MortalityPub Date : 2022-08-05DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2022.2107797
Jana Mercadal-Sánchez, Emilio Ferrer-Romero, Ignacio Fradejas‐García
{"title":"Palliative accompaniment: biomedical and social resignification of dying during the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Jana Mercadal-Sánchez, Emilio Ferrer-Romero, Ignacio Fradejas‐García","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2022.2107797","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2022.2107797","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented changes in the accompaniment of the sick, the dead, and their loved ones. This article analyses the intertwined accompaniment practices performed by health professionals working in hospitals and nursing homes and by the relatives of those who died or striving during the first few months of the pandemic in Barcelona, Spain. We argue that isolation, fear of contagion, and lack of biomedical professionals and infrastructures, produced a resignification of palliative care, social support and grief practices. Moving beyond the Western biomedical professionalization and the institutionalization of dying processes to give more agency to the dying and their loved ones, we apply the term palliative accompaniment to disentangle healthcare and psychosocial support practices adapted to the extreme circumstances of COVID-19, which includes old and new practices to alleviate patients’ suffering, relieve their loved ones’ anguish and support health professionals. Following the stories of our respondents, the interruption of the face-to-face visits and dying and mourning rituals was eased by the appearance of innovative healthcare practices, communication, and ritualization. However, this necessary evil was not enough to cope with the feelings of abandonment that emerged in response to dying alone and postponing mourning.","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":"27 1","pages":"443 - 458"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44629630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MortalityPub Date : 2022-08-05DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2022.2107795
C. Klaufus, Julienne Weegels
{"title":"From prison to pit: trajectories of a dispensable population in Latin America","authors":"C. Klaufus, Julienne Weegels","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2022.2107795","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2022.2107795","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The prisoner population in Latin America is highly vulnerable to violence and deadly disease due to overpopulation, understaffing and political neglect. The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened their situation. Drawing from empirical research in three countries – Argentina, Colombia, and Nicaragua – this paper analyses three phases of marginalisation in prisoners’ trajectories from prison to pit. Our analysis is structured by the triple marginalisation that stretches out from an experienced situation of ‘social death’ in prison, a legally imposed ‘depersonalisation’ of the dead prisoners’ body, and the ‘bare’ death of their plastic-wrapped bodies buried without any ceremony in a politically neglected cemetery. This process points to the everyday necropolitical production of marginal deaths and sheds light on marginalised populations’ moral conceptions of dying in pandemic times.","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":"27 1","pages":"410 - 425"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42051310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MortalityPub Date : 2022-07-22DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2022.2101095
Y. Papadakis, Trine Stauning Willert
{"title":"Deathscapes, erasures and posthumous identities: a comparison of cemeteries in Denmark and Cyprus","authors":"Y. Papadakis, Trine Stauning Willert","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2022.2101095","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2022.2101095","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44237529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MortalityPub Date : 2022-07-19DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2022.2092394
Katharina Mayr, N. Barth, Andreas M. Walker, Sophie Gigou
{"title":"Organized rituals – ritualized reflection on mourning culture in palliative care units and hospices","authors":"Katharina Mayr, N. Barth, Andreas M. Walker, Sophie Gigou","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2022.2092394","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2022.2092394","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44342456","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MortalityPub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2021.1966617
M. Sitter
{"title":"Enchantment. Ashes, diamonds and the transformation of funeral culture","authors":"M. Sitter","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2021.1966617","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2021.1966617","url":null,"abstract":"social inequalities and their representation in a funerary context, and the value of bioarchaeological research versus the cost of disturbing an internment site. Discussing these issues in an introductory textbook has the potential to influence the work ethics of young researchers and perhaps to promote resolution of current biocultural conflicts. Lastly, Sutton’s final chapter dedicated to differentiating forensic anthropological from bioarchaeological theories is refreshing, while it also introduces the reader to the new and rising field of humanitarian forensic anthropology (e.g. mass burials/genocides) which has the potential to shed light on past political conflicts.","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":"27 1","pages":"386 - 387"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45749278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MortalityPub Date : 2022-06-02DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2022.2072718
T. Walter
{"title":"‘Heading for Extinction’: how the climate and ecological emergency reframes mortality","authors":"T. Walter","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2022.2072718","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2022.2072718","url":null,"abstract":"The discourse of a climate and ecological emergency (CEE), especially as articulated in 2019 by Extinction Rebellion, impinges on two major features of western death mentalities. First, in order to motivate action, CEE discourse induces mortality awareness, death anxiety and grief, and thus furthers the de-sequestration of death and grief. Second, the CEE redirects attention from the death of personally known individuals, to species death;and even if humans survive as a species, it may only be after many billions of humans have died. This anxiety about future collective death arguably comprises a new death mentality. The paper compares and contrasts the CEE with other harbingers of mass mortality such as nuclear war and the Covid pandemic.","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43991460","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
MortalityPub Date : 2022-06-02DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2022.2081495
Sarah Turner, J. Littlemore, Eloise Parr, Julie Taylor, A. Topping
{"title":"‘Lights in the darkness’, part 1: characterising effective communication with healthcare practitioners following the death of a child","authors":"Sarah Turner, J. Littlemore, Eloise Parr, Julie Taylor, A. Topping","doi":"10.1080/13576275.2022.2081495","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2022.2081495","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this two-part article, we investigate communication with parents following the death of a child. Parents who have lost a child need to communicate with a wide range of professionals, and the quality of the communication that parents have with these groups can radically affect their experience of bereavement. In this UK-based interview study, we investigate why particular types of communication are deemed particularly (in)effective, by examining them in the light of parents’ descriptions of the experience of loss. In this first part of the article, we report findings from our in-depth content analysis of these interviews, discussing the ways in which the death of a child was experienced and then exploring the parents’ accounts of the communication they had with healthcare professionals involved. In the second part of the article, published in a subsequent issue of this journal, we consider the wider network of professionals with whom parents may come into contact following the death of a child. We conclude by discussing the ways in which effective care and communication resonates with, and takes account of, the experiences of the bereaved.","PeriodicalId":40045,"journal":{"name":"Mortality","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41325861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}