scholarly journals Embalming, Viewing and the Social Construction of the Corpse: Time for Another Look

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 776-776
Author(s):  
Redmond Finney ◽  
Lisa Shulman ◽  
Raya Kheirbek
Keyword(s):  
Financial Burden ◽  
The United States ◽  
Occupational Hazards ◽  
Substantial Evidence ◽  
Loved One ◽  
Grieving Process ◽  
The Social ◽  
Expected Outcome ◽  
The Dead ◽  
True Condition

Abstract Embalming of the dead is more common in the United States than anywhere else in the world. Battles far from home during the Civil War with concern for contagion from dead bodies being shipped home, compelled President Lincoln to direct the troops to use embalming to allow the return of the Union dead to their homes. Viewings were common with war heroes and culminated with the viewing of Lincoln himself. In the 20th century embalming became a tradition despite substantial evidence indicating environmental and occupational hazards related to embalming fluids and carbon dioxide generated from manufacturing steel coffins before placing in concrete burial vaults. Embalming is promoted and considered helpful to the grieving process when families are comforted by a the appearance of a peaceful death. Embalmers are expected to produce an illusion of rest, an image that in some ways disguises death for the benefit of mourners. The dead are carefully displayed in a condition of liminal repose where the 'true' condition is hidden, and death is removed from the actual event. In this paper we highlight the spiritual and cultural complexities of embalming related- issues. We also provide data on the lack of grieving families’ preparedness for the financial burden associated with the death of a loved one and the lack of knowledge of alternative options. We propose an innovative process to empower people facing serious illness, and their families to make shared and informed decisions, especially when death is the expected outcome.

The Corpse: Time for Another Look A Review of the Culture of Embalming, Viewing and the Social Construction

2021 ◽  
pp. 104990912110257
Author(s):  
Redmond Finney ◽  
Lisa M. Shulman ◽  
Raya E. Kheirbek
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Occupational Hazards ◽  
Substantial Evidence ◽  
Grieving Process ◽  
Innovative Process ◽  
Actual Event ◽  
The Social ◽  
Expected Outcome ◽  
The Dead ◽  
True Condition

Embalming of the dead is more common in the United States than anywhere else in the world. Battles far from home during the Civil War with concern for contagion from dead bodies being shipped home compelled President Lincoln to direct the troops to use embalming to allow the return of the Union dead to their homes. Viewings were common with war heroes and culminated with the viewing of Lincoln himself. In the 20th century embalming became a tradition despite substantial evidence indicating environmental and occupational hazards related to embalming fluids and carbon dioxide generated from manufacturing steel coffins before placing in concrete burial vaults. Embalming is promoted and considered helpful to the grieving process. Embalmers are expected to produce an illusion of rest, an image that in some ways disguises death for the benefit of mourners. The dead are carefully displayed in a condition of liminal repose where the ‘true’ condition is hidden, and death is removed from the actual event. In this paper we highlight the spiritual and cultural complexities of embalming related issues. We propose an innovative process to empower people facing serious illness, and their families to make shared and informed decisions, especially when death is an expected outcome.

Disenfranchised Grief and Families’ Experiences of Death After Police Contact in the United States

2019 ◽  
pp. 003022281984642
Author(s):  
David Baker ◽  
Dana Norris ◽  
Veroniki Cherneva
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Disenfranchised Grief ◽  
Loved One ◽  
White Families ◽  
Grieving Process ◽  
Police Contact ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Semistructured Interviews

This article examines the experiences of family members when a loved one dies after police contact in the United States. It uses qualitative data from semistructured interviews with the bereaved families of 43 U.S. citizens who died after police contact and considers their experiences as covictims of homicide. It examines how they experience grief in the aftermath of such a death and considers Doka’s concept of disenfranchised grief in evaluating how social norms affect their grieving process. It argues that individuals affected by deaths after police contact are often unable to grieve in a way that is socially legitimized. The article finds that disenfranchised grief has a racial dimension with regard to deaths after police contact with non-White families being deeply affected by it due to their position within society, the context in which their loved one died, and in terms of how the deceased was socially constructed.

scholarly journals Tangible and intangible costs of "protecting human subjects": The impact of the National Research Act of 1974 onuniversity research activities

2004 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederic Jacobs ◽  
Arina Zonnenberg
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Treatment ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Financial Burden ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Policies And Procedures ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Oversight ◽  
Protection Of Human Subjects ◽  
The Impact

This article (1) examines the overall structure of regulatory research oversight in the United States; (2) details the origins and evolution of federal legislation pertaining to the protection of human subjects in biomedical and behavioral treatment and research; and (3) describes the expansion of oversight regulation from biomedical and behavioral treatment areas to the social sciences. In addition, the paper describes three areas identified by compliance administrators as susceptible to abuse: (1) informed consent, (2) assessment of risks and benefits, and (3) equitable selection of human subjects. There is a discussion of existing tensions in the implementation of oversight policies and procedures. Finally, the paper identifies four issues for future consideration: (1) scope of the mandate regarding protection of human subjects, (2) impact on the nature of research being undertaken, (3) financial burden of compliance and oversight activities, and (4) ethical standards, constraints, and potential.

All Men Are Created Equal: Addressing Disparities in Prostate Cancer Care

2019 ◽  
pp. 302-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hala Borno ◽  
Daniel J. George ◽  
Lowell E. Schnipper ◽  
Franco Cavalli ◽  
Thomas Cerny ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prostate Cancer ◽  
Cancer Care ◽  
Financial Burden ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cancer Treatments ◽  
Education Access ◽  
Probability Of Survival ◽  
The Social ◽  
Racial Ethnic ◽  
Financial Burden Of Cancer

The global cancer burden is estimated to have risen to 18.1 million new cases and 9.6 million deaths in 2018. By 2030, the number of cancer cases is projected to increase to 24.6 million and the number of cancer deaths, to 13 million. Global data mask the social and health disparities that influence cancer incidence and survival. Inequality in exposure to carcinogens, education, access to quality diagnostic services, and affordable treatments all affect the probability of survival. Worryingly, despite the fact that many cancers could be prevented by stronger public health actions and many others could be largely cured by better access to diagnostics and affordable treatments, the international community has yet to make a substantial move to tackle this challenge. In prostate cancer, studies show that there are geographic and racial/ethnic distribution differences as well as a number of other variables, including environmental factors, limited access to standard cancer treatments, reduced probability to be included in trials, and the financial burden of cancer treatments. Financial burden for the patients can result in poor adherence, increased debt, and poor long-term outcomes. The following article will discuss some of the important causes for disparity in prostate cancer and prostate cancer care, focused on the current situation in the United States, as well as possible remedies to address these causes.

The Complexity of Health Disparities: More Than Just Black–White Differences

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Charles Ellis ◽  
Molly Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Health Disparities ◽  
Clinical Outcomes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Speech Language Pathology ◽  
Death Rates ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Language Pathology

Health disparities have once again moved to the forefront of America's consciousness with the recent significant observation of dramatically higher death rates among African Americans with COVID-19 when compared to White Americans. Health disparities have a long history in the United States, yet little consideration has been given to their impact on the clinical outcomes in the rehabilitative health professions such as speech-language pathology/audiology (SLP/A). Consequently, it is unclear how the absence of a careful examination of health disparities in fields like SLP/A impacts the clinical outcomes desired or achieved. The purpose of this tutorial is to examine the issue of health disparities in relationship to SLP/A. This tutorial includes operational definitions related to health disparities and a review of the social determinants of health that are the underlying cause of such disparities. The tutorial concludes with a discussion of potential directions for the study of health disparities in SLP/A to identify strategies to close the disparity gap in health-related outcomes that currently exists.

Suicide-Bereaved Individuals’ Attitudes Toward Therapists

Crisis ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin F. Ward-Ciesielski ◽  
Madeline D. Wielgus ◽  
Connor B. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health Treatment ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
The United States ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Time Of Death ◽  
Loved One ◽  
Important Group ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
Suicide Bereaved ◽  
Research Domain

Background: Suicide-bereaved individuals represent an important group impacted by suicide. Understanding their experiences following the suicide of a loved one is an important research domain, despite receiving limited attention. Although suicide-bereaved individuals may benefit from mental health treatment, their attitudes toward therapy and therapists are poorly understood. Aims: The present study aimed to understand the extent to which bereaved individuals’ attitudes toward therapy and therapists are impacted by whether their loved one was in therapy at the time of death. Method: Suicide-bereaved individuals (N = 243) from the United States were recruited to complete an online survey about their experience with and attitudes toward therapy and therapists following the suicide of a loved one. Results: Bereaved individuals whose loved one was in therapy at the time of death (N = 48, 19.8%) reported more negative and less positive attitudes toward the treating therapist than those whose loved one was not in therapy at the time of death (N = 81, 33.3%) or whose loved one was never in therapy/the deceased’s therapy status was unknown (N = 114, 46.9%). Conclusion: The deceased’s involvement with a therapist appears to be an important factor impacting the experience of bereaved individuals and should be considered when attempting to engage these individuals in postvention.

Horror and Death: Rethinking Coco's Border Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 41-49
Author(s):  
Orquidea Morales
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Walt Disney Company ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Walt Disney ◽  
Day Of The Dead ◽  
Animated Film ◽  
Border Politics ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The U.S

In 2013, the Walt Disney Company submitted an application to trademark “Día de los muertos” (Day of the Dead) as they prepared to launch a holiday themed movie. Almost immediately after this became public Disney faced such strong criticism and backlash they withdrew their petition. By October of 2017 Disney/Pixar released the animated film Coco. Audiences in Mexico and the U.S. praised it's accurate and authentic representation of the celebration of Day of the Dead. In this essay, I argue that despite its generic framing, Coco mobilizes many elements of horror in its account of Miguel's trespassing into the forbidden space of the dead and his transformation into a liminal figure, both dead and alive. Specifically, with its horror so deftly deployed through tropes and images of borders, whether between life and death or the United States and Mexico, Coco falls within a new genre, the border horror film.

The Unusual Cruelty of Nursing Homes Behind Bars

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 264-271
Author(s):  
Rachel E. López
Keyword(s):  
Nursing Homes ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Financial Burden ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
The United States ◽  
Term Care ◽  
Trained Staff ◽  
State Prisons ◽  
The Cost

The elderly prison population continues to rise along with higher rates of dementia behind bars. To maintain the detention of this elderly population, federal and state prisons are creating long-term care units, which in turn carry a heavy financial burden. Prisons are thus gearing up to become nursing homes, but without the proper trained staff and adequate financial support. The costs both to taxpayers and to human dignity are only now becoming clear. This article squarely addresses the second dimension of this carceral practice, that is the cost to human dignity. Namely, it sets out why indefinitely incarcerating someone with dementia or other neurocognitive disorders violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. This conclusion derives from the confluence of two lines of U.S. Supreme Court precedent. First, in Madison v. Alabama, the Court recently held that executing someone (in Madison’s case someone with dementia) who cannot rationally understand their sentence amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Second, in line with Miller v. Alabama, which puts life without parole (LWOP) sentences in the same class as death sentences due to their irrevocability, this holding should be extended to LWOP sentences. Put another way, this article explains why being condemned to life is equivalent to death for someone whose neurodegenerative disease is so severe that they cannot rationally understand their punishment.

Cross-space Consumption among Undocumented Chinese Immigrants in the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Zhou ◽  
Xiangyi Li
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Chinese Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Currency Exchange ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Migrants

We consider cross-space consumption as a form of transnational practice among international migrants. In this paper, we develop the idea of the social value of consumption and use it to explain this particular form of transnationalism. We consider the act of consumption to have not only functional value that satisfies material needs but also a set of nonfunctional values, social value included, that confer symbolic meanings and social status. We argue that cross-space consumption enables international migrants to take advantage of differences in economic development, currency exchange rates, and social structures between countries of destination and origin to maximize their expression of social status and to perform or regain social status. Drawing on a multisited ethnographic study of consumption patterns in migrant hometowns in Fuzhou, China, and in-depth interviews with undocumented Chinese immigrants in New York and their left-behind family members, we find that, despite the vulnerabilities and precarious circumstances associated with the lack of citizenship rights in the host society, undocumented immigrants manage to realize the social value of consumption across national borders and do so through conspicuous consumption, reciprocal consumption, and vicarious consumption in their hometowns even without being physically present there. We conclude that, while cross-space consumption benefits individual migrants, left-behind families, and their hometowns, it serves to revive tradition in ways that fuel extravagant rituals, drive up costs of living, reinforce existing social inequality, and create pressure for continual emigration.

Local Histories/Global Designs

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter D. Mignolo
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Central America ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
South Central ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Border Thinking ◽  
East West

This book is an extended argument about the “coloniality” of power. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, this book points to the inadequacy of current practices in the social sciences and area studies. It explores the crucial notion of “colonial difference” in the study of the modern colonial world and traces the emergence of an epistemic shift, which the book calls “border thinking.” Further, the book expands the horizons of those debates already under way in postcolonial studies of Asia and Africa by dwelling on the genealogy of thoughts of South/Central America, the Caribbean, and Latino/as in the United States. The book's concept of “border gnosis,” or sensing and knowing by dwelling in imperial/colonial borderlands, counters the tendency of occidentalist perspectives to manage, and thus limit, understanding. A new preface discusses this book as a dialogue with Hegel's Philosophy of History.

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