On Bereavement : The Culture of Grief

by Walter, Tony

• ISBN13: 9780335200801
• ISBN10: 033520080X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-10-01
• Publisher: Open University Press

Summary

'Insightful and refreshing.' - Professor Dennis Klass, Webster University Religion Department, St. Louis, USA'A tour de force.' - Dr Colin Murray Parkes, OBE, MD, FRCPsych, President of CRUSESome societies and some individuals find a place for their dead, others leave them behind. In recent years, researchers, professionals and bereaved people themselves have struggled with this. Should the bond with the dead be continued or broken? What is clear is that the grieving individual is not left in a social vacuum but has to struggle with expectations from self, family, friends, professionals and academic theorists.This ground-breaking book looks at the social position of the bereaved. They find themselves caught between the living and the dead, sometimes searching for guidelines in a de-ritualized society that has few to offer, sometimes finding their grief inappropriately pathologised and policed. At its best, bereavement care offers reassurance, validation, and freedom to talk where the client has previously encountered judgmentalism.In this unique book, Tony Walter applies sociological insights to one of the most personal of human situations. On Bereavement is aimed at students on medical, nursing, counselling and social work courses that include bereavement as a topic. It will also appeal to sociology students with an interest in death, dying and mortality.

Author Biography

Tony Walter is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Reading. He has written extensively about death in modern society, particularly funeral reform, and has lectured widely to a range of groups from the Royal Society of Arts to hospices, bereavement groups and clergy. He is currently researching the increasing interest in reincarnation in the West, the media's interest in death, and new approaches to bereavement care.

Table of Contents

Series editor's preface	ix
Acknowledgements	xii
Introduction	xiii
Prologue	1	(16)
Part I Living with the dead	17	(100)
Introduction to Part I	19	(4)
Other places, other times	23	(16)
War, peace and the dead: twentieth-century popular culture	39	(17)
Private bonds	56	(13)
Public bonds: the dead in everyday conversation	69	(15)
The last chapter	84	(19)
Theories	103	(14)
Part II Policing grief	117	(92)
Introduction to Part II	119	(8)
Guidelines for grief: historical background	127	(11)
Popular guidelines: the English case	138	(16)
Expert guidelines: clinical lore	154	(14)
Vive la difference? The politics of gender	168	(17)
Bereavement care	185	(20)
Conclusion: integration, regulation and postmodernism	205	(4)
References	209	(16)
Index	225