Sociology of Death

"Everybody knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it." -Morrie Schwartz

"How can anyone feel so important when we know death is stalking us? The thing to do when you're impatient is to turn to your left and ask advice from your death."-Don Juan

"If a man has learned to think, no matter what he may be thinking about he is always also thinking of his own death." Tolstoy

"The fact is, those who apply themselves correctly to philosophy are simply and solely practicing dying and preparing for death…" Socrates (Plato)

Study Questions: The sociology of death and dying - D. Moller

1) What does the life and death experience of Kirk Baines suggest about the problem of meaning in life and dying in American culture?

2) In what ways does the experience of Kirk Baines reflect the vision of Tolstoy regarding the meaningfulness of modern dying? How is the epiphany of Kirk Baines similar and dissimilar to that of Ivan Illich?

3) What are the salient differences between traditional and modern forms of dying?

4) Why has modern dying become so difficult?

5) What social factors underlie the rejection of the medicalized model of death?

6) How has the thanatology revolution changed the pattern of medicalized death?

7) Has the thanatology, hospice, and palliative care movement resulted in personal, moral, and cultural peace with dying?

There is this story of an old man who married at 90 and built a home near a school -vpr

"Today approximately 200,000 people died…. We live in a society conditioned to deny death. It may be for this reason that many, at the time of their dying, feel so confused and guilty. Like sex, death has been whispered about behind closed doors. We feel guilty for dying, not knowing how to live." -Levine

Sociology of Death & Grief, Soc 330-01
Professor Roseanne Martorella - Email: RoMartin@frontier.wilpaterson.edu
William Paterson College, Wayne NJ

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

REQUIRED READINGS:
The Last Dance: Encountering Death & Dying, 3rd edition, by DeSpelder and Strickland. Palo Alto, California: Mayfield Publishing Company, l992.
Death in the Midst of Life. by Jack Kamerman. New York: Prentice Hall, l988.
Selected articles from the New York Times and Library Reserve

Lesson I - General Introduction
Psychology Questionnaire

Lesson II - Cemetery Report

Lesson III - THE SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
Text - DeSpelder: Chapter l, pp. 5-46
Kamerman: Chapter l, pp. l-l2
Film - "Death," AV, Library 23 (44 minutes)

Lesson IV - CROSS-CULTURAL/HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON DEATH,
LAST RITES AND BURIAL CUSTOMS
Text: Chapter 2, pp 49-86; Chapter 6, pp l97-23l
Hand out "Psychology Today" questionnaire
Last Rites: read Chapter 6,pp.l6l-l85; Kamerman,pp.76-88

Lesson V - Slide Presentation of "King Tut"

Lesson VI - PERSONAL ATTITUDES AND REACTIONS
Kamerman: Chapter 3, pp. 25-39
Text: Chapter 9, pp. 297-330
Review Questionaire
Cemetery Report - Due October

Lesson VII - GRIEF & BEREAVEMENT
Kamerman: Chapter 7, pp. 233-265
Text: Chapter 5, pp. 163-194
Social Readjustment Scale, pp. 397

Lesson VIII - Films: "Time to Mourn and Choose" and "Grief"
New York Times Assignment

Lesson IX - DEATH IN CHILDREN'S LIVES (cognitive awareness
of death; stages; loss of pets)
Kamerman: Chapter l0 & ll, pp. ll-l35
Text: Chapter 8, pp. 267-294
Films: "Childhood Cancer," 59 minutes
"When Children Grieve" 20 minutes
Discuss New York Times Assignment (20%)

Lesson X - SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND DEATH
Visit funeral home - November
Read Hand-outs

Lesson XI - HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS
Kamerman: Chapter 4, pp. 39-54
Text: Chapter 4, pp. l25-160
Distribute Mid-term I - Essay

MID-TERM

Lesson XII - STAGES OF DYING
On Death and Dying, Kubler-Ross
Film: "To Live Until you Die," featuring Dr. Kubler-Ross

Lesson XIII - MOURNING, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
Kamerman: Chapter 7, pp. 75-87 (An Essay on Challenger Disaster)

RECESS

Film presentation of "Gramps"

Lesson XIV - SUICIDE
Kamerman: Chapter 8, pp. 89-l0l
Text: Chapter l3, pp. 477-524
Tape presentation

Term Paper/Book Report - Due: __________

Lesson XV - MEDICAL ETHICS AND DEATH & DYING
Film presentation: "Who's Life Is It Anyway"
Read Chapter l0, pp. 343-385

R327 Sociology of Death and Dying - IUPUI, the Department of Sociology.
This course examines inevitable and salient features of the human condition. Historical evaluation of images and attitudes toward death, the medicalization of death, the human consequences of high-tech dying, the role of the family in caring for dying loved ones, the emergence and role of hospices, the social roles of funerals, grief and bereavement, euthanasia and suicide, the worlds of dying children and grieving parents, and genocide are major issues that are addressed. Two of the major themes of the course revolve around the idea that the way we die is a reflection of the way we live; and, that the study of dying and death is an important way of studying and affirming the value of life.

SOC 320 - Sociology of Death
http://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/socsci/sociology/Faculty/McGrane/index.html
Required Texts:
1. Bernard McGrane - The Un-TV and the 10 MPH Car
2. Inge Bell - This Book Is Not Required (Revised Edition)
3. Leo Tolstoy - The Death of Ivan Ilich
4. Simone de Beauvoir - A Very Easy Death
5. John James and Russell Friedman - The Grief Recovery Handbook (Revised Edition)
6. Mitch Alben - Tuesdays with Morrie
7. Philippe Aries - Western Attitudes Towards Death
8. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross - On Death and Dying
9. Ernest Becker - The Denial of Death
10. Stephen Levine - Who Dies
11. Raymond Moody - Life After Life
12. Carlos Castaneda - Journey to Ixtlan
13. Sogyal Rinpoche - The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying
14. Reader: "Bardo" [Library Reserve or purchase at Copy Stop, 2309 E. 17th St.,
Santa Ana (17th and Tustin) - 542-8010]

Recommended Texts:
1. Philippe Aries - The Hour of Our Death
2. Michel Foucault - Madness and Civilization
3. Norbert Elias - The Loneliness of Dying
4. R. Kastenbaum - Death, Society and Human Experience: Is There Life After Death
5. Jacques Choron - Death and Western Thought
6. Richard Selzer - Mortal Lessons
7. Audrey Gordon - They Need to Know, How to Teach Children About Death
8. Philip Kapleau - The Wheel of Death
9. Da Free John - Easy Death
10. Trungpa and Freemantle - The Tibetan Book of the Dead
11. Herman Feifel - The Meaning of Death
12. Edwin Schneidman - Voices of Death
13. George Bataille - Death and Sensuality
14. Colin Wilson - Afterlife
15. Avery Weisman - The Coping Capacity
16. Joel Whitton - Life Between Life
17. Stephen Levine - Healing Into Life and Death
18. John Robbins - Diet for a New America
19. P. Sargent, I. Watson - Afterlives
20. Marie-Louise von Franz - On Dreams and Death
21. Robert Bosnak - A Little Course in Dreams

Course Statement:

We live in a society conditioned to deny death. We are conditioned to relate to it indirectly, in terms of hope and fear, hope in our survivorship, that we can postpone or avoid death, and fear that we will not. Historically, when the Western world was "flat" we lived in fear of exploring it because we might "fall off"; when it became "round" we became encouraged and empowered to explore it. Similarly today, though we subconsciously fear that we are all to be "victims" of death, we are not yet "explorers" of death. This course will be an exploration of and an expedition into that dark, uncharted, tabooed territory conventionally labeled "death". Sociologically speaking, what are the prescribed social attitudes toward "my own death" and how and why are these prescriptions supported and maintained? What social functions do they serve? Existentially speaking, what are the possible available attitudes toward "my own death" (for with death, as with suffering, it is not whether one dies and suffers or not, but how one lives one's suffering, how one lives one's dying). What is the relationship between one's idea of death and one's idea of oneself, between awareness of mortality and awareness of identity?

How do humans learn of death (a philosophical-epistemological question and also a psychological question of child development)? What is death? Is it a natural phenomenon or does it require explanation in non-natural terms (a metaphysical and religious problem)? What does the history of death, of the idea of death, look like? Historically, when did the encounter with the finality of death become more socially certain than a transition to immortality (when death was just a change in life-style)? What of the atomic and ecological situations? How has the concept of death as the end of my world been affected by apocalypse as the end of the world?

How has contemporary society provided us with a framework to ignore death? How has it trained us to cultivate a fantasy mentality, a perpetual forgetfulness towards the realities of old age, death and dying. When and how did death become denied and repressed? Is it possible to re-discover the ordinariness of death? Gurdjieff has Beelzebub remark in All and Everything. "The Sole means now for saving beings of the planet Earth would be to implant again into their essences a new organ, an organ like Kundabuffer, but this time of such properties that everyone of these unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his death as well as of the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests."

Are there significant variations in the experience and interpretation of death from epoch to epoch (an historical question), from culture to culture (an anthropological question)? Are there great differences in the quality of death? (How a society conceives of and treats death deeply reflects how it conceives of life.) Are there great differences in the awareness and fear of death from epoch to epoch (historically viewed), from culture to culture (anthropologically viewed)? If so, how are these variations to be explained? What specific social conditions tend to heighten the awareness of death? The denial of death? The fear of death? The ordinariness of death? How has death-related behavior, mourning customs, burial rites (burying, burning, embalming, etc.) changed historically?

"All disease is a socially created reality." (Ivan Illich) What does it mean to say disease or, for that matter, death is socially created? We will examine the medicalization of death and disease perception and the medicalization of the struggle against death, as well as the possibilities of a de-medicalization of these phenomena. We will examine to what degree we are prisoners of the medical ideology in which we were brought up and socialized. What is the value of our medical values and how well founded is our overwhelming belief in the progress and superiority of modern medicine?

Optimistic Calendar and Detailed Road Map:

Week 1 - (Feb. 8) - Bell - This Book Is Not Required, Chps. 1, 2, 3, 5, & 6; McGrane - The Un-TV, pgs. 1-58; Tolstoy - Death of Ivan Illich (AFTER WHICH read Chp. 5, "Models" in Levine - Who Dies, followed by Preface and Chp. 1; and pgs. 3-55 in Rinpoche - The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying; James and Friedman - The Grief Recovery Handbook; Course READER: "Bardo" Chps. 1-9; Pascal, Montaigne, Dickey, Dostoevski, Sartre, Huxley, Malinowski, Freud, On Heidegger; and Chp. 14a: Kapleau 'Wheel of Death;' Mark and Dan Jury - Gramps, A Man Ages and Dies (On Library Reserve Only) Film - Ikiru, Part 1 20/20 Interview with Morrie Schwartz

Week 2 - (Feb. 15) - Reading - As Above and Mitch Albom - Tuesdays With Morrie
Film - Ikiru, Parts 2, 3

Week 3 - (Feb. 22) - Reading - As Above

Week 4 - (Feb. 29) - Reading - As Above. MID-TERM #1 INTEGRATIVE ESSAY DUE FEB. 29th. PROJECT #1 DUE March 2
.
Week 5 - (Mar. 7) - Reading - Kubler-Ross, On Death & Dying (entire); Aries - Western Attitudes Towards Death (entire); READER: "Bardo": Chp. 12, Kubler-Ross pieces; Selzer, Tisdale, (Chps. 10-11).
Films - A Family in Grief; Some Babies Die, Time Flies When You're Alive

Week 6 - (Mar. 14) - Reading - As Above.

Week 7 - (Mar. 21) - Reading - As Above

Week 8 - (Mar. 28) - Reading - As Above - MID-TERM #2 - INTEGRATIVE ESSAY DUE MARCH 28th

Week 9 - (Apr. 4) - Reading - Becker, The Denial of Death (pgs. 1-125); McGrane, The Un-TV, pgs. 259-338; "Bardo" - Becker's Death Bed Interviews (Chp. 13); "Bardo" - Animals, Death, Diet and Ethics (Chp. 15)
Film - The Animal Film

Week 10 - (Apr. 11) - Reading - As Above and Sogyal Rinpoche - The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying (pgs. 56-256)

* * * SPRING BREAK * * *

Week 11 - (Apr. 25) - Reading - As Above

Week 12 - (May 2) - Reading - Stephen Levine - Who Dies (pgs. vii-100, 233-291); Raymond Moody - Life After Life; Carlos Castaneda - Journey to Ixtlan; "Bardo" - The Wisdom of the West and the Wisdom of the East, (Chp. 14)

Week 13 - (May 9) - Reading - As Above - PROJECT #2 DUE MAY 9

Week 14 - (May 16) - Reading - As Above

FINAL TAKE HOME EXAM DUE MAY 22

Course Requirements: PROJECTS, TAKE HOME ESSAYS

1) Mid-Term #1 take home essay - (25% of grade)

2) Mid-Term #2 take home essay - (25% of grade)

3) Final take home essay - due May 22 (25% of grade)

4) Project #1: Recommended reading: The American Way of Death; (a) Call and, if possible, visit a "funeral home" and find out all the details for arranging a funeral. Find out the least expensive funeral you could arrange. (b) Also, please visit a cemetery, arrange to experience this alone even if you go with a group: spend at least half an hour and "see what you can see." Results should be typed up: 1 to 2 typed pages. (12.5% of grade)

5) Project #2: (to be explored, arranged, and initiated in the context of our class) some suggested topics:

A. Visit a hospice, do interviews.
B. Visit an old age home, do interviews.
C. Witness an autopsy in a hospital or coroner's office.
D. Witness a birth.
E. Interview someone who is "dying."
F. Work at Grief Institute.
G. Read the Sample Final Projects on Library Reserve and create your own topic (this needs to be okayed first by Instructor). Results should be individually typed up by each student (2 to 4 pages) (12.5% of grade).

6) Various "experiments" will be assigned from time to time. (263% of grade)

7) Any "extra-credit" papers, projects, experiments, film-responses, etc., happily accepted.

8) To work on and improve your reading and writing skills, I recommend you use Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler, and Ira Progoff's At a Journal Workshop.

9) Categories of evaluating take-home integration essays: a) power of integrating theme, continuity, and comprehensiveness; b) use of materials, range and depth of reference; c) creativity, boldness and originality; d) writing style, communication skillfulness.

COURSE READER: Sociology of Death - "Bardo"

1) Blaise Pascal - Man's Disproportion (from Pascal's Pensees) 4

2) M. Montaigne - That to Philosophize Is to Learn to Die (from Essays) 7

3) James Dickey - Falling 17

4) Fydor Dostoevsky - Death as a Certainty (from The Idiot) 21

5) Jean Paul Sartre - The Wall 23

6) Aldous Huxley - Death Scene (from Island) 33

7) B. Malinowski - Death and the Reintegration of the Group 46

8) S. Freud - Our Attitude Towards Death 50

9) On Heidegger's analysis of Death and Dasein:
(a) Alan Paskow - The Meaning of My Own Death 57
(b) William Smoot - The Social Dimension of Death Anxiety 67
(c) Kenneth Bryson - Being and Human Death 70

10) Richard Selzer - The Corpse
(from Mortal Lessons, Notes on the Art of Surgery) 75

11) Sallie Tisdale - The Sacred and the Dead -
Autopsies, Embalming and the Spirit 82

12) (a) Kubler-Ross - Talks with Students at Laguna Beach 90
(b) Kubler-Ross - Playboy Interview on Near Death Experiences 94
(c) R. Rosenbaum - Critique of Kubler-Ross: Turn On, Tune In,
Drop Dead 114

13) Ernest Becker and Sam Keen - Death Bed Interview 123

14) The Wisdom of the West (from Great Books of the Western World)
(a) Life and Death 131
(b) Immortality 136

15) The Wisdom of the East
(a) Philip Kapleau - The Wheel of Death 142
(b) Judith Lief - On the Tibetan Book of the Dead 156
(c) Antonio Wood - Matters of Life and Death 158
(d) Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche - Karma and Rebirth;
On the Tibetan Book of the Dead: Guiding the Dead 159
(e) Da Free John - Easy Death 194
(f) Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche - The Tibetan Book of the Dead 214

16) Animals, Death and Diet
(a) John Robbins - Diet for a New America (sections) 228
(b) Peter Singer - Ethics and Animals 240
(c) Harriet Schleifer - Images of Death in Life 246

17) Orange county: The Cost of Leaving Chart 252

18) Donald Richie - IKIRU (from The Films of Akira Kurosawa) 253

19) S. Weimer, F. Lu - IKIRU and personal transformation 264

David Moller, "Death, Social Attitudes Towards" in Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics (San Diego: Academic Press, 1998), pages: 735-745.

Groopman, Jerome. "The Last Deal." The New Yorker 73(26): 62.