Showing papers in "Mortality in 2006"
TL;DR: In this article, a literature review is presented to trace and evaluate the different and changing theoretical, methodological, and disciplinary perspectives through which Western, mainly UK social scientists have sought to understand and address the experience of bereavement during the twentieth century.
Abstract: This paper takes the form of a literature review to trace and evaluate the different and changing theoretical, methodological, and disciplinary perspectives through which Western, mainly UK social scientists (i.e., psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists), have sought to understand and address the experience of bereavement during the twentieth century. Such an overview is timely in relation to the rapidly changing nature of Western society around the turn of the century. It examines how the science-based discourse of modernity has shaped such perspectives and the extent to which this has obscured, as well as revealed, important aspects of the bereavement experience. It considers the potential of recent “postmodernist” approaches, which prioritize qualitative methods, and the subjective experiences of bereaved individuals to allow a fuller engagement with this complex and challenging dimension of social life. In so doing it aims to demonstrate how the inadequacy of modernist perspectives in a...
103 citations
TL;DR: A model was developed where six anti-donation factors and two pro-donations factors influence the attitude toward organ donation and can be applied also to other procedures with the dead body such as autopsy, anatomical dissection, and burial.
Abstract: This article is based on the author's previous studies on people's reactions to organ donation, including both questionnaire surveys and qualitative interviews. A model was developed where six anti...
72 citations
TL;DR: It is proposed that the compelling nature of sacrifice and the manner in which it impinges on families' decision-making may help to explain the high refusal rates in populations that appear generally aware of the benefits of organ transplantation.
Abstract: Globally, there is a critical shortage of donor organs to meet the demands for human organ transplantation. An understanding of what motivates families to agree to donation is therefore essential t...
62 citations
TL;DR: The authors investigated the different types of ongoing bonds endorsed by a group of spousally-bereaved participants, and by subjecting the results to principal components analysis found three independent facets of continuing bonds: sensing the presence of the deceased, communicating with the deceased and re-living the relationship, and dreaming of and yearning for the deceased.
Abstract: The nature of the ongoing bond between the bereaved and the deceased has attracted some considerable attention in recent years. Early theorists proposed that the continuing maintenance of such a bond is indicative of a failure to adjust to the loss, whereas more recent work has questioned the validity of this position. Problematic within these opposing positions is the fact that many different theorists and researchers have operationalized the notion of “continuing bonds” in different ways, and consequently have found different relationships with adjustment. The current study investigated the different types of ongoing bonds endorsed by a group of spousally-bereaved participants (n = 45), and by subjecting the results to principal components analysis found three independent facets of continuing bonds: sensing the presence of the deceased, communicating with the deceased and re-living the relationship, and dreaming of and yearning for the deceased. Each of these factors was found to have a differe...
42 citations
TL;DR: Transplantation is seen in a long historical perspective taking in the funerary culture of the British Isles, the judicial use of dissection as a punishment, bodysnatching, transplantation itself, and the history of bodily donation, in an attempt to help provide some understanding of modern phenomena, such as organ shortage.
Abstract: When a nurse or a doctor unpacks a wound, they take away the dressings to see how things look beneath. Historians unpack the present by looking behind it, to try to discern roots and causes. Here, ...
34 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss Swedish funeral directors from a professionalization perspective with a focus on the last decades, and show that the funeral directors have acquired a professionalisation by broadening their work tasks in different fields.
Abstract: The aim of this article is to discuss Swedish funeral directors from a professionalization perspective with a focus on the last decades. The article is primarily based on a research study made in 1998 – 2002 where multiple data were used: interviews, field observations, text analysis, and a questionnaire. Later findings have been added to update. The results show that the funeral directors have acquired a professionalization by broadening their work tasks in different fields. Initially they took care of dead bodies and organized the logistics. In the last decades, new task areas have opened within the law, bereavement, and ceremonial rites. Of specific significance is that Swedish funeral directors seem reluctant to develop work tasks connected with the dead body; rather it is as public experts on death and bereavement that they want to be recognized. A step forward in this direction came with the public need for funeral directors in the aftermath of the tsunami.
29 citations
TL;DR: The painful, mysterious, and intimate reality of dying needs to be given its place in the curriculum of medical training and it already has its Place in the community the authors serve.
Abstract: The aim was to enquire qualitatively into the phenomenon of the moment of death at home as experienced by the lay carer. Using a purposeful sampling strategy, rural and urban families were identified in the mid-west of Ireland. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the main carer 2 to 21 days (average 10 days) after the death. The proximity of the interviews to the death was a unique aspect of the study. Twenty-two families were recruited with 10 completing the interviews which were analysed using a framework approach of grounded theory. The first of three major themes describes the experience of the moment of death with particular reference to breathing and mystery. The second theme of relationship encompasses the characteristics of the carer, gender, humour, and the patient's personality. Finally, the role of the professional as guide is explored. This is the experience of the moment of death as recounted by 10 families. Our findings bring the deathbed scene to our clinical and concept...
22 citations
TL;DR: The finding that spouses often put their own feelings at a distance, and endured suffering in silence suggests the need for support for spouses that not only aims to enhance their ability to facilitate the end-of-life situation for the sick partner, but also helps them to master their own lives.
Abstract: Spouses grief before the patient's death: retrospective experiences related to palliative home care in urban Sweden
21 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, three pathways by which genealogists come to know and symbolically represent their deceased ancestors are proposed: descriptive, narrative, and experiential pathways contribute both to the construction of ancestors as symbolically real and to genealogologists' cognitive, empathic, and affective ties with their creations.
Abstract: Three pathways by which genealogists come to know and symbolically represent their deceased ancestors are proposed. Descriptive, narrative, and experiential pathways contribute both to the construction of ancestors as symbolically real and to genealogists' cognitive, empathic, and affective ties with their creations. The analysis is based on data taken from Canadian genealogists' written answers to an open-ended survey question in 1994, and from face-to-face interviews conducted with Australian convict-descendant genealogists in 1999. The paper concludes with observations on the normative contexts of genealogy, on genealogists' participation in imaginal relations, and on the conditions of immanence, all requiring further research.
15 citations
TL;DR: The ways Israeli society defines and classifies the status of death are examined, and the possibility of transforming the significance of death according to its circumstances is debated, particularly by donating organs.
Abstract: This paper examines the ways Israeli society defines and classifies the status of death, and debates the possibility of transforming the significance of death according to its circumstances, particularly by donating organs. Israeli society's consideration of death is of singular interest, since it is a society that lives in the shadow of frequent bereavement and grades death into clear categories: heroic death, natural death, and accidental death. Israeli society correlates heroic death almost exclusively with the heroic death of soldiers. Thus the media presents it publicly and the deceased is included in the pantheon of heroes to become part of the collective memory. Other forms of deaths, such as death in a road accident or as a result of a brain hemorrhage, a malignant illness, or suicides, are not considered socially significant and therefore are not categorized as heroic death. It is culturally possible to upgrade or downgrade the status of death. This happens through negotiating the owners...
14 citations
TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that the perceived transgression of boundaries implied in animal to human organ transplantation may activate anxieties of "the beast within", an anxiety that may speak of our uncertain and uneasy conquest of culture over nature.
Abstract: This paper is about the fear of zoonosis (transmission of disease from animals to humans) surrounding xenotransplantation that involves animal to human organ transplantation. While not wanting to minimize the very real threat to human health that cross-species organ transplantation could pose, these fears will be read as symbolic statements that may reveal anxieties about our perception of human nature and the spatialized ways in which we have constructed relationships between ourselves and other animals. This theme is addressed by considering the symbolism associated with transplantation and xenotransplantation and fears of pollution and disease. It is argued that the perceived transgression of boundaries implied in animal to human organ transplantation and that fears about zoonosis may activate anxieties of “the beast within,” an anxiety that may speak of our uncertain and uneasy conquest of culture over nature.
TL;DR: The contention of as mentioned in this paper is that one of the conglomeration of issues raised by the death of someone close to us is the difficulty in accepting the death in acceptance of the person's death.
Abstract: Why is it that we commonly experience such difficulty in accepting the death of someone close to us? It is the contention of this paper that one of the conglomeration of issues raised by the death ...
TL;DR: This special edition of Mortality focuses on exploring organ donation and transplantation from a number of social, cultural, and psychological perspectives.
Abstract: Human organ transplantation was undoubtedly one of the outstanding medico-surgical advances of the twentieth century offering individuals, facing certain death from end stage organ failure, a secon...
TL;DR: A recent work on tombstone lettering by the author has demonstrated its value as a cultural marker as discussed by the authors, showing that lettering on some headstones demonstrates a positive effect on the culture.
Abstract: Recent work on tombstone lettering by the author has demonstrated its value as a cultural marker. Throughout Britain, Ireland, New England, and Canada, lettering on some headstones demonstrates a n...
TL;DR: A sociological analysis of one of the more prominent of these emerging practices, that of xenotransplantation, which has the potential to increase the number of organs available for transplantation and compels us to reconsider the authors' lives, their relationship with animals, and what it means to be human.
Abstract: The transplantation of human organs is now an accepted medical procedure. However, the success of human organ transplantation is tempered by the insufficient organs available to satisfy demand. Pat...
TL;DR: It is time to consider abandoning the dead donor rule and consider the process of informed consent for organ donation.
Abstract: The rapidly growing organ transplant list combined with the rising patient mortality while on this waiting list has prompted an interest in donors other than heart beating brain dead organ donors (...
TL;DR: The savage God: A study of suicide A. ALVAREZ New York: Bantam, 1970 Anyone working as a social science academic will notice the ongoing tension between the professions and the social sciences as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The savage God: A study of suicide A. ALVAREZ New York: Bantam, 1970 Anyone working as a social science academic will notice the ongoing tension between the professions and the social sciences. Eve...
TL;DR: This paper used bracketing interviews to hold the tension of the dialectic process of investigating the nature of the participants' experience, at the same time as holding her own experience, and the presence of a skilled "bracketer" contributed to the production of knowledge by increasing objectivity and amplifying the researcher's own reflexive capacity.
Abstract: A major challenge for researchers using qualitative methods is to explore how their assumptions and experiences may be influencing the construction of knowledge. In a study of UK childhood bereavement services, “bracketing interviews” were used to explore the impact of the researcher's personal and professional experiences during data collection and analysis. Bracketing interviews provide an important research-focussed relationship that adapts the skills of clinical supervision in the context of research. While other forms of activity offer opportunities for reflection, the presence of a skilled “bracketer” contributed to the production of knowledge by increasing objectivity and amplifying the researcher's own reflexive capacity. Without entering the researcher's material therapeutically, bracketing interviews enabled the researcher to hold the tension of the dialectic process of investigating the nature of the participants' experience, at the same time as holding her own experience. It enabled t...
TL;DR: The findings show the degree and nature of the dependence and interdependence felt between donors and recipients; the difficulties encountered in both the decision to donate and the refusal to donate; the longer term obligations that may arise; and the impact on the family unit, demonstrating psychological, social, and cultural risks within the live donation process.
Abstract: Living renal donation is increasing and is an important source of kidneys for patients with end stage renal disease. Such donations have major quality of life implications for donors and recipients...
TL;DR: A comparative view of how transplantation is practiced and experienced in different settings is offered, focusing on variation across three key issues consistently raised by transplantation: the (re)definition of death, conceptions of body, self, and identity, and the commodification of human body parts.
Abstract: Organ donation and transplantation, now practiced in many places around the world, provoke fundamental questions of both meaning and social justice. Drawing on ethnographic research in North Americ...
TL;DR: The authors explored the consequences of this for cultural representations of death (and its transcendence) in contemporary film, and pointed out how such films express the complex collision of long-standing philosophical and religious debates about human essence with utopic fantasies and dystopic fears about the nature of consciousness.
Abstract: Definitions of death and the experience of dying have signally changed in the last half century; a change resulting, in part, from the sequestration and medicalization of quotidian death. This article explores the consequences of this for cultural representations of death (and its transcendence) in contemporary film. A critical commentary on Mike Nichol's film Wit, Pedro Almodovar's Talk to her, and Vincent Ward's What dreams may come demonstrates how such films express the complex collision of long-standing philosophical and religious debates about human essence with utopic fantasies and dystopic fears about the nature of consciousness; fears and fantasies shaped by the medical reinvention of death. In becoming discursively “locatable” (through the concept of brain death), death has gained a novel symbolic anatomy that privileges the head, the face, and an imagining of the brain and its workings. Current screen representations of dying, death, and its transcendence evidence the preoccupation, cu...