Virtual Special Issue

Virtual Special Issue on death, dying and bereavement
Editorial by Clive Seale, Brunel University

Death represents the starkest reminder of division between the biological life of the body and its social presence. Humans, uniquely, live with awareness of their own finitude and ill health is a reminder of our ultimate fragility. More directly, experience of the deaths of others, and the provision of care to people as they approach death or respond to loss, have the potential to confront us with knowledge of our own mortality. Yet our capacities to make meaning through social organisation provide us with the resources to orient towards life. Sociologists in the pages of Sociology of Health and Illness have, over the years, contributed to an understanding of these things. The purpose of this Virtual Special Issue is to guide readers to work that has appeared in the journal on this theme. Readers of this editorial should also note that the journal has also published Catherine Exley’s (2004) review of some major books by sociologists working in this field, assessing their contribution to this field.

Read the full editorial

List of articles appearing in the Virtual Special Issue

Armstrong, David
The invention of infant mortality
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 8, Issue 3, Page 211-232, Sep 1986, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.ep11340331

Broom, Alex and Philip Tovey
Therapeutic pluralism? Evidence, power and legitimacy in UK cancer services
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 551-569, May 2007, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01002.x

Coyle, Joanne and Doreen MacWhannell
The importance of ‘morality’ in the social construction of suicide in Scottish newspapers
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 24, Issue 6, Page 689-713, Nov 2002, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.00314

Exley, Catherine
Review article: the sociology of dying, death and bereavement
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 26, Issue 1, Page 110-122, Jan 2004, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2004.00382.x

Frost, Julia, Harriet Bradley, Ruth Levitas, Lindsay Smith and Jo Garcia
The loss of possibility: scientisation of death and the special case of early miscarriage
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 29, Issue 7, Page 1003-1022, Nov 2007, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01019.x

Green, Judith
The medico-legal production of fatal accidents
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 373-389, Sep 1992, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.ep11357503

Gunaratnam. Yasmin
'We mustn't judge people ... but': staff dilemmas in dealing with racial harassment amongst hospice service users
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 23, Issue 1, Page 65-84, Jan 2001, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.00241

Haddow, Gillian
The phenomenology of death, embodiment and organ transplantation
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 27, Issue 1, Page 92-113, Jan 2005, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2005.00433.x

Hoad, Peter
Volunteers in the independent hospice movement
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 13, Issue 2, Page 231-248, Jun 1991, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.ep11340813

Hunt, Maura
The identification and provision of care for the terminally ill at home by 'family' members
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 13, Issue 3, Page 375-395, Sep 1991, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.ep10492394

James, Nicky
Care = organisation + physical labour + emotional labour
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 14, Issue 4, Page 488-509, Dec 1992, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.ep10493127

Jennings, Beth
The politics of end-of-life decision-making: computerised decision-support tools, physicians' jurisdiction and morality
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 28, Issue 3, Page 350-375, Apr 2006, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2006.00496.x

Lawton, Julia
Contemporary Hospice Care: the Sequestration of the Unbounded Body and ‘Dirty Dying’
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 20, Issue 2, Page 121-143, Mar 1998, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.00094

Mamo, Laura
Death and Dying: Confluences of Emotion and Awareness
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 21, Issue 1, Page 13-36, Jan 1999, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.00140

McNamara, Beverley, Charles Waddell Margaret Colvin
Threats to the good death: the cultural context of stress and coping among hospice nurses
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 17, Issue 2, Page 222-244, Mar 1995, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.ep10933398

Owens, Christabel, Helen Lambert, Keith Lloyd and Jenny Donovan
Tales of biographical disintegration: how parents make sense of their sons’ suicides
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 237-254, March 2008, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01034.x

Peräkylä, Anssi
Appealing to the 'experience' of the patient in the care of the dying
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 11, Issue 2, Page 117-134, Jun 1989, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.ep10844263

Prior, Lindsay
Making sense of mortality
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 7, Issue 2, Page 167-190, Jul 1985, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.ep10949063

Radley, Alan
The aesthetics of illness: narrative, horror and the sublime
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 366-390, Apr 2007, doi:
10.1111/1467-9566.00183

Redley, Marcus
Towards a new perspective on deliberate self-harm in an area of multiple deprivation
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 25, Issue 4, Page 348-372, May 2003, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.00350

Seale, Clive
Dying alone
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 17, Issue 3, Page 376-392, Jun 1995, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.ep10933327

Seymour, Jane, Sheila Payne, Alice Chapman and Margaret Holloway
Hospice or home? Expectations of end-of-life care among white and Chinese older people in the UK
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 29, Issue 6, Page 872-890, Sep 2007, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01045.x

Shim, Janet K., Ann J. Russ and Sharon R. Kaufman
Risk, life extension and the pursuit of medical possibility
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 28, Issue 4, Page 479-502, May 2006, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2006.00502.x

Sweeting, Helen and Mary Gilhooly
Dementia and the phenomenon of social death
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 19, Issue 1, Page 93-117, Jan 1997, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.ep10934317

Timmermans, Stefan
Dying of awareness: the theory of awareness contexts revisited
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 16, Issue 3, Page 322-339, Jun 1994, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.ep11348751

Timmermans, Stefan
Resuscitation Technology in the Emergency Department: Towards a Dignified Death
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 20, Issue 2, Page 144-167, Mar 1998, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.00095

Timmermans, Stefan
Death brokering: constructing culturally appropriate deaths
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 27, Issue 7, Page 993-1013, Nov 2005, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2005.00467.x

Timmermans, Stefan
The cause of death vs. the gift of life: boundary maintenance and the politics of expertise in death investigation
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 24, Issue 5, Page 550-574, Sep 2002, doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.00308

von Lehm, Dirk
The body as interactive display: examining bodies in a public exhibition
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 28, Issue 2, Page 223-251, Mar 2006, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2006.00489.x

Walter, Tony
Body Worlds: clinical detachment and anatomical awe
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 26, Issue 4, Page 464-488, May 2004, doi: 10.1111/j.0141-9889.2004.00401.x

Weyers, Heleen
Explaining the emergence of euthanasia law in the Netherlands: how the sociology of law can help the sociology of bioethics
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 28, Issue 6, Page 802-816, Sep 2006, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2006.00543.x

Zimmermann, Camilla
Death denial: obstacle or instrument for palliative care? An analysis of clinical literature
Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 29, Issue 2, Page 297-314, Mar 2007, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.00495.x