The Matter of Death: Space, Place and Materiality

This stimulating and thought-provoking book is focused on the various spaces, places and material culture with which people come into contact when dealing with death. It covers the disciplinary perspectives of anthropology, history, sociology and theology, and its scope ranges across the spaces in hospitals where death occurs, to the spaces in which bodies are viewed after death; it also considers the political nature of memorialising activities, and the therapeutic value of visiting places of death, for example, after suicide. The chapters provide rich and current data 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, and `the matter' of death.

Jenny Hockey is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Sheffield University, UK. She has published widely in the area of death, dying, disposal and memorialisation, drawing on related work in the fields of material culture, the life course, ageing and gender.
Carol Komaromy is Senior Lecturer in Health Studies at the Open University, UK. Her background in health care underpins her research and scholarship in death and dying and commitment to making a difference to the experience of end-of-life care.
Kate Woodthorpe is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bath, UK, where she teaches on the MSc Death and Society and oversees the Foundation Degree in Funeral Services. Her research interests include the materiality of death, deathcare work and ethnographic research.