Abstract
Humans have a complex — and possibly unique — relation to death, and especially to the awareness of dying; we not only know that we are mortal, but we also know that we know. In other words, we are aware of being aware (Bauman, 1992). It comes as no surprise, then, that death has a long history of being a key ‘thought anchor’. Today, a variety of disciplines from the social sciences and the humanities, such as sociology, philosophy, anthropology and psychology (see for instance the work of Glennys Howarth, Steven Luper, Mary Bradbury and James Green), have a well-established tradition of studying death in all its forms — the study of social characteristics and attitudes towards death, cultural variations in dealing with death and dying, individual experiences with death and dying, and so forth.
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© 2014 Leen Van Brussel and Nico Carpentier
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Van Brussel, L., Carpentier, N. (2014). Introduction. In: Van Brussel, L., Carpentier, N. (eds) The Social Construction of Death. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137391919_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137391919_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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