Bonds Of The Dead

Despite popular images of priests seeking enlightenment in snow-covered mountain temples, the central concern of Japanese Buddhism is death. For that reason, Japanese Buddhism’s social and economic base has long been in mortuary services—a base now threatened by public debate over the status, treatment, and location of the dead. Bonds of the Dead explores the crisis brought on by this debate and investigates what changing burial forms reveal about the ways temple Buddhism is perceived and propagated in contemporary Japan. Mark Rowe offers a crucial account of how religious, political, social, and economic forces in the twentieth century led to the emergence of new funerary practices in Japan and how, as a result, the care of the dead has become the most fundamental challenge to the continued existence of Japanese temple Buddhism. Far from marking the death of Buddhism in Japan, Rowe argues, funerary Buddhism reveals the tradition at its most vibrant. Combining ethnographic research with doctrinal considerations, this is a fascinating book for anyone interested in Japanese society and religion.

First published in 1996. This new book gives voice to an emerging consensus among bereavement scholars that our understanding of the grief process needs to be expanded. The dominant 20th century model holds that the function of grief and mourning is to cut bonds with the deceased, thereby freeing the survivor to reinvest in new relationships in the present. Pathological grief has been defined in terms of holding on to the deceased. Close examination reveals that this model is based more on the cultural values of modernity than on any substantial data of what people actually do. Presenting data from several populations, 22 authors - among the most respected in their fields - demonstrate that the health resolution of grief enables one to maintain a continuing bond with the deceased. Despite cultural disapproval and lack of validation by professionals, survivors find places for the dead in their on-going lives and even in their communities. Such bonds are not denial: the deceased can provide resources for enriched functioning in the present. Chapters examine widows and widowers, bereaved children, parents and siblings, and a population previously excluded from bereavement research: adoptees and their birth parents. Bereavement in Japanese culture is also discussed, as are meanings and implications of this new model of grief. Opening new areas of research and scholarly dialogue, this work provides the basis for significant developments in clinical practice in the field.

What would you say to a deceased loved one if they could come back for one day? What if you can’t just ‘move on’ from grief? At Home with Grief: Continued Bonds with the Deceased chronicles Blake Paxton’s autoethnographic study of his continued relationship with his deceased mother. In the 90s, Silverman, Klass, and Nickman argued that after the death of a loved one, the bond does not have to be broken and the bereaved can find many ways to connect with memories of the dead. Building on their work, many other bereavement scholars have discussed the importance of not treating these relationships as pathological and have suggested that more research is needed in this area of grief studies. However, very few studies have addressed the communal and everyday subjective experiences of continuing bonds with the deceased, as well as how our relationship with our grief changes in the long term. In this book, Blake Paxton shows how a community in southern Illinois continues a relationship with one deceased individual more than ten years after her death. Through this gripping autoethnographic account of his mother’s struggles with a rare cancer, her death, and his struggles with sexuality, he poses possibilities of what might happen when cultural prescriptions for grief are challenged, and how continuing bonds with the dead may help us continue or restore broken bonds with the living.

Explores the variety of bonds that are formed between writers and the figure of the dead lover

Can one man save the Titanic? March 1912. A mysterious man appears aboard the Titanic on its doomed voyage. His mission? To save the ship. The result? A world where the United States never entered World War I, thus launching the secret history of the 20th Century. April 2012. Joseph Kennedy - grand-nephew of John F. Kennedy - lives in an America occupied in the East by Greater Germany and on the West Coast by Imperial Japan. He is one of six people who can restore history to its rightful order -- even though it would mean his own death. "A magnificent alternate history, set against the backdrop of one of the the greatest maritime disasters." Library Journal “Imaginative, monolithic, action-packed… The reader will not be disappointed.” — Bookseller and Publisher "Time travel, airships, the Titanic, Roswell ... Kowalski builds a decidedly original creature that blends military science fiction, conspiracy theory, alternate history, and even a dash of romance." Publishers Weekly "Kowalski effortlessly smashes together high art and grand adventure in this alt-history juggernaut." John Birmingham, acclaimed author of Weapons of Choice "Exciting action, twisty and ingenious characterisation, and complicated time-travel plotting, deftly handled." S.M. Stirling, NYT bestselling author of The Tears of the Sun "A non-stop chase that takes place across two thousand miles ... and one hundred years of perdurant time." Walter Jon Williams, NYT bestselling author of Deep State

The introduction of the continuing bonds model of grief near the end of the 20th century revolutionized the way researchers and practitioners understand bereavement. Continuing Bonds in Bereavement is the most comprehensive, state-of-the-art collection of developments in this field since the inception of the model. As a multi-perspectival, nuanced, and forward-looking anthology, it combines innovations in clinical practice with theoretical and empirical advancements. The text traces grief in different cultural settings, asking questions about the truth in our interactions with the dead and showing how new cultural developments like social media change the ways we relate to those who have died. Together, the book’s four sections encourage practitioners and scholars in both bereavement studies and in other fields to broaden their understanding of the concept of continuing bonds.

Continuing Bonds with the Dead explores the redemptive literary achievements of five nineteenth-century American authors who lost a son or daughter. In it, Harold K. Bush illuminates America's evolving cultural attitudes about death and grief.

A serial killer terrorizes a small California town in this gripping thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag. California, 1985—Four children and young teacher Anne Navarre make a gruesome discovery: a partially buried female body, her eyes and mouth glued shut. A serial killer is at large, and the very bonds that hold their idyllic town together are about to be tested to the breaking point. Tasked with finding the killer, FBI investigator Vince Leone employs a new and controversial FBI technique called “profiling,” which plunges him into the lives of the four children—and the young teacher whose need to uncover the truth is as intense as his own. But as new victims are found and pressure from the media grows, Vince and Anne find themselves circling the same small group of local suspects, unsure if those who suffer most are the victims themselves—or those close to the killer, blissfully unaware that someone very near to them is a murderous psychopath…

First published in 1996. This new book gives voice to an emerging consensus among bereavement scholars that our understanding of the grief process needs to be expanded. The dominant 20th century model holds that the function of grief and mourning is to cut bonds with the deceased, thereby freeing the survivor to reinvest in new relationships in the present. Pathological grief has been defined in terms of holding on to the deceased. Close examination reveals that this model is based more on the cultural values of modernity than on any substantial data of what people actually do. Presenting data from several populations, 22 authors - among the most respected in their fields - demonstrate that the health resolution of grief enables one to maintain a continuing bond with the deceased. Despite cultural disapproval and lack of validation by professionals, survivors find places for the dead in their on-going lives and even in their communities. Such bonds are not denial: the deceased can provide resources for enriched functioning in the present. Chapters examine widows and widowers, bereaved children, parents and siblings, and a population previously excluded from bereavement research: adoptees and their birth parents. Bereavement in Japanese culture is also discussed, as are meanings and implications of this new model of grief. Opening new areas of research and scholarly dialogue, this work provides the basis for significant developments in clinical practice in the field.

The Andean idea of death differs markedly from the Western view. In the Central Andes, particularly the highlands, death is not conceptually separated from life, nor is it viewed as a permanent state. People, animals, and plants simply transition from a soft, juicy, dynamic life to drier, more lasting states, like dry corn husks or mummified ancestors. Death is seen as an extension of vitality. Living with the Dead in the Andes considers recent research by archaeologists, bioarchaeologists, ethnographers, and ethnohistorians whose work reveals the diversity and complexity of the dead-living interaction. The book’s contributors reap the salient results of this new research to illuminate various conceptions and treatments of the dead: “bad” and “good” dead, mummified and preserved, the body represented by art or effigies, and personhood in material and symbolic terms. Death does not end or erase the emotional bonds established in life, and a comprehensive understanding of death requires consideration of the corpse, the soul, and the mourners. Lingering sentiment and memory of the departed seems as universal as death itself, yet often it is economic, social, and political agendas that influence the interactions between the dead and the living. Nine chapters written by scholars from diverse countries and fields offer data-rich case studies and innovative methodologies and approaches. Chapters include discussions on the archaeology of memory, archaeothanatology (analysis of the transformation of the entire corpse and associated remains), a historical analysis of postmortem ritual activities, and ethnosemantic-iconographic analysis of the living-dead relationship. This insightful book focuses on the broader concerns of life and death.