Death, mourning commemoration in late twentieth-century Scotland: the impact of medicalisation and rationalisation on everyday death practices. (360G-Wellcome-081352_Z_06_Z)

Passing Time - Death in Late Twentieth Century Scotland The focus of this research project will be on changing practices surrounding death, the 'ultimate' rite of passage. In particular, it will consider the impact of the medicalisation and rationalisation of death and dying on social attitudes in a period when healthcare practice was improving and life expectancies increased. These broad themes are investigated within a tightly focussed geographical area and time frame - namely late twentieth century Scotland. The study will address 3 sets of key research questions: What has been the impact of rapid and fundamental change in terms of demography, medicalisation and secularisation on Scottish death practices? How far has the handling of death been a metaphor of attitudes towards wider social arrangements concerning the community, gender relations and the family? How far do the essential themes identified by the sociologists like Schilling have a resonance in Scottish experience? These include: privatisation and rationalisation in the organisation of death; shrinkage in scope of sacred in terms of experience of death; fundamental shift in corporeal boundaries, symbolic and actual which separate dead from living. What patterns have evolved in terms of gendered death? How far, for example, has the process of 'defeminising' the management of death been challenged by the hospice movement?