Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century (Material Worlds)
by Candi K. Cann
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For millennia, the rituals of death and remembrance have been fixed by time and location, but in the twenty-first century, grieving has become a virtual phenomenon. Today, the dead live on through social media profiles, memorial websites, and saved voicemails that can be accessed at any time. This dramatic cultural shift has made the physical presence of death secondary to the psychological experience of mourning. Virtual Afterlives investigates emerging popular bereavement traditions. show more Author Candi K. Cann examines new forms of grieving and evaluates how religion and the funeral industry have contributed to mourning rituals despite their limited ability to remedy grief. As traditions associated with bereavement and sites of mourning have shifted, people have begun to discover new ways to remember their loved ones, turning both to virtual forms of memorialization and to material expressions of grief such as T-shirts and car decals. Examing mourning practices in the United States against the broader background of practices in other parts of the world such as Asia and Latin America, Virtual Afterlives seeks to resituate death as a part of life and grieving as a unifying process that helps to create identities and narratives for commnities. As technology and other hallmarks of modernity change the ways in which we experience death, this engaging study explores the culture of bereavement and the ways in which it, too, is being significantly transformed. show lessTags
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Candi K. Cann is associate professor of religion at Baylor University. She is the author of The World Religions: Essential Readings and Handbook and Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century.
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