A culture of silent grief?: The transformation of bereavement care in 20th century England

Making Sense of Family Deaths in Urban Senegal: Diversities, Contexts, and Comparisons

“…And collective feeling rules, or emotional regimes (Reddy, 2001), may mean that this is seen as an entirely appropriate response to death-as seen with the Senegalese religious framework discussed earlier which inhibits the outward expression of "too much" emotion. This perhaps resonates in a U.K. context with the inhibitions (e.g., the "stiff upper lip") of emotional expression of grief (in public at least) in relation to the levels of loss experienced during the two major 20th century wars (Jalland, 2013), when particular feeling rules were encouraged in ways considered important toward the needs of the continuing war effort.…”

“…In developing our qualitative empirical study of family deaths in West Africa, the work of Klass (1999), calling for a cross-cultural model of “grief,” has been a key starting point. In addition, we drew theoretically on feminist theorizing of care ethics and caringscapes (Bowlby, 2012; Evans, 2012; Ribbens McCarthy, 2012a; Ribbens McCarthy & Prokhovnik, 2014; Tronto, 1993) and the notion of a family death as a “vital conjuncture” (Johnson-Hanks, 2002; Evans, 2014) that was likely to be associated with significant changes in various aspects of family members’ lives. For the present discussion, we also draw on an interactionist sociological approach to discuss how people “made sense” of family deaths through a theoretical focus on meanings-in-context.…”

Salvaging soldiers, comforting men

“…Despite the clear emotional trials of caring for the dying, nursing sisters would have been obligated to grieve silently and unobtrusively in a system that 'privileged stoicism in the face of loss'. 142 In a war zone where death was a common occurrence, to be incapacitated by it would have hindered nurses' abilities to care for the living.…”

Family and funerals: Taking a relational perspective

“…In the latter half of the nineteenth century, as US and UK society urbanised and industrialised, death began to be shaped by three interconnected developments. The first was the growing use of technical/medial rational discourse; the second was the growth of specialist and technical practitioners including pathologists, cemetery managers and registrars (Walter, 2005); with the third being a growth in secular and individualised beliefs (Ramshaw, 2010;Jalland, 2013). Correspondingly, the funeral began to be seen as a reflection of the deceased's standing in the social order rather than the fate of their soul (Laqueur, 1983).…”