Death, modernity, and the body : Sweden 1870-1940 / Eva Åhrén ; translated by Daniel W. Olson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Åhrén, Eva.

Series:

Rochester studies in medical history

Rochester studies in medical history, 1526-2715

Standardized Title:

Doden, kroppen och moderniteten. English

Language:

English

Swedish

Subjects (All):

Funeral rites and ceremonies--Sweden--History.

Funeral rites and ceremonies.

Mourning customs--Sweden--History.

Mourning customs.

Human body--Social aspects--Sweden.

Human body.

Human body--Symbolic aspects--Sweden.

Human body--Symbolic aspects.

Human body--Social aspects.

History.

Sweden--Social life and customs.

Sweden.

Manners and customs.

Physical Description:

xiv, 215 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Rochester, N.Y. : University of Rochester Press, 2009.

Summary:

Originally published in Swedish in 2002, Death, Modernity, and the Body explores the impact of modernization on customs and practices surrounding the dead body in Sweden in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This period of intense social and cultural change transformed Sweden from an agricultural society to a modern industrial state. The book focuses on five arenas: medical research and education, displays of the dead body for entertainment purposes, funerary preparations of the body, memorial photography, and cremation.

The book takes an original approach to the history of death in modern society by focusing on the dead body in intersecting cultural domains. Medical, scientific, and technological history are thereby connected to popular culture, social and political history, as well as ethnography and anthropology. The scholarly literature on the history of death is disproportionately focused on the Anglophone world, France, and Germany. This study contributes to the scholarship by examining the case of Sweden, where modernization was exceptionally rapid and pervasive, and full of interesting particularities.

Contents:

The modernization of death

On the usefulness of the dead

Death on display

Preparing the dead body

Picturing the dead

Purifying flames

Abjection and modern rituals.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781580463126

1580463126

OCLC:

310401852