Customer Reviews

Handbook of Death and Dying (2 Vol. Set)

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I somewhat agree with the first review of this work . . . I think. The two-volume set does focus "largely on the social aspects of death," as it is meant to be a largely sociological and "cultural studies" approach to death and dying. For some, including myself, it does not succulently address either the theological or psychological questions of how one is to face their own mortality, of how to make sense of death in a seemingly non-sensical world. But then again, this has never been the realm of sociology, history, or even culture studies.

What these two books do, and do well in my opinion, is address (among other things) the larger reasons why death has become so removed from our culture, as well as explore other cultural, historical and social approachs to death and dying. It also reveals the particular ways in which we make sense of death as a culture . . . death as "accident," death as suicide, death as punishment.

For those seeking to explore their own theological or psychological relationship to death, I suggest other well-known works. Philosophically, one should perhaps start with Plato's Apology in the western tradition, or various "non-western" philosophical approaches to death and dying found in Hinduism and Buddhism. Theologically, the list is almost endless in the Judeo-Christian tradition, not only in terms of religious texts, but in the succession of thinkers such as Origin of Alexandria to Augustine to Kierkegaard to Martin Buber. These people have written, and written well, on the theological aspect of one's own death.

Psychologically, one might look to Freud's later works regarding the "death drive" (i.e. Beyond the Pleasure Principle), to Jung's work on the relationship between archetypes and death, or more recently to Ernst Becker's well-known The Denial of Death.

My point is that, as a sociologist, I have never looked to my discipline as a means to address my own relationship to death. When sociology becomes theological or psychological, it is just bad sociology. What my discipline does do well, and by extension the well-written and researched articles in this set, is to provide a contextual and historical framework from which to move forward into my own theological or psychological questions.

As a final note, I hesitated even writing this "response." I so thoroughly agree with the first reviewer that people should look elsewhere to help them make sense of their own death. They should look to their communities, their family, their churches. They should look to works in their own traditions, along with other cultures, to make sense of the fact that they will die, and nothing can stop this.

Yet sociology enters where social disruption begins, and in this regard, the question of why death has become so separated from our daily lives is the domain of sociological analysis. Neither theology nor psychology has been able to adequately address this question. Thus, a "sociological" analysis may lend little to our own relationship to death. On the other hand, it may (ironically) serve to frame and define the very notion that death has become untenable, un-approachable, un-thinkable. The notion that this has not always been true; this is what the disciplines of sociology and history can do, if they do it well.

This is an exhaustive research and reference tool for anyone working in the industry. The only sad thing (and this is a small point) is that it is starting to show its age. But most of the articles are timeless in their value.

Though I agree with this books "diagnosis" of the field of death and dying-that it has become "intellectually unmanageable" and that anattempt should be made to aggregate, consolidate, classify etc the plethora of materials related to the subject I think this book fails to do accomplish such.

Certainly, As Ernest Becker states in his classic: The Denial of Death that we should fashion something out of ourselves and offer it to the life instinct-this should be done after one has undergone a thorough process of contemplating death. This book, in my estimation has failed to undergo a thorough process of contemplating the many facets of mans encounter with death despite its asseverations to the contrary.

This book covers a wide range of subjects but does so superficially and focuses largely on the social aspects of death-AIDs, Funerals,Hospice,death education,mortality rates, ghosts, the death awareness movement, death in popular culture,life insurance,social construction of death, terrorism,capital puinishment, etc. The social aspects of the death system are emphasized without a thorough understanding of the individual as an agentic self interacting with the elements of the death system in the book-suggesting a belief that the contributors believe in sociological determinism.
Conspicuously absent from this book is the intrapsychic persepective and the many contributions to our understanding from depth psychology. The role of the body image,the stimulus barrier, habits,the sense of aliveness, the nonhuman environment-are absent.

Howard Gardner in a recent book suggests what matters when it comes to learning is not the understanding of others but ones own understanding. This book is not based on helping individuals gain their own unique understanding of death but merely in an instructionistic fashion shows the understanding of experts.
This book reinforces the modern approach to death in that it in a Procrustean and reductionistic manner approaches the subject without a sense of how the individual might use it to construct a better understanding of themselves as authentic individuals who can reconstruct their own orientation to death. At the end of each article is a section for concluding remarks. I think readers are better served by providing the "scaffolding" for individualized explorations of death rather then tacitly assume what counts is what the experts say about death and dying and not how such can be used by individuals in an authentic manner.