Abstract

Why a special issue on death and dying? As Clive Seale states, the “[s]tudy of the human experience of death allows us to understand some fundamental features of social life.” According to him, the fact that we are embodied beings means that we are mortal. Knowing about our mortality is constantly threatening to make our lives meaningless. Therefore, we engage in social and cultural practices to give meaning to death and dying. Examining how practices around death and dying have changed and vary in different socio-cultural contexts enables us to realize how much our constructions of death and dying are contingent on the historical, socio-cultural and political context.