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The loss of a loved one causes the world and the place of the bereaved survivor in it to change irreversibly. A key aspect of the grieving process is the integration of the loss in the bereaved survivor's life story, identity change, and a new future orientation through meaning attribution. Meaning attribution can have favourable or unfavourable effects on the grieving process and hence determines the extent to which a loss disrupts the bereaved survivor's functioning. A framework of meaning attribution after loss is presented, comprising 17 determinants that fall into five categories: event-related, cultural, social, individual and relational determinants. Each determinant may lead to both positive and negative meanings, thereby facilitating or complicating the grieving process. The framework of meaning attribution highlights the importance of an integrated network for mental health care, spiritual care, and end-of-life care in the prevention and treatment of traumatic grief. It also emphasizes the support from relatives, collective rituals, cultural views, legal settlements, and other societal factors that may foster or impede adaptation to loss. The framework of meaning attribution informs research across a range of research themes, including specialist care for traumatic grief, a culturally sensitive care network for traumatic grief, and improving care for ambiguous loss in a global context. • Meaning attribution is an adaptive process that reduces the fear of the unknown.• Event-related, cultural, social, individual and relational determinants impact on meaning attribution following loss.• Research into meaning attribution is characterized by interdisciplinarity, methodological pluralism, and explicit orientation within the sociocultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main topic of this study is to contribute to the study of female sacred mobility in the Middle Ages by proposing a new approach for the analysis of historical sources (wills and bequests), combining quantitative and qualitative methodology. We have set three aims: (1) Reinforcing the female presence within historical documents through their empirical analysis; (2) Reflecting upon female participation in the public sphere; (3) Investigating women’s agency in religious terms. Concerning the geographical context of the research, the historical sources have been retrieved from the Historical Archives of the Italian Region of Apulia (Italy); where we have studied the above mentioned topics in relation to the devotion to St. James (Spain). The first part of the article introduces female mobility to the city of Santiago de Compostela; then, it moves to the forms of devotion to the Apostle St. James the Greater and female pilgrims in Apulia. The present empirical study has the differential to propose a transversal interpretation of the selected historical texts according to the following criteria: (1) Devotion to the Apostle St. James the Greater (2) Female devotion. As well as reinforcing the use of these historical documents to investigate female social behaviour, the research contributes to the study of the female role within the geography of pilgrimage in the following terms: sacred mobility; territorial history and experiential and devotional value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the relationship of space with obstetric practices and its role in the medicalisation of childbirth in a case study of the two maternity clinics of a provincial town in Greece. Typical birth care procedures in Volos were observed to act as rituals to define childbirth as a medical crisis and to transmit the message of superiority and necessity of medicine and technology in childbirth. The arrangements and uses of birth spaces made possible the application of the technomedical model with its high rate of obstetric interventions, while they supported and solidified its symbolic meanings. However, in the current economic and social crisis, these established practices are being challenged and alternative paradigms of birth care are being formed. Their interaction with existing spaces in maternity clinics and at home and the changes they required or caused are offering possibilities for new conceptualisations of birth, birth care and women's transition to maternity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the eighteenth century, magic and witchcraft were used as a means of resolving people's everyday conflicts, anxieties and uncertainties. Practitioners of magic and their clients made use of both public and private spaces, ‘appropriating’ them for purposes very different from those which they were really meant to serve. The performance of magic rituals in public and private spaces meant that both were used as places in which to source ingredients for the rituals themselves. Such spaces were also where potential customers, seeking to avail themselves of sorcery, were directly approached and enticed by its practitioners. The magic rituals performed there were supervised by witches who engaged in magic secretly while professing to reject it in public. Generally, they liked to do their work in places that were symbolically in keeping with the magic they practised, and with the relationships they wished to establish with their clients. In other words, they exploited their chosen milieu for their own particular ends. The people, actively or passively superstitious, who were opposed to a world in which they were expected to obey the accepted norms of moral conduct and in which they found themselves judged harshly by others more submissive to society's rules of behaviour, discovered in witchcraft adaptable ways in which to give expression to their true inclinations while avoiding the risks of openly defying the prevailing views of the society to which they belonged. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Going beyond the myths prevalent in the socio-cultural embeddedness of rural Bangladesh, this article examines the diverse visible and invisible roles of fisherwomen in small-scale fisheries. This research considered two ethnic groups situated in two different ecosystems: the floodplain freshwater ecosystem is represented by new-entrant Muslim fishers ‘Maimal’ and the coastal ecosystem is represented by caste-based Hindu fishers ‘Jaladas’. From the basic ontological worldview of human dignity, moral individualism, and the social recognition of women’s rights, we argue that fisherwomen’s roles need to be recognized, focused, and valued to develop a horizontal understanding that is a prerequisite to the process of democratization, and the proper functioning of a just society. In the rural societies, a host of attributes, such as the deep-rooted socio-cultural constructions of the motherly myth, extreme tolerance, family teaching, religious antagonism, poverty, lack of education, internalization of a subordinate position, lack of supportive institutions, and fear of loss of societal patronage, profoundly undermine the capacity of women to aspire and raise their voice. Fisherwomen are accrued an inferior social position although they perform unique roles in the areas of childcare, household upkeep, livelihoods, and psycho-social support for the seafaring fishers. Conducive to the ecotone of marine fisheries, this article also portrays how a rigid patriarchal form of society is seasonally transformed to matrifocality when fishermen are away for fishing for half the year. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]