Customer Reviews

A Social History of Dying

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Although the subject may be one about which we try not to think too much or often, I felt attracted by this book because it offers a general framework for understanding how we human beings have faced death (or, better to say, "dying" as a social process, i.e., "as a shared set of overt social exchanges between dying individuals and those who care for them") so I decided it to give it a chance, in despite of not finding previous comments on it.

Basically, there have been four ages in the social history of dying:

1) Otherworld journey. During the Stone Age, people usually died suddenly, so it was their community which understood death as an otherworld journey: a process with an imagined spirit moving towards tests and trials in the invisible otherworld. In that context, the brunt of the responsibility for inheritance was shouldered by community members, which designed and offered gifts to the dying person for their use in their future challenges.

2) Good Death. During the Pastoral Age (with the arrival of sedentism), awareness of approaching death is the responsibility of the dying person. In such settler societies the onus of inheritance falls to the dying person as part of fulfilling his final this-world social obligations, and deathbed exchanges and gifts were common.

3) Managed Death. With the rise and spread of cities, in the so-called "managed death", awareness of approaching death is usually purchased (financially and socially) by others, usually the medical profession. In cities, a well-managed dying would see at least some provisions made well in advance of the terminal phase of dying, particularly financial and property provisions of the middle and upper classes. Religious, medical and personal preparations for death might be made later at the death bed.

4) Shameful Death. Dying in the Cosmopolitan period is becoming increasingly tragic and antisocial. Among the lone elderly, those in nursing homes, and in other contexts of world poverty, we are witnessing the steady growth of shameful forms of death. In this period, when the prospect of death is unclear to most -dying people or their carers- dying people lose their roles as dying people and are placed in "holding" locations where health care rather than dying care is the priority. Dying as a professional concern disappears, replaced by round-the-clock nursing care, respite care or acute or even emergency management. Preparations for death are being severed from the process of dying and are now associated with the less urgent and more general recognition of mortality across the lifespan.

All that (and much more that I do not mention in this summary) is developed in 255 pages (plus bibliography), the book being divided in the following parts and chapters: Introduction// Part I: The Stone Age. 1.- The dawn of Mortal Awareness. 2.- Otherworld journeys: death as Dying. 3.-The first challenge: anticipating death.// Part II: The Pastoral Age. 4.- The emergence of sedentism. 5.- The birth of good death. 6.- The second challenge: preparing for death.//Part III: The age of the city. 7.- The rise and spread of cities. 8.- The birth of the managed death. 9.- The third challenge: taming death.// Part IV. The cosmopolitan age. 10.- The exponential rise of modernity. 11.- The birth of the shameful death. 12.- The final challenge: timing death//Conclusion.

The book is no very engaging, but it is not dry either. It can be savoured by the professional historian and by the educated layperson too. Therefore, my rating is between 5 (content) and 3 (pleasure, sometimes falling to 2, sometimes raising to 4).

Other book that I would recommend reading, more or less related to the matter, would be "How we die" by S.B. Nuland ,"The loneliness of Dying" by Norbert Elias and chapter 11th of "The Waning of the Middle Ages" by Johan Huizinga.

Additionally, as a complement to "A Social History of Dying", I would also suggest reading the following works, whose scope is as amazingly global as Kellehear's: 1. Agrarian cultures: "Pre-industrial societies" by Patricia Crone; 2. Economy: "The world economy. A millennial perspective" (2001) plus "The world economy: Historical Statistics" (2003) by Angus Maddison (a combined edition of these two volumes is to appear on December 2007); 3. Government: "The History of Government" by S.E. Finer; 4 Ideas: "Ideas, a History from Fire to Freud", by Peter Watson; 5. Religion: "The Phenomenon of Religion: A Thematic Approach" by Moojan Momen; and 6. War: "War in Human Civilization" by Azar Gat.