Deathscapes

Death is at once a universal and everyday, but also an extraordinary experience in the lives of those affected. Death and bereavement are thereby intensified at (and frequently contained within) certain sites and regulated spaces, such as the hospital, the cemetery and the mortuary. However, death also affects and unfold in many other spaces; the home, public spaces and places of worship, and sites of accidents, tragedy and violence. Such spaces, or deathscapes, are both intensely private and personal, but also frequently collective and mediated through the intersections of state (and sometimes geopolitics), society and the body. Bringing together geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, cultural studies academics and historians among others, this book focuses on the relationships between space/place and death/ bereavement in 'western' societies. Addressing three broad themes: the place of death; the place of final disposition and spaces of remembrance and representation, the chapters reflect a variety of scales ranging from the mapping of bereavement on the body or in domestic space, through to sites of burial or cremation in public and private space. The book also examines social and cultural changes in death and bereavement practices, including personalisation and secularisation, making for a powerful synergy between theory and practice. Current debates within academia and wider society are also addressed by chapters on green and garden burial, negotiating emotion in public/ private space, remembrance of violence and disaster, and virtual space.