Death, Ritual and Belief: The Rhetoric of Funerary Rites

Description

Death, Ritual and Belief, now in its third edition, explores many important issues related to death and dying, from a religious studies perspective, including anthropology and sociology. Using the motif of 'words against death' it depicts human responses to grief by surveying the many ways in which people have not let death have the last word, not simply in terms of funeral rites but also in memorials, graves, and in ideas of ancestors, souls, gods, reincarnation and resurrection, whether in the great religious traditions of the world or in more local customs. He also examines bereavement and grief, experiences of the presence of dead, near-death experiences, pet-death and the symbolic death played out in religious rites. Updated chapters have taken into account new research and include additional topics in this new edition, notably assisted dying, terrorism, green burial, material culture, death online, and the emergence of Death Studies as a distinctive field. Case studies range from Anders Breivik in Norway, to the Princess of Wales, and to the Rapture in the USA. A new perspective is also brought to his account of grief theories Providing an introduction to key authors and authorities on death beliefs, bereavement, grief and ritual-symbolism, Death, Ritual and Belief is an authoritative guide to the perspectives of major religious and secular worldviews Title Page Copyright Page Contents Preface to Second Edition Preface to Third Edition Acknowledgements Illustrations Introduction Chapter 1: Interpreting death rites Introducing the theory Words and humanity Perspectives in death studies Sociological and anthropological explanations Human body as microcosm Identity and embodiment Rites of passage Psychological explanations Hope and survival Death and transcendence Chapter 2: Coping with corpses: Impurity, fertility and fear Burying, caves and cemeteries Burning bodies Funerals as two-phased rituals Modern cremation rites Cremation in Britain Hertz and cremation Modern treatment of ashes The politics of burial and cremation Air, earth and water disposal Space for bodies Impurity, fear and fertility: Values of the corpse Food against death Chapter 3: Theories of grief Psychoanalytic forces Evolutionary aspects Ritual transcendence Reservations Performing grief Tears and emotion Embodiment, soul and role Popular psychology of grief in Greece Grief: Normality or illness? Motherhood and loss of child Behavioural, cognitive and stress-focused theories Stage theories of grief Continuing bonds and narrative approaches Dividuality and grief Chapter 4: Violence, sacrifice and conquest Control and death Sacrificial violence and war Chapter 5: Eastern destiny and death Zoroastrian-Parsee death rites Indian death rites Buddhism Chapter 6: Ancestors, cemeteries and local identity Mummies East and West Ancestors, identity and death Identity, emigration and ancestors Cemeteries and ethnic identity Ancestral Mormonism Myths of death Competing and complementing rites Chapter 7: Jewish and Islamic Destinies Judaism Islam Books and words Chapter 8: Christianity and the death of Jesus Death, life and Jesus Early Christianity and graves Christianity and the death of Jesus Folk beliefs in Christian cultures Retrospective fulfilment of identity Theological concern Chapter 9: Near-death, symbolic death and rebirth Symbolic power of death Imagination, hope and survival Initiation rituals Spiritual rebirth in Christianity Shamanism Wounded healers Near-death experience Chapter 10: Somewhere to die Home deathbed Hospital bed Hospice Roadside deaths Battlefield memorials National Memorial Arboretum Locating death Age and place Chapter 11: Souls and the presence of the dead The nineteenth century Popular British views on reincarnation The dead in living memory Chapter 12: Pet and animal death The death of dogs and cats Human and animal remains Symbolic animals Surveying pet death, 1992 Animal souls Bereavement and pet death Animal grief Chapter 13: Robots, books, films and buildings Religious sources Media sources Television Music Hymns and music Sculpture Exhibition and art Poetic words against death Humane words against death Architecture of death Death studies Contemporary adaptation Chapter 14: Offending death, grief and religions Theory of offending death Sacrificial reversal Enforced deaths Death in religion Death and the birth of religion Leaders and charisma Some Christian movements Bahai religion Mormonism New religious movements and death Chapter 15: Secular death and life Dataism How many? Secular French rites Soviet ceremonial Shared secularity Postmodern individuals and death Negotiating individuality Body-philosophy Postmodernity and mortuary rites Cremation, modernity and postmodernity Two cases of ash-scattering Social optimism and pessimism Euthanasia Death, life and world communities Rhetoric of mortuary rites Bibliography Index