‘We’re OK with Death’

Coombs, Sarah

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-53631-6_6

Cited by 1 publication

(5 citation statements)

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“…The high mortality rate in children until the 20th century [2] and the perils to which they were exposed during their lives, including hunger, health problems, work and poor education as dominant dimensions for most [3,34], have started to fade away in the collective imagination. The death of children tends to be perceived more and more as an unnatural and exceptional phenomenon [35,36]. People usually feel uneasy mentioning death and children in the same sentence [36], and most of the social discourse considers any connection between the two inappropriate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The death of children tends to be perceived more and more as an unnatural and exceptional phenomenon [35,36]. People usually feel uneasy mentioning death and children in the same sentence [36], and most of the social discourse considers any connection between the two inappropriate. This cultural reluctance also reverberates within the social sciences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, if death has found its way out from taboos and stigmata and given rise to the academic field of death studies [39], and if children are given much more attention as full subjects than a few decades ago [40], the same cannot be said about the two taken together as a research topic. Sarah Coombs [36] observes in her recent pioneering book combining death studies with childhood and youth studies, that within Western culture throughout history, death and children were in a very similar way both marginalised, feared and sometimes romanticised, but they were also secluded from one another. Coombs brilliantly explains that although today’s children are much less exposed to the possibility of dying and to witnessing non-mediated forms of death, they are artificially separated from it, in a utopic attempt of society to protect them from death as such.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following Coombs’ suggestions, childhood and death could cohabitate as social realities and research topics, if children are allowed to express their own opinions and perspectives about death [36,40]. It is an excellent solution for bridging the social disconnection between death and childhood and for repairing the scholarly attitudes that have silenced or neglected the voices of children regarding death.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It should be the role of social sciences to elucidate all these questions; however, the abovementioned poor intersection between research on death and research on children is a hindrance. Studies interested in the representations of death and dying in children are rather scant or lacking focus on social and political aspects [36]. When illness comes into play as the element responsible for the actualisation of the unfortunate possibility that ties together children and death, the analysis of social aspects is extremely important.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

When the Future is Not Bright: Social and Political Stakes in Discussing Childhood Cancer in Romanian Media

Teodorescu

Chiribuca

2019

Children

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In contemporary societies’ perception of children, death plays an incredibly insignificant role. This role goes from being ornamental, a weak reminder that our civilisation has overcome the times of children’s high mortality rates, to being some other society’s concern. Despite both medical improvements and cultural constructions of the child as an immanent and social transcendence, children can and do die. Although an increasing number of recent studies disclose and legitimise children’s preoccupation with death and dying in the context of a popular culture fascinated with death, studies interested in the representations of death and dying in children are rather scant. In this article, we investigate the social and political stakes in discussing children’s cancer in today’s Romanian media, aiming to make visible how the illustrations of the connections between children, death and illness are never ethically neutral. We begin with the observation that, during recent years, there has been a growing media focus on childhood cancer in Romania. Adopting a qualitative approach and resorting to comparative analysis, we analyse what lies beneath the intentions of criticising troublesome socio-political or medical realities of childhood cancer, revealing the mechanisms through which childhood cancer is transformed into a social illness and the cultural implications for the acceptance of death as an inherent part of life both for children and the population as a whole.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%