Academic constructions of bereavement

This paper takes the form of a literature review to trace and evaluate the different and changing theoretical, methodological, and disciplinary perspectives through which Western, mainly UK social scientists (i.e., psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists), have sought to understand and address the experience of bereavement during the twentieth century. Such an overview is timely in relation to the rapidly changing nature of Western society around the turn of the century. It examines how the science-based discourse of modernity has shaped such perspectives and the extent to which this has obscured, as well as revealed, important aspects of the bereavement experience. It considers the potential of recent “postmodernist” approaches, which prioritize qualitative methods, and the subjective experiences of bereaved individuals to allow a fuller engagement with this complex and challenging dimension of social life. In so doing it aims to demonstrate how the inadequacy of modernist perspectives in addressing the complexity and diversity of current Western deathways has produced a paradigm shift. It identifies the way such a shift is opening up new areas of inquiry.