Dødskultur og sorgkultur

– om (nye) måder at gøre død og sorg på

Abstract

How are we able to comprehend a particular culture of death and grief In this article, the authors show – by taking their point of departure in a specific conceptualization of culture – that death and grief has undergone various cultural transitions, whose shape and form have had an impact on how we understand and handle them. In order to accomplish this in a thorough manner, the authors shall focus on three different aspects of both the culture of death and the culture of grief. More specifically, the authors shall point the attention to how death has been tabooed, then privatized and now – in our present day and age – has beecome a spectacle. Subsequently, we will examine how grief has been stigmatized, then individualized, privatized and professionalized in contemporary society. Throughout the article, we discuss some of the implications of this development and how this inform us about how death and grief are understood in contemporary society.