Eventually death will come to us all, but death itself is still unknown to every living person. No one has ever died and returned to give a clear account about what death is really like. It is said that it is man’s nature to fear what they do not understand and cannot control. We can never know precisely what death is unless we die, therefore we can never understand it while living. When looking at the sociological approach towards death we come across ‘death-denying’. It has become common within society to say that contemporary western society is ‘death-denying’. This characterisation, which sociologists have named the ‘denial of death thesis’ was created between the period of 1955 and 1985. We’ll look at this is detail and with the information
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This thesis was first advanced in literature in the period between 1955 and 1985. After the Second World War, many advances in technology had occurred, for example medicine and pharmaceutical agents were developed in order to treat illnesses this prolonged life and warded off the dying process. In the past people would die at home in a familiar environment with their family and friends around them, what has changed in contemporary society is people die in hospitals and hospices. Elisabeth Kubler Ross explains that “Sometimes we feel very uncomfortable when a dying patient looks at us and would like to ask a question in regard to dying”. (Ross, 1969, p.174). This can be seen as evidence for ‘death denying’ in society. We try to avoid the dying so are not reminded that one day it could be us who is in that position. We can look at many examples of what could be evidence for the argument that we are a ‘death denying’ society. We can look at the work of Anthony Giddens on how death has become ‘sequestered’, We can also look at topics such as the medicalisation of death, the taboo on conversation about death, how death is segregated from the rest of society and the decline of mourning rituals and funeral …show more content…
Giddens (1991) terms ‘late’ modernity as a time when society has become increasingly detached from death, the theory that death is becoming sequestered is related to this. Thus the way we deal with death is becoming more through privatisation which gives us a different social response to it. Relatives of the dying have no real say over how the death is confronted; it is the medical professionals and other professional organisations such as the police, pathologists, undertakers, etc, that deal with death and it is they who determine when a death is said to happen, when and where the corpse will be buried for example. Giddens says that “all types of event leading up to and involved with the process of dying can be so incorporated”(Giddens, 1991,p. 162), and by this he means that we cannot control death, we can control everything leading up to it but death itself is inevitable. A point that needs to be explained is the privatisation of death. The privatisation of death is the process of taking death away as a shared experience. Society confronts death differently than before, hospices can be shown as an example, and Giddens tells us “the development of hospices are environments in which death can be discussed and confronted, rather than merely shunted away from general view”. (Giddens, 1991, p.204). Society also no longer copes with death through the showing of bodies or
This thesis was first advanced in literature in the period between 1955 and 1985. After the Second World War, many advances in technology had occurred, for example medicine and pharmaceutical agents were developed in order to treat illnesses this prolonged life and warded off the dying process. In the past people would die at home in a familiar environment with their family and friends around them, what has changed in contemporary society is people die in hospitals and hospices. Elisabeth Kubler Ross explains that “Sometimes we feel very uncomfortable when a dying patient looks at us and would like to ask a question in regard to dying”. (Ross, 1969, p.174). This can be seen as evidence for ‘death denying’ in society. We try to avoid the dying so are not reminded that one day it could be us who is in that position. We can look at many examples of what could be evidence for the argument that we are a ‘death denying’ society. We can look at the work of Anthony Giddens on how death has become ‘sequestered’, We can also look at topics such as the medicalisation of death, the taboo on conversation about death, how death is segregated from the rest of society and the decline of mourning rituals and funeral …show more content…
Giddens (1991) terms ‘late’ modernity as a time when society has become increasingly detached from death, the theory that death is becoming sequestered is related to this. Thus the way we deal with death is becoming more through privatisation which gives us a different social response to it. Relatives of the dying have no real say over how the death is confronted; it is the medical professionals and other professional organisations such as the police, pathologists, undertakers, etc, that deal with death and it is they who determine when a death is said to happen, when and where the corpse will be buried for example. Giddens says that “all types of event leading up to and involved with the process of dying can be so incorporated”(Giddens, 1991,p. 162), and by this he means that we cannot control death, we can control everything leading up to it but death itself is inevitable. A point that needs to be explained is the privatisation of death. The privatisation of death is the process of taking death away as a shared experience. Society confronts death differently than before, hospices can be shown as an example, and Giddens tells us “the development of hospices are environments in which death can be discussed and confronted, rather than merely shunted away from general view”. (Giddens, 1991, p.204). Society also no longer copes with death through the showing of bodies or