Death and Institutions - (Death and Culture) by Kate Woodthorpe & Helen Frisby & Bethan Michael-Fox (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Institutions play a crucial role in shaping experiences of end-of-life care, dying, death, body disposal and bereavement. However, there has been little holistic or multidisciplinary research in this area, with studies typically focusing on individual settings such as hospitals and cemeteries, or being confined to specific disciplines.

This interdisciplinary collection combines chapters on process, place and the past to examine the relationships both within and between institutions, institutionalization and death in international contexts.

Of broad appeal to students and academics in areas including social policy, health sciences, sociology, psychology, anthropology, cultural studies, history and the wider humanities, this collection spans multiple disciplines to offer crucial insights into the end of life, body disposal, bereavement and mourning.

Review Quotes

"This collection offers clear and perceptive critical lenses to tropes about dying well, the 'pejorative state', necropolitics and the Death Positive Movement to name a few, which are soundly researched, timely and refreshing." Ruth McManus, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

About the Author

Kate Woodthorpe is Reader in Sociology and Co-Director of the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath.

Helen Frisby is Visiting Research Fellow in the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath.

Bethan Michael-Fox teaches and researches in the School of English and Creative Writing at The Open University.