Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Violent deaths stand out in stark relief against the contemporary social climate of controlled private death and grieving. Both uncontrolled and public violent deaths call into question some of our most fundamental cultural values and prompt spontaneous rituals to publicly express individual and collective grief. We refer to these new rituals as spontaneous memorialization and to the impromptu shrines that result from this memorialization as spontaneous memorials. In this article, we introduce both concepts, delineate the characteristics of this emerging American mourning ritual and use it to illustrate our contention that death ritual is important in the contemporary United States but that it is changing form in response to the needs of a changing society.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Rando

T. A.

, Treatment of Complicated Mourning, Research Press, Champaign, Illinois, 1993.

Bocock

, Ritual in Industrial Society: A Sociological Analysis of Ritualism in Modern England, Crane, Russak and Company, Inc., New York, 1974.

Collins

, Sociological Insight: An Introduction to Non-Obvious Sociology (2nd Edition), Oxford University, New York, 1992.

Driver

T. F.

, The Magic of Ritual: Our Need for Liberating Rites that Transform Our Lives and Our Communities, Harper Collins Publishers, San Francisco, 1991.

Irion

P. E.

, Changing Patterns of Ritual Response to Death, Omega, 22:3, pp. 159–172, 1990–1991.

Fulton

, Death and Identity, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, 1965.

Mellor

P. A.

and Shilling

, Modernity, Self-Identity, and the Sequestration of Death, Sociology, 27, pp. 411–431, 1993.

Simon

W. C.

Haney

, and Buenteo

R. J.

, The Post-Modernization of Death and Dying, Symbolic Interaction, 16:4, pp. 411–426, 1993.

Campbell

and Moyers

, The Power of Myth, Doubleday, New York, 1988.

10.

Doka

K. J.

, Disenfranchised Grief, in Disenfranchised Grief—Recognizing Hidden Sorrow, Doka

K. J.

(ed.), Lexington Books, Lexington, Massachusetts, 1989.

11.

Patoski

J. N.

, The Queen is Dead, Texas Monthly, 5, p. 110, May 23, 1995.

12.

Rodriguez

, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Houston, personal communication, Houston, Texas, May 28, 1996.

13.

Santos

, Editor and Publishers, La Politiquera, personal communication, Houston, Texas, April 1, 1996.

14.

Lule

, News Strategies and the Death of Huey Newton, Journalism Quarterly, 70:2, pp. 287–299, 1993.

15.

Stein

M. A.

and Basheda

, Huey Newton is Killed, The Los Angeles Times, pp. A1 and A3, August 23, 1989.

16.

San Francisco Chronicle, un-captioned Photograph, p. A1, August 23, 1989.

17.

Bragg

, On Walls, Memories of the Slain are Kept, The New York Times, Sec: A, Metropolitan Desk, p. 1, 1994.

18.

Gustaitis

, Pacific New Service , in Annual Editions: Dying, Death, and Bereavement (3rd Edition), Dickenson

G. E.

Leming

M. R.

, and Mermann

A. C.

(eds.), Duskin Publishing Co., Guilford, Connecticut, p. 172, 1996.

19.

Moller

D. W.

, Confronting Death: Values, Institutions, and Human Mortality, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 25, 1996.

20.

Littlewood

, The Denial of Death and Rites of Passage in Contemporary Societies, in The Sociology of Death: Theory, Culture, Practice, Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp. 69–84, 1993.

Spontaneous Memorialization: Violent Death and Emerging Mourning Ritual

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References