Death, Dying and Bereavement New Sociological Perspectives

Introduction

Laura Towers and Sharon Mallon

Part I: Theory

1. Death Is Social: A Sketch for a Reflexive Sociology of Death, Dying and Bereavement

Adriana Teodorescu

2. The Financial Life of Funerals before Death

Samantha Fletcher and William McGowan

3. Sociological Insights into Post-Death Time Experiences

Glenys Caswell

4. Social Change, Collective Loss, Planet Earth

Tony Walter

Part II: Dying

5. Sociology and Palliative Care: Travelling Concepts and Possibilities for Sociology

Erica Borgstrom

6. The Biopolitical Economy of Dying in Care Homes: A Theoretical Framework

Diana Teggi

7. A Socio-Legal Investigation into Making Plans for Dying: Perspectives of People with Dementia

Chloe Waterman, Rosie Harding and Elizabeth Peel

8. Representing Illness and Dying: The Uses of Sociology

Michael Brennan

Part III: After Death

9. “Death Is for the Living”: Ontology of Grief in the Context of Intimate Partnership - Case Study of a Widow, a Fiancée, and a Lover in India

Neelakshi Talukdar

10. Beyond the Individualisation of Risk: Lessons from the Japanese Response to COVID-19

Norichika Horie

11. Sociology and the Greening of Death in Aotearoa New Zealand

Ruth McManus, Denise Blake and Dot Brown

12. Complex Worlds, Complex People: Auto-Ethnographic Sociological Perspectives on Decolonising the Aftermath of Death

Berenice Golding, Sukhbinder Hamilton and Jane Ribbens McCarthy

Conclusion: The Importance of Death, Dying and Bereavement for Sociology

Jenny Huberman

Biography

Sharon Mallon is a senior lecturer in mental health at the University of Staffordshire, UK. She is an experienced qualitative researcher who specialises in projects focused on bereavement and mental health, particularly suicide postvention and prevention, the gendered, social approaches to understanding death by suicide and the wider impact of suicide bereavement on different bereaved groups. She has also developed a strong interest in the emotional impact of researching sensitive subjects on researchers. She was awarded her PhD for a qualitative study of young adults’ suicides from the perspective of their friends. She is co-editor of Preventing and Responding to Student Suicide: A Practical Guide for FE and HE Settings (Jessica Kingsley, 2021), Narratives of COVID: Loss, Dying, Death and Grief during COVID-19 (Kindle Direct Publishing, 2021) and Unpacking Sensitive Research: Epistemological and Methodological Implications (Routledge, 2022).

Laura Towers is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Sociology Department at the University of Manchester, UK, and a Visiting Research Fellow to the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, UK. In a project titled ‘Storying the Unspeakable: Narrating the Experiences of Siblings Bereaved by Suicide’, Laura is using a relational approach to consider how siblings bereaved by suicide understand and make sense of their loss over time through narratives of personal experience. She also recently carried out research in partnership with Hospice UK, looking at people’s experiences at work when caring for someone who is dying. Overall, Laura is keen to explore the social nature of grief, loss and bereavement, emphasising the longevity of these experiences. She was co-convenor of the British Sociological Association’s Social Aspects of Death, Dying and Bereavement Study Group between 2017 and 2022.

“These international authors and editors offer a substantial review of the cutting-edge of sociological insight into contemporary death, dying, and bereavement. The chapters engage with a fascinating span of analyses at the intersections of climate change, intersectionality, professional care, and the sociologies of time, reflexivity, or decoloniality. This book raises the bar for current sociological debates on human mortality.” 

Allan Kellehear, Professor of Health and Social Care, Northumbria University, UK

“A wide-ranging collection of chapters that provide academic and political insight into the contemporary experience of death, of dying and of bereavement.  As a whole, the volume engages with many key concerns and debates, making it invaluable reading for those working or interested in this area of scholarship.”

Gayle Letherby, Visiting Professor of Sociology, University of Plymouth, UK and Visiting Professor, Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath, UK