Thinking about and analyzing bereavement: the socio-anthropological approach

Studying mourning enables us to understand the anthropological invariants of human beings' reactions to the dead. Through a comprehensive and dynamic approach, the speaker will take up different definitions of mourning and its expressions with the help of sociology and anthropology.

These definitions will be articulated to the evolution of funeral rites and more broadly to the major transformations in the West in the twentieth and twentieth centuries vis-à-vis death and the dead (demographic, economic, technological, medical, social and religious) and visible in particular through the personalization of funerals (L.V. Thomas) and the intimization of death (J.D. Déchaux). We will also observe that the definition of mourning has broadened and become more complex, from the loss of a job to the mourning of Nature, via mourning at work, collective mourning during an attack or the death of a celebrity, or even the loss of an animal.

So we'll be thinking about the different expressions of grief in our society, between (sometimes paradoxical) injunctions, prejudices, artistic works and social networks, and we won't have enough of an initial seminar to cover everything. For all that, the general intention of this talk will be to provide food for thought for analyzing and understanding contemporary bereavement(s), possible articulations with the themes and interests of laboratory members, and future seminar times.

Martin JULIER-COSTES holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Strasbourg, and is an independent researcher and associate at UGA. His research themes focus on the social treatment of death and the dead (end of life, funeral rites, mourning, undertakers, school, digital).

Find out more:
https://ilcea4.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/actualites/seminaire-cerhis-1