The Matter of Death: Space, Place and Materiality

Abstract

The Matter of Death: Space, Place and Materiality J. Hockey, Komaromy, C. and Woodthorpe, K. ( eds .), . Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan , 2010 £55.00 (hbk ) xv+270 pp . ISBN 978-0-2302-2416-2 This thought-provoking and well researched edited collection, stemming from the symposium on The Social Aspects of Death, Dying and Bereavement (2006), focuses on the spaces, places and material culture with which people come into contact when dealing with death. It encompasses the disciplinary perspectives of anthropology, history, psychology, sociology and theology. Its research base encompasses both the spaces in hospitals where death occurs and the spaces in which bodies are viewed or encountered after death. The work considers the political nature of memorialising activities, and the therapeutic and social value of visiting or engaging with places of death, including those related to difficult and conflicted deaths, for example, suicide. The various chapters present arguments from a large number of recent UK-based and international projects that examine various forms of death, dying and bereavement, providing insight into the different ways in which dying and bereaved people interact with the environment around them. The authors explore the meaning of death as part of the human experience and the key role of material culture in that experience. Strongly influenced by twenty-first century sociologists, the work questions current death-related attitudes and practices with particular regard to taboo areas and denial with respect to social, economic, material and medical factors. In this, the authors are not afraid of highlighting areas of inconsistency and where the evidence suggests that Western society may be getting it wrong, in terms of how people make sense of the experience of death within specific contexts and how death-related policy and practice is a factor in that experience. For example, Tony Walter and Clare Gittings identify contrasting attitudes in both the public and private arena in relation to the proliferation of new and emerging ritual sites and the use of silences. What to one group might be an experience of inappropriate reminders of mortality, to another would be welcomed as a celebration of human emotion and openness to the experience of death. These themes of contested space and practice are picked up in other chapters in the book to raise significant questions about shifting boundaries around death. This is of immediate relevance to me, as an Anglican Priest as well as an academic, and reflects the broad relevance of this work. The book uses a strongly cognitive focus, deploying an abstraction of classification schema and mixed discourses to explore specific cultural practices and the bodies and areas that surround them post mortem. This classification includes socially defined spaces, such as burial space, work space, home space, and how these are understood and managed in relation to different groups of people, such as family, strangers, work colleagues etc. One of the key areas of theoretical interest in the book is the culture-specific nature of the differences (and changes) in the way in which these categories are used. This area is further developed through a materially grounded phenomenological perspective, which captures the engagement of the individual with the experience of death. Noticeable in this respect are the impressive chapters from Kate Woodthorpe, Una MacConville and Regina McQuillan. Later chapters develop this theme by exploring how ‘absence’ alongside emerging memories evoked by specific places outside of conventional mourning sites, can be understood using psychotherapeutic, socio-political and theological perspectives, in the context of a rapidly changing cultural landscape. This is an important and extremely well-written and presented book. Many of the authors are recognised experts in their fields and they manage to maintain a balance between the researcher’s central question and the incredible diversity of the different individual approaches and subjects included. This is also a very readable collection, which makes both an academic and practical contribution to the field of materiality and the space and place of death. It will remain on my desk for some time to come.