Mortality

Mortality. Edited by David Field, Glennys Howarth and Peter Jupp. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Carfax, three times a year. Institutions 108 [pounds sterling]; individuals 38 [pounds sterling]. ISSN 1357 6275

This journal, described as an interdisciplinary journal with relevance to both academics and "other professionals engaged in this field of work," first appeared in March 1996. In that editorial, Glennys Howarth and Peter Jupp explained that the stimulus for its appearance "grew out of an awareness of the wide range and depth of new research being undertaken around human mortality" (1996, p. 5). They cite such areas as the academic study of death, dying and bereavement, popular media commentaries, groups involved in improving social rituals surrounding mortality, the hospice movement, palliative care and counselling. Certainly, within the broad field of thanatology, the arrival of this journal is important since the two which already hold sway in English-speaking countries--Omega and Death Studies--are American. With an international advisory board of twenty-seven members, Mortality is therefore the first British interdisciplinary journal of its type and its appearance is significant for that reason alone.

So far, the issues reveal a good deal of flexibility in terms of content. There are editorials, articles, replies to articles, review articles, guest contributions, research notes, news and notes, a section entitled "classics revisited," book reviews, exhibition reviews, and news of forthcoming conferences and exhibitions. As expected, the majority of the articles and reviews are by British authors. Apart from Bennett and Roud's (1997) selective listing of popular British and Irish material from Folklore, other articles that may be of interest to folklorists include: gender relations at the deathbed in early modern Canterbury (Hallam, 1996); Somerset examples of "public" and "private" funerals in later Stuart gentry (Houlbrooke, 1996); comparative analysis of death and bereavement in India and England (Langani, 1996); memorial sermons on famous people in Britain 18001914 (Wolffe, 1996); reflections on death in the diaries of Lady Cowper (Gittings, 1997); suicide and gender (O'Connor and Sheehy, 1997); and funeral services for those who have donated their bodies for medical research (Tinker, 1998).

One innovative section in a few of the issues so far is "classics revisited." In one, Ronald Frankenberg, a British anthropologist and sociologist, reviewed Peter Marris's Loss and Change, with its material from Lagos, Boston and London, hailing it as a seminal piece often overlooked in the field (1996, pp. 213-17); and, in another, Tony Walter--also a sociologist--reviewed Geoffrey Gorer's Death, Grief and Mourning in Contemporary Britain. Walter believes that this is a classic British sociology of bereavement and grief, although flawed in some respects, because most academic texts continue to medicalise or psychologise these experiences (1998, pp. 83-7). There is a lack of a sociology of bereavement, he claims, to which this journal itself bears witness.

Another fairly unusual section in the journal is its exhibitions review. One 1997 issue reviewed sixteenth-century memento mori prints from northern Europe at University College; relics and reliquaries at the Victoria and Albert Museum; artefacts and other items related to Sir Thomas a Beckett at Canterbury Cathedral; and the History of Medicine exhibition at the Wellcome Institute. This reminds readers of the variety and abundance of death-related material to be found in visual form.

This journal has already promoted one important debate within its pages; and that promotion, within a British-English context may, in time, prove significant. The first issue contained "A New Model of Grief: Bereavement and Biography" by Walter, in which he reviewed the seminal literature (Freud 1913; Lindemann 1944; Bowlby 1979; 1980; Parkes 1986, and Raphael 1984) and challenged its dominant model of grief as a working through of emotions in order to let go of and live without the deceased. He suggests that, rather than forgetting, the bereaved need to create a new, secure place for the deceased by talking with a range of people about him/her and building up a new, composite picture. In a subsequent issue, Margaret Stroebe of the Utrecht Centre for Bereavement Research and Intervention responded to this proposal, suggesting that Walter's is not a new, but rather a supplementary, perspective that incorporates and emphasises elements previously neglected in the field--such as a focus on the social construction of the meaning of loss, and on non-medical outcomes. However, in the same issue, as well as replying to Stroebe, Walter suggested that the "copious and appreciative mailbag" (1997, p. 263) he had received causes him to reaffirm the revolutionary nature of what both he and his respondents have experienced, namely that there is a need to talk about the deceased which may not always be met for a range of reasons. Such a discussion of how people grieve looks set to run for some time in this journal and elsewhere.