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This paper examines the interplay between gratitude and gratefulness in connection to accepting terminal illness and the finality of death in the autobiographical writing of Jenny Diski and Oliver Sacks, who died of cancer in 2016 and 2015 respectively. Instead of focusing solely on the embodied experiences of illness or on the desire to be remembered, the paper explores the personal and public dimensions of writing about terminal illness through expressions and representations of gratitude and gratefulness. Memoir and other forms of life writing manifest the process of seeking closure, and in end-of-life writing this endeavour is even more prominent. Diski narrates the humiliating procedures cancer treatment may involve, while Sacks's autobiography and final essay collection exude a sense of urgency as time is running out. Both writers ponder the meaning of gratitude as a way to come to terms with their illnesses. Expressions of gratitude also work towards acceptance of the ill body while still creating distance to it, enabling the retention of a sense of self not defined by illness. This is a central feature of the texts examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the cultural conceptualisation of children's social identity and status through memorialisation, based on the study of children's grave markers and plots in five South Australian cemeteries (from colonisation to the present), with an age range from infant (including stillborn) to 20 years. The idea of childness, the differing conception of being or being labelled a child, was used as a measure to identify the degree of variation in child identity realised by child-only and family grave markers, showing both change and continuity in the representation of children through family choices of form, style, wording, motif, spatial arrangement and grave furniture. Archaeological evidence of childness was observed through representations of smallness, innocence, domesticity, play, temporality and the distinct emotional nature of the parent-child relationship. Notably in the latter period of study, within the context of lower child mortality, revised understandings of child identity and status were observed representing the social re-evaluation of prenatally deceased and stillborn children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that the Epicurean argument against death's badness can be much more easily defended if one endorses the view that lives and people are evaluated differently. Drawing on the work of philosophers Shelly Kagan and Stephen Rosenbaum, it is argued that death is not bad for those who are dead, but that it can be bad for the lives of those who are dead. Although death never harms the one who dies, it always affects the value of one's life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medicalisation of hospice care has been discussed simultaneously with the development of palliative care into a medical speciality. However empirical knowledge of the role of medicalisation in hospice practice is underexplored. This paper considers hospice managers' perspectives on hospice care in the complex between values related to hospice philosophy and a specialised medical approach to hospice care. Focus groups and small group interviews were conducted with hospice managers from 16 out of the 19 Danish hospices. Drawing on hope as a theoretical framework, the study contributes to further understanding of the complexity of navigating hospice care in the impasse between an existential hope focused on meaning at the end of life and a medical hope for control of the dying body. Hospice care appeared as pulled between these dimensions of hope. The hospice managers took a pragmatic approach to medicalisation but their emphasis on dying as an existential event also points to a role for hospices as a critical voice against over-medicalisation of dying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The context of mainland China remains under-researched in the bereavement literature. This article reports on a qualitative study on bereaved people's experience in mainland China in light of their relational beings, uncovering varied applications of cultural emphases on harmony in their ongoing lives. By collecting and analysing qualitative data from a sample of 31 bereaved people, a largely traditional but changing picture of the bereavement experience is captured. The findings highlight the predominant values of harmony and familism in shaping the Chinese bereaved people's identities in their ongoing lives. This article examines the idea of relational beings in the context of mainland China by shedding light on the reported experience of bereavement, and thus, furthers the ongoing debates on socio-cultural constructions of bereaved people's identities. Accordingly, this paper provides researchers and practitioners with an in-depth narrative of bereaved people's experience in this largely under-explored society, providing theoretical and empirical evidence to inform future studies, as well as bereavement support and policy-making in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suzanne Collins' bestselling Hunger Games trilogy is saturated in death, particularly the death of children. In exploring these fictional deaths, this article firstly considers the problematic nature of Collins' representation. While the trilogy's declared purpose is to critique the misuse of power by a corrupt government who perpetuate their control through staging the slaughter of children as entertainment, the narrative can only make this critique through itself enacting the gladiatorial contest which is the Hunger Games. The tension between the Hunger Games as voyeuristic spectacle and as murder of innocents is never fully resolved, but Collins' awareness of the cost and trauma of murder and war mitigate this seeming exploitation of human suffering. Drawing on Susan Sontag's interrogation of both the dangers and necessity of representing violent death in Regarding the Pain of Others, we argue that Collins depicts and confronts death to critique oppressive power and its devaluing of life. Through her protagonist Katniss, Collins articulates a message of action in the face of terror and loss, while never losing sight of the tragic cost of violence. Her complex and nuanced engagement with death seeks to sensitise her audience and heighten their ethical awareness as they follow Katniss's moral evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions regarding end-of-life (EOL) preferences often occur late in the course of a disease leading to rushed clinical decisions misaligned with patient goals. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to identify EOL goals among a healthy sample of young adults (N = 305) through a possible selves framework. Common EOL hopes included: having loved ones present, closure, and living a full life. Common EOL fears included: pain and suffering, specific types of death, and dying alone. Hopes and fears related to religiosity were rare. Overall, participants felt more confident attaining EOL hopes than avoiding EOL fears. Even in young adulthood, when concerns related to ageing, illness, and dying are not acute, individuals have clear ideas regarding what they do and do not want to experience at their end of life. Conversations regarding EOL preferences should therefore be initiated with adult patients of all ages. Clinically, end-of-life training and care should integrate these psychological insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questioning the material status of a dead body is a challenge: On the one hand, a corpse seems to be nothing more than the physical remains of a person that once was – and is now gone. On the other hand, the dead body is still the material representation of the social identity that used to 'inhabitate' this body. Not least for it's striking similarity, one person's corpse is thus often considered the post mortem status of his or her 'self'. When taking a closer look at the difference between living (in the sense of 'ensouled') bodies and their allegedly materialistic counterparts, the separating effect dissolves. As a consequence, certain concepts of sociological theory become interpretable in a truly transfrontier manner. By drawing upon empirical data from original research carried out by the authors concerning dying, death and bereavement, this article is an attempt to approach the materiality of the dead body in the light of it's various forms of social utilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues as follows: (i) The presence of the dead within a society depends in part on available communication technologies, specifically speech, stone, sculpture, writing, printing, photography and phonography (including the mass media), and most recently the internet. (ii) Each communication technology affords possibilities for the dead to construct and legitimate particular social groups and institutions – from the oral construction of kinship, to the megalithic legitimation of the territorial rights of chiefdoms, to the written word’s construction of world religions and nations, to the photographic and phonographic construction of celebrity-based neo-tribalism, and to the digital reconstruction of family and friendship. (iii) Historically, concerns about the dead have on a number of occasions aided the development of new communication technologies – the causal connection between the two can go both ways. The argument is based primarily on critical synthesis of existing research literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article challenges the dominance of a rupture model for understanding how we live day-to-day with life-threatening illness and the prospect of death. It argues that this model acts as a key interpretive framework for understanding dying and its related experiences. As a result, a rupture model upholds a normative and inherently crisis-based view of severe ill-health that reifies dying as an experience which exists outside of, and somehow transformatively beyond, everyday matters of ordinary life. These matters include the minutiae of daily experience which inform and shape our lived identities – as individuals and as relational selves. Drawing primarily on interview data from two family case studies that have contributed to an ethnographic project exploring family experiences of living with life-threatening illness, it will show how mundane, daily life is integral to understanding the ways in which families are produced and able to maintain a sense of continuity during circumstances of impending death. The analysis presented here moves analytical understanding of dying experience towards a theory of how individuals and families ‘know’ and engage with so-called ‘big’ life events and experiences. In this way, my study helps generate a novel and more inclusive way of understanding living with life-threatening/limiting illness. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past 10 - 15 years the geography of death has changed in Sweden. Dying and end-of-life care has to a great extent been moved out of hospitals back into the local community, and renewed attention is given to dying and spiritual care issues. Yet, at the same time, a new ideological investment in civil society has taken place, which ascribes caring and networking qualities and resources that may not always be encountered in practice. This article discusses the implications of this situation, by focusing on the role of the Church of Sweden, as an actor in civil society, and on its support for parishioners in their end-of-life phase. Questions discussed are: what role do local church parishes play in the care of dying parishioners, and what is the meaning of parish belonging and networks in this context? Results from a study of all parishes in two Swedish, medium-sized, communities indicate that support for dying parishioners is surprisingly uncommon, while most parishes offer support for the bereaved. The article argues that this may be an indication of failing resources, on the part of the parishes, to meet the needs of these contrasting situations. While a relational logic motivates support for the dying parishioner, support for the bereaved seems to follow a service logic, one with which the representatives of the parishes are more at ease. Networks and personal relationships seemed to be the heart of the matter and the concept of social capital was used to capture this phenomenon. In a more general sense, however, the results illustrate the partly contradictory roles and strategies that the Church has adopted in order to face different interpretations of civil society and ongoing societal change in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to discuss Swedish funeral directors from a professionalization perspective with a focus on the last decades. The article is primarily based on a research study made in 1998 – 2002 where multiple data were used: interviews, field observations, text analysis, and a questionnaire. Later findings have been added to update. The results show that the funeral directors have acquired a professionalization by broadening their work tasks in different fields. Initially they took care of dead bodies and organized the logistics. In the last decades, new task areas have opened within the law, bereavement, and ceremonial rites. Of specific significance is that Swedish funeral directors seem reluctant to develop work tasks connected with the dead body; rather it is as public experts on death and bereavement that they want to be recognized. A step forward in this direction came with the public need for funeral directors in the aftermath of the tsunami. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the diary of Sarah, Lady Cowper written between 1700 and 1716, a wonderfully eclectic document filled with fascinating detail of 18th-century life and thought. First, the story of her life is outlined, covering her unhappy marriage to the bad-tempered Sir William Cowper and the disasters brought about by her sons, including a suicide and a murder trial which nearly wrecked the whole family. The second half of the article looks at Dame Sarah's attitudes towards death, and, in particular, her belief in the doctrine of Divine Providence. Thus it explores both how her attitudes to death were shaped by the circumstances of her life and how, by fixing her thoughts on the hereafter, she was able to bear the woes of her earthly existence. Finally, a brief assessment is made of how far Sarah, Lady Cowper could be considered typical of her times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]