Download or read book Roadside Crosses in Contemporary Memorial Culture written by Holly J. Everett and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is a study of roadside crosses in which the author presents the history of these unique commemoratives and their relationship to contemporary memorial culture.
Download or read book Virtual Afterlives written by Candi K. Cann and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For millennia, the rituals of death and remembrance have been fixed by time and location, but in the twenty-first century, grieving has become a virtual phenomenon. Today, the dead live on through social media profiles, memorial websites, and saved voicemails that can be accessed at any time. This dramatic cultural shift has made the physical presence of death secondary to the psychological experience of mourning. Virtual Afterlives investigates emerging popular bereavement traditions. Author Candi K. Cann examines new forms of grieving and evaluates how religion and the funeral industry have both contributed to mourning rituals despite their limited ability to remedy grief. As grieving traditions and locations shift, people are discovering new ways to memorialize their loved ones. Bodiless and spontaneous memorials like those at the sites of the shootings in Aurora and Newtown and the Boston Marathon bombing, as well as roadside memorials, car decals, and tattoos are contributing to a new bereavement language that crosses national boundaries and culture-specific perceptions of death. Examining mourning practices in the United States in comparison to the broader background of practices in Asia and Latin America, Virtual Afterlives seeks to resituate death as a part of life and mourning as a unifying process that helps to create identities and narratives for communities. As technology changes the ways in which we experience death, this engaging study explores the culture of bereavement and the ways in which it, too, is being significantly transformed.
Download or read book Road Scars written by Robert Matej Bednar and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the ubiquity of automobility, the reality of automotive death is hidden from everyday view. There are accident blackspots all over the roads that we use and go past every day but the people that have died there or been injured are not marked, unless by homemade shrines and personal memorialization. Nowhere on the planet is this practice as densely actioned as in the United States. Road Scars is a highly visual scholarly monograph about how roadside car crash shrines place the collective trauma of living in a car culture in the everyday landscapes of automobility. Roadside shrines—or road trauma shrines—are vernacular memorial assemblages built by private individuals at sites where family and friends have died in automobile accidents, either while driving cars or motorcycles or being hit by cars as pedestrians, bicyclists, or motorcyclists. Prevalent for decades in Latin America and in the American Southwest, roadside car crash shrines are now present throughout the U.S. and around the world. Some are simply small white crosses, almost silent markers of places of traumatic death. Others are elaborate collections of objects, texts, and materials from all over the map culturally and physically, all significantly brought together not in the home or in a cemetery but on the roadside, in drivable public space—a space where private individuals perform private identities alongside each other in public, and where these private mobilities sometimes collide with one another in traumatic ways that are negotiated in roadside shrines. This book touches on something many of us have seen, but few have explored intellectually.
Download or read book Crossroads written by Holly J. Everett and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis considers issues in belief and material culture studies in an examination of roadside cross memorials in and around the city of Austin, Texas. Thirty-five memorial sites, including both Mothers Against Drunk Driving crosses, which are erected through the Texas Department of Transportation, and others constructed by private citizens, are featured in descriptions and photographs. -- The first two chapters provide the historical and current context for the appearance of vernacular memorials and discuss a number of memorials, both informal and formal, in North America and Europe, including roadside crosses in other areas of Texas. Chapter three details Austin's crosses, noting dominant patterns in construction and assembly and providing a thorough inventory of memorial offerings. Items placed at many of the crosses reflect an ongoing dialogue with the deceased (notes, inscriptions on bridge railings), and the continuation of missed celebrations (toys, homecoming mums, graduation tassels). The memorials thus become representative not only of the mystery of death, but of the deceased themselves. -- In chapters four and five, Austin area residents consider their involvement with, and perceptions of, various memorial assemblages. Informant responses are analyzed in terms of vernacular, domestic religious expression, political activism and grief processes. A number of roadside memorial assemblages contain elements more often associated with seasonal home and yard adornment, a manner of decoration which allows bereaved individuals to incorporate the dead into the world of the living, and vice versa. -- Whereas contemporary funeral custom and landscape emphasizes the difference between the deceased and those who mourn, roadside cross memorials present a more universally active, and thus affective threshold. Individuals mourning the sudden death of a loved one must negotiate a complex field of emotion, often dealing not only with their own grief, but that of other relatives and friends of the deceased. Additionally, magico-religious beliefs may be called into question and/or reaffirmed, as are individual priorities and expectations. In an effort to incorporate an unexpected loss, a number of my informants maintain memorial assemblages as places of intimacy and community, sacred spaces in which death may be contemplated, and life celebrated.
Download or read book Stories in the Time of Cholera written by Charles L. Briggs and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-01-16 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cholera, although it can kill an adult through dehydration in half a day, is easily treated. Yet in 1992-93, some five hundred people died from cholera in the Orinoco Delta of eastern Venezuela. In some communities, a third of the adults died in a single night, as anthropologist Charles Briggs and Clara Mantini-Briggs, a Venezuelan public health physician, reveal in their frontline report. Why, they ask in this moving and thought-provoking account, did so many die near the end of the twentieth century from a bacterial infection associated with the premodern past? It was evident that the number of deaths resulted not only from inadequacies in medical services but also from the failure of public health officials to inform residents that cholera was likely to arrive. Less evident were the ways that scientists, officials, and politicians connected representations of infectious diseases with images of social inequality. In Venezuela, cholera was racialized as officials used anthropological notions of "culture" in deflecting blame away from their institutions and onto the victims themselves. The disease, the space of the Orinoco Delta, and the "indigenous ethnic group" who suffered cholera all came to seem somehow synonymous. One of the major threats to people's health worldwide is this deadly cycle of passing the blame. Carefully documenting how stigma, stories, and statistics circulate across borders, this first-rate ethnography demonstrates that the process undermines all the efforts of physicians and public health officials and at the same time contributes catastrophically to epidemics not only of cholera but also of tuberculosis, malaria, AIDS, and other killers. The authors have harnessed their own outrage over what took place during the epidemic and its aftermath in order to make clear the political and human stakes involved in the circulation of narratives, resources, and germs.
Download or read book Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death written by J. Santino and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an edited volume of approximately 17 essays that deal with various types of spontaneous shrines and other, related public memorializations of death. The articles address events such as New York after 9/11; roadside crosses, and the use of 'Day of the Dead' altars to bring attention to deceased undocumented immigrants.
Download or read book The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials written by Erika Lee Doss and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials: Towards a Theory of Temporary Memorials Erika Doss examines this contemporary phenomenon of public commemoration in terms of changed cultural and social practices regarding mourning, memory, and publ.
Download or read book Is the Cemetery Dead written by David Charles Sloane and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-04-25 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Examines our evolving mourning rituals, specifically in relationship to cemeteries . . . a levelheaded report on the death care industry.” —Los Angeles Review of Books In modern society, we have professionalized our care for the dying and deceased in hospitals and hospices, churches and funeral homes, cemeteries and mausoleums to aid dazed and disoriented mourners. But these formal institutions can be alienating and cold, leaving people craving a more humane mourning and burial process. The burial treatment itself has come to be seen as wasteful and harmful—marked by chemicals, plush caskets, and manicured greens. Today’s bereaved are therefore increasingly turning away from the old ways of death and searching for a more personalized, environmentally responsible, and ethical means of grief. Is the Cemetery Dead? gets to the heart of the tragedy of death, chronicling how Americans are inventing new or adapting old traditions, burial places, and memorials. In illustrative prose, David Charles Sloane shows how people are taking control of their grief by bringing their relatives home to die, interring them in natural burial grounds, mourning them online, or memorializing them streetside with a shrine, ghost bike, or RIP mural. Today’s mourners are increasingly breaking free of conventions to better embrace the person they want to remember. As Sloane shows, these changes threaten the future of the cemetery, causing cemeteries to seek to become more responsive institutions. A trained historian, Sloane is also descendent from multiple generations of cemetery managers and he grew up in Syracuse’s Oakwood Cemetery. Enriched by these experiences, as well as his personal struggles with overwhelming grief, Sloane presents a remarkable and accessible tour of our new American way of death.
Download or read book Cultural Studies on Death and Dying in Scandinavia written by Anders Gustavsson and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Touring Cultures written by Chris Rojek and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is becoming ever clearer that while people tour cultures, cultures and objects themselves are in a constant state of migration. This collection brings together some of the most influential writers in the field to examine the complex connections between tourism and cultural change and the relevance of tourist experience to current theoretical debates on space, time and identity.
Download or read book Grassroots Memorials written by Peter Jan Margry and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2011-08-01 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grassroots memorials have become major areas of focus during times of trauma, danger, and social unrest. These improvised memorial assemblages continue to display new and more dynamic ways of representing collective and individual identities and in doing so reveal the steps that shape the national memories of those who struggle to come to terms with traumatic loss. This volume focuses on the hybrid quality of these temporary memorials as both monuments of mourning and as focal points for protest and expression of discontent. The broad range of case studies in this volume include anti-mafia shrines, Theo van Gogh’s memorial, September 11th memorials, March 11th shrines in Madrid, and Carlo Giuliani memorials in Genoa.
Download or read book The Happy Valley written by Ken Nicolson and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hong Kong's oldest Western cemetery garden is located in Happy Valley. This history and tour highlights the need for urgent action to conserve the built and natural heritage resources of this important cultural landscape. The author challenges the reader to reconsider the basic approach to heritage conservation adopted in Hong Kong where a false dichotomy persists between natural and built heritage conservation initiatives. The Hong Kong Cemetery provides an excellent example of a precious cultural landscape which is deteriorating because simplistic approaches to site management have failed to understand and protect the complex interrelationship between the natural (flora mid fauna - habitats) and built (monuments and Memorials) heritage resources. The first-three chapters introduce the cemetery garden concept as it evolved in early nineteenth century Europe, and was eventually established in Hong Kong by the British.-The second half of the book provides a self-guided tour of the cemetery highlighting its resources as well as explaining the main conservation problems and possible solutions to protect the cemetery.
Download or read book Everyday Sacred written by Hillary Kaell and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last decade there has been ongoing discussion about the place of religion in Québécois society, particularly following the proposed Charter of Quebec Values in 2013. The essays in Everyday Sacred emerged from this active and often tense period of debate. Revitalizing an awareness of how people encounter, create, and employ religion in everyday life, contributors to this volume explore communities’ networks of beliefs, traditions, and relationships. Through broad comparisons beyond the Quebec context, contributors look at African Pentecostal congregations, an Iraqi Jewish community in Montreal, a rural Catholic parish on the Saint Lawrence River, and Tewehikan drumming in Wemotaci. They also examine wayside crosses, places of pilgrimage and devotion, debates on the regulation of the hijab, and the place of Montreal Spiritualists and transhumanists in the religious landscape. Seeking a holistic definition of Québécois religion, Everyday Sacred considers religious and secular identity, pluralism, the bodily and material aspects of religion, the impact of gender on community and the public sphere, and the rise of hybridity, sociality, and new technologies in transnational and online networks, in order to uncover the transmission of practices and beliefs from one generation to another. Disrupting familiar dichotomies between Catholicism and other religions, “founders” and immigrants, new religious movements and traditional institutions, Everyday Sacred marks the beginning of a sustained conversation on contemporary religion in Quebec, both inside and outside of the province. Contributors include: Emma Anderson (University of Ottawa), Randall Balmer (Dartmouth College), Hélène Charron (Université Laval), Elysia Guzik (University of Toronto), Laurent Jérôme (Université du Québec à Montréal), Norma B. Joseph (Concordia University), Cory Andrew Labrecque (Université Laval), Deirdre Meintel (Université de Montréal), Géraldine Mossière (Université de Montréal), Frédéric Parent (Université de Québec à Montréal), Meena Sharify-Funk (Wilfrid Laurier University).
Download or read book Nature Space and the Sacred written by S. Bergmann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nature, Space and the Sacred offers the first investigative mapping of a new and highly significant agenda: the spatial interactions between religion, nature and culture. In this ground-breaking work, different concepts of religion, theology, space and place and their internal relations are discussed in an impressive range of approaches. Weaving together a diversity of perspectives, this book presents an innovative and truly transdisciplinary environmental science. Its broad range offers a rich exchange of insights, methods and theoretical engagements.
Download or read book For King and Country written by Heather Jones and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-23 with total page 591 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was the First World War really 'For King and Country'? This is the first full history of the monarchy's role.
Download or read book Rhetoric Remembrance and Visual Form written by Anne Teresa Demo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-03-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a multifaceted investigation of intersections among visual and memorial forms in modern art, politics, and society. The question of the relationships among images and memory is particularly relevant to contemporary society, at a time when visually-based technologies are increasingly employed in both grand and modest efforts to preserve the past amid rapid social change. The chapters in Rhetoric, Remembrance, and Visual Form provide valuable insights concerning not only how memories may be seen (or sighted) in visual form but also how visual forms constitute noteworthy material sites of memory. The collection addresses this central theme with a wealth of interdisciplinary and international approaches, featuring conventional scholarly as well as artistic works from such disciplines as rhetoric and communication, art and art history, architecture, landscape studies, and more, by contributors from around the globe.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Death Human Experience written by Clifton D. Bryant and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2009-07-15 with total page 1161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This two-volume Encyclopdia - through multidisciplinary and international contributions and perspectives - organizes, defines and clarifies more than 300 death-related concepts.
