Death, Ritual, and Belief: The Rhetoric of Funerary RitesBloomsbury Publishing, 2002 M06 1 - 272 pages Describing a great variety of funeral ritual from major world religions and from local traditions, this book shows how cultures not only cope with corpses but also create an added value for living through the encouragement of afterlife beliefs. The explosion of interest in death in recent years reflects the key theme of this book - the rhetoric of death - the way cultures use the most potent weapon of words to bring new power to life. This new edition is one third longer than the original with new material on the death of Jesus, the most theorized death ever which offers a useful case study for students. There is also empirical material from contemporary/recent events such as the death of Diana and an expanded section on theories of grief which will make the book more attractive to death counsellors. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 88
Page 2
... social psychology ( Billig , 1987 ) . Some scholars , quite properly , warn against easy use of the word , marked as it has been by too close an association with ideas of ' sophistication ( in the less . positive sense of that word ) ...
... social psychology ( Billig , 1987 ) . Some scholars , quite properly , warn against easy use of the word , marked as it has been by too close an association with ideas of ' sophistication ( in the less . positive sense of that word ) ...
Page 4
... social status undergo major changes . These cannot be ignored despite the fact that ' identity ' is an extremely difficult word to define , raising significant anthropological and philosophical questions concerning degrees of self ...
... social status undergo major changes . These cannot be ignored despite the fact that ' identity ' is an extremely difficult word to define , raising significant anthropological and philosophical questions concerning degrees of self ...
Page 6
... social life of a community . Death rites are as much concerned with issues of identity and social continuity as with the very practical fact that human bodies decay and become offensive to the sight and smell of the living . Confronting ...
... social life of a community . Death rites are as much concerned with issues of identity and social continuity as with the very practical fact that human bodies decay and become offensive to the sight and smell of the living . Confronting ...
Page 7
... social destiny . Accordingly , I regard death rites as serving to repulse this negative feature of death and , precisely because of this , I speak of death rites as ' words against death ' . In symbolic terms words represent the ongoing ...
... social destiny . Accordingly , I regard death rites as serving to repulse this negative feature of death and , precisely because of this , I speak of death rites as ' words against death ' . In symbolic terms words represent the ongoing ...
Page 9
... social world of urban , cosmopolitan and weakly secularized contexts , in which people do not share ultimate values in implicit ways . Indeed , it is this which makes it hard for some people to ' find the right words ' to speak to ...
... social world of urban , cosmopolitan and weakly secularized contexts , in which people do not share ultimate values in implicit ways . Indeed , it is this which makes it hard for some people to ' find the right words ' to speak to ...
Contents
1 | |
Impurity Fertility and Fear | 24 |
3 Theories of Grief | 43 |
4 Violence Sacrifice and Conquest | 62 |
5 Eastern Destiny and Death | 81 |
6 Ancestors Cemeteries and Local Identity | 91 |
7 Jewish and Islamic Destinies | 118 |
8 Christianity and the Death of Jesus | 125 |
10 Somewhere to Die | 155 |
11 Souls and the Presence of the Dead | 163 |
12 Pet and Animal Death | 182 |
13 Book Film and Building | 196 |
14 Offending Death Grief and Religions | 211 |
15 Secular Death and Life | 224 |
Bibliography | 240 |
Index | 258 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
afterlife amongst ancestors animals anthropologist argued ashes aspects associated become belief bereavement Bloch body Britain British British Humanist Association Buddhism burial buried cemeteries cent Chapter Christian church concerned contemporary context corpse cremated remains crematoria cultures D. J. Davies death rites deceased described dying emotion emphasize especially euthanasia example existence express fact fact of death focused funeral rites funerary rites grave grief groups human idea identity important increasingly individual interpreted involved issue Jesus kind living major memory modern Mormon mortuary mummification nature near-death experience offending death particular performative utterance period pet death popular post-modernity practice psychological realm rebounding violence reflects reincarnation relationship relatively religion religious response resurrection rhetoric ritual sacrifice salvation secular sense shamanism significance social society sociological soul speak spiritual status stress stupa symbolic theological theory tomb traditional transcendence twentieth century words against death Zoroastrians