Geography Of Death Research Articles

Extinctionscapes: Spatializing the commodification of animal lives and afterlives in conservation landscapes

ABSTRACT This article advances a more-than-human perspective on geographies of death and dying, engaging with extinctionscapes as spaces where the memorialization of nonhuman life generates affective and commodifiable experiences with species loss in conservation landscapes. Bringing geographical concepts, such as absence-presence, into conversation with recent literature on lively commodities, we describe how animals at the threshold of life and death are made to work for conservation as well as how their afterlives are subjected to ongoing forms of commodification through acts of memorialization in landscape. Specifically, our analysis focuses on the stories of three rhinos at a conservancy in Kenya to consider the themes of death and dying, value, and commodification in relation to endangered species conservation. By situating the lives and afterlives of these rhinos in the history of settler colonialism and capitalism in Kenya, we examine how commodification, as a social and cultural process, becomes entangled with the corporeal and discorporate lives of animals and contributes to the reproduction of historic injustices through extinctionscapes. Ultimately, we argue for ongoing critical engagement with the amorphous borderland of life and death in geographies of conservation, which represents an important space of biopolitics and commodification.

Geographies of death and memory: shrines dedicated to African saints and spectral deities in India

ABSTRACT African presence in the western Indian states of Gujarat and Kerala is remembered and revived by different subaltern communities through the palimpsestic spatial layering of sacred landscapes and geographies of death. In the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, there are several small mazars (shrines) dedicated to deceased African martyrs and saints. In addition to these small shrines, there are also a few mausoleums from the sixteenth century dedicated to African martyrs. On the other hand, in coastal Kochi in southern India, African memoryscapes survive through shrines dedicated to Kappiris (Africans) in Hindu sacred groves where benevolent African spirits continue to intercede in the lives of their devotees. While African cultural memories in the states of Gujarat and Kerala are fragmented, these dispersed and far-flung sacred edifices constructed to commemorate the lives of deceased Africans serve as active sites of memory. Employing ethnographic methodologies, I demonstrate how multiple narratives of African pasts are constructed by invested stakeholders through ritual transactions and memory-making practices at these spirited topographies in Kerala and Gujarat.

And now the end is near: enlivening and politizising the geographies of dying, death and mourning

A new body of scholarship on death and loss has emerged as a sub-field within social and cultural geography. This work has done much to draw geographers’ attention to questions of death, dying and remembrance and likewise to bring a spatial perspective to interdisciplinary death studies. Whilst deathscapes have been framed within geographical work as incorporating material, embodied and virtual spaces, to date Anglo-American and European studies have tended to focus on the literal and representational spaces of the end of life, sites of bodily remains and memorialization. With a number of important exceptions, embodied and dynamic experiences of dying, death and survival have been absent within the geographies of death. This special section aims to broaden the scope, and to resist simple dichotomies of life and death, and to be especially attentive to the embodied and visceral experiences, practices and processes of dying, death and survival. In this introduction, we explore themes of dying/s, death/s and survival/s across varied international, national and cultural contexts, as discussed in the contributing papers and raised by the politics of recent events. This collection offers an expanded and enlivened approach to research, documenting facing death/s, journeys at the end of life, living through, on and with life-limiting illnesses, living with loss and the interconnected spatialities that these experiences and practices evoke for individuals and wider social groups. They open up new spaces of P/politics and emotions, challenging limited political and medicalized frames. The papers also raise methodological questions and present a challenging agenda for future research. This special section grew out of sessions we organized for the 2012 RGS-IBG Annual International Conference at the University of Edinburgh.

Strange Fruit: Brazil, Necropolitics, and the Transnational Resonance of Torture and Death

This article critically interrogates the epidemic of death squad murders in Salvador as a phenomenon uniquely imbued with multiple layers of racialized, gendered, sexed, and classed meaning, simultaneously territorialized as a continuous part of the landscape of inequality and black suffering in Brazil and transnationally and cross-temporally defined by its connections with the geopolitical landscape of torture, the United States' war on terror, and legacies of colonialism and slavery in the Americas. The article examines resonances between death squad murders in Bahia, the transnational exchange of torture practices between the United States and Latin America, the contemporary use of torture against “terrorist” bodies by the United States (exemplified by Abu Ghraib), and the legacy of anti-black lynching in the United States. Through this discussion, the article suggests that the geography of death in Brazil has everything to do with transnational necropolitics that target the black/queer/terrorist/female/other body.

Geography, Death, and Finitude

Despite growing interest in the geographies of death, loss, and remembrance, comparatively little geographical research has been devoted either to the historical and cultural practices of death, or to an adequate conceptualisation of finitude. Responding to these absences, in this paper I argue for the importance of the notion of finitude within the history and philosophy of geographical thought. Situating finitude initially in the context of the work of Torsten Hägerstrand and Richard Hartshorne, the notion is argued to be both productive of a geographical ethics, and as epistemologically constitutive of phenomenological apprehensions of ‘earth’ and ‘world’. In order to better grasp the sense and genealogy of finitude, I turn to the work of Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Georges Bataille. These authors are drawn upon precisely because their writings present powerful conceptual frameworks which demonstrate the intimate relations between spatiality, death, and finitude. At the same time, their writings are critically interrogated in the light of perhaps the most important aspect of the conceptual history of finitude: the way in which it has been articulated as a site of anthropocentric distinction. I argue for a critical deconstruction of this anthropocentric basis to finitude; a deconstruction which raises a series of profound questions over the ethics, normativities, and understandings of responsibility shaping contemporary ethical geographies of the human and nonhuman. In so doing, I demonstrate the geographical importance of the notion of finitude for a variety of arenas of debate which include: phenomenological understandings of spatiality; the biopolitical boundaries drawn between human and animal; and contemporary theorisations of corporeality, materiality, and hospitality.

Spiritual Care in the Last Phase of Life: A Comparison between the Church of Sweden and the Church of Finland

This article deals with the Church of Sweden and the Church of Finland and their spiritual support for parishioners during their end-of-life phase. Support for the dying seemed uncommon in both countries, while most parishes offered support for the bereaved. The Finnish respondents expressed more confidence in their spiritual role than did the Swedes. This may have to do with the role of the churches in their respective countries and the varying geographies of death.

Reviews/Comptes rendus

The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadienVolume 38, Issue 4 p. 369-381 Reviews/Comptes rendus First published: December 1994 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-0064.1994.tb01921.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract Book reviewed in this article: The Land Transformed, 1800–1891. Vol 2 of The Historical Atlas of Canada, edited R. LOUIS GENTILCORE (GEOFFREY J. MATTHEWS, Cartographer) A Scholar's Guide to Geographical Writing on the American and Canadian Past, edited by MICHAEL P. CONZEN, THOMAS A. RUNMEY, and GRAEME WYNN. Continental America, 1800–1867. Vol. 2 of The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, by DONALD W. MEINIG. Impacts of Sea-Level Rise on European Coastal Lowlands, edited by MICHAEL J. TOOLEY and SASKIA JELGERSMA. The Geography of Death: Mortality Atlas of British Columbia, 1985–1989, Edited by LESLIE T. FOSTER and MICHAEL C.R. EDGELL. Teaching Geography in Higher Education: A Manual of Good Practice, JOHN R. GOLD, ALAN JENKINS, ROGER LEE, JANICE MONK, JUDITH RILEY, IFAN SHEPHERD, and DAVID UNWIN. The Shape of the City: Toronto Struggles with Modern Planning, by JOHN SEWELL, with a foreword by Jane Jacobs. Géographie et ethnographie en Grèce ancienne, par CHRISTIAN JACOB, Armand Colin, Paris L'Empire des Cartes: Approche théorique de la cartographie à travers l'histoire par CHRISTIAN JACOB, Albin Michel Trouble in the Woods: Forest Policy and Social Conflict in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, by L. ANDERS SANDBERG. The First Immigrants from Asia: A Population History of the North American Indians, by A.J. JAFFE. Volume38, Issue4December 1994Pages 369-381 RelatedInformation

End of life and dimensions of civil society: The Church of Sweden in a new geography of death

Over the past 10 – 15 years the geography of death has changed in Sweden. Dying and end-of-life care has to a great extent been moved out of hospitals back into the local community, and renewed attention is given to dying and spiritual care issues. Yet, at the same time, a new ideological investment in civil society has taken place, which ascribes caring and networking qualities and resources that may not always be encountered in practice. This article discusses the implications of this situation, by focusing on the role of the Church of Sweden, as an actor in civil society, and on its support for parishioners in their end-of-life phase. Questions discussed are: what role do local church parishes play in the care of dying parishioners, and what is the meaning of parish belonging and networks in this context? Results from a study of all parishes in two Swedish, medium-sized, communities indicate that support for dying parishioners is surprisingly uncommon, while most parishes offer support for the bereaved. The article argues that this may be an indication of failing resources, on the part of the parishes, to meet the needs of these contrasting situations. While a relational logic motivates support for the dying parishioner, support for the bereaved seems to follow a service logic, one with which the representatives of the parishes are more at ease. Networks and personal relationships seemed to be the heart of the matter and the concept of social capital was used to capture this phenomenon. In a more general sense, however, the results illustrate the partly contradictory roles and strategies that the Church has adopted in order to face different interpretations of civil society and ongoing societal change in Sweden.

Death out of State: Arizonans who die Elsewhere

Many individuals in America die in distant states, sometimes quite far from what is considered their residence. This study employs an analysis of death certificates in order to explore the geography of death away from home. The state of Arizona, 807 residents of which died out-of-state in 1984, is used as a case study. This study reveals that most out-of-state deaths did not occur randomly around the United States, but rather occurred in adjacent states, and in those states that have strong cultural and economic ties to Arizona. Most deaths occurred in summer months, when most Arizonans can be expected to be out of the state. Finally, it appears that minorities do not travel much out of Arizona, except for Navajo Indians, who are a very special case.

Jesus the Martyr

Men and women martyred for their faith form a coherent and distinctive group—from Socrates and Stephen, through Joan of Arc, Savonarola and Thomas More, down to Dietrich Bonhoeffer in our own day. Violent death came to each in such a way that we can classify them all with Jesus.Particular circumstances may allow us to match their martyrdoms with his passion and crucifixion. At times betrayal by former friends or similar forms of treachery led to arrest and imprisonment. The trials which preceded the death penalty frequently centred on some fatal question. Did Thomas More wish to deprive Henry VIII of the title which Parliament had granted him? How would Jesus answer when the high priest asked him : ‘Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’ (Mark 14:61). Finally, many martyrs shared the same geography of death with Jesus—public execution. Some were, of course, butchered in their prison cells, or like Bonhoeffer led away to the sinister secrecy of a Nazi hanging. But Joan of Arc died in the Rouen market-place, Savonarola outside the old Palace in Florence, and Thomas More on Tower Hill.Granted these and other similarities, we need, nevertheless, to be sensitive to much that gives Jesus’ passion and death its own particular profile. The differences go beyond the obvious and massive fact that no one even alleges that the other martyrs have reconciled the entire human race with God. We must not let other notable contrasts slip out of sight. Let me examine one of these.

The Geography of Death in England and Wales, 1960

The Geography of Death in England and Wales, 1960