Death, Memory and Material Culture

2001-12 Family & Relationships

Author : Elizabeth Hallam
Release : 2001-12
Genre : Family & Relationships
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : /5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Death, Memory and Material Culture by : Elizabeth Hallam

Download or read book Death, Memory and Material Culture written by Elizabeth Hallam. This book was released on 2001-12. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: · 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.

Women and the Material Culture of Death

2017-07-05 History

Author : BethFowkes Tobin
Release : 2017-07-05
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 796/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Women and the Material Culture of Death by : BethFowkes Tobin

Download or read book Women and the Material Culture of Death written by BethFowkes Tobin. This book was released on 2017-07-05. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the compelling and often poignant connection between women and the material culture of death, this collection focuses on the objects women make, the images they keep, the practices they use or are responsible for, and the places they inhabit and construct through ritual and custom. Women?s material practices, ranging from wearing mourning jewelry to dressing the dead, stitching memorial samplers to constructing skull boxes, collecting funeral programs to collecting and studying diseased hearts, making and collecting taxidermies, and making sculptures honoring the death, are explored in this collection as well as women?s affective responses and sentimental labor that mark their expected and unexpected participation in the social practices surrounding death and the dead. The largely invisible work involved in commemorating and constructing narratives and memorials about the dead-from family members and friends to national figures-calls attention to the role women as memory keepers for families, local communities, and the nation. Women have tended to work collaboratively, making, collecting, and sharing objects that conveyed sentiments about the deceased, whether human or animal, as well as the identity of mourners. Death is about loss, and many of the mourning practices that women have traditionally and are currently engaged in are about dealing with private grief and public loss as well as working to mitigate the more general anxiety that death engenders about the impermanence of life.

Death, Memory and Material Culture

2020-05-26 Social Science

Author : Elizabeth Hallam
Release : 2020-05-26
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 196/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Death, Memory and Material Culture by : Elizabeth Hallam

Download or read book Death, Memory and Material Culture written by Elizabeth Hallam. This book was released on 2020-05-26. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: - 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.

Popular eBooks

Death, Memory and Material Culture

Women and the Material Culture of Death

You may also like...