Postmortal Society

<p>Throughout history mankind has struggled to reconcile itself with the inescapability of its own mortality. This book explores the themes of immortality and survivalism in contemporary culture shedding light on the varied and ingenious ways in which humans and human societies aspire to confront and deal with death or even seek to outlive it as it were. </p><p>Bringing together theoretical and empirical work from internationally acclaimed scholars across a range of disciplines <em>Postmortal Society</em> offers studies of the strategies adopted and means available in modern society for trying to ‘cheat’ death or prolong life the status of the dead in the modern Western world the effects of beliefs that address the terror of death in other areas of life the ‘immortalisation’ of celebrities the veneration of the dead in virtual worlds symbolic immortality through work the implications of understanding ‘immortality’ in chemical-neuronal terms and the apparent paradox of our greater reverence for the dead in increasingly secular capitalist societies. </p><p>A fascinating collection of studies that explore humanity’s attempts to deal with its own mortality in the modern age this book will appeal to sociologists anthropologists philosophers and scholars of cultural studies with interests in death and dying.</p>