Doctoral Dissertation Research: Crisis and community response in death and grieving practices

博士论文研究：死亡和悲伤实践中的危机和社区反应

• 批准号: 2116231
• 负责人: A. Cymene Howe
• 金额: $ 2.5万
• 依托单位: William Marsh Rice University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-07-01 至 2022-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2116231&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Crisis; community

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).This doctoral dissertation project considers how a crisis has prompted changes in the ways people and communities care for their dead. With social distancing protocols prohibiting in-person funerals during the COVID-19 pandemic, much attention has focused on overflowing mortuary facilities and the use of technology in modified mourning rituals. However, far less consideration has been given to natural deathcare practices that take place outside of typical settings such as hospitals or funeral homes. This ethnographic research project examines the work of end-of-life care providers, many of whom are amateur or paraprofessional caregivers providing physical, emotional, and informational support during the dying process. The research advances theory in political and medical anthropology by examining whether and how natural deathcare affects concepts of death and the process of mourning and how individual and community attributes interact with deathcare to affect these outcomes. In addition to training a doctoral student, the findings will be disseminated broadly to diverse stakeholders and audiences. Specifically, this study examines how COVID-19 has impacted alternative ways of handling and framing death. It goes beyond a typical emphasis on virtual funerary practices to ask how individuals and communities committed to natural deathcare have adapted to the crisis. The research asks (1) whether and how experiences of crisis transform deathcare, (2) what rituals this involves, (3) how natural deathcare is positioned among alternatives to serve grieving communities, and 4) how these factors intersect to affect concepts and expressions of death. The study is being conducted in communities with diverse alternative practices to understand how community-level factors affect the availability and concepts of deathcare. Additionally, the research investigates whether and how individual social identity affects end-of-life choices and outcomes, to provide a nuanced understand of shifting definitions in what constitutes a good death. The investigators use participant observation, interviews, focus groups, and archival research among deathcare practitioners, students, and deathcare clients, and within the context of a natural cemetery collective. Findings from this research provide insight into diverse experiences of the pandemic and the significant cultural shifts the pandemic has inspired within some communities. This research contributes to recent anthropological calls to expand how death is understood and to improve institutionalized experiences of death by exploring the contributions of external caregivers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项全部或部分根据2021年美国救援计划法案（公法117-2）资助。该博士论文项目考虑了危机如何促使人们和社区照顾死者的方式发生变化。随着社交距离协议在COVID-19大流行期间禁止亲自葬礼，人们的注意力集中在太平间设施的过度使用和在修改的哀悼仪式中使用技术。然而，很少有人考虑在医院或殡仪馆等典型环境之外进行的自然死亡护理实践。这个民族志研究项目探讨了临终关怀提供者的工作，其中许多人是业余或准专业护理人员，在临终过程中提供身体，情感和信息支持。该研究通过研究自然死亡护理是否以及如何影响死亡和哀悼过程的概念，以及个人和社区属性如何与死亡护理相互作用以影响这些结果，推进了政治和医学人类学的理论。除了培训一名博士生外，研究结果将广泛传播给不同的利益攸关方和受众。具体而言，本研究探讨了COVID-19如何影响处理和框定死亡的替代方式。它超越了对虚拟葬礼实践的典型强调，询问致力于自然死亡护理的个人和社区如何适应危机。该研究询问：（1）危机经历是否以及如何改变死亡护理，（2）这涉及哪些仪式，（3）自然死亡护理如何定位于为悲伤社区服务的替代方案中，以及4）这些因素如何交叉影响死亡的概念和表达。这项研究正在具有不同替代做法的社区进行，以了解社区层面的因素如何影响死亡护理的可用性和概念。此外，该研究还调查了个人社会身份是否以及如何影响临终选择和结果，以提供对什么是好的死亡的变化定义的微妙理解。调查人员使用参与者观察，访谈，焦点小组和档案研究之间的临终关怀从业人员，学生和临终关怀客户，并在一个自然的墓地集体的背景下。这项研究的结果提供了对大流行病的不同经历以及大流行病在一些社区内激发的重大文化转变的深入了解。这项研究有助于最近的人类学呼吁扩大如何理解死亡，并通过探索外部照顾者的贡献，以改善制度化的死亡经验。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。