Inscribing Death
Inscribing Death

Author: Jessey J. C. Choo

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2022-07-31

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0824893220

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This nuanced study traces how Chinese came to view death as an opportunity to fashion and convey social identities and memories during the medieval period (200–1000) and the Tang dynasty (618–907), specifically. As Chinese society became increasingly multicultural and multireligious, to achieve these aims people selectively adopted, portrayed, and interpreted various acts of remembrance. Included in these were new and evolving burial, mourning, and commemorative practices: joint-burials of spouses, extended family members, and coreligionists; relocation and reburial of bodies; posthumous marriage and divorce; interment of a summoned soul in the absence of a body; and many changes to the classical mourning and commemorative rites that became the norm during the period. Individuals independently constructed the socio-religious meanings of a particular death and the handling of corpses by engaging in and reviewing acts of remembrance. Drawing on a variety of sources, including hundreds of newly excavated entombed epitaph inscriptions, Inscribing Death illuminates the process through which the living—and the dead—negotiated this multiplicity of meanings and how they shaped their memories and identities both as individuals and as part of collectives. In particular, it details the growing emphasis on remembrance as an expression of filial piety and the grave as a focal point of ancestral sacrifice. The work also identifies different modes of construction and representation of the self in life and death, deepening our understanding of ancestral worship and its changing modus operandi and continuous shaping influence on the most intimate human relationships—thus challenging the current monolithic representation of ancestral worship as an extension of families rather than individuals in medieval China.

Inscribing Devotion and Death
Inscribing Devotion and Death

Author: Karen B. Stern

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 9004163700

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Drawing upon scholarship of cultural identity, anthropology and historical linguistics, this book offers a novel and contextual approach to the interpretation of archaeological evidence for Jewish populations in North Africa and elsewhere in the ancient Mediterranean.

Preparing for Death, Remembering the Dead
Preparing for Death, Remembering the Dead

Author: Tarald Rasmussen

Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Published: 2015-04-22

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 3647550825

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Death and dying were not in the main focus of the denominational conflicts of the 16th century. However, pious literature covered these topics again and again, not only before the Reformation, but after it as well. Here, certain denominational differences are clearly visible. Partly, these differences consist in the use of genres: For example, funeral sermons are an often used genre among Lutherans, while they are much rarer in the Reformed tradition. Similar differences can be observed concerning epitaphs. In Roman Catholic areas, funeral sermons and epitaphs are common in the 16th century, too; but their religious function is often a different from the one in Lutheranism. Beyond such interdenominational differences, there are also interesting continuities and connections which the contributors of the volume analyze. For example, there is a certain continuity between 16th century Lutheran funeral sermons and the late medieval tradition of ars moriendi.The volume contains papers presented at the Second RefoRC Conference in Oslo in 2012, and is characterized by a multiconfessional and multidisciplinary approach, with contributions from Church History, Art History, Archaeology, History of Literature and Cultural History. Within a field of research dominated by specialized contributions (e.g. on ars moriendi traditions or on specific traditions of funeral monuments and funeral sermons), the broad approach of this volume may further stimulate to comparative and cross-confessional reflection.

Death and Dying in America
Death and Dying in America

Author: Andrea Fontana

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2009-07-27

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0745639151

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This engaging new book takes a fresh approach to the major topics surrounding the processes and rituals of death and dying in the United States. It emphasizes individual experiences and personal reactions to death as well as placing mortality within a wider social context, drawing on theoretical frameworks, empirical research and popular culture. Throughout the text the authors highlight the importance of two key factors in American society which determine who dies and under what circumstances: persistent social inequality and the American consumerist ethic. These features are explored through a discussion of topics ranging from debates about euthanasia to deaths resulting from war and terrorism; from the death of a child to children’s experience of grieving and bereavement; and from beliefs about life after death to more practical issues such as the disposal of the dead body. Drawing on sociological, anthropological, philosophical, and historical research the authors present the salient features of death and dying for upper-level students across the social sciences. For anyone interested in learning more about the end of life, this book will provide a useful and accessible perspective on the uniquely American understanding of death and dying.

American Afterlives
American Afterlives

Author: Shannon Lee Dawdy

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-10-19

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0691210640

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"Here is the book summary: What do you think happens to you when you die? And what do you want done with your body? For three years Shannon Lee Dawdy travelled the U.S., from Vermont to California, Illinois to Alabama, posing such questions to a wide range of people from all walks of life. Many of her interlocutors recently lost loved ones. She also spoke to people who have made death their business: funeral directors, death care entrepreneurs, designers, cemetery owners, and death doulas about the changes they were seeing, and in many cases promoting, in how the bodies of recently-deceased persons are being treated, and how the memory of the deceased are being memorialized, in the U.S. Her ethnographic research resulted in this book, a wide-ranging investigation into rapidly-changing death practices in the twenty-first century United States. The author is also working on a documentary film project on this topic with cinematographer Daniel Zox. Still photos from the film work will appear in this book"--

The Sacred Remains
The Sacred Remains

Author: Gary Laderman

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1996-01-01

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780300078688

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" ... A primary goal of this study is to shed some light on how changing attitudes toward death and the dead in the previous century have led to present-day perspectives and practices."--Page 1.

The A–Z of Death and Dying
The A–Z of Death and Dying

Author: Michael John Brennan

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2014-02-17

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 1440803447

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This engaging and informative resource provides readers with an understanding of the social, cultural, and historical influences that shape our encounters with death, dying, and bereavement—a universal experience across humanity. Written in an engaging and accessible style by leading international scholars and practitioners from within the field of death and bereavement studies, this book will have broad appeal, providing in a single volume insights from some of the key thinkers within the interdisciplinary field of death, dying, and bereavement. Its approximately 200 entries will serve as useful starting points for those new to the topic and will be informative to those already acquainted with some of the core concepts and ideas within this burgeoning field of inquiry. This encyclopedia will serve as an essential resource for high school and undergraduate students, those engaged in independent research, and professionals whose work involves caring for the dead, dying, and bereaved. It will also be of great interest to general readers intrigued by the social, medical, and cultural dimensions to human mortality. Underscored by the inescapable biological certainties that affect us all, The A–Z of Death and Dying offers a highly relevant examination of the social and historical variation in the rituals, practices, and beliefs surrounding the end of life.

The New Death
The New Death

Author: Shannon Lee Dawdy

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0826363458

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"There is perhaps no object as uncanny as the corpse--or more subject to elaborate taboos--and few topics yield as much cross-cultural anxiety as human mortality. Yet beliefs and practices around death never stand still. The New Death brings together scholars who are intrigued by today's rapidly changing death practices and attitudes. New and different ways of treating the body and memorializing the dead are proliferating across global cities. What are the beliefs, values, and ontologies entwined with these emergent death practices? Are we witnessing a shifting relationship between the living and the dead? Using ethnographic, historical, and media-based approaches, the contributors to this volume focus on new attittudes and practices around mortality and mourning--from the possibilities of digitally enhanced afterlives to industrialized 'necro-waste,' the ethics of care, the meaning of secular rituals, and the political economy of death. Together, the chapters coalesce around the argument that there are two major currents running through the new death-reconfigurations of temporality and of intimacy. Some aspects of the new death represent a remaking of older ideas and practices. But whether they draw on 'tradition' or on evolving technologies, people are reaching for new memorial objects to keep the dead present in their lives and new rituals to manage the timing and tempo of death. Pushing back against the folklorization endemic to anthropological studies of death practices and the whiteness of death studies as a field, the chapters strive to override divisions between the Global South and the Anglophone world, focusing instead on syncretization, globalization, and magic within the mundane" --