Death and Bereavement Across Cultures


Book Description

All societies have their own customs and beliefs surrounding death. This handbook explains how to offer appropriate and sensitive support to those from other cultures who are dying or bereaved.




Death and Bereavement Across Cultures


Book Description

All societies have their own customs and beliefs surrounding death. In the West, traditional ways of mourning are disappearing, and though science has had a major impact on views of death, it has taught us little about the way to die or to grieve. Many who come into contact with the dying and the bereaved from other cultures are at a loss to know how to offer appropriate and sensitive support. Death and Bereavement Across Cultures, provides a handbook with which to meet the needs of doctors, nurses, social workers, counsellors and others involved in the care of the dying and bereaved. Written by international authorities in the field, this important text: * describes the rituals and beliefs of major world religions * explains their psychological and historical context * shows how customs change on contact with the West * considers the implications for the future This book explores the richness of mourning traditions around the world with the aim of increasing the understanding which we all bring to the issue of death.




Death and Bereavement Across Cultures


Book Description

All societies have their own customs and beliefs surrounding death. This handbook explains how to offer appropriate and sensitive support to those from other cultures who are dying or bereaved.




Death Across Cultures


Book Description

Death Across Cultures: Death and Dying in Non-Western Cultures, explores death practices and beliefs, before and after death, around the non-Western world. It includes chapters on countries in Africa, Asia, South America, as well as indigenous people in Australia and North America. These chapters address changes in death rituals and beliefs, medicalization and the industry of death, and the different ways cultures mediate the impacts of modernity. Comparative studies with the west and among countries are included. This book brings together global research conducted by anthropologists, social scientists and scholars who work closely with individuals from the cultures they are writing about.




Dying to Eat


Book Description

Food has played a major role in funerary and memorial practices since the dawn of the human race. In the ancient Roman world, for example, it was common practice to build channels from the tops of graves into the crypts themselves, and mourners would regularly pour offerings of food and drink into these conduits to nourish the dead while they waited for the afterlife. Funeral cookies wrapped with printed prayers and poems meant to comfort mourners became popular in Victorian England; while in China, Japan, and Korea, it is customary to offer food not only to the bereaved, but to the deceased, with ritual dishes prepared and served to the dead. Dying to Eat is the first interdisciplinary book to examine the role of food in death, bereavement, and the afterlife. The contributors explore the phenomenon across cultures and religions, investigating topics including tombstone rituals in Buddhism, Catholicism, and Shamanism; the role of death in the Moroccan approach to food; and the role of funeral casseroles and church cookbooks in the Southern United States. This innovative collection not only offers food for thought regarding the theories and methods behind these practices but also provides recipes that allow the reader to connect to the argument through material experience. Illuminating how cooking and corpses both transform and construct social rituals, Dying to Eat serves as a fascinating exploration of the foodways of death and bereavement.




The World of Bereavement


Book Description

This visionary work explores the sensitive balance between the personal and private aspects of grief, the social and cultural variables that unite communities in bereavement, and the universal experience of loss. Its global journey takes readers into the processes of coping, ritual, and belief across established and emerging nations, indigenous cultures, and countries undergoing major upheavals, richly detailed by native scholars and practitioners. In these pages, culture itself is recognized as formed through many lenses, from the ancestral to the experiential. The human capacity to mourn, endure, and make meaning is examined in papers such as: Death, grief, and culture in Kenya: experiential strengths-based research. Death and grief in Korea: the continuum of life and death. To live with death: loss in Romanian culture. The Brazilian ways of living, dying, and grieving. Death and bereavement in Israel: Jewish, Muslim, and Christian perspectives. Completing the circle of life: death and grief among Native Americans. It is always normal to remember: death, grief, and culture in Australia. The World of Bereavement will fascinate and inspire clinicians, providers, and researchers in the field of death studies as well as privately-held professional training programs and the bereavement community in general.




Death, Mourning, and Burial


Book Description

In Death, Mourning, and Burial, an indispensable introduction to the anthropology of death, readers will find a rich selection of some of the finest ethnographic work on this fascinating topic. Comprised of six sections that mirror the social trajectory of death: conceptualizations of death; death and dying; uncommon death; grief and mourning; mortuary rituals; and remembrance and regeneration Includes canonical readings as well as recent studies on topics such as organ donation and cannibalism Designed for anyone concerned with issues of death and dying, as well as: violence, terrorism, war, state terror, organ theft, and mortuary rituals Serves as a text for anthropology classes, as well as providing a genuinely cross-cultural perspective to all those studying death and dying




The Psychology of Grief


Book Description

What is happening emotionally when we grieve for a loved one? Is there a ‘right’ way to grieve? What effect does grief have on how we see ourselves? The Psychology of Grief is a humane and intelligent account that highlights the wide range of responses we have to losing a loved one and explores how psychologists have sought to explain this experience. From Freud’s pioneering psychoanalysis to discredited ideas that we must pass through ‘stages’ of grief, the book examines the social and cultural norms that frame or limit our understanding of the grieving process, as well as looking at the language we use to describe it. Everyone, at some point in their lives, experiences bereavement and The Psychology of Grief will help readers understand both their own and others’ feelings of grief that accompany it.




Death and Bereavement Across Cultures


Book Description

All societies have their own customs and beliefs surrounding death. In the West, traditional ways of mourning are disappearing, and although Western science has had a major impact on how people die, it has taught us little about the way to die or to grieve. Many whose work brings them into contact with the dying and the bereaved from Western and other cultures are at a loss to know how to offer appropriate and sensitive support. Death and Bereavement Across Cultures 2nd Edition is a handbook which meets the needs of doctors, nurses, social workers, hospital chaplains, counsellors and volunteers caring for patients with life-threatening illness and their families before and after bereavement. It is a practical guide explaining the religious and other differences commonly met with in multi-cultural societies when someone is dying or bereaved. In doing so readers may be surprised to find how much we can learn from other cultures about our own attitudes and assumptions about death. Written by international experts in the field the book: Describes the rituals and beliefs of major world religions; Explains their psychological and historical context; Shows how customs are changed by contact with the West; Considers the implications for the future The second edition includes new chapters that: explore how members of the health care professions perform roles formerly conducted by priests and shamans can cross the cultural gaps between different cultures and religions; consider the relevance of attitudes and assumptions about death for our understanding of religious and nationalist extremism and its consequences; discuss the Buddhist, Islamic and Christian ways of death. Death raises questions which science cannot answer. Whatever our personal beliefs we can all gain from learning how others view these ultimate problems. This book explores the richness of mourning traditions around the world with the aim of increasing the sensitivity and understanding which we all bring to the issue of death and bereavement.




Death's Summer Coat


Book Description

Death is something we all confront—it touches our families, our homes, our hearts. And yet we have grown used to denying its existence, treating it as an enemy to be beaten back with medical advances.We are living at a unique point in human history. People are living longer than ever, yet the longer we live, the more taboo and alien our mortality becomes. Yet we, and our loved ones, still remain mortal. People today still struggle with this fact, as we have done throughout our entire history. What led us to this point? What drove us to sanitize death and make it foreign and unfamiliar?Schillace shows how talking about death, and the rituals associated with it, can help provide answers. It also brings us closer together—conversation and community are just as important for living as for dying. Some of the stories are strikingly unfamiliar; others are far more familiar than you might suppose. But all reveal much about the present—and about ourselves.