Year: 2008
Type: book-review
Abstract: W hile the contemporary academic study of the social construction of dying, death, and bereavement can be traced back to the 1960s in the United States and the United Kingdom, "death studies" is a relatively new field of study.In her book, Death and Dying: A Sociological Introduction, Glennys Howarth makes a contribution to the emerging field of death studies by examining the social construction of dying, death, and bereavement in traditional, modern, and contemporary times.(Howarth hedges, appropriately given the current lack of consensus, on the label for the contemporary era, alternatively describing the present as late modern, high modern, or postmodern.)Starting from the premise that "Our experiences of dying, death and bereavement are embedded within our social and cultural worlds" (p. 2), Howarth examines these experiences as arising from the intersection of social structure and individual agency, objectivity and subjectivity, collectivity and individuality.The fundamental question is "how societies [and individuals in these societies] make meaning when confronted with mortality" (p.15).She explores the shift from structure to agency, from the social to the individual, and from collectivist to individualist cultural frameworks.This examination of changing social constructions of and responses to dying, death, and bereavement historically from traditional to modern to postmodern times is a recurring theme in this book and provides a very useful organizing framework that generates interesting discussions and insights.Howarth argues that in traditional times, societies typically defined death as familiar, expected, "tame," inevitable, beyond human control, and ultimately under supernatural control (whether divine or evil).In the traditional era, death typically took place in the home and community and religion played a central role in defining death, constructing meaning in the face of death, and shaping the social response to death.The priest was assigned an important part in the social response to death and the focus of priest and survivor alike was primarily on the soul of the deceased and on the afterlife.
DOI: 10.29173/cjs4188
Author: Herbert C. Northcott
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1849269854