Critical Approaches to Death, Dying and Bereavement

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 the 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).

• Chapter 1: Introduction. Section I: Populations, Politics, and Society. Chapter 2: Thinking With and Beyond Mortality Statistics. Chapter 3: Policy and Death. Chapter 4: Mass Death Events and Shifting Death Practices. Chapter 5: Social Movements and Death. Section II: Dying. Chapter 6: Medicalisation of Dying. Chapter 7: Palliative Care and the Modern Hospice Movement. Chapter 8: Assisted Dying. Chapter 9: Disenfranchised Dying. Section III: The aftermath of death. Chapter 10: The Dead Body and Disposal Practices. Chapter 11: Grief Theories and Therapies. Chapter 12: Suicide. Chapter 13: Conclusion.

"Looking at how power operates through government, law, media, professions and social movements to shape how we die and grieve, validating some deaths and discounting others, this book provides a much needed critical edge to death studies."--Professor Tony Walter, University of Bath, UK“Borgstrom and Visser expertly chart how death, dying, and bereavement are considered as health matters, and as social processes. They shine much-needed light on the ways in which culture, power, and inequality influence the management and experience of loss. Compulsory reading for the death studies curriculum."--Professor Emma Kirby, PhD. Professor of Sociology at UNSW Sydney, Australia