DEATH, MOURNING AND BURIAL

• Comprised of six sections that mirror the social trajectory of death: conceptualizations of death; death and dying; uncommon death; grief and mourning; mortuary rituals; and remembrance and regeneration
• Includes canonical readings as well as recent studies on topics such as organ donation and cannibalism
• Designed for anyone concerned with issues of death and dying, as well as: violence, terrorism, war, state terror, organ theft, and mortuary rituals
• Serves as a text for anthropology classes, as well as providing a genuinely cross-cultural perspective to all those studying death and dying

Death and Anthropology: An Introduction: Antonius C. G. M. Robben.

Part I: Conceptualizations of Death.

1. Magic, Science and Religion: Bronislaw Malinowski.

2. The Terror of Death: Ernest Becker.

3. Symbolic Immortality: Robert Jay Lifton and Eric Olson.

4. The Hour of Our Death: Philippe Ariès.

5. How Others Die: Reflections on the Anthropology of Death: Johannes Fabian.

Part II: Death and Dying.

6. Death Omens in a Breton Memorate: Ellen Badone.

7. The Meaning of Death in Northern Cheyenne Culture: Anne S. Straus.

8. Kinds of Death and the House: María Cátedra.

9. Displacing Suffering: The Reconstruction of Death in North America and Japan: Margaret Lock.

Part III: Uncommon Death.

10. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande: E. E. Evans-Pritchard.

11. Burial Alive: Godfrey Lienhardt.

12. State Terror in the Netherworld: Disappearance and Reburial in Argentina: Antonius C. G. M. Robben.

Part IV: Grief and Mourning.

13. The Andaman Islanders: A. R. Radcliffe-Brown.

14. Metaphors of Mediation in Greek Funeral Laments: Loring M. Danforth.

15. Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage: Renato Rosaldo.

16. Death Without Weeping: Nancy Scheper-Hughes.

Part V: Mortuary Rituals.

17. A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Representation of Death: Robert Hertz.

18. The Rites of Passage: Arnold van Gennep.

19. The Phase of Negated Death: Hikaru Suzuki.

20. ‘Thus are our bodies, thus was our custom’: Mortuary Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society: Beth A. Conklin.

Part VI: Remembrance and Regeneration.

21. Sacrificial Death and the Necrophagous Ascetic: Jonathan Parry.

22. The 19th-Century Tlingit Potlatch: A New Perspective: Sergei Kan.

23. Dead Bodies Animate the Study of Politics: Katherine Verdery.

Index.