Ethical and sociocultural challenges in managing dead bodies during epidemics and natural disasters

BackgroundCatastrophic natural disasters and epidemics claim thousands of lives and have severe and lasting consequences, accompanied by human suffering. The Ebola epidemic of 2014–2016 and the current COVID-19 pandemic have revealed some of the practical and ethical complexities relating to the management of dead bodies. While frontline staff are tasked with saving lives, managing the bodies of those who die remains an under-resourced and overlooked issue, with numerous ethical and practical problems globally.MethodsThis scoping review of literature examines the management of dead bodies during epidemics and natural disasters. 82 articles were reviewed, of which only a small number were empirical studies focusing on ethical or sociocultural issues that emerge in the management of dead bodies.ResultsWe have identified a wide range of ethical and sociocultural challenges, such as ensuring dignity for the deceased while protecting the living, honouring the cultural and religious rituals surrounding death, alleviating the suffering that accompanies grieving for the survivors and mitigating inequalities of resource allocation. It was revealed that several ethical and sociocultural issues arise at all stages of body management: notification, retrieving, identification, storage and burial of dead bodies.ConclusionWhile practical issues with managing dead bodies have been discussed in the global health literature and the ethical and sociocultural facets of handling the dead have been recognised, they are nonetheless not given adequate attention. Further research is needed to ensure care for the dead in epidemics and that natural disasters are informed by ethical best practice.

Replicability, Robustness, and Reproducibility in Psychological Science

Replication, an important, uncommon, and misunderstood practice, is gaining appreciation in psychology. Achieving replicability is important for making research progress. If findings are not replicable, then prediction and theory development are stifled. If findings are replicable, then interrogation of their meaning and validity can advance knowledge. Assessing replicability can be productive for generating and testing hypotheses by actively confronting current understanding to identify weaknesses and spur innovation. For psychology, the 2010s might be characterized as a decade of active confrontation. Systematic and multi-site replication projects assessed current understanding and observed surprising failures to replicate many published findings. Replication efforts highlighted sociocultural challenges, such as disincentives to conduct replications, framing of replication as personal attack rather than healthy scientific practice, and headwinds for replication contributing to self-correction. Nevertheless, innovation in doing and understanding replication, and its cousins, reproducibility and robustness, have positioned psychology to improve research practices and accelerate progress.

Prospects for Pentecostal Philosophy

In this essay, I offer a constructive vision for the future of pentecostal philosophy. Specifically, I first offer a series of sociocultural challenges that pentecostal philosophy faces. Then I offer a short timeline of philosophical engagement from pentecostal thinkers over the past several decades. In order to open a more productive space for pentecostal philosophy moving forward, I argue that pentecostal philosophy needs to rethink its ties to Plantinga-type confessional Christian philosophy. In this way, pentecostal philosophy should not be reducible to a kind of pentecostal theology. Drawing on Sarah Coakley’s appropriation of feminism for philosophy of religion, I suggest that pentecostal philosophy can facilitate a way of responding appropriately to two audiences (theological and philosophical) without simply circumscribing one into the other. I conclude by contending that pentecostal philosophy should be affectively engaging, argumentatively rigorous, and existentially relevant.

Narrating as an Answer to Sociocultural Challenges

The narrative typologies presented previously are juxtaposed with the principal characteristics of sociocultural transformation in this chapter. The findings reveal how these affect the network actors’ storytelling, but without dominating the narrative. Social developments come up against headstrong subjects who make use of their ability to select, differentiate, and reflect.