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The Craft of Dying, 40th Anniversary Edition: The Modern Face of Death
The fortieth-anniversary edition of a classic and prescient work on death and dying.
Much of today's literature on end-of-life issues overlooks the importance of 1970s social movements in shaping our understanding of death, dying, and the dead body. This anniversary edition of Lyn Lofland's The Craft of Dying begins to repair this omission. Lofland identifies, critiques, and theorizes 1970s death movements, including the Death Acceptance Movement, the Death with Dignity Movement, and the Natural Death movement. All these groups attempted to transform death into a "positive experience," anticipating much of today's death and dying activism.
Lofland turns a sociologist's eye on the era's increased interest in death, considering, among other things, the components of the modern "face of death" and the "craft of dying," the construction of a dying role or identity by those who are dying, and the constraints on their freedom to do this. Lofland wrote just before the AIDS epidemic transformed the landscape of death and dying in the West; many of the trends she identified became the building blocks of AIDS activism in the 1980s and 1990s. The Craft of Dying will help readers understand contemporary death social movements' historical relationships to questions of race, class, gender, and sexuality and is a book that everyone interested in end-of-life politics should read.
Much of today's literature on end-of-life issues overlooks the importance of 1970s social movements in shaping our understanding of death, dying, and the dead body. This anniversary edition of Lyn Lofland's The Craft of Dying begins to repair this omission. Lofland identifies, critiques, and theorizes 1970s death movements, including the Death Acceptance Movement, the Death with Dignity Movement, and the Natural Death movement. All these groups attempted to transform death into a "positive experience," anticipating much of today's death and dying activism.
Lofland turns a sociologist's eye on the era's increased interest in death, considering, among other things, the components of the modern "face of death" and the "craft of dying," the construction of a dying role or identity by those who are dying, and the constraints on their freedom to do this. Lofland wrote just before the AIDS epidemic transformed the landscape of death and dying in the West; many of the trends she identified became the building blocks of AIDS activism in the 1980s and 1990s. The Craft of Dying will help readers understand contemporary death social movements' historical relationships to questions of race, class, gender, and sexuality and is a book that everyone interested in end-of-life politics should read.
- GenresNonfictionSociologyDeath
168 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1978
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 19, 2020
Reading this was so incredibly interesting. As one of the founding books of death nonfiction, this brings something totally new to the table as a primary resource. Lofland discusses how death might be a positive experience, as it's something everybody experiences and can often be an end to pain and other suffering. Though difficult to view death of a loved one, or even your own death, as such, she provides many examples and manners of thinking to help reposition death as something both inescapable and not as scary as we think.
As medicine continues to push back life expectancy, Loflan begins to wonder (and this is largely a part of why it's probably been republished!) just whether extending our lives are worth it. As we get older and we are faced with a slew of diseases and medicines, can we truly argue that pushing off death equivalents a better quality of life? If a cocktail of medicine is what's keeping us alive in a hospital room when we're 80 years old, is it really worth it? For some, absolutely, but for others, we are just painfully prolonging the inevitable.
So, then, she wonders, how do we make death more accessible, and more pleasant? As inferred from above, perhaps we stop relying on life-saving medicine and start relying more on pain medication. Perhaps we allow ourselves and others to make the decision to stop clinging to life. And perhaps we also allow for better palliative care, help those workers, create a more comfortable living--and dying--space.
As such, her book and ideas have clearly created the world in which we Americans tend to live in today, where we're constantly balancing what it means to live, and what it means to die.
Review cross-listed here!
As medicine continues to push back life expectancy, Loflan begins to wonder (and this is largely a part of why it's probably been republished!) just whether extending our lives are worth it. As we get older and we are faced with a slew of diseases and medicines, can we truly argue that pushing off death equivalents a better quality of life? If a cocktail of medicine is what's keeping us alive in a hospital room when we're 80 years old, is it really worth it? For some, absolutely, but for others, we are just painfully prolonging the inevitable.
So, then, she wonders, how do we make death more accessible, and more pleasant? As inferred from above, perhaps we stop relying on life-saving medicine and start relying more on pain medication. Perhaps we allow ourselves and others to make the decision to stop clinging to life. And perhaps we also allow for better palliative care, help those workers, create a more comfortable living--and dying--space.
As such, her book and ideas have clearly created the world in which we Americans tend to live in today, where we're constantly balancing what it means to live, and what it means to die.
Review cross-listed here!
March 31, 2023
What is the Book is About?
That is basically the justification of Thanatology, the subject of this book. The writer covered a lot of her contemporary ground— briefly, but with some interesting insights.
The first of this insight, expounded well in the Part I is the observation of the change of modes and methods in the modern, technologically advanced Western societies.
This change obviously leads to changes regarding how a dying person and people related can choose (and the limitations on such choices by socio-economic conditions) to die, or live for the remaining of the days.
In the Part III, she gave an overview of the then-contemporary movement to help people to die happily.
My Takeaway
The writing is very much descriptive in nature. She tried her best to cast an impartial gaze on the situation. The subject, however, is a cross-school one. This adds some complexity.
Her exploration of modern craft of dying in Part I & Part II were sharp and to the point. It's a must-read, along with The denial of death by Earnest Becker, to understand the modern ideas about the death.
However, her portrayal of the happy death movement in the Part III shows the dismal state of affair in that front. No modern person in their right mind can take Kübler-Ross's “Research” seriously:
Befitting a movement largely composed of presumably secular upper-middle-class professionals, the immortality claim rests not on revelation but on “research.” That is, Kübler-Ross and others know there is an afterlife not as a consequence of any direct communication with a deity but because of “evidence,” such as the following accounts, provided by the recovered “clinically dead.”
This is a dealbreaker for me. Of course, Lofland is mostly a chronicler here, and she had her doubts too.
If I follow advises of one such movement, I'll have a very unhappy death for sure. Instead, I would like to assume a dying role for me which is based on knowledge and emotional understanding of what it means to be dead.
Like the prolonged helplessness of its young, like bisexual reproduction, the inevitable fact of death provides one of the great parameters of the human condition. It can neither be “believed” nor “magicked” nor “scienced” away.
That is basically the justification of Thanatology, the subject of this book. The writer covered a lot of her contemporary ground— briefly, but with some interesting insights.
The first of this insight, expounded well in the Part I is the observation of the change of modes and methods in the modern, technologically advanced Western societies.
This change obviously leads to changes regarding how a dying person and people related can choose (and the limitations on such choices by socio-economic conditions) to die, or live for the remaining of the days.
In the Part III, she gave an overview of the then-contemporary movement to help people to die happily.
My Takeaway
The writing is very much descriptive in nature. She tried her best to cast an impartial gaze on the situation. The subject, however, is a cross-school one. This adds some complexity.
Her exploration of modern craft of dying in Part I & Part II were sharp and to the point. It's a must-read, along with The denial of death by Earnest Becker, to understand the modern ideas about the death.
However, her portrayal of the happy death movement in the Part III shows the dismal state of affair in that front. No modern person in their right mind can take Kübler-Ross's “Research” seriously:
Befitting a movement largely composed of presumably secular upper-middle-class professionals, the immortality claim rests not on revelation but on “research.” That is, Kübler-Ross and others know there is an afterlife not as a consequence of any direct communication with a deity but because of “evidence,” such as the following accounts, provided by the recovered “clinically dead.”
This is a dealbreaker for me. Of course, Lofland is mostly a chronicler here, and she had her doubts too.
If I follow advises of one such movement, I'll have a very unhappy death for sure. Instead, I would like to assume a dying role for me which is based on knowledge and emotional understanding of what it means to be dead.
October 2, 2019
A marvellous book.
My blog on the book:
https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/...
My blog on the book:
https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/...
November 10, 2021
A very brief introduction to the sociology and culture surrounding modern death culture and the social role of 'being a dying person' particularly from the view of the 70s when this was originally written. This is honestly something I picked up on a total whim, but it was pretty neat. The introduction of the 'Positive Death' movement of the time and how its ideological biases were really interesting and informative. I really liked the retrospective on how these biases formed and how they resulted in commercialized hospice care primarily managed by hospitals with the same issues as dying in a hospital.
December 13, 2021
Excellent. This kind of thing is my shit. Like 100 pages of sociological discussion of a cool subject? Mainly focuses of the Happy Death movement of the 1970s (or of today???) Would have wished the aniversary edition intro brought up AIDS, which would have been perfect for me.
May 26, 2025
A dissection of the modern form of dying in excruciating detail as a personal identity fashioning and cultural movement. It’s a different perspective on some recurring philosophies (e.g. dying with dignity) I’ve heard in popular culture and makes links that I did not see, such as with religion.
February 25, 2022
This book was written in the 70’s and reads like a text book. It has interesting facts about the philosophy of death.
December 31, 2024
Fantastic criticism of the good death movement, incredibly contemporary. It’s great that this book was republished.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews