Culture and thanatology

Question 1

What is biological death?

Answer 1

• death is a biological and a social/cultural phenomenon
• = the death of the body
• the process by which criteria organ systems permanently cease to function and decay and decomposition begins

Question 2

Define social death, psychological death, psychosocial death, psychogenic death and legal death

Answer 2

Social Death: when people are treated as if they were dead when they are still alive. Disintegration of social identity

Psychological Death: unconsciousness (comatose)

Psychosocial Death: a person is significantly changed, seems completely different from who they once were

Psychogenic Death: the unexpected deaths of people in traumatic situations when they appear to ‘given up’ or ’lost the will to live;

Legal Death: a person who is declared legally dead, even if their body is not found.

Question 3

how is the concept of culture an iceberg?

Answer 3

• Culture refers to the: “beliefs, attitudes, values (collectivism vs individualism), behaviors (family roles), practices (death rituals) shared by a group to support its survival”
• “Culture influences personal beliefs, subjective perceptions, and the meanings that individuals assign to dying and death” (N & W, 2022, p. 121).
• Visible and invisible elements of culture.
• surface culture = basic elements, deep culture = unspoken rules & unconscious rules = deep knowledge

Question 4

what does culture mean in terms of heterogeneous & generalizations

Answer 4

• Culture as a a web of meanings: a meaning-making system that helps us make sense of ourselves, our place in the world, how to act.
• Heterogeneous – people within a cultural group may understand, interpret, or practice their culture in different ways.
• Generalizations: nationality is not (necessarily) same as culture; often there is a lot of variation.
• Cultures change over time

Question 5

what is the death system?

Answer 5

• Interpersonal, sociopolitical, & symbolic systems that mediate an individual’s experience of death:
  “we face death as a part of a society whose expectations, rules, motives, and symbols influence our individual encounters

functions:
- to give warnings and predictions of threats to life
- prevent death
- care for the dying
- dispose of the dead
- work towards social consolidation after death
- bring about socially sanctioned death

elements or components:
- people: whose social roles are more or less directly related to death
- places: specific locations
- times: specific occasions
- objects: associated with death
- symbols: related to death

Question 6

why is there a need for cultural approach to dying and death?

Answer 6

• Care for dying increasingly taking place in medical facilities, bureaucratized spaces
• Can create conflict when the culture of the patient or family do not align with the institutional culture.
• Lack of understanding on the part of institutional caregivers can exacerbate grief, lead to negative outcomes.

Question 7

what is the cultural competence approach?

Answer 7

• Awareness, understanding of cultural differences.
• Can treat learning as a checklist to be completed, lead to stereotyping.
• Suggests expertise: Very difficult/impossible to gain full competence in a culture, lived experience, that is not your own.

Question 8

What are the cultural conscientiousness and humility to death

Answer 8

• Critical self-reflection –> What are the assumptions that I bring into this encounter?
• Life-long learning –>
  Openness to evolving knowledge, to ‘not-knowing’
  Ask questions about desires, values, needs, fears.
  Empathy and willingness to apologize if you get it wrong
• Honoring sameness and difference –> From a humble, respectful vantage point