Death, Gender and Ethnicity examines the ways in which gender and ethnicity shape the experiences of dying and bereavement, taking as its focus the diversity of ways through which the universal event of death is encountered. It brings together accounts of how these experiences are actually managed with analyses of a range of representations of dying and grieving in order to provide a more theoretical approach to the relationship between death, gender and ethnicity.
Though death and dying have been an increasingly important focus for academics and clinicians over the last thirty years, much of this work provides little insight into the impact of gender and ethnicity on the experience. The result is often a universalising representation which fails to take account of the personally unique and culturally specific experiences associated with a death. Drawing on a range of detailed case studies, Death, Gender and Ethnicity develops a more sensitive theoretical approach which will be invaluable reading for students and practitioners in health studies, sociology, social work and medical anthropology.
Introduction 1. Making Sense of Difference: Death, Gender and Ethnicity in Modern Britain David Field , Jenny Hockey and Neil Small 2. Death at the Beginning of Life Alice Lovell 3. 'Shoring up the Walls of Heartache': Parental Responses to the Death of a Child Gordon Riches and Pamela Dawson 4. Masculinity and Loss Neil Thompson 5. Women in Grief: Cultural Representation and Social Practice Jenny Hockey 6. Death and the Transformation of Gender in Image and Text Elizabeth Hallam 7. Beauty and the Beast: Sex and Death in the Tabloid Press Mike Pickering , Jane Littlewood and Tony Walter 8. Absent Minorities? Ethnicity and the Use of Palliative Care Services Chris Smaje and David Field 9. Culture is not Enough: A Critique of Multi-culturalism in Palliative Care Yasmin Gunaratnam 10. Death, Gender and Memory: Remembering Loss and Burial as a Migrant Gerdian Jonker 11. Death and Difference Neil Small Index
