Death, Memory and Material Culture: v. 16 (Materializing Culture) - Hardcover

Hallam, Elizabeth; Hockey, Jenny

3.69

29 ratings by Goodreads

9781859733745: Death, Memory and Material Culture: v. 16 (Materializing Culture)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1859733743 ISBN 13: 9781859733745

Publisher: Berg Publishers, 2001

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

* How do the living maintain ongoing relationships with the dead in Western societies?* How have the residual belongings of the dead been used to evoke memories?* Why has the body and its material environment remained so important in memory-making?Objects, images, practices, and places remind us of the deaths of others and of our own mortality. At the time of death, embodied persons disappear from view, their relationships with others come under threat and their influence may cease. Emotionally, socially, politically, much is at stake at the time of death. In this context, memories and memory-making can be highly charged, and often provide the dead with a social presence amongst the living. Memories of the dead are a bulwark against the terror of forgetting, as well as an inescapable outcome of a life's ending. Objects in attics, gardens, museums, streets and cemeteries can tell us much about the processes of remembering. This unusual and absorbing book develops perspectives in anthropology and cultural history to reveal the importance of material objects in experiences of grief, mourning and memorializing. Far from being 'invisible', the authors show how past generations, dead friends and lovers remain manifest - through well-worn garments, letters, photographs, flowers, residual drops of perfume, funerary sculpture. Tracing the rituals, gestures and materials that have been used to shape and preserve memories of personal loss, Hallam and Hockey show how material culture provides the deceased with a powerful presence within the here and now.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

'Offering insights into the one certainty of human life, this exploration of practices related to death holds a fascination that proved irresistible.'Anthropology in Action'It is a book that was waiting to be written.'Bereavement Care '[The authors] offer a wide-ranging consideration of death, memory and the material world and the sociocultural processes by which they are understood and linked.'Choice

About the Author:

Elizabeth Hallam Director of Cultural History,University of Aberdeen Jenny Hockey Senior Lecturer in the School of Comparative and Applied Social Sciences, University of Hull

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.