Death, Grief, and Magical Thinking; Reconciling spirituality and science through implicit and explicit knowledge

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The proposed research project investigates the changing perceptions and moral understandings of death,bereavement, religion and spirituality, with an ethnographic focus on the different ways that bereavement isexperienced and understood in contemporary Britain. An increasing number of the UK population identify asatheistic or agnostic while simultaneously engaging in 'magical thinking' and associated spiritual practices.'Magical thinking' in this context is a broad polythetic category encompassing those behaviours, beliefs andlifeworlds that are grounded in spiritual understanding and practice whereby the person does not necessarilyalign themselves with a belief in God or any particular theology. It may also refer to those persons who doidentify with and practice organised religion but who simultaneously carry out magical thinking and practice.A specific research focus will be those whose lives have been affected by grief and bereavement and theirperceptions, experiences and understandings of 'good' and 'bad' deaths (Simpson, 2001