted for own societys survival (death
  ruptures relationships, changes identities)
• RHETORIC art of persuasion, for use for
  framing death activity

3

• Words against death not just coping but
  triumphing over it (hope) performative
  utterance (words and actions)
• Aries death rites as defence of society
  against untamed nature...ritualisation of
  death...man against nature
• Satre death is always beyond my subjectivity
• Death rites help people cope active
  self-conscious person to passive corpse subject
  to decay (offensive to sight smell of living)
• Archaeology shows long history of burial

4

• Hertz society imparts permanence to individuals
  within it society feels immortal so illness
  death may pose a challenge to society
• Body as a microcosm of society people and their
  things are highly symbolic death of the
  microcosm problematic
• Cumpsty 3 groups/types to deal with this-
• Nature religions (dead become ancestors)
• Withdrawl religions (reincarnated)
• Secular world affirming religions (distinct
  heaven)

5

• Chidester 4 patterns of transcendence
  (transcendence being a way of coping)-
• Ancestral (dead become ancestors Zulu
  Aboriginal Dreaming)
• Experiential (experience death shamanism
  initiation rituals)
• Cultural (cult of the dead often similar to
  ancestral
• Mythic (stories of/about death Zulu Ojibway)
• Hertz 2 phases of death-identity wet dry
  with identity of body transformed not gone
• Durkheim mourning as serving social ends even
  more than private - loss that group feels

6

• Malinowki rejects Durkheims ignoring
  individual experience as death touches private
  lives of people deeply with communal support
  helping
• Bauman death so profound it swamps humans
  will to live so death rites help with impact
• Van Gennep tri-partite rites of passage with
  liminal (Turner communitas)
• Bloch religion turns biological order on head
  by initiation rituals (not just patch up tears or
  fabric of life but add new energy to
  bereaved/survivors)

7

• Frued ego instincts are death instincts as
  reduce humans to life-less state against life
  instincts (sexual instincts) which perpetuate
• Kubler-Ross dying patients needs hope stages
  of response
• Denial (this isn't happening to me!)
• Anger (why is this happening to me?)
• Bargaining (I promise I'll be a better person
  if...)
• Depression (I don't care anymore)
• Acceptance (I'm ready for whatever comes)

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Kastenbaum Costa

• Sociology Durkheims Suicide (1951)
• Anthropology Frazers Fear of the Dead (1933)
• Physicians Osler last words Mechnikov
  (1901) thanatology as term for scientific field
• Psychology Feifel (1950s) dying grateful for
  conversation Kubler-Ross (1969)
• Children death Nagy (1948) 3 stages with
  comprehension around 9yrs but anecdotal reports
  suggest earlier (media?)

9

• Death anxiety as universal with death related
  words elicit more arousal than neutral words
• all deaths involve the interplay of
  psychological, social biological processes
• Hexing loosing will to live
• Issues of suicide why do people do it?
• Bereavement as survival with cognitive,
  affective behavioural disturbances

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Walter

• So-called ideal types in Traditional, Modern
  Neo-Modern historical types and in a variety of
  contexts (good death)-
• Bodily context
• Social context
• Authority
• Coping strategies
• Journey
• Values

11

• Bodily social contexts do not have to change at
  the same time-
• Traditional death typically disease (sin/curse)
  death rooted in community with religious
  authority
• Modern death typically old age (natural laws of
  causation) public/private split with death
  managed by experts
• Neo-Modern death typically prolonging death?
  Private experience valued with self as authority
• Death and the social person 1899 proscribed
  mourning to neo-natal funerals
• Social death of the elderly

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References

• Davies, D., 2002. Death, Ritual and Belief.
  London Continuum
• Kastenbuam, R, Costa, P.T. 1977. Psychological
  Perspectives on Death Annual Review of
  Psychology Vol 28 225-49
•  Walter, T. 1994. The Revival of Death. London
  Routledge.
• See also-
• Bauman, Z. 1992. Mortality, Immortality other
  life srategies. Standford CA California Uni
  Press.
• Bloch, M and Parry, J (eds) (1982) Death and the
  Regeneration of Life, Cambridge Cambridge
  University Press.
• Chidester, D, 2002. Patterns of Transcendence
  Religion, Death Dying. London Wadswoth
• Davies, D. 2005. A Brief History of Death.
  London Blackwell.
• Searle, C. 1998. Constructing Death the
  sociology of dying bereavement. Cambridge.
• Walter, T. 1996. The Eclipse of Eternity.
  Basingstoke Macmillan