PSY 1200 Chapter Notes - Chapter Chapter 17: 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake And Tsunami, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Breitbart News
28 May 2023
School
Department
Course
Professor
1 The Death
System and
Cultural Contexts
THE DEATH SYSTEM
AND ITS CULTURAL
VARIATIONS
Robert Kastenbaum (2004, 2009, 2012) emphasizes that a number of
components compose the death system in any culture. These components include
the following:
● People. Because death is inevitable, everyone is involved with death at
some point, both their own death and the deaths of others. Some
individuals have a more systematic role with death, such as those who
work in the funeral industry or belong to the clergy, as well as people
who work in life-threatening contexts, such as firefighters and the police.
● Places or contexts. These include hospitals, funeral homes, cemeteries,
hospices, battlefields, and memorials (such as the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.).
● Times. Death involves times or occasions—such as Memorial Day in the
United States and the Day of the Dead in Mexico—which are set aside to
honor those who have died. Also, anniversaries of disasters such as D-
Day in World War II, 9/11/2001, and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, as well
as the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia that took approximately 100,000
lives, are times when those who died are remembered in special ways
such as ceremonies.
● Objects. Many objects in a culture are associated with death, including
caskets and various colored objects such as clothes, armbands, and
hearses. In the United States black is associated with death, but in China
white is linked to death.
● Symbols. Symbols such as a skull and crossbones, as well as last rites in
the Catholic religion and various religious ceremonies, are connected to
death.
Shown here is some of the damage caused by Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Florida, in
October, 2018, that claimed more than 30 lives. How might people from different cultural
backgrounds view and deal with the death caused by the hurricane?
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Kastenbaum (2004, 2007, 2009, 2012) also argues that the death system serves
certain functions in a culture. These functions include issuing warnings and
predictions (by such providers as weather-forecasting services and the media,
laboratories that analyze test results, and doctors that communicate with patients
and their families); preventing death (by people such as firefighters, the police,
physicians, and researchers who work to improve safety and find cures for
diseases); caring for the dying (by various health professionals such as
physicians and nurses, as well as places where dying individuals are cared for,
such as hospitals or hospices); disposing of the dead (removal of the body,
embalming or cremation, and so on); social consolidation after death (coping
and adapting by family members and friends of the deceased, who often need
support and counseling); making sense of the death (how people in the society
try to understand death); and killing (when, how, and for what reasons people in
the culture can be killed, such as criminals, and whether the death penalty should
be given to some individuals). Figure 1 describes the functions of the death
system in the context of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (Kastenbaum, 2007,
2009).Page 587
Death System
Function
Hurricane
Katrina
Warnings and
predictions
Long-standing
recognition of
vulnerability; clear
advance warning
of impending
disaster.
Preventing death
The hurricane
itself could not be
prevented; loss of
life, social
disorganization,
and massive
property
destruction could
have been sharply
reduced by better
advance planning
and emergency
response.
Caring for the
dying
Medical care was
interrupted and
undermined by
damage to
hospitals and
communications.
