Mechanisms of Recalling or Forgetting Death: A Qualitative Study
Journal Title: Strategic Research on Social Problems in Iran - Year 2022, Vol 10, Issue 4
Abstract
Introduction: As a long-standing mystery for humans, death has been always considered by various scholars and schools. Sociologists, for their part, have explored death and its aftermath from a variety of perspectives. Still, the sociology of death is full of unexplored theoretical realms, the exploration of which will undoubtedly give researchers significant insights into society. The issue of death is not due to the eternal question of immortality alone. It is, in fact, one of the essential points of civilization struggles, in which the power of any civilization to give meaning to social life is challenged. The way a society deals with the concept of death and dying gives an index that can measure the degree of any semantic systems since facing death can destroy everyday life's normative and cognitive practices and distort the socially constructed images of reality. There has been a constant conflict between the two major narratives of Islamic tradition and modernity on the issue of death. On the one hand, life has a broad meaning and death is an inevitable transition to the next stage. In the discourse of modernity, the meaning given to social life is associated with neglecting death and institutionalizing this negligence in social structures. Modernity is thus confused when facing the events that inevitably take death out of the state of structural secrecy and expose it as an inescapable truth. Materials and Methods: This article sought to answer what mechanisms people use intentionally or unintentionally in their lived experiences to recall or neglect death. For this purpose, a qualitative phenomenological study was designed and conducted. A purposive sample of 23 people, who had significant lived experiences in facing death, was drawn. Then, phenomenological interviews were done with them. A voluntary assistant in a cancer treatment center was one of them and a voluntary doctor in war was another. A veteran wartime commander was also another interviewee. The four interviewees had done extensive religious and philosophical studies with published papers and books on death and dying. There was also a documentary film director, who had worked in the field of death experiences of other people. An old university professor, who was a Darwinist and a participant of monastic circles associated with death and ghosts, as well as a man with a long experience of loneliness were among the interviewees. Four others had a high-risk job or situation, i.e., working in a mine neutralization company and being already severely hurt, being threatened to death by terrorist groups, narrowly escaping previous assassinations, and struggling with cancer. Seven people had experienced the sudden loss of either their parents, children, or friends in earthquakes, accidents, or suicides, which had then inspired them to think about death. The researcher was also given a chance to interview with a lady whose spouse was a nuclear scientist assassinated by Israeli terror squads. The interview scripts were analyzed via thematic analysis. Discussion of results and conclusion: The results were expressed in two categories: death recall mechanisms and death neglect mechanisms. Eight main themes formed the subcategories of the former, which were witnessing the death of others, mental mutation evocative of death, near-death experiences, social structures reminiscent of death, remembrance of death in interpersonal relationships, cultural consumption reminiscent of death, religious ceremonies reminiscent of death, and cautious recalling of death to escape any disliked circumstances. The latter, i.e., death neglect mechanisms, contained 4 main themes of death neglect: death neglection stemming from everyday life, dysfunctional attitudes toward death, avoidance of death ceremonies, and avoidance of death reminder conversations. Finally, using the findings on the Corona pandemic, some considerations were made for the growth of death consciousness in the Iranian society.
Authors and Affiliations
Abdolhosein Kalantari* Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran,Iran abkalantari@ut. ac. ir Zahra Shahrzad PhD Candidate, Faculty of Social Sciences and Economics, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran zahra. shahrzad@gmail. com Hamid Parsania Professor, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran h. parsania@yahoo. com
Keywords
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- EP ID EP704984
- DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.22108/srspi.2022.132600.1777
- Views 51
- Downloads 0
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