Mortal Dilemmas : The Troubled Landscape of Death in America

Anthropologist Donald Joralemon Asks Whether America Is Really, As Many Scholars Claim, A Death-denying Culture That Prefers To Quarantine The Sick In Hospitals And The Elderly In Nursing Homes. His Answer Is A Reasoned No. In His View, Americans Are Merely Struggling To Find Cultural Scripts For The Exceptional Conditions Of Dying That Our Social World And Medical Technologies Have Thrust Upon Us. The Book -is Written In The First-person For A Broad Audience By A Senior Anthropologist, Making It An Authoritative Yet Accessible Textbook For Courses On Death And Dying And American Culture; -includes Contemporary Debates About Highly Visible Cases, The Definition Of Death, The Status Of Human Remains, Aging, And The Medicalization Of Grief; -demonstrates Persuasively That Arguments Over Death And Dying Are In Fact Arguments About What It Means To Be Human In Modern America-- A Culturally Naked Death? -- Deciding To Die -- Liminal People, Hard Decisions -- Dead? -- Reflections On Dying Dilemmas -- Grief: Is It Complicated? -- Inconvenient Bodies -- Remember -- Dying And Death In America: The Prognosis Donald Joralemon. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 139-144) And Index. Asks whether America is really, as many scholars claim, a death-denying culture that prefers to quarantine the sick in hospitals and the elderly in nursing homes. Joralemon's answer is a reasoned "no." In his view, Americans are merely struggling to find cultural scripts for the exceptional conditions of dying that our social world and medical technologies have thrust upon us. Joralemon focuses on five important areas of contention surrounding dying and death in America: the right of dying to end their lives voluntarily, the appropriate treatment of persons in vegetative states, the definition of the boundary between life and death, the repackaging of grief as disease, and the politics of memorials. In each instance, he asks what the debates that swirl around these topics tell us about how our views of death respond to wider societal changes, from technological innovations to shifts in the American political landscape. At the end, Joralemon turns to the questions of death denial by asking: What do these death disputes indicate about how Americans manage mortality, now and into the future? --Adapted from publisher description "Anthropologist Donald Joralemon asks whether America is really, as many scholars claim, a death-denying culture that prefers to quarantine the sick in hospitals and the elderly in nursing homes. His answer is a reasoned "no." In his view, Americans are merely struggling to find cultural scripts for the exceptional conditions of dying that our social world and medical technologies have thrust upon us. The book -is written in the first-person for a broad audience by a senior anthropologist, making it an authoritative yet accessible textbook for courses on death and dying and American culture; -includes contemporary debates about highly visible cases, the definition of death, the status of human remains, aging, and the medicalization of grief; -demonstrates persuasively that arguments over death and dying are in fact arguments about what it means to be human in modern America"-- Provided by publisher.