The end of the beginning: A sociological analysis of death at birth
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| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Little is known about perinatal death in the Czech Republic. The presented work-in-progress fieldwork based in the Czech context is framed and inspired by studies from the British context and local conceptual reflection. It brings insight into the changing mode of approaches to mental health and relations between the private and the public, individualization and privatization of death and thus contribute to the discussion on how personal troubles may become public issues as the core topics of the conference. The research study thematises gendered character of the experience (Komaromy 2007, Earle et al. 2009), the institutional setting and symbolic context of such “inappropriate” event, and acknowledges social structure differentiations (Howarth 2007). The Czech Republic represents a very secular, post socialist country, with top ranking medical care in biomedical standards. Nevertheless, issues of death, bereavement and associated rituals have been displaced to the very edge of both social policy and public debate, and shared individual experience. The author explores a diversity of empirical material from her ongoing qualitative inquiry. The presentation concentrates on perinatal loss representing a very specific and extreme recess in the displacement of death respect. For example, the rules and practice for burying bodies (still born, prematurely born or miscarried in later stages of pregnancy), when these are often treated as biological waste and disposed accordingly. The appeal to “healthy population” infiltrates medical professional instructions directed authoritatively to parents concerning treatment of embryos with congenital diseases or “defects incompatible with life”, which forms the atmosphere for dealing with death itself. |
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