Thematic Session of the 32nd Conference of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion

Rethinking Community. Religious Continuities and Mutations in Late Modernity, Turku-Åbo, Finland, 27-30 June, 2013

Dealing with death and dying has undergone major changes in recent years and decades. Death, often a predictable event at a high age, occurs in hospitals, retirement homes or hospices i.e. death is being ‘outsourced’ to institutions, which determine processes and procedures. However, this standardization is accompanied by a wide range of new phenomena, which indicate an individualization of death and dying, ranging from euthanasia and patient decrees to memorial websites. Funerals no longer need to be indisputably interpreted as a transition, and it is not mandatory for them to be performed with religious rituals.

The recent changes in the social treatment of death and dying show that the influence of social and especially religious norms is declining and society as a whole does not unanimously share the attribution of sense. So the traditionally very close connection between religion and death is drifting apart: Social change, processes of pluralization and individualization and tendencies of secularization led to the loss of the church's dominance when it comes to the interpreting and ritualizing of death. Instead of upholding Christian traditions this new dealing with death and dying often got more focused on this world. At the same time however, taken aback by the death of one of its members, a community calls for norms to stabilize itself. With regard to these transformations, we ask: How are social cohesion and continuity maintained in spite of increasing diversity in dealing with death and dying. And what do these changes tell us about the meaning of religion and religious traditions in our times? The participants of the Thematic Session should follow these and other questions.

Please, submit an abstract (max. 200 words) and a brief biography (max. 200 words) to Antje Kahl (antje.kahl@tu-berlin.de) and Nicole Sachmerda-Schulz (sachmerda@uni-leipzig.de) not later than October 31th, 2012.