Death, ritual and belief: the rhetoric of funerary rites (third edition)

The Shape of Grief at Green Burial Cemeteries

“…The bereaved person learns to adjusts to the reality that their interactions with the deceased now occur mostly internally-in memory and in thought. Anthropologist and theologist Douglas Davies (2017) calls this the "dividuality of grief" which, as Davies explains it, is the process by which the bereaved person takes on a new understanding of their selfhood, incorporating-or perhaps burying-the deceased's person's identity into their own. This research project investigates if and how Penn Forest facilitates this process by offering the bereaved a material expression of that relationship through an opportunity for continued and personalized memorialization.…”

“…To understand the emotional attachments of the bereaved participants, I analyze them through three theoretical models of grief that honor the relationships family members have with their dead loved ones (Davies 2017(Davies , 2018Derrida 1994Derrida , 2001Klass, Silverman, and Nickman 1996). Theories of grief that respect, rather than pathologize, the ongoing relationships survivors have with their dead loved ones developed in the 21 st century.…”

“…The second theoretical model of bereavement I call upon is called, "the relationship between dividuality and grief," proposed by anthropologist and theologist Douglas Davies (2017Davies ( , 2018. Davies argued that the continuing bonds model should be refined by theorizing it on the grounds of dividual personhood-meaning that the "continuing bond" the bereaved engage in is an extension of what Davies calls a "dividual complex identity."…”

“…This section explores whether this belief is true for the family members of Penn Forest, and if so, how such an understanding shapes their grief experiences. I conclude this chapter by analyzing my interlocutors' interactions with the memorial tree through two current theoretical models of grief that respect, rather than pathologize, the ongoing relationships survivors have with the dead (Davies 2017(Davies , 2018Klass, Silverman, and Nickman 1996).…”

“…As such, I argue that the ecological afterlife is also constructed through the emotional attachments that family members establish to the ecology of their loved one's gravesites. To understand these attachments, I analyze them through three theoretical models of grief that respect the ongoing relationships family members have with their dead loved ones (Derrida 1998(Derrida , 2001Davies 2017Davies , 2018Klass, Silverman, and Nickman 1996).…”