Hardback | |
June 24, 2014 | |
9780813145419 | |
English | |
212 | |
26 b&w photos | |
9.00 Inches (US) | |
6.00 Inches (US) | |
1 Pounds (US) | |
$70.00 USD, £28.00 GBP | |
v2.1 Reference | |
Paperback / softback | |
November 19, 2015 | |
9780813168326 | |
English | |
212 | |
26 b&w photos | |
9.00 Inches (US) | |
6.00 Inches (US) | |
.7 Pounds (US) | |
$30.00 USD, £18.00 GBP | |
v2.1 Reference | |
Virtual Afterlives
Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century
Virtual Afterlives investigates emerging popular bereavement traditions. Author Candi K. Cann examines new forms of grieving and evaluates how religion and the funeral industry have both contributed to mourning rituals despite their limited ability to remedy grief. As grieving traditions and locations shift, people are discovering new ways to memorialize their loved ones. Bodiless and spontaneous memorials like those at the sites of the shootings in Aurora and Newtown and the Boston Marathon bombing, as well as roadside memorials, car decals, and tattoos are contributing to a new bereavement language that crosses national boundaries and culture-specific perceptions of death.
Examining mourning practices in the United States in comparison to the broader background of practices in Asia and Latin America, Virtual Afterlives seeks to resituate death as a part of life and mourning as a unifying process that helps to create identities and narratives for communities. As technology changes the ways in which we experience death, this engaging study explores the culture of bereavement and the ways in which it, too, is being significantly transformed.
About the Author
Reviews
"Cann argues that the way we grieve and memorialize the dead has shifted in
recent years. She carefully takes the reader on a journey that reveals the metamorphosis of memorialization and ways of grieving that are more private today, yet at the same time are brought out into the public sphere in creative ways via cyberspace, tattoos, t-shirts, bodiless memorials, and automobile decals."—George Dickinson, author of Understanding Dying, Death and Bereavement
"Cann's book has added new areas of exploration and significant comparative observations across cultures, including practices in Asia, Latin America, and Muslim countries. Her expertise in religious studies brings unique and helpful notations throughout the book regarding both traditional and contemporary ways that religious practices inform and sustain good grief."—Omega Journal of Death and Dying
"Virtual Afterlives introduces its readers to examples of innovative mourning practices that are embedded in ordinary lives and communities – it is essentially an engaging précis of grassroots memorialization.
The analysis provided is sensitive, rich and unfolds with careful context and detail.
Not only does this work identify and describe trends in popular memorialization, it also uses evidence from current policy and draws on historical debates in the field to argue that these practices are a response to the disappearance of death from contemporary life. Traces of death, be they the physical dead body or manifestations of grief, have according to Cann, been banished from our familiar, daily lives. Therefore, the examples of popular memorialization the book explores have a purpose which is twofold; they are a means to represent the dead in the day-to-day space in which we live, and they also enable individuals who are experiencing loss to be identified as someone who is bereaved."—Julie Ellis, Mortality
"Cann's deep understanding of the process of grieving, both personal and academic, is reflected throughout her book. She flawlessly integrates the discourse of mourning—from Facebook posts to tombstones to eulogies—exploring the landscape of bereavement with an eye for material culture."—Western Folklore
Hardback | |
June 24, 2014 | |
9780813145419 | |
English | |
212 | |
26 b&w photos | |
9.00 Inches (US) | |
6.00 Inches (US) | |
1 Pounds (US) | |
$70.00 USD, £28.00 GBP | |
v2.1 Reference | |
Paperback / softback | |
November 19, 2015 | |
9780813168326 | |
English | |
212 | |
26 b&w photos | |
9.00 Inches (US) | |
6.00 Inches (US) | |
.7 Pounds (US) | |
$30.00 USD, £18.00 GBP | |
v2.1 Reference | |
Other Titles by Candi K. Cann
Dying to Eat
Other Titles from Material Worlds Series
Explaining Traditions
Culinary Tourism
Funeral Festivals in America
Other Titles in SOCIAL SCIENCE / Death & Dying
Preparing for a Better End
The Crisis of US Hospice Care
A Monument to Dynasty and Death