About this item
Highlights
- Though death is universal, how we respond to it depends on when and where we live.
- About the Author: Tony Walter is a sociologist who writes, lectures and consults on death and society.
- 144 Pages
- Medical, Health Policy
Description
About the Book
Bringing 25 years of research and teaching in the sociology of death and dying to this important book, Tony Walter engages critically with key questions around this universal fact.Book Synopsis
Though death is universal, how we respond to it depends on when and where we live. Dying and grieving continually evolve: new preparations for dying, new kinds of funerals, new ways of handling grief and new ways to memorialise are developing all the time.
Bringing 25 years of research and teaching in the sociology of death and dying to this important book, Tony Walter engages critically with key questions such as: should we talk about death more and plan in advance? How effective is this as more people suffer frailty and dementia? How do physical migration and digital connection affect place-bound deathbeds, funerals and graves? Is the traditional funeral still relevant? Can burial and cremation be ecological? And how should we grieve: quietly, openly, or online?
Review Quotes
"...an insightful and erudite exploration of death and dying, in a manner accessible to a general readership or those with a more specialist background... a strength of the text is how it incorporates a necessarily broad and holistic understanding of society's approach to death and dying... an engaging and thoughtful exploration of contemporary Western attitudes towards death and dying." Mortality
"In this new work, Walter's encyclopaedic and critical gaze has produced another volume of analysis to be reckoned with." Allan Kellehear, University of Bradford
About the Author
Tony Walter is a sociologist who writes, lectures and consults on death and society. He was director of the University of Bath's Centre for Death & Society where he is now an honorary professor. His books include Basic Income (1988), Funerals - and how to improve them (1990), Pilgrimage in Popular Culture (1993), The Revival of Death (1994), On Bereavement: the culture of grief (1999) and Social Death (2016).