Deathscapes. Spaces for Death, Dying, Mourning and Remembrance

Death is at once a universal and everyday, but also an extraordinary experience in the lives of those affected. Death and bereavement are thereby intensified at (and frequently contained within) certain sites and regulated spaces, such as the hospital, the cemetery and the mortuary. However, death also affects and unfolds in many other spaces: the home, public spaces and places of worship, sites of accident, tragedy and violence. Such spaces, or Deathscapes, are intensely private and personal places, while often simultaneously being shared, collective, sites of experience and remembrance; each place mediated through the intersections of emotion, body, belief, culture, society and the state.

Bringing together geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, cultural studies academics and historians among others, this book focuses on the relationships between space/place and death/ bereavement in 'western' societies. Addressing three broad themes: the place of death; the place of final disposition; and spaces of remembrance and representation, the chapters reflect a variety of scales ranging from the mapping of bereavement on the individual or in private domestic space, through to sites of accident, battle, burial, cremation and remembrance in public space.

The book also examines social and cultural changes in death and bereavement practices, including personalisation and secularisation. Other social trends are addressed by chapters on green and garden burial, negotiating emotion in public/ private space, remembrance of violence and disaster, and virtual space. A meshing of material and 'more-than-representational' approaches consider the nature, culture, economy and politics of Deathscapes - what are in effect some of the most significant places in human society.

Contents: Foreword, Lily Kong; Preface; Introduction: bringing a spatial lens to death, dying, mourning and remembrance, Avril Maddrell and James D. Sidaway; Part I At the Threshold – Living with Death: 'It's not really like a hospice': spaces of self-help and community care for cancer, Jacqueline H. Watts; Laying Lazarus to rest: the place and space of the dead in explanations of near death experiences, Mary Murray. Part II Spaces of Burial: Taboo, Iconoclasm and Returning to Nature: Buried bodies in an East London cemetery: revisiting taboo, Kate Woodthorpe; From anti-social behaviour to x-rated: exploring social diversity and conflict in the cemetery, Bel Deering; Rest in peace? Burial on private land, Clare Gittings and Tony Walter; From cabbages to cadavers: natural burial down on the farm, Andy Clayden, Trish Green, Jenny Hockey and Mark Powell. Part III Negotiating Space for Memorialisation in Private and Public Space: The production of a memorial place: materialising expressions of grief, Anna Petersson; Bringing the dead back home: urban public spaces as sites for new patterns of mourning and memorialisation, Leonie Kellaher and Ken Worpole; Memorialisation in US college and university tragedies: spaces of mourning and remembrance, Kenneth Foote and Sylvia Grider; Private spaces for the dead: remembrance and continuing relationships at home memorials in The Netherlands, Joanne Wojtkowiak and Eric Venbrux. Part IV Art and Design in Service of Remembrance and Mourning: Living to living, living to dead: communication and political rivalry in Roman tomb design, Penelope J.E. Davies; Maxwell Fry and the 'anatomy of mourning': Coychurch crematorium, Bridgend, Glamorgan, South Wales, Hilary J. Grainger; The living, the dead and the imagery of emptiness and re-appearance on the battlefields of the Western Front, Paul Gough; Art and mourning in an Antarctic landscape, Polly Gould; Index.

About the Editor: Avril Maddrell, University of the West of England, UK and James D. Sidaway,University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Reviews: 'This remarkable, genuinely inter-disciplinary collection examines the spaces, places and landscapes of death and bereavement in western societies. Elegantly written and impeccably researched, these essays underline how western attitudes to death are geographically constituted. Deathscapes provides an unflinching, unsentimental and often moving commentary on the last great taboo of the modern age.'
Mike Heffernan, University of Nottingham, UK

'Deathscapes is more than the sum of its interdisciplinary parts. It describes living with death, locating burial spaces and negotiating sites of mourning while linking historical and contemporary funerary trends across wide geographical tracts. This imaginative collection builds a powerfully integrated picture of human mortality. Experts and the curious will not be disappointed.'
Douglas J. Davies, Durham University, UK

'This multidisciplinary collection presents important new insights into the spaces and places of death and dying. Bringing together theoretically and empirically rich approaches to subjects as varied as near death experiences, green burial and memorial art, the editors provide an indispensable guide to the inevitable.'
Joyce Davidson, Queen's University, Canada