Pratices Surrounding the Dead in French-speaking Belgium: Rituals in Kitlike Form
(2003) The Handbook of Death and Dying — ISBN: [0-7619-2514-7], published
Files
No attached file found for this publication.
Details
- Authors
- Abstract
- As in other European countries, funeral practices have changed in Belgium in recent decades. In urban areas, traditional practices, including wakes, funeral hanging, mourning clothes, and funeral processions behind the hearse, have almost completely disappeared, and new practices have emerged. Much has been said and written about this evolution, which has generated a number of questions and worries. For many years, researchers in the social sciences have analyzed it in a very critical way, warning about its negative consequences. they have argued that the disappearance of traditional funerary practices is a sign that people nowadays refuse to confront the reality of death. This evolution was associated with a rejection of traditions and rituals, with the disappearance of religious practices and beliefs, and with the disentanglement of social and family links. Emerging funerary practices were suspected of being empty and ineffective and were accused of exposing individuals to an everlasting grief. This thesis was popular in public opinion too, and as a result several initiatives were taken to confront what was called the "taboo of death" in an attempt to "resocialize death". Slowly, however, probably partly as a result of these social initiatives and partly because new funerary practices became more and more widespread and socially accepted, this taboo thesis has been questioned.
- Affiliations
Citations
Vandendorpe, F. (2003). Pratices Surrounding the Dead in French-speaking Belgium: Rituals in Kitlike Form. In C. F. Bryant, C. K. Edgley, M. R. Leming, D. L. Peck, and K. L. Sanstrom ed(s) (ed.), The Handbook of Death and Dying. Sage Publications. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/25580