New Books in Sociology Erica Borgstrom and Renske Visser, "Critical Approaches to Death, Dying and Bereavement" (Routledge, 2024)
Jan 26, 2025
Erica Borgstrom and Renske Visser dive into the multifaceted world of death, dying, and bereavement. Borgstrom, a medical anthropology professor, and Visser, a medical anthropologist with a focus on space and place, explore how social and political factors influence death experiences. They discuss the impact of government policies on mortality, the evolving landscape of hospice care, and the need for a more nuanced understanding of grief. Listeners will also gain insights into their future research projects and the importance of critical approaches to palliative care.
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Mortality Statistics: A Social Construct
- Mortality statistics, seemingly objective, are socially constructed, reflecting choices about what data is collected and how it's interpreted.
- This shapes our understanding of death and influences government decisions, often medicalizing death and obscuring individual experiences.
Necropolitics and Migration Policies
- Migration policies, while seemingly about border control, can become life-or-death decisions, impacting who lives and who dies.
- The concept of necropolitics highlights how political choices can systematically mark certain groups, often along racial or colonial lines, for death.
Politics of Mass Death
- Mass death events reveal how political decisions shape not just immediate responses, but also longer-term memorialization.
- Governments make choices about counting deaths, treating bodies, and post-death rituals, often reflecting power dynamics and social inequalities.