Publication details
Men, Death and Grief in the Czech Context
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| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Little is known about men´s approach to death, funeral rites and grief generally. Even more so this applies to the period of State Socialism and the region of East-Central Europe. The presentation aims to explore potential links connecting masculinities with representations of (non)grieving men coping with death of their kin and normalizing expectations related to such experiences and practices. Institutionalisation of death and related service provisions will be targeted as well focusing on their gendered character. Displacement of death in our culture (late modern Western, Christian), associations of grief with effeminate conduct and conventional masculinities with control of emotions on the one hand, and expected rational (patriarchal) management of related rituals within families on the other provides a framework for further exploration of the topic under focus. Inspired by a current research project of the author on perinatal loss in the Czech context, and her long time research involvement with critical studies on men and masculinities as well as more recent engagement with sociology of health and medicine - the presentation will focus on a comparison of current trends with (very limited) data on men and death and grief in the late State Socialist Czech era. The approach is inspired by qualitative sociological methods selecting particular relevant cases and interpreting them critically from the perspective of respective gender order and other relevant relations re/producing the status quo in social relations in the historically specific time. Particular relation of men and masculinities to death, funeral rites and patterns of grieving will be explored in the light of current practices. The research field (and the proposed presentation) covers examples from both the private sphere (fathers/sons, families) and institutionalised dealing with death and dying, such as funeral services. The private realm will be represented by narrative accounts of parental loss thematising men/fathers. The public sphere will utilize representations of the funeral service employees “funebráci” (men - undertakers) that embody culturally strongly loaded image (very low social status, high level of precariousness and public scorn). On the other side of the spectrum, there is the influential literary and cult film character of “spalovač mrtvol” (The Cremator, 1967, 1968) embodying the structural power and evil with reference to the World World II and explicit parallels to the totalitarian regime of Czech State Socialism. Masculinities and their performance or doing gender play a significant role in both of these analysed cases representing institutionalized treatment of death. |
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