Death, Dying and Bereavement: New Sociological Perspectives

While death, dying and bereavement are universal life events, the social conditions under which death takes place are fundamental in shaping how it is experienced by the individual. Bringing together contributors from around the world, this collection of chapters provides sociological insights into death, dying and bereavement.

Drawing upon a range of sociological theorists, including Émile Durkheim, Zygmunt Bauman and C. Wright Mills, the book reviews the historical contribution of sociology to the field of thanatology. In doing so, the book challenges individualistic psychological approaches to death, dying and bereavement and demonstrates how sociological approaches can shape, constrain and empower experiences by imbuing them with both collective and individual meaning. Chapter-length case studies explore a wide range of issues, from digital aspects of remembrance and memorialisation and continued threats to liberties that permit life and death decisions to discussions of the impact and likely legacy of COVID-19 and climate change.

This collection will be of interest to students and researchers in the social sciences with an interest in societal attitudes towards death and bereavement.

Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http: //www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

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.