Short description:

This book is the first of its kind to examine key topics in death, dying and bereavement through a critical lens, highlighting how the understanding and experience of death can vary considerably, based on social, cultural, historical, political, and medical contexts. 

Long description:

This book is the first of its kind to examine key topics in death, dying, and bereavement through a critical lens, highlighting how the understanding and experience of death can vary considerably, based on social, cultural, historical, political, and medical contexts. It looks at the complex ways in which death and dying are managed, from the political level down to end- of- life care, and the inequalities that surround and impact experiences of death, dying, and bereavement.

Readers are introduced to key theories, such as the medicalisation of dying, as well as contemporary issues, such as social movements, pandemics, and assisted dying. The book stresses how death is not only a biological process or event but rather shaped by a range of intersecting factors. Issues of inequalities in health, inequities in support, and intersectional analyses are brought to the fore, and each chapter is dedicated to an issue that has interdisciplinary resonance, thus showcasing the wider sociocultural and political factors that impact this time of life.

This book is valuable reading for scholars in thanatology and death studies, and for those in related fields such as sociology of health, medical and social anthropology, and interdisciplinary social science courses.

"Looking at how power operates through government, law, media, professions and social movements to shape how we die and grieve, validating some deaths and discounting others, this book provides a much needed critical edge to death studies."

--Professor Tony Walter, University of Bath, UK

?Borgstrom and Visser expertly chart how death, dying, and bereavement are considered as health matters, and as social processes. They shine much-needed light on the ways in which culture, power, and inequality influence the management and experience of loss. Compulsory reading for the death studies curriculum."

--Professor Emma Kirby, PhD. Professor of Sociology at UNSW Sydney, Australia

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: Introduction. Section I: Populations, Politics, and Society. Chapter 2: Thinking With and Beyond Mortality Statistics. Chapter 3: Policy and Death. Chapter 4: Mass Death Events and Shifting Death Practices. Chapter 5: Social Movements and Death. Section II: Dying. Chapter 6: Medicalisation of Dying. Chapter 7: Palliative Care and the Modern Hospice Movement. Chapter 8: Assisted Dying. Chapter 9: Disenfranchised Dying. Section III: The aftermath of death. Chapter 10: The Dead Body and Disposal Practices. Chapter 11: Grief Theories and Therapies. Chapter 12: Suicide. Chapter 13: Conclusion.