Caveat Emptor:On Time, Death and History in Late Modernity

This article focuses on 'revivalism' and 'resurrectionism'. While the former is a sociological label for contemporary rituals of dying and death, the latter is a label for contemporary practices of historiographical representation. By exploring the formal and substantive similarities between 'revivalism' and 'resurrectionism', this study offers a speculative reflection on the relationship between time, death and history in late modernity

Transnational politics and poetics in the revival of Chinese death rituals

Religions and religious rituals are being increasingly proclaimed as Intangible Cultural Heritages by UNESCO. Chinese death rituals can thus been conceptualised as significant intangible cultural heritages within the Chinese societies, both within Mainland China and the Chinese Diaspora. Since the Open Door Policy in 1978, there has been a revival of death rituals within the villages of South China. This revival has led to the emergence of the death rituals that have not seen practiced in Mainland China since pre-Cultural Revolution days. This paper argues that the preservation and the practice of death rituals in modern China and the Chinese Diaspora are significant intangible cultural heritages because of their role in informing a group of its identity and in helping with identity construction within these societies. Here, these rituals have re-cemented lost kinship ties among the Chinese villagers within the village setting, between the Chinese villagers and their urban kin in China, and between these two groups and their kin residing in the Diaspora. By coming together and recreating an environment where different groups of individuals participate in the death rituals and pay respects to common ancestors, we are witnessing a rediscovery and reconfiguration of kinship ties and social relationships on the one hand, and, at the same time, a surfacing of tensions and conflicts on the other. In this sense, death rituals, as a complex system of intangible cultural heritages, enables us to understand the dynamics of modern kinship ties and social relationships in contemporary Chinese societies.postprintInternational Symposium on the Politics and Poetics of Asian Intangible Cultural Heritage, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 16-17 October 2009

Social Death

This review will outline various ways in which the notion of 'social death’ can be understood, and how they can be related to clinical practice. The idea of social death is used to analytically represent how someone can be identified and treated as if they are ontologically deficient – meaning that they are not seen as being 'fully human.' This impacts on their position within society and how they are interacted with. This review will consider three examples of social death - often distinguished from physical or biological death - that are important for clinical practice: loss of agency and identity; treating people as if they are already dead; and, rituals and bereavement. Recognising that a distinction between social and biological death may not always be helpful, this review will suggest ways in which healthcare practitioners can minimise the likelihood of inadvertently treating someone as 'socially dead'

Maori children and death: Views from parents

Research about Maori children's experiences and perceptions of death and tangi (Maori death rituals) is sparse. What is available tends to be generalised and stems from Western paradigms of knowledge. In this study we explore Maori children's experiences of death and tangi through the eyes of Maori parents. Through semi-structured interviews with 17 Maori parents, five areas were explored: a) the childhood experiences of parents and how they learned about death and an afterlife; b) what their adult beliefs about these matters are; c) how they have communicated the death concept to their children; and d) whether their children are likely to do the same in the future. From this study we learn that death was not hidden from children, that parents talked with their children in very open and age relevant ways, and considered their children's participation in tangi an important way to grieve and ensure continuity with kinship networks and support. This study suggests that the challenge now is to ensure that these practices continue to persist between parents and their children, and future generations

Διατροφικές συνήθειες και συμβολισμοί κατά το διαβατήριο στάδιο της τελευτής στις Κυκλάδες από τον 20ό αιώνα μέχρι σήμερα

Please note: this article is in Greek. Dietary habits and symbolism during the transitional stage of death in the Cyclades from the 20th century to today: For the living, death is a nexus of rituals accompanying the whole procedure from the moment of the onset of death until the period of remembrance by the relatives of the deceased, which lasts for ca two family or community generations, is over. Kollyva (boiled wheat) is the symbolic food par excellence which is consumed during memorial services and, more generally, in rituals of remembrance of the dead over a long period of time. If one studies how these rituals develop, both the manner in which they are transformed and the socio-economic conditions that influence this transformation cannot fail to strike one. In particular, in the case of the Cyclades and especially of Santorini, the development of tourism has resulted in a change in the economic circumstances of the inhabitants from an agricultural to an urban way of life. This change becomes even more obvious in the daily choices made by the inhabitants. The result of this economic development is the commercialisation of death rituals whereby they cease to be representations of religious values and become representations of commercial values. From the moment when the evaluation of social relations in terms of money becomes a criterion for social reproduction, death can no longer be symbolically represented in the form in which it was in the past. Death preserves its outward characteristics whilst its internal nature is deconstructed

Religion, culture and politics in the Philippines

This essay addresses two questions with regard to the contemporary Philippines: the question of political violence and the question of status and hierarchy or, as some would have it, class. In recent years I have done field work in and around Manila and in the provinces of Laguna and Quezon about the use of amulets or antíng-antíng in martial rituals for making men's bodies invulnerable, and also on practices concerned with the disposal of the dead. I will suggest that the ritual use of amulets through which Filipino men typically seek to protect themselves from violence signifies a generalised fear of violence. I will also suggest that such rituals of invulnerability transform violence, vulnerability and invulnerability into spiritual problems that can only be overcome through spiritual means. This is to be regarded as a problem: political violence in the Philippines will not be stopped by prayer or by a tattoo or a talisman. Secondly, I will argue that if we want to understand Filipino society with its hierarchies and status and class relationships, we can find ready-made 'maps' of such relations in graveyards. In other words, the geography of death provides an important insight into the ordinarily hidden structuring of society in the Philippines. As such, I will argue that the increasing tendency of middle-class or 'C' class Filipinos to choose cremation at death and for the ashes to be stored not in a graveyard but in a columbarium suggests a desire to escape hierarchy, but also the political impotence of the middleclass in that for this class the problem of hierarchy in the Philippines can only be resolved in death: the issue of inequality simply cannot be confronted in reality

"Rytuały rodzinne'. Wobec śmierci w filmie

In the article Family rituals in the face of death the author analyzes fi lms from the perspective of the experience of a family confronted with death. The author is interestedin what family rituals are still used at this time and what actions have been abandoned.The presented fi lms demonstrate fascination with the topic of death, which is present in every culture with different intensity, by means of various descriptions which are attractivebecause they are fi lled with the richness of symbols. The majority of these films emphasize a shift in the discourse about death in social space towards an individual subject. The author wanted to observe and show the moment when the community experience of death and mourning was given up and the ritual passed into the hands of specialized institutions

“The Vegetables Really Get More Tender Care”: An Introduction to Death and Dying in the Civil War

The Victorian world was one of ceremony and order, even in death. Deathways–the practices of a society regarding death and dying–in 19thcentury America focused on elaborate rituals that earned the country the grisly distinction of possessing a “culture of death.” The American Civil War presented a four-year window in which many of these traditions were radically challenged in both the North and the South, as loved ones died anonymous deaths far from the embrace of kin. Nevertheless, the warring populations attempted to maintain important traditions even as the horrors of war surrounded them, thus allowing the deathways of the antebellum years to survive even into the early days of the 20th century. [excerpt