Death in the Early Twenty-first Century

Death in the Early Twenty-first Century
Author :
Publisher : Springer
Total Pages : 296
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9783319523651
ISBN-13 : 3319523651
Rating : 4/5 (51 Downloads)

Synopsis Death in the Early Twenty-first Century by : Sébastien Penmellen Boret

Focusing on tradition, technology, and authority, this volume challenges classical understandings that mortuary rites are inherently conservative. The contributors examine innovative and enduring ideas and practices of death, which reflect and constitute changing patterns of social relationships, memorialisation, and the afterlife. This cross-cultural study examines the lived experiences of men and women from societies across the globe with diverse religious heritages and secular value systems. The book demonstrates that mortuary practices are not fixed forms, but rather dynamic processes negotiated by the dying, the bereaved, funeral experts, and public institutions. In addition to offering a new theoretical perspective on the anthropology of death, this work provides a rich resource for readers interested in human responses to mortality: the one certainty of human existence.

Dying in the Twenty-First Century

Dying in the Twenty-First Century
Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
Total Pages : 218
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780262534598
ISBN-13 : 0262534592
Rating : 4/5 (98 Downloads)

Synopsis Dying in the Twenty-First Century by : Lydia S. Dugdale

Physicians, philosophers, and theologians consider how to address death and dying for a diverse population in a secularized century. Most of us are generally ill-equipped for dying. Today, we neither see death nor prepare for it. But this has not always been the case. In the early fifteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church published the Ars moriendi texts, which established prayers and practices for an art of dying. In the twenty-first century, physicians rely on procedures and protocols for the efficient management of hospitalized patients. How can we recapture an art of dying that can facilitate our dying well? In this book, physicians, philosophers, and theologians attempt to articulate a bioethical framework for dying well in a secularized, diverse society. Contributors discuss such topics as the acceptance of human finitude; the role of hospice and palliative medicine; spiritual preparation for death; and the relationship between community, and individual autonomy. They also consider special cases, including children, elderly patients with dementia, and death in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, when doctors could do little more than accompany their patients in humble solidarity. These chapters make the case for a robust bioethics—one that could foster both the contemplation of finitude and the cultivation of community that would be necessary for a contemporary art of dying well. Contributors Jeffrey P. Bishop, Lisa Sowle Cahill, Daniel Callahan, Farr A. Curlin, Lydia S. Dugdale, Michelle Harrington, John Lantos, Stephen R. Latham, M. Therese Lysaught, Autumn Alcott Ridenour, Peter A. Selwyn, Daniel Sulmasy

Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe

Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe
Author :
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages : 365
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781443832564
ISBN-13 : 1443832561
Rating : 4/5 (64 Downloads)

Synopsis Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe by : Marius Rotar

This book features a selection of the most representative papers presented during the international conference Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe (ABDD). It invites you on a fascinating journey across the last three centuries of Europe, with death as your guide. The past and present realities of the complex phenomena of death and dying in Romania, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Serbia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Italy are dealt with, by authors from varying backgrounds: historians, sociologists, priests, humanists, anthropologists, and doctors. This is yet more proof that death as a topic cannot be confined to one science, the deciphering of its meanings and of the shifts it effects requiring a joint, interdisciplinary effort.

American Afterlives

American Afterlives
Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Total Pages : 272
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780691228457
ISBN-13 : 0691228450
Rating : 4/5 (57 Downloads)

Synopsis American Afterlives by : Shannon Lee Dawdy

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.

Laughing to Keep from Dying

Laughing to Keep from Dying
Author :
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Total Pages : 0
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0252085302
ISBN-13 : 9780252085307
Rating : 4/5 (02 Downloads)

Synopsis Laughing to Keep from Dying by : Danielle Fuentes Morgan

By subverting comedy's rules and expectations, African American satire promotes social justice by connecting laughter with ethical beliefs in a revolutionary way. Danielle Fuentes Morgan ventures from Suzan-Lori Parks to Leslie Jones and Dave Chappelle to Get Out and Atlanta to examine the satirical treatment of race and racialization across today's African American culture. Morgan analyzes how African American artists highlight the ways that society racializes people and bolsters the powerful myth that we live in a "post-racial" nation. The latter in particular inspires artists to take aim at the idea racism no longer exists or the laughable notion of Americans "not seeing" racism or race. Their critique changes our understanding of the boundaries between staged performance and lived experience and create ways to better articulate Black selfhood. Adventurous and perceptive, Laughing to Keep from Dying reveals how African American satirists unmask the illusions and anxieties surrounding race in the twenty-first century.

Dying in the City of the Blues

Dying in the City of the Blues
Author :
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Total Pages : 352
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781469617411
ISBN-13 : 1469617412
Rating : 4/5 (11 Downloads)

Synopsis Dying in the City of the Blues by : Keith Wailoo

This groundbreaking book chronicles the history of sickle cell anemia in the United States, tracing its transformation from an "invisible" malady to a powerful, yet contested, cultural symbol of African American pain and suffering. Set in Memphis, home of one of the nation's first sickle cell clinics, Dying in the City of the Blues reveals how the recognition, treatment, social understanding, and symbolism of the disease evolved in the twentieth century, shaped by the politics of race, region, health care, and biomedicine. Using medical journals, patients' accounts, black newspapers, blues lyrics, and many other sources, Keith Wailoo follows the disease and its sufferers from the early days of obscurity before sickle cell's "discovery" by Western medicine; through its rise to clinical, scientific, and social prominence in the 1950s; to its politicization in the 1970s and 1980s. Looking forward, he considers the consequences of managed care on the politics of disease in the twenty-first century. A rich and multilayered narrative, Dying in the City of the Blues offers valuable new insight into the African American experience, the impact of race relations and ideologies on health care, and the politics of science, medicine, and disease.

Death Down Under

Death Down Under
Author :
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages : 284
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781527544369
ISBN-13 : 1527544362
Rating : 4/5 (69 Downloads)

Synopsis Death Down Under by : Ruth McManus

Death is one of the most challenging aspects of living, demanding inventive and meaningful responses. This insightful collection demonstrates cultural commitment to improving the conditions of the dying and dead and also documents the varied, creative ways that we, the living, already respond to death. Collectively, the 16 essays are an interrogation of the commonly held assumption that death is somehow hidden, denied, or done badly as standard practice. The underpinning themes and narratives in this anthology make a significant contribution to death studies debates and conversations by offering examples of post-colonial, multi-cultural practices that span professional and every-day points of intersection. Death studies can be a challenging and complex field; nevertheless each contributor here highlights specific ways in which assumptions and beliefs about contemporary death practices can be unpicked, nuanced and challenged.

The Lost Art of Dying

The Lost Art of Dying
Author :
Publisher : HarperCollins
Total Pages : 272
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780062932655
ISBN-13 : 0062932659
Rating : 4/5 (55 Downloads)

Synopsis The Lost Art of Dying by : L.S. Dugdale

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.

Dying to Control

Dying to Control
Author :
Publisher : WestBow Press
Total Pages : 0
Release :
ISBN-10 : 1449758207
ISBN-13 : 9781449758202
Rating : 4/5 (07 Downloads)

Synopsis Dying to Control by : Leon R. Hayduchok

The story of Adam and Eve one of the oldest and most widely cherished stories in human history has been misused and abused in the battleground of America's culture war. Dating back to the Scopes Trial of 1925, evolutionists and creationists have been tearing this story apart in their fight over the origin of man, losing sight of one significant detail: the story of Adam and Eve was not written as a scientific treatise but as an account of human nature and our relationship with God and one another. Dying to Control offers a fresh and provocative look at the Garden of Eden drama, revealing how the story of Adam and Eve is our story. This penetrating work exposes our obsession with control and the extreme lengths we go to preserve and promote the self. This overdue commentary on American culture offers a compelling perspective on how to experience the fullness of life in a world dying to control."

Virtual Afterlives

Virtual Afterlives
Author :
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages : 212
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780813145426
ISBN-13 : 0813145422
Rating : 4/5 (26 Downloads)

Synopsis Virtual Afterlives by : Candi K. Cann

For millennia, the rituals of death and remembrance have been fixed by time and location, but in the twenty-first century, grieving has become a virtual phenomenon. Today, the dead live on through social media profiles, memorial websites, and saved voicemails that can be accessed at any time. This dramatic cultural shift has made the physical presence of death secondary to the psychological experience of mourning. Virtual Afterlives investigates emerging popular bereavement traditions. Author Candi K. Cann examines new forms of grieving and evaluates how religion and the funeral industry have both contributed to mourning rituals despite their limited ability to remedy grief. As grieving traditions and locations shift, people are discovering new ways to memorialize their loved ones. Bodiless and spontaneous memorials like those at the sites of the shootings in Aurora and Newtown and the Boston Marathon bombing, as well as roadside memorials, car decals, and tattoos are contributing to a new bereavement language that crosses national boundaries and culture-specific perceptions of death. Examining mourning practices in the United States in comparison to the broader background of practices in Asia and Latin America, Virtual Afterlives seeks to resituate death as a part of life and mourning as a unifying process that helps to create identities and narratives for communities. As technology changes the ways in which we experience death, this engaging study explores the culture of bereavement and the ways in which it, too, is being significantly transformed.