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AbstractBereavement scholarship predominantly examines psychological aspects of grief, which neglects the role of social, economic, and political factors that shape the space to accommodate these experiences. Responding to calls for enhancing bereavement care, this research explores bereavement accommodation for workers in precarious employment in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on critical qualitative research and feminist ethics, this study employed in-depth interviews to generate knowledge on the everyday experiences of bereaved workers in precarious employment. Participants expressed they were uninformed and unprepared for grief and practical bereavement labor, and that navigating the current context created tension, stress, exhaustion, isolation, and stigma. We argue the systemic neglect of bereavement is driven by socio-political forces that devalue relationality, stigmatize emotions, and render bereavement an individual responsibility. This research informs broad recommendations, including enhancing grief literacy, establishing safeguards for precarious workers, and creating more responsive care pathways and strategies for addressing individual and collective grief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Embodied knowledge and grief are often unaddressed in academic training and education. This article presents a reflexive and critical account of the author’s experience conducting a qualitative study on bereavement accommodation as an insider, researcher, and practitioner. Approaching herself as an object of inquiry, she considers the way her identities engage with the knowledge being generated, and the discrepancy between the values she was promoting in her work and the pressures to replicate ideologies about productivity and autonomy. The author outlines a methodological approach that applies feminist ethics beyond the data to account for the researcher and research process. The implications of placing care at the center of the labor process are discussed, including: (a) attending to embodied knowledge, interdependence, responsibilities, and invisible labor, (b) developing, implementing, and evaluating a care plan, (c) distinguishing participant and researcher voices, and (d) contributing to collective efforts to enhance bereavement care and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The compassionate communities movement challenges the notion that death and dying should be housed within clinical and institutional contexts, and works to normalize conversations about death and dying by promoting death literacy and dialogue in public spaces. Community-based practices and conversations about grief remain marginal in this agenda. We aimed to theorize how grief could be better conceptualized and operationalized within the compassionate communities movement. We develop the concept of Grief Literacy and present vignettes to illustrate a grief literate society. Grief literacy augments the concept of death literacy, thereby further enhancing the potential of the compassionate communities approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]