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About the Author

Gary Laderman received a B.A. in psychology from California State University, Northridge, and a M.A. and Ph.D. from the Religious Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a professor of American religious history and cultures at Emory University. His works include The mostrar mais Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799-1883; Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America; Religion and American Cultures: An Encyclopedia of Traditions, Diversity, and Popular Expressions; and Science, Religion, Societies: Histories, Cultures, Controversies. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos

Includes the name: Professor Gary Laderman

Obras de Gary Laderman

Associated Works

Religions of the United States in Practice, Volume 2. (2001) — Contribuinte — 33 cópias

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Sexo
male
Ocupação
religion professor
Organizações
Emory University

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From the Death reading list. Author Gary Laderman is a religion professor; he tracks changing attitudes toward death in 18th and 19th century America. The book starts with a description of George Washington’s funeral procession in Providence, Rhode Island in 1799 – minute guns, muffled church bells, a long stream of mourners behind the bier and coffin, and the interment of the coffin in the crypt. And a similar event in New York. And in Philadelphia. The catch here is Washington died at home in Mount Vernon and was buried in the family tomb on the grounds; the elaborate funeral processions in other cities all had empty coffins. At the time, if somebody important died, you had a funeral procession, regardless of the location of the guest of honor. Most ordinary Americans didn’t get a procession, of course; but like Washington most people died at home and were buried at home – since most Americans were rural farmers, they had the room for that. If the body needed to be carried somewhere for burial, it was done on the shoulders of pallbearers (in a creepy note, if an infant died, older children were often recruited to carry the coffin). The body went in the ground quickly; embalming, cremation, and dissection were all anathema (it was allowed to pack some ice in the coffin if any were available). There was also an almost necrophiliac fascination with the process of decay; Laderman cites several diary entries from people (usually men with their wives or women with their children) who would visit the tomb every so often, open the coffin, and see how things were coming along.

This all changed – as did so many other aspects of American life – with the Civil War. Parents wanted their sons sent home; given transport speed at the time this wasn’t practical unless something was done to prevent or slow down decay. Embalmers showed up as soon at the battle was over, set up tents, and went to work. It was an extremely lucrative process – one embalmer noted annual gross income of $80000, roughly $1.2M in modern purchasing power. The war also led to a change in attitude toward dissection; the Army created a medical museum and the first curator, Dr. John Brinton, wandered around the battlefields looking for interesting wounds. At one point he heard of an unusual bone, and was in the process of excavating the owner when his comrades showed up. Although initially hostile, Brinton was apparently eloquent in explaining the value of medical specimens; after a while the soldiers allowed that if he was able, the bone owner would cheerfully give it up, and it was duly done.

I once had something of a professional interesting in this sort of thing; it looked like a light rail line would be going through a cemetery that dated to the 1870s. The EPA had done some work on groundwater contamination – including drilling a monitoring well right through a coffin; I bet there was some consternation in the sampling crew when they opened the split spoon – and found elevated levels of arsenic and other heavy metals. Alas for my ghoulish anticipation; the line didn’t end up going there and I was no longer employed by the time it got to the general area.

Appropriate illustrations, an extensive reference list, and good end notes. About the only drawback is Laderman’s focus is exclusively Protestant attitudes.
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setnahkt | Dec 29, 2017 |
In Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America, Gary Laderman builds upon what he began in his previous monograph, The Sacred Remains. He writes, “The final ceremonies that accompany a corpse’s disposal, as well as its preparation for these cermeonies and the manner in which it vanishes from living society, reveal a great deal about the animating cultural values and integrating social principles at work in any particular community” (pg. xvi). Laderman argues, “The twentieth century was indeed the ‘embalming century’” (pg. xix). He continues, “Embalming could not have taking root in American society without implicit and explicit forms of support from across the larger cultural landscape throughout the century. This new, deeply complicated cultural convergence transformed the presence of the dead in both the social and imaginative worlds of modern Americans” (pg. xix).
As an introductory case study, Laderman focuses on Jessica Mitford’s 1963 work, The American Way of Death. Laderman argues the Mitford’s “book, in fact, permanently changed the public face of death in America” (pg. xxiv). He continues, “In twentieth-century America, funeral directors took charge of the body so the bereaved could have what they wanted most – one last private moment with the loved one” (pg. xli). Laderman argues, “Contrary to the accusations leveled by Mitford and others, there is more to the business of death than simply economics – the emotional, psychological, religious, and cultural dimensions of disposal must also be taken into historical account when investigating American ways of death” (pg. xlii).
Laderman writes, “The success of the funeral industry was a product of the radically changing conditions of modern life, and modern dying, in this historical period” (pg. 4). He continues, “As funeral directors found their niche in early twentieth-century American society, the age-old familiarity of the living with the dead was replaced by a new alienation. Combined with the mortality revolution taking place and the growing presence of medical institutions that sequestered the dying from the living, new ritual patterns for disposing of the dead founded on the practice of embalming relieved living relations of traditional duties. Dead bodies, in effect, disappeared from the everyday world of twentieth-century Americans” (pg. 22). In this way, “As a domesticated space of death, the funeral home upset conventional boundaries between the religious and the profane, commerce and spirit, private and public” (pg. 25).
Laderman writes of the period after World War I, “For most inside the industry, the increasing commodification of the American funeral was a perfectly natural development in one of the most powerful capitalistic nations in the world. Indeed, the entrepreneurial spirit animating the network of commercial activity surrounding the funeral was experienced in patriotic terms, and any threats to its standing in the free market denounced as an attack on American democracy” (pg. 46). He continues, “At its core, the message funeral directors wanted to convey was simple: The funeral services they furnish respond to American sensibilities about propriety, respect, and honor in the face of death. In the course of developing this message, the industry invented what came to be known as ‘the American way of death’” (pg. 78).
Turning to portrayals of death in the media, Laderman writes, “Try as they might, undertakers could not control the fate of their public image…His presence on the stage, in novels, over the airwaves, on the silver screen speaks to the complicated set of relations between the living and the dead that were overtaking Americans in the early decades of the twentieth century, as well as to the familiar ambivalence toward corpse handlers found across global cultures” (pg. 84). He continues, “The caricature also served as a vehicle for a thoroughly modern set of criticisms of the American response to death: too materialistic, too secular and too unrealistic. The undertaker embodied all the critique’s of the industry, personifying everything that was wrong with American’s perceptions of death and their choices about corpse disposal” (pg. 92). Expanding beyond perceptions of undertakers to perceptions of the dead in media such as zombie films, Laderman writes, “Never before had Americans been confronted with such accessible, pervasive, and disturbing portraits of death, and never before had Americans disagreed so strongly about the meaning, value, and power of the dead” (pg. 125). He further turns to personifications of Death himself, writing, “One of the most easily recognizable characters in American consciousness – a tribute to his deep-rooted presence in the Chrisitan imagination – is being resurrected not by leaders in the church but by ad agencies on Madison Avenue” (pg. 171). A playful image of Death sells various products while a more traditional image helps warn about mortality, as in the dangers of smoking cigarettes.
Examining changes in funerary practices in the late twentieth century, Laderman writes, “The federal investigation of the industry beginning in the 1970s, coupled with the growing and popularity of the death awareness movement during the same period, actively encouraged patrons to take control of the funeral and create ceremonies that suit their own tastes rather than simply conform to the modern traditions established over the first half of the twentieth century” (pg. 144). He continues, “Although fears of death-care giants monopolizing the funeral business do not currently get as much press as in the early 1990s, their undeniable impact in American society, and the kind of coverage they receive in the media, contributes to a cultural nostalgia for the traditional values now associated with the family-owned funeral home” (pg. 192).
Laderman concludes, “Most Americans do not want the dead body to disappear too quickly. But on the other hand, they do not want it lingering around for too long. A brief, intimate moment with the dead – looking at the face, touching the casket, being in the presence of the corpse for a short time – is an ingrained ritual gesture that brings meaningful, and material, order out of the chaos of death” (pg. 211).
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Estatísticas

Obras
6
Also by
1
Membros
184
Popularidade
#117,736
Avaliação
3.9
Resenhas
3
ISBNs
21

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