Funeral Service Education: eBooks

Even though, at death, identity and social status may undergo major changes, by studying funerary customs we can greatly gain in the understanding of a community's social structure, distribution of wealth and property, and the degree of flexibility or divisiveness in the apportionment of power. With its great regional diversity and variety of community forms and networks, ancient Greece offers a unique context for exploring, through the burial evidence, how communities developed. Mortuary Variability and Social Diversity in Ancient Greecebrings together early career scholars working on funerary customs in Greece from the Early Iron Age to the Roman period. Papers present various thematic and interdisciplinary analysis in which funerary contexts provide insights on individuals, social groups and communities. Themes discussed include issues of territoriality, the reconstruction of social roles of particular groups of people, and the impact that major historical events may have had on the way individuals or specific groups of individuals treated their dead.

Normative, Atypical or Deviant? Interpreting Prehistoric and Protohistoric Child Burial Practices, the tenth volume in the SSCIP monograph series, explores the response of the living when dealing with the death of a child. This response is strongly connected to belief systems and concern for the fate of the deceased in the afterlife. The funerary rituals for each culture generally follow a prescribed format that will both satisfy the needs of the dead and ensure there are no negative consequences for the living. But how do we interpret burials that do not adhere to the recognised formula for their society? Can we find evidence that such differences involved positive or, indeed, negative emotions? Should atypical rites for children actually be considered normal since they are typical for their age cohort, differing only from those of adults, and perhaps simply reflect adult-centric interpretations of the past? The papers within the volume discuss these issues by focusing on juvenile burial practices in Europe and the Near East during recent prehistory and protohistory. The interpretation of normative, atypical or deviant is interrogated based on the context of the burials and the intentionality of the practice.

While late 17th- and 18th-century burial grounds of colonial North America are frequently the subject of research, wide-scale studies of 17th-century burial landscapes are often the less documented aspect of these sites. This book aims to fill some of that gap by exploring the relationships and organization of early British colonial burial grounds within the context of their own settlements and the wider northeast coast. Early settlers immigrated to North America for many reasons, and there, away from the Church of England, they could freely explore their relationship with their faith, community and death, represented today through the organization of their burial landscapes and burial practices. By studying the relationship between burial grounds and their associated settlements, we gain a more holistic understanding of how settlers related to, interpreted, and ultimately handled the reality of human mortality.   This book examines the organization of 40 burial grounds founded by British settlers on the northeast coast of North America in the 17th century, with the intention of identifying trends in burial ground organization during this period of early colonization. The results can be applied to archaeological or historical research on colonial settlements that have not yet located their earliest burial ground. The book expands the current knowledge base of settler relationships with mortality through the physical placement of burials and interaction with burial landscapes within their new settlements.

The book Approaches to Death and Dying: Bioethical and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Marta Szabat and Jan Piasecki, is part of a still too narrow catalogue of works devoted to end-of-life themes. The volume consists of eleven articles arranged in four parts corresponding to a broad range of issues: law, ethics, philosophy, and cultural studies. The arrangement of the book is thus constructed around various perspectives upon which any reflection on death and dying must be based. This is perhaps indicative of how difficult it is to adopt an unambiguous attitude towards death–modernity, which introduces a multitude of possible choices and decisions regarding our own bodies, has enhanced individualism but at the same time done away with the order provided by old customs, cultural arrangements, strategies towards the inevitable and the power exerted by that order.

This book evaluates existing theories, concepts, and models with the practices of death, dying and bereavement from different societies around the world. The differences in various belief systems and how these influence death, dying and bereavement practices are highlighted, including Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Ancestor worship, Afro-Brazilian religions, the belief systems of Native Indians, the Maoris of New Zealand and others. These belief systems will contribute to a better understanding of the existing models of death, dying and bereavement that are examined. An overview of countries in different continents is also provided. This helps to refresh the reader's mind of the country's geographical location and bring attention to the prevailing causes of death and life expectancy of nations in different parts of the world. At the end of each chapter, review questions are provided to aid in the reader's comprehension and allow for self-refection. At the end of each chapter, an Additional Readings section has been included so the reader can find additional information to further an interest developed from reading the chapter material. A glossary of terms is included to aid with explaining certain terms and add to the reader's vocabulary. Given its overview of existing theories/models as well as a focus on issues of cross-cultural relevance on death, dying and bereavement, the book will be of interest to bereavement counselors, healthcare practitioners, and others.

Winner of the 2020 Stand-Out Graduate Research Award Winner of the August 2020 Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture (FRQSC) Prix Relève étoile Paul-Gérin-Lajoie Photographic portraits of those who have passed have the potential to become valuable sites of remembrance. Across North America and Western Europe, parents are increasingly unfamiliar with death; lacking the rituals and tools that have historically eased the bereavement process. This book shines a light on how semi-private social media groups enable the bereaved parents of today to navigate their grief in the modern world. The author explores how creative, and sometimes contested, incorporations of photography within these online spaces demonstrate a revival and renegotiation of historic practices. By shining a light on recurrent tendencies and their evolution within new media this book offers an opportunity to observe the complex relationships grief can prompt some individuals to form with the portraits of absent loved ones.  As social networking sites continue to enable the reinsertion of death within the social realm, the author looks ahead: might we begin to see a revival and increased openness towards end-of-life, post-mortem and funerary photography? As bereavement increasingly becomes something communicated in an online context, what new types of embellishments to the photographic portrait might we encounter?