Death Café, Bauman and striving for human connection in ‘liquid times’

Gitte H Koksvik,Naomi Richards

doi:10.1080/13576275.2021.1918655

Gitte H Koksvik, Naomi Richards

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2021.1918655

Copy DOI

Abstract

ABSTRACT The death-positive movement, the latest enactment of the death awareness movement, posits that contemporary societies are suffering under a ‘death taboo’ and that people should talk more about death. In this article, we analyse an international social franchise aligned with this movement – Death Café – whereby strangers gather in a café setting to talk informally about death and dying. Drawing on interviews conducted with 49 Death Café organisers in 34 countries, we apply the theories of Zygmunt Bauman to interpret this social initiative. Our analysis shows that the way in which the temporary café space is staged for atmosphere and attended by strangers who engage in ‘taboo’ conversation, all serves to engender feelings of intimacy and connection. Rather than viewing Death Cafés as primarily spaces for death awareness-raising, we interpret them as paradigmatic examples of what Bauman termed ‘peg’ communities, constructed to assuage the loneliness experienced by individuals in liquid modernity.

Highlights

The current cultural climate, at least in the Anglosphere, is ripe with both social and formal death education and awareness-raising initiatives
We argue that Death Cafés are paradigmatic examples of what Bauman termed ‘peg’ communities, constructed to assuage the loneliness experienced by individuals in liquid modernity
According to Crettaz (2010, p. 124) who ran the original Café Mortels in Switzerland, café conversations functioned as nothing less than a conduit through which attendees were ‘born into authenticity’. This special quality of death talk was reflected by the Death Café organisers we interviewed, for whom it was said to bring the conversation to a ‘human level’ or who expressed that ‘being willing to talk about death and dying is about being willing to connect with people’ (Organiser, North America)

Summary

Introduction

The current cultural climate, at least in the Anglosphere, is ripe with both social and formal death education and awareness-raising initiatives Some of these include Death Over Dinner (Hebb, 2018); Order of The Good Death (The Order of the Good Death, 2019); Death Salon (Death Salon, 2019); and the focus of this article, Death Café (Impermanence, 2011). Death positivity is the continuation of a discourse that has been ongoing for nearly 50 years We consider it to be the latest incarnation of a social movement that began in the 1970s, spearheaded and popularised by the likes of psychiatrist Kübler-Ross (1969), who promoted the 5 stages of grief model, and Mitford (1963), who critiqued the profiteering of the American funeral industry. Advocates argue that talking about and engaging more actively with mortality, including end-of-life planning, is to be encouraged because it holds significant

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion