Bereavement among Adolescents with Intellectual Disability: A Qualitative Study

The current study was conducted to explore the bereavement (experienced loss of a loved one through death within time frame of 0–3 years span). Seven adolescents (10–19 years old) with intellectual disability were included in the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted through interview guide which was prepared with the help of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development concept related to death. Data was analyzed with content analysis and six major themes were derived, that is, meaning of death, death rituals, religious concepts related to death, reasons of death, grieving perception, and coping with grief. Mostly, concepts were explained under the light of religious preaching and their introjection in the lives of adolescents with intellectual disability. Current study helped in exploration of experiential phenomenon of loss in adolescents with intellectual disability.

The Political Ecology of Death: Chinese Religion and The Affective Tensions of Secularised Burial Rituals in Singapore

This paper explores the political ecology of death and the affective tensions of secularised burial rituals in Singapore. Although scholars have recently acknowledged the roles of biopower and affect in shaping environmental politics, religion and death as socio-affective forces have not been substantively engaged with by political ecologists. We argue that death is inherently both a spiritual and ecological phenomenon, as it exposes not only the spiritual geographies that structure how people see the natural world, but also the affective tensions and struggles over what counts as a “proper” form of burial in relation to religion and nature. First, we demonstrate how the Singapore state utilises a politico-ecological discourse to secularise Chinese death rituals, such that the death can be separated from the transcendent spheres and incorporated into the environmental biopolitics. Second, we focus on how people's variegated affective inhabitations of religion and secularity condition the political ecology of death. In doing so, this paper foregrounds the roles of religion, secularity and affect in rethinking the “political” of political ecology.

Hudhud: A Living Oral Tradition of the Ifugao

This study focuses mainly on the oral tradition of Ifugao called Hudhud, its performances, cultural values, and means of pedagogical transmission. It is important to note that this oral tradition is sustaining through the school of living tradition in the place of its origin. Through this study, people will be aware of this unique oral tradition of Ifugao, which is situated in the northern Philippine highlands. This ethnographic study captures the holistic purpose of the study of Hudhud; and thus, immersion, interview, archiving, and observation of the subject were made. Performances of the Hudhud are still popular during the community gathering called Gotad ad Ifugao, death rituals, weddings, and other important gatherings—big or small—in the entire province of Ifugao.

The Hungarian-Jewish Social Contract, its Rupture, and Jewish Death Rituals

This article explores the supposedly reciprocal social contract between “Greater Hungary” and its Jewish population from the “Golden Age” of the Dual Monarchy to its rupture in the Holocaust. The afterlife of this broken contract will be addressed through the upkeep and neglect of cemeteries in Subcarpathia and Hungary proper. Along the way, I present memoiristic vignettes that illustrate the challenge of loyalty to state / military authority and death rituals in the time of the 1918-1919 Hungarian-Romanian War, Jewish mourning in the context of Czechoslovakia’s loss of Subcarpathia, and the disjuncture between the normal praxis of death ritual and the spectre of Auschwitz-Birkenau, as well as the ritual contrast to Hungarian Jews who were deported, but not to Auschwitz. I also turn to the historical research of Tim Cole and Daniel Rosenthal, in conjunction with Hungarian (especially North-Transylvanian) Holocaust memoirs, to reflect on Holocaust-era suicide as a mode of victims’ resistance to their brutalization by Hungarian gendarmes -- the pinnacle of the betrayal of the erstwhile contract between Hungarian state authority and its Jewish population.

A Dramaturgy of Death: Performing (And Spectating) Filial Piety in Early China

This essay analyzes the early Chinese elite discourse on filial death rituals, arguing that early Chinese texts depict these rituals as performance events. Building on spectacle of xiao sacrifices in the Western Zhou Dynasty, Eastern Zhou authors conceived of filial death rituals as dramaturgical phenomena that underscored not only what needed to be performed, but also how it should be performed, and led to an important distinction between personal dispositions and inherited ritual protocol. This distinction, then, led to concerns about artifice in human behavior, both inside and outside the Ruist (Confucian) tradition. By end of the Warring States Period and in the early Western Han Dynasty, with the embracement of artifice in self-cultivation, the dramatic role of the filial son in death rituals became even more developed and complex, requiring the role of cultivated spectators to be engaged critics who recognized the nuances of cultivated performances.

Exploring the Prospective of Dark Tourism in Pashupatinath: A Hindu Pilgrimage Site, Nepal

A unique and increasingly pervasive feature within the tourism landscapes in the post-modern world is the special interests of tourists in death and anything associated with death. It is often believed that those who indulge in death and disaster site tours could potentially awaken their spiritual journey. The visitor immersions, in the spaces of death, and the events that have taken place or are re-created, triggers social conscience, or some shared emotion or an experience of involvement, with the death event. Reckoning to this facet, Pashupatinath temple- a place of pilgrimage for the followers of Santana Vedic religion which shows the comprehensive aspect of Hindu death rituals, symbols and processes has been chosen. The study proposes the site as a dark tourism destination and explores the convergence of cultural heritage site, pilgrimage and death rituals in the area that is associated with its characterization- particularly with reference to the witnessing of live open pyre burning death rituals at the cremation ground (ghat) that exclusively showcases the eastern phenomenon of death-spectatorship exhibited by Hindu death ritual. Despite an immense influence of the site in the tourism industry, the eastern dark tourism potential induced by the site has not been recognized formally by the tourism stakeholders. Even though it is widely consumed by the western visitors as a tourist element. The phenomenon of Hindu death tradition in the ghats of Pashupatinath is inclusive of all the death-related rituals and is a threshold of transition and transgression, a place in between life and death. Henceforth, as the central tenet of dark tourism being “the death”, Hindu death rituals in Pashupatinath could be firmly brought into the realms of dark tourism discourse. The findings are based on the prevalence of push factors that encourages consumption of the proposed site as a dark tourist product in liminal conditions (an in-between position). To be more specific, the practice of intellectualization of emotion, convenience of visits, edutainment elements, practice of moral disengagement. The prospective of dark tourism in Pashupatinath, if entitled to the mere promotion of the crematory site, may send a negative connotation and raise moral and ethical concerns. Hence, tourism stakeholders should consciously introduce the phenomenon as an accompaniment to the popularized mainstream religious and cultural value of the site.

Global Mediatized Death and Emotion: Parasocial Grieving—Mourning #stephenhawking on Twitter

This study examined mediatized death and emotion, specifically parasocial grieving, toward high-profile celebrity Stephen Hawking’s death from a global perspective. A thematic analysis of public tweets explored how social media mourners expressed parasocial grieving following Hawking’s death and how that shaped mediatized global flows of emotion in terms of digital affect culture. Findings showed varied forms of mediatized emotional responses associated with parasocial grievings, such as sadness, shock, confusion, love, and longing. Mourners also adopted varied coping mechanisms, including individualized tributes, reminiscing, memorializing, and advocacy. Findings suggested that Hawking’s mourners performed parasocial death rituals on Twitter as a legitimate public space of mourning. Findings contribute to parasocial grieving scholarship and mediatization of death and emotion.

The Socialist Cemetery

Chapter 2 charts the development of new mourning rites in East Germany, focusing on the role that music played in these ceremonies. Death rituals articulated a new death culture for the socialist state. This chapter examines three aspects of East German death culture: the reestablishment of ceremonies to honor communist heroes from the Weimar Republic, state burials for East German politicians, and manuals published for funeral planning intended for the general public. Visually and rhetorically, state ceremonies were political displays that marginalized the emotional needs of the mourning community. But the music in these services intoned the new country’s connections to customs that the ruling party were explicitly attempting to displace: the Nazis’ heroic burial customs and the mourning rituals of the Lutheran church. In early efforts to fashion a socialist sepulchral culture across multiple artforms, a gap emerged between political ideology and musical reality that allowed composers, performers, and audiences to enact the work of mourning through music.

MORTUARY RITES IN COVID-19: MOURNING & BURIAL RITES OF MIGRANTS IN NORTHERN PUNJAB

Purpose of the study: This study aims to highlight how death serves as a central feature of social ties among the natives of Northern Punjab. Death is a great leveller and one of the most curious aspects of human cognition. Bereavement follows the terminal rites de passage; the transition of the deceased from this world to the other world. Methodology: By using an inductive approach, the ethnographic account of the most significant rite of passage; death was gathered. The primary data is based on case-based narratives and empirical findings gathered during in-depth interviews and participant observation at the locale. A total of thirteen cases of death migrants are discussed in this paper. Main Findings: The findings reveal the social pressures the family of the deceased encountered in the pre and post-death phase both in the country of origin and in the country of destination, how horrors of COVID-19 infection kept the entire bereaved families at a halt to decide their funerary rituals, pandemic’s effect on the body’s postmortem clearance and death certificate, arrangement for the morgue and grave while the decision of burial was in process, familial politics engaged in decision making, the journey back to the native soil, the burial, mourning, condolence and bereavement rituals of Potohar. Applications of this study: This paper solely focuses on the death rituals of migrants from the Northern Punjab region in COVID-19. The study provides an understanding of the religio-cultural rituals and their transformation in the global pandemic. Novelty/Originality of this study: The researcher has prepared an account of the death rituals based on the close observations and in-depth insights during the mortuary rites of migrants who expired during the pandemic COVID-19 during doctoral research. No such research has been carried out in Potohar (Northern Punjab) in this context.