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Presented by Prof. Chan Kin Man Reference Books: The Denial of Death
by
Ernest Becker (NY: Fee Press,
1973) Constructing
Death: The Sociology of Dying and Bereavement by Clive Seale (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998) Facing Death: Where
Culture, Religion, and Medicine Meet edited by Howard M.
Spiro, Mary G. McCrea Curnen & Le Palmer Wandel. (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1996) |
| 1.
Introduction Ð
Cemetery
study at Yale 2.
Denial and
Fear Tuesdays with
Morrie by Mitch Albom (NY: Doubleday, 1997) Ò..the culture doesnÕt encourage you to
think about such things until
youÕre about to die.Ó (p.64) ÒThey canÕt wait to get it
out of their sight. People act as if death
is contagious.Ó (p. 172) 【西藏生死書】索甲仁
波切著
鄭振煌譯
(台北: 張老師, 1996) Ò在這兩種死亡態度中，一種
是把死亡當做避之唯恐不及的事，另一種則是把死亡當做自個兒會解決的事。兩者對於死亡真義的瞭解都何其錯誤啊!Ó
(P.21) 3.
The Death of the
Body (Constructing Death: The Sociology of
Dying and Bereavement) a. Causes: a decline in infectious
diseases
(tuberculosis) and a rise in heart disease, cancer and strokes in
modern
societies. (p. 36) b. Predictability of
death and Òaware dying roleÓ Ð cancer and AIDS c. Social construction
of pain (expression and experience) and different
dimensions of pain (Saunders and BainesÕ Ôtotal painÕ includes physical,
mental (feeling about dying and loss), social (distress
about family relationships) and spiritual (feeling of cosmic
meaninglessness
where people have lost the capacity to feel that their suffering has
any
purpose). (p. 43) d. Illness as
metaphor: the experience of pain from cancer is worse in a
culture that uses the disease as a metaphor for social evil. (See
Sontag
(1979)) This engenders fear and loathing, increasing the distress of
pain. e. Women dying alone Ð because women live
longer than men, and tend to marry
older men, they are more likely to experience widowhood, live alone,
and
eventually enter institutional care when unable to maintain themselves
in
private households. (p. 46) (See also Robert Elias, 2001) 4.
Denial of Death and the Meaning of Death Awareness
a.
Social organization
for death in late modernity is
remarkably active, realistic and death accepting. We
must distinguish between the psychological denial of
death (like the taboo of talking about death) and the sociological,
which can
be more accurately seen as a Ôhiding awayÕ or sequestration of
mortality in
modern times. (p. 3) b.
Parsons points out
that in modern society there are
active efforts to construct most deaths as ÔnaturalÕ by controlling
premature death, resisting deliberately imposed death and
relieving the physical suffering of dying. (p. 54) c.
Death, nationalism and
meaning of life Ð ordinary people come
to feel that their lives are a part of some greater
whole, that will live on after their deaths, and for which it is
worthwhile,
and indeed heroic under certain circumstances, to die.
(p. 56) Ò..indeed a
transcendence of the basic human problem of
being alone. The guarantee of
remembrance by those left behind is a further compensation for such a
death,
and memorials are duly constructed that show the living that this will
occur.Ó (p. 56) d.
Secularization : ÔDeath of GodÕ and scientific
representation of death (to locate the causes of death
within the body). Insurance
systems help people live in a world without God. (p. 86) |