Sociologi: døden og døende

Death studies typically focus on the death of humans, overlooking the wider factors involved in social and natural processes around death. This edited volume provides an alternative focus for death studies by looking beyond human death, to reveal the complex interconnections among human and more than human creatures, entities and environments. Bringing together a diverse range of international scholars, the book sheds light on topics which have previously remained at the margins of contemporary death studies and death care cultures. Organised around three themes - Knowledge and Mediation, Care and Remembrance, and Agency and Power - this book pushes the boundaries of death studies to explore death and dying from beyond the perspective of a nature/culture binary.

Contemporary audiences are often shocked to learn that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, medical students around the world posed for photographic portraits with their cadavers; a genre known as dissection photography. Featuring previously unseen images, stories, and anecdotes, this book explores the visual culture of death within the gross anatomy lab through the tradition of dissection photography, examining its historical aspects from both photographic and medical perspectives. The author pays particular attention to the use of dissection photographs as an expression of student identity, and as an evolving transgressive ritual intricately connected to, and eventually superseding, the act of dissection itself.

Whose Coat is that Jacket Hanging on the Floor? serves as a historical testimony and collection of narratives in response to collective trauma.

REGARDING OUR APPROACH TO THE END OF LIFE Death is a universal human experience. The knowledge of our own mortality connects us - beyond all boundaries of space, time and social conventions. Even while we're still alive, the great unknown presents us with a multitude of questions, affecting us in different ways: Is there life after death? What is a 'good death'? How do we find comfort? What remains of me? This book discusses possible answers from an individual point of view as well as from a cultural and social perspective. It forges a bridge between the nature of our fleeting existence and a culture of death that can be shaped, between the certainty of our own passing and the awareness of the impending loss of all our livelihood through the extinction of species.-Reflecting on the great unknown: What does death mean today?-Conceptions of the afterlife, funerary rites, and commemoration of the dead all around the world-Experts from the fields of journalism, philosophy, medicine, forensics, art, ecology, archaeology, psychotherapy, palliative care, zoology, and sociology illuminate the topic in all its facets-On dignity, mourning, and living with the dead-Essays, interviews, personal accounts, and photo spreadsAN ENCOUNTER WITH THE MANY DIFFERENT NOTIONS OF DEATHIn a wide-ranging compilation of essays, interviews and personal accounts, "in_finite. Living with Death" offers a multi-layered look at beliefs about the afterlife, funerary rites, the treatment of the dying, and coping with grief. Here, the perspective extends far beyond the European cultural sphere. Alongside experts from various fields of science, representatives of religious communities such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and the Yoruba religions, also share their views and provide nuanced accounts of diverse, including non-Western, perspectives on the end of life. This book offers an approach that contributes to a holistic understanding of death and makes it possible to ask questions that remain hidden in everyday life.ABOUT THE FINAL CHAPTER OF OUR BEINGFor all the broadness of its thematic scope, the book is clearly structured around key topics. The individual contributions range from reflections on immortality by the philosopher and journalist Stephen Cave to factual descriptions of the process of dying by Dr Jens Dreier of the Berlin Charité hospital and touching reports from the everyday lives of end-of-life caregivers from all over the world.The publication accompanying the exhibition "un_endlich. Leben mit dem Tod" is published by the Humboldt Forum Foundation in the Berliner Schloss. With contributions by Stephen Cave, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Matthias Glaubrecht, Cristina Cattaneo, Hartmut Dorgerloh, Jens Dreier, and others.

After suffering depression following a catastrophic event at 17, Sharon Greenwald knows she'll commit suicide one day. But she never considered what would happen if she survived. Not even a lifelong eating disorder stemming from an abortion, watching her father and best friend take their last breaths, or postpartum depression that ruins her experience as a new mother can lead her to suicide. But then, when the depression comes back after her divorce, inconsequential events set her plan in motion. When she awakens from a 5-day coma, Sharon must deal with the effects of her decision, including the stunned reactions of her loved ones. As Sharon and her family try to cope with what happened, her family keeps asking "Why?"SIXTY-NINTH STREET SUICIDE is a candid, raw story that explores Sharon's every destructive thought and feeling that adds to her why. The answer may surprise you.

Innovative and challenging study that provides fresh insights on the anthropology of death and postcolonial politics.

This book shows how interpretations of suicidal motives were guided by gendered expectations of behaviour, and that these expectations were constructed to create meaning and understanding for family, friends and witnesses. Providing an insight into how people of this era understood suicidal behaviour and motives, it challenges the assertion that suicide was seen as a distinctly feminine act, and that men who took their own lives were feminized as a result. Instead, it shows that masculinity was understood in a more nuanced way than gender binaries allow, and that a man's masculinity was measured against other men. Focusing on four common narrative types; the love-suicide, the unemployed suicide, the suicide of the fraudster or speculator, and the suicide of the dishonoured solider, it provides historical context to modern discussions about the crisis of masculinity and rising male suicide rates. It reveals that narratives around male suicides are not so different today as they were then, and that our modern model of masculinity can be traced back to the 19th century.

"A deeply transformative memoir that reframes how we think about death and how it can help us lead better, more fulfilling and authentic lives, from America's preeminent death doula"--]cProvided by publisher.

Through examination of the death penalty in literature, Aaron Aquilina contests Heidegger's concept of 'being-towards-death' and proposes a new understanding of the political and philosophical subject.Dickens, Nabokov, Hugo, Sophocles and many others explore capital punishment in their works, from Antigone to Invitation to a Beheading. Using these varied case studies, Aquilina demonstrates how they all highlight two aspects of the experience. First, they uncover a particular state of being, or more precisely non-being, that comes with a death sentence, and, second, they reveal how this state exists beyond death row, as sovereignty and alterity are by no means confined to a prison cell.In contrast to Heidegger's being-towards-death, which individualizes the subject - only I can die my own death, supposedly - this book argues that, when condemned to death, the self and death collide, putting under erasure the category of subjectivity itself. Be it death row or not, when the supposed futurity of death is brought into the here and now, we encounter what Aquilina calls 'relational death'. Living on with death severs the subject's relation to itself, the other and political sociality as a whole, rendering the human less a named and recognizable 'being' than an anonymous 'living corpse', a human thing. In a sustained engagement with Blanchot, Levinas, Hegel, Agamben and Derrida, The Ontology of Death articulates a new theory of the subject, beyond political subjectivity defined by sovereignty and beyond the Heideggerian notion of ontological selfhood.

CW: Suicidal ideation, self-harm, sex/death psychodynamics, but the journey moves from such darkness into radiant, transformative light!"and the glints on waves, are not glints on waves, but... stars..."In summer 2010, gay British artist and poet Bruce Rimell fell into a self-destructive spiral of suicidal ideation, confused hyperactivity, and dark dreams so unsettling and so persistent that they threatened to tear his life apart.The most prominent recurring nightmare was one in which he hanged himself and enjoyed it, eager to end his life, but at the last moment he would spit out letters, and so did not die. Waking up terrified, he felt himself coming undone, desperately seeking answers but finding none.When he began to 'enter into the image' of this dream, rather than study it rationally, a new and unexpected transformative path opened up towards a more holistic Queer spiritual identity. This in turn kickstarted the healing of his latent self-destructive urges that arose from his internalised rage at centuries of homo/queerphobic persecution.'Hangman Starman' is a visionary voyage through the darkest realms of Bruce's gay/queer psyche, a brutally honest account of his time in the underworld, and how he worked his dreams to burn his darkness through to the blazing light on the other side.

Based on a content analysis of writing assignments from a class on death and dying, this book focuses on the manner in which college students use religion to make sense of death and the dying process.