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Death Café is a not-for-profit international social franchise founded in 2011 in London. This paper is based on the most extensive empirical research of Death Cafés to date, examining the content of Death Café conversations. I interrogate the finding that, alongside talking directly about death and dying, people at a Death Café consistently talk about the value of being at a Death Café and about the value of talking about death. I introduce three main ways that talking about the value of conversations about death appears in a Death Café and, most importantly, I argue that talking about the value of conversations about death is an enjoyable part of the conversation in its own right. I use neo-tribal theory and its concept of aesthetics as ‘a way of feeling in common’ and ‘a means of recognising ourselves’ to examine this further. When talking about the value of conversations about death, Death Café participants reflexively consider the activity they are engaging in= together, which strengthens the feeling of collectivity, and bonds them into a neo-tribe. This paper demonstrates that Death Café is a valued form of social interaction, moving it away from the current academic attempts to discover Death Café’s instrumental utility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fieldwork encounters are not only contingent to biographical subjectivities, but are mediated by a confluence of identity, place and embodiment. This paper offers reflexive accounts of researchers with various socio-cultural and disciplinary backgrounds, who collaborated as a team to examine the varied funerary experiences and needs of established minorities and recent migrants in England and Wales. Focusing on the researchers' varied personal experiences with death and bereavement and on their performances of minority and majority ethnic and migrant identities, the paper highlights the mediated and embodied nature of fieldwork. It argues that reflection on the various aspects of intersectional researcher identity is necessary for a rigorous fieldwork practice that takes transparency and politics into account. This facilitates a deeper understanding of the positionality of both researchers and interlocutors, and the situated co-production of knowledge. In doing so, the paper illustrates that conducting research with a diverse team of researchers contributes to better understanding the complexity and multifacetedness of social phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research about dying is viewed as inherently sensitive because of how death is perceived in many societies. Such framing assumes participants are 'vulnerable' and at risk of 'harm' from research. Simultaneously, with increasing recognition of the importance of reflexivity, researchers can become (deeply) preoccupied with their actions and experiences in the field. Whilst reflexivity is often described as a helpful process, in this paper we consider when introspection becomes problematic and even harmful for death researchers, in both a professional and personal sense. Identifying a process we call 'internalising sensitivity' the paper describes our own experiences of working and living with the pervasive ethical notions of sensitivity, vulnerability, risk and harm. We argue that these discourses can get 'under the skin' of researchers in that they impact researchers intellectually, emotionally, and physically, and this in turns affects their relationship with the research process and their place within, and beyond it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile methodology has long been adopted in social science as a data collection tool and there is an established industry focused on cemeteries and ghost walks as a novel and appealing way to engage audiences in mortality. However, death studies have rarely sought to embrace mobile methods as an opportunity for innovation in teaching to enhance Higher Education (HE) student learning. This paper will reflect on the value and potential of adapting mobile methods to become mobile learning, an innovative pedagogic approach enabling the teaching of mortality to become an immersive experience of ‘learning on the move’ using mobile technology. Learning on the move has, I will demonstrate, a range of benefits for participants. These include the stimulation of the thanatological imagination and the schooling of participants to communicate effectively and sensitively about death, dying and the dead. I will explore the significance of mobile learning through the York Death and Culture Walk (DaCWalk), an open access self-guided fully podcasted walk through the centre of one of the UK’s oldest cities. The walk is designed to enable HE student walkers to experience embodied learning as they come to both know and understand mortality in a historic urban space. Mobile learning is argued to be a powerful innovation as a pedagogic tool for teaching and learning about death, dying and the dead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article substantiates some methods and perspectives of cultural thanatology as an integrative part of cultural history within the anthropological field. While general history is usually concerned with individual events, cultural (pre-)history uncovers common beliefs and everyday culture. Culture here is both a materialized form of the mass consciousness embodiment and a dynamic complex of creative information exchange between individuals and with the surrounding landscape. A common field for cultural (pre-)history is the worldview (mentality) of a particular society, its outlook, and common knowledge. The spectrum of the death and afterlife ideas is usually a significant amount of it. The paper presents some thanatological observations of social-cultural context. ● Afterlife mapping can be traced chronologically: the idea of the Land of the Dead obviously started due to the first Epi-Paleolithic long-distance migrations and the primitive sedentism. This was also the time when permanent structured burial ritualism arose. One can clearly trace the concept of "inextricable realm of tangled paths," later associated with spiral-like labyrinth and mirror symbolism, contributing to the imagery of the Otherworld. The sky also became the stage for ancestors' mythological deeds and location for their households. ● Almost all traditional societies shared beliefs in an active concentrated incorporeal (spiritual) essence, commonly referred to as "soul". A polarity in the perception of afterlife is revealed, displayed in ornitomorphic "upper soul" and snake-like "lower soul" concepts. The head and the circulatory blood system were regarded as typical soul receptacles. ● Tomb symbolism was closely connected with rebirth and metamorphosis. Funerary structures were usually strongly connected with the ancestor cult, so they could include a feasting hall, representing a kind of "inn". More importantly, tumuli and grave-chambers were often the liminal places of initiation. Therefore, the authors also draw attention to the concept of liminality. ● Societies with an epic type of worldview such as the Vikings, Celts, Scythians and other nomads, had unique mental models that fell somewhere between the "mythological" and "rational" mind. Their epic heroes' adventures were also the ancestors' ascent. Therefore, when using a comparative-iconological method to analyze their funerary art objects, we should keep this in mind and consider its profound ideological influence. ● A comparative analysis of mature posthumous fate concepts, such as those of ancient Geeks, Indo- Iranians, Chinese, or Maya, generally reveals afterlife trial motifs as a sign that the corresponding society has reached the level of "Axiality," as seen by Karl Jaspers. We claim that Jaspers' "axial" cultural features do not indicate a universal "phase" but rather a certain state of civilization development. The socio-cultural vector in this context aims to stimulate and transform human personality. At the core of "axiality", there lie the specific changes within the cultural space of certain societies, which mainly lead to personality transformation and a general individualization of the worldview. So, "axiality phase" should have revealed the boundary changes of human consciousness. Thus, we attempt to investigate such changes through the prism of comparative cultural-historical thanatology, using a multidisciplinary approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction provides some insights on this special issue of Mortality, entitled Dying and Death in Former Communist European Countries, setting the issue against the general background of death studies and, more specifically, of death studies in eastern European countries. Some relevant references to the Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe International Conference, organised in Romania, at the '1 Decembrie 1918ʹ University of Alba Iulia, Romania, between 2007 and 2019, are also made. The rationale and also the limitations of this special issue are brought into attention. The papers that form this issue are briefly presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National days of mourning are state-sponsored rituals of collective grief enacted in the public sphere by political authorities to symbolically mark and emotionally cope with a socially significant loss. These officially declared and ceremonially performed state rituals of communion in grief provide privileged epistemic opportunities for unravelling the politics of grievability underpinning a society's willingness to mourn its dead. This paper focuses on comparing and contrasting two case studies – the Colectiv nightclub fire and the flu epidemics – in order to grasp the politics of national mourning in the Romanian post-communist context. After identifying the criteria of grievability underlying the declaration of national mourning in cases of mass death as consisting in a 'chronotopic togetherness' in death that is characterised by an 'instantaneity of emotional shock,' the paper argues for enlarging these criteria of grievability so as to include the victims of socially invisible traumas inflicted by structural violence, such as those killed in epidemics and car road accidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of death studies has a rich interdisciplinary history but little scholarship examining the process of interdisciplinary collaboration. The development of, and inquiry into, a more rigorously interdisciplinary death studies is a topical pursuit. The aim of this paper is to shed critical light on researcher experiences in an interdisciplinary collaboration on the topics of dying, death of grief, and examine what possibilities and challenges it prefaces for future interdisciplinary research in the field. An interdisciplinary study group called Exploring Narratives of Death (END) is examined over a period of one year through participant observation and semi-structured interviews. The conclusion is that researchers strongly advocate for more interdisciplinary agendas in death studies in order to develop greater intellectual advancement in the field and/or practical application of research in society. However, a lack of structural and temporal latitude in researchers' professional roles in the university could inhibit their ability to perform such research in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on data from fieldwork conducted in the EURAC – Institute for Mummies and the Iceman (Bozen, Italy). I observed the way in which the researchers related themselves to the object of their study: ancient human remains and through the analysis of the researchers’ relationship to such remains, I argue that, contrary to what is generally stated in archaeological literature, human remains were not considered emotionally charged materials to which respect was owed in virtue of their former humanity. In particular, I will show how, in the context of the research facility in which I conducted my observations, human remains were removed from any association with the concept of death as such, for ancient skeletons and mummies were not understood to be conventional ‘dead’. My work ultimately constitutes an attempt to challenge the human/non-human dichotomy by arguing that the entity, which is brought into being through bioanthropological analysis, eludes canonical categorisations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is a report of qualitative and quantitative research on "continuing bonds" between the bereaved and the deceased in the areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake. The disaster victims recount that it is normal for them to have conversations with the deceased, and that maintaining continuing bonds with the deceased makes them feel better. Communities of grief, within which stories about the deceased are shared, have emerged among the bereaved. There appear to be two types of representation of, and relationship with, the dead: namely, as "familiar spirits" and "unfamiliar spirits." The closeness of relationships within a community decides which type is dominant. Many victims consider their connection to the deceased to be stronger than their connection to the priests who facilitate these bonds. Finally, based on these findings, this paper examines how religious specialists have been engaged in spiritual care, and whether such care will be successful as a post-secular activity under the conditions of "recovery secularism." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Gossiping is ubiquitous in social life. In every imaginable corner of society, people from all walks of life are gossiping their living acquaintances. But what happens when the "third party," i.e., the subject of gossip, is absent par excellence, not only temporarily and spatially, but definitively? Do people continue to gossip their dead acquaintances? What is the fate of gossip after its target dies? These are the questions this paper sets out to address. In doing so, it develops a non-reductionist sequential model of death as a social process in which biological death is only the starting point of the bio-social phenomenon of dying. Building on some classic anthropological theories and concepts taken from Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner, the paper examines the post-mortem status of gossip in terms of the unfolding sequence of the funeral ritual in a particular Romanian cultural context. It argues that during the liminal phase covering the deathwatch and the burial, a transient "gossipless communitas" emerges around the dead one governed by the taboo against gossiping. If the dead is afterward spared from post-mortem gossip, this is due mainly to the impracticality of gossip. The paper ends by arguing that death, despite the emotional distress caused to the surviving family, brings about a reputational bless for the deceased. It does so since, under the normative jurisdiction of the saying "De mortuis nihil nisi bonum" (Of the dead, nothing unless good), the memory of the deceased is being posthumously dignified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which editor discusses the field of death studies including publications about the emotional nature of conducting sensitive research, implications for researchers and ethics committees, and lack of career structure for researchers.

This paper discusses the possibilities of using theories of glocalisation for understanding national differences in death ways, in times when global digital technologies play a growing role in how individuals and societies respond to severe crises. How people approach death is influenced by personal needs and values, unfolding within a thick framework of significance. Romania is a revealing example: what it is locally relevant is not unproblematically linked to a global pattern. After exploring the literature, we identify and discuss three key-directions of research that may be of help in further debates: 1. glocalisation of lived death practices and meanings; 2. glocalisation of death studies agendas; 3. the theoretical relevance of glocalism for understanding fundamental human experiences (we suggest a social phenomenological approach).

Narratives being the cornerstone of societal development will never go out of fashion. The act of reading will naturally be a part of highly developed cognitive beings. In this paper, the ideal reader is replaced by the embodied reader. The neurocognitive implications of the narratee will be analysed to uncover the fact that reading is quite similar to using a VR headset to play video games. The reason behind a good book being a favourite pastime for many is due to the ability of fiction to be experiential. Understanding fiction as a catalyst for neural engagement and triggering sensory-motor neural movement will be used to understand the true nature of the reading community. In addition to this close-up analysis of the embodied reader, the psychological response of such a reader when coming across a text that highlights the theme of death will also be analysed using the findings of terror management theory (TMT).

The paper is devoted to the problem of death as a separate subject of socio-humanitarian studies in the West during the second half of the 20th century. In the recent decades, thanatological aspects have gained increasing attention in socio-cultural studies. In this regard, the aim of this paper, which seems to be relevant to the field, is to identify the specifics of investigating the problem of death in socio-humanitarian studies using historiographical analysis. The obtained results show that death studies, which were mainly the research on death and funerary rites, appeared in the first half of the 20th century due to anthropologists' efforts. However, a new impetus was given to the research in the middle of the 1950s. The “repression of death” in modern society caused intense debate which triggered the research interest in death on the whole and, in particular, its phenomenon in modern developed countries. Consequently, a number of publications appeared and such of disciplines as death psychology, sociology of death and dying, and historical thanatology were developed. By the turn of the centuries, the intensification of death studies in various disciplines contributed to the transformation of the overall problem of death within the scope of a broad interdisciplinary cooperation. It is important to understand these processes in order to unlock the cognitive potential of socio-humanitarian thanatological studies, as well as to understand the role of their results in historical, cultural, and social research.

Gossiping is ubiquitous in social life. In every imaginable corner of society, people from all walks of life are gossiping their living acquaintances. But what happens when the “third party,” i.e., the subject of gossip, is absent par excellence, not only temporarily and spatially, but definitively? Do people continue to gossip their dead acquaintances? What is the fate of gossip after its target dies? These are the questions this paper sets out to address. In doing so, it develops a non-reductionist sequential model of death as a social process in which biological death is only the starting point of the bio-social phenomenon of dying. Building on some classic anthropological theories and concepts taken from Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner, the paper examines the post-mortem status of gossip in terms of the unfolding sequence of the funeral ritual in a particular Romanian cultural context. It argues that during the liminal phase covering the deathwatch and the burial, a transient “gossipless communitas” emerges around the dead one governed by the taboo against gossiping. If the dead is afterward spared from post-mortem gossip, this is due mainly to the impracticality of gossip. The paper ends by arguing that death, despite the emotional distress caused to the surviving family, brings about a reputational bless for the deceased. It does so since, under the normative jurisdiction of the saying “De mortuis nihil nisi bonum” (Of the dead, nothing unless good), the memory of the deceased is being posthumously dignified.

Development of death studies, choice of topics and aspects of their interpretations were influenced by many factors, both global and local. The former were related to universal processes of medicalization, bureaucratization and professionalization of death and dying, as well as to processes of general secularization of society and culture. The latter were connected with specific and dominant local social and cultural praxes, politics and academic traditions. In this paper we will point out specificities of death studies development in different academic communities. We will also open the question and offer some answers on disciplinary identity of thanatology and, at the end, we will consider possibilities and needs for introducing the discipline in curriculum at different education levels. The aim of the paper is to settle preliminary frames for future investigation; the emphasis is placed on ethnological and anthropological perspective and on English and Serbian language bibliography. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 177028]

Throughout his life, British composer Sir Arthur Bliss (1891–1975) placed great importance on the value of music. He saw it as something that could bring peace and healing and as an 'art that reaches beyond the world.' In his artistic creed, set out in 1934, Bliss speaks of music as inherently linked with emotion in its form as a crucial mode of human expression, both in listening and in its composition. His philosophies on these are fairly well documented; he spoke publicly on contemporary composition and wrote extensively on his own experiences with music, not least in his autobiography, As I Remember. Equally, he and his wife both write of his music as an embodiment of the 'private' Arthur Bliss, one in which we might find something of the man hidden from the general public. With this in mind, and given Bliss's view of music as something with spiritual value, this article aims to examine his previously neglected philosophies on composition, exploring themes of emotion, identity, and destiny through an exegesis of his writings, lectures, and broadcasts, and by probing the composition and context of A Colour Symphony, Meditations on a Theme by John Blow, and Shield of Faith. Using a lens of Douglas Davies' idea-value-belief series supported by Davies' theory of cultural intensification it argues that, for Bliss, music can be seen as more than an idea—it was a value, a belief, and perhaps even a religious belief. In its conclusion, this article suggests that we can uncover a form of spirituality in Bliss's attitude to music and view this attitude as something which acts 'against death'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview conducted with Emeritus professor Karla Holloway on the African American funeral director as preservers of culture and history illuminates her scholarship and importance to the field of Death Studies. Questions asked in order to understand her interdisciplinary academic background and her canonical book Passed On: African American Mourning Stories, A Memorial were received with answers on how her knowledge of language and letters provide important understandings of death and dying in broad and heterogenous African American communities. Holloway shared her own personal grief narratives and how they inform her work by disclosing her purposeful and continual use of the term 'Vilomah' which she borrowed from Sanskit as a way to bring comfort to those who have lost a child. Ultimately, the interview showcases how premature loss in African American communities, inclusive to children and adults, lead to creative and distinctive rituals and memorial work – work born of trauma and pain but also resistance and resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first part of this article, published in an earlier issue of this journal, provided an overview of how the death-denial thesis took shape and spread in the social sciences between the 1930s and 1980s. By 'death-denial thesis' we refer to the assumption according to which Western societies seek to deny the reality of death. In this second part of the article, we turn our attention to the most extensive critiques addressed to the said thesis. We attempt to assess the present state of the narrative and to outline how its apparent obsolescence today opens new avenues of exploration for death studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following is a two-part article on the 'death-denial' thesis, namely the assumption that modern Western societies seek to deny and conceal the reality of death. The first part of the article gives a chronological overview of Anglophone and French literature on the thesis, focussing on its development and pervasiveness in the disciplines of history and sociology. In the second part of the article, published in a subsequent issue of this journal, we summarise the critiques to the said thesis. We also assess its present state in the social sciences and point to new paths for the future of death studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The events surrounding the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 are well documented in digital image culture. As a traumatic event of the Internet age, the images of 9/11's aftermath (the falling bodies, the urban ruin) were quickly disseminated on a global scale. One of the images, that of Richard Drew's Falling Man, holds a particular place in 9/11's legacy as a cultural-traumatic memory. The photograph, depicting an unidentifiable man who falls to his death before a backdrop of the crumbling World Trade Center, has received both much criticism and acclaim for its vivid depiction of the physical horror that 9/11 brought forward. But the Falling Man is but one of many bodies that emphasized the precariousness of physical structures, human as well as non-human, in a post-9/11 world. Through a discussion of the dead human body in contemporary depictions, including the various reproductions of the Falling Man but also others, I argue that the virtualization of the human corpse affects the way in which the corpse is encountered from an aesthetic, but also ethical perspective. The widespread accessibility that online culture engenders, I contend, places the image of the human corpse within an unprecedentedly global reach. What, I ask, does this new, web-based access to the political human corpse mean for the cultural memory that it leaves behind?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary Western culture, death has been widely censured because of its conceptual implications; it lies at the boundaries between reductionism and metaphysics. There is not yet an efficacious epistemology able to solve this contraposition and its consequent collision with science and tradition. This article analyzes Near Death Experiences (NDEs) as a prototypical argument in which the two perspectives conflict. Specifically, it analyzes the epistemological antinomies of the ontological representations of death, inhering in passage versus absolute annihilation. Indeed, the NDEs theme permits the examination of the logical contradiction between monistic reductionism and its ontological counterpart to improve the discovery of a new paradigm that integrates the ecological with eternalist views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]