Blackwell Reference Online

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Sociology of death and dying is the study of the ways that values, beliefs, behavior, and institutional arrangements concerning death are structured by social environments and contexts. Although death is a universal human experience, societal responses to death vary according to cultural attitudes toward death, as well as contextual factors including the primary causes of death, and normative age at which death occurs. Conceptualizations of and practices surrounding death in the United States have come full circle over the past two centuries. In the eighteenth century, death was public and visible. Death tended to occur at a relatively young age, at home, and due to infectious diseases that could not be “cured.” The loss of a loved one was expressed by dramatic displays of grief among survivors, and elaborate efforts to memorialize the deceased ( Ariès 1981 ). Throughout the late nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, death became “invisible” ( Ariès 1981 ) and “bureaucratized” ( Blauner 1966 ). Physicians and hospitals assumed control over dying, death and mourning became private, the handling of dead bodies and funeral rites were transferred from private homes to funeral parlors, and people were encouraged to deny death and believe in medical technologies ( Blauner 1966 ). Treating dying persons in isolation was believed to help smooth the transition beyond death; reducing ... log in or subscribe to read full text