Critical Approaches to Death, Dying and Bereavement

This book is the first of its kind to examine key topics in death, dying, and bereavement through a critical lens, highlighting how the understanding and experience of death can vary considerably, based on social, cultural, historical, political, and medical contexts. It looks at the complex ways in which death and dying are managed, from the political level down to end- of- life care, and the inequalities that surround and impact experiences of death, dying, and bereavement.

Readers are introduced to key theories, such as the medicalisation of dying, as well as contemporary issues, such as social movements, pandemics, and assisted dying. The book stresses how death is not only a biological process or event but rather shaped by a range of intersecting factors. Issues of inequalities in health, inequities in support, and intersectional analyses are brought to the fore, and each chapter is dedicated to an issue that has interdisciplinary resonance, thus showcasing the wider sociocultural and political factors that impact this time of life.

This book is valuable reading for scholars in thanatology and death studies, and for those in related fields such as sociology of health, medical and social anthropology, and interdisciplinary social science courses.

Erica Borgstrom is Professor of Medical Anthropology at The Open University in the United Kingdom. She leads Open Thanatology, the Open University’s interdisciplinary research group for the study and education of death, dying, loss and grief across the life course, and is co-editor in chief for the interdisciplinary journal Mortality and Bristol University Press book series Death and Culture.

Renske Visser is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oulu in Finland. She runs blog Dead Good Reading (www.deadgoodreading.com) featuring books about death, dying and loss. She also co-hosts The Death Studies Podcast. She was previously the administrator for the Association for the Study of Death and Society (ASDS).