Book Reviews
Grief, Mourning and Death Ritual
Jenny Hockey, Jeanne Katz and Neil Small (eds)
ISBN: 0335 205 011 2001 286 pp pages Buckingham: Open University Press
Beverley McNamara
Senior Lecturer Anthropology and Sociology, School of Social and Cultural Studies, The University of Western Australia
As part of the excellent Facing Death series, this edited volume demonstrates that the subject of death has stimulated a rich theoretical discussion beyond the somewhat more practical clinical and policy related issues typically associated with the subject. While the 'cancer death' has taken a place in this theoretical discussion for some time, this collection pushes the commentary further to embrace topics of grief and mourning. It is refreshing then to see a distinctly sociological critique of a topic too often believed to reside in the realms of psychology. This critical edge is achieved in the multidisciplinary collection by the clear editorial direction provided by Hockey, Katz and Small, whose disciplinary backgrounds are in sociology and anthropology.
The book is organised into three sections with each section launched by a sustained and critical analysis of one of the three themes. The editors take responsibility for these three long chapters which, first, provide theoretical directions through explorations of the cultural dimensions of grief; second, explore the implications of these theories for practice; and third, examine questions of ritual and memorialisation. Beyond mere scene-setting, these chapters provide extensive historical overviews of literature from a range of disciplines. Following each of these chapters are a wide range of contributions which draw on different disciplinary perspectives, methodological traditions and cultural and institutional settings. The book is further framed by a comprehensive general introduction and a pithy and pointed conclusion in which Katz argues that we cannot take for granted the set of meanings we associate with the terms bereavement, grief and mourning. It is easy to dip into a book like this to extract specific case study material or broader theoretical reflections about tradition, modernity and postmodernity and their relationships to social practices surrounding death and bereavement.
Death is typically a solemn topic; yet despite this the book has a decidedly upbeat approach, suggesting that while grief is work and is not time limited, it can be productive in some way. Rather than conceptualising grief as a process of recovery, a different turn is taken in response to loss. In this volume grief is not seen as a mental health problem to be solved or medicalised. The accounts provided within the book assume that processes of loss occur in a variety of social and cultural contexts and that these are always mediated by historical and various other perspectives. Small's theoretical chapter in the first section of the book argues that this context is all important. He also makes the point that the division between 'inner' emotionality and 'outer' behavioural responses is drawn more for heuristic purposes than for their reflections upon everyday life. There is, he suggests, 'a complex and reflexive relationship between emotionality, subjectivity and social practice' (p.20). The four chapters that follow, in their different ways, question the ways that culture presents grief at different times as 'illness', mediated by 'family identity', 'naturalised', and 'romanticised'. All formulations are context driven.
Despite the predominantly theoretical tone of this volume, the editors have not neglected the important ways that discourses of grief impact upon the production of bereavement care. The second section of the book is devoted to this perspective, though again through a critical lens that questions the way bereavement services reflect social trends. An analytical framework is employed that examines modernity's elevation of the individual and the expression of feelings, and in addition considers Foucault's conceptualisation of power and knowledge. In this section bereavement counselling is examined in relation to governmentality; an argument is made that grief is socially constructed through metaphor and that the grief counselling process is illustrative of this; and three chapters focus on children and death, drawing out particularly issues of 'modal', 'normal' and 'timely' deaths.
Contemporary death rituals are also examined, highlighting the important continuing focus upon social, observable and public expressions of loss and suffering. Hockey's comprehensive overview of changing death rituals leads the third section of the book, preceding an interesting set of chapters that explore the role of funerals, cemeteries, crematoria, mourning rituals, and public grieving and ritual in response to sudden death and disaster. If anything can be said about the book it is that no stone is left unturned and grief is dealt with through all phases of the life cycle and in a broad range of cultural and social practices and settings. Throughout each of the sections predominant themes deal sensitively with how humans make sense of human suffering; how humans continue to pursue relationships with dead; how these practices impact upon the identities of survivors; and how social experiences of grief are shared in ways that lead to various forms of community action.
The book is deliberately aimed at scholars with an academic interest in death, but is also of value to those concerned with loss and how to respond to it in professional and personal ways. With the active and growing academic interest in death amongst social scientists in the United Kingdom, it is not surprising that each chapter is of good quality and the overall coherence of the volume is excellent.
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