Kate Woodthorpe

Is it the end for anonymity as we know it? A critical examination of the ethical principle of anonymity in the context of 21st century demands on the qualitative researcher

Told from the perspective of two UK-based early career researchers, this article is an examination of contemporary challenges posed when dealing with the ethical principle of anonymity in qualitative research, specifically at the point of dissemination. Drawing on their respective doctoral experience and literature exploring the difficulties that can arise from the application of anonymity with regard to historical and geographical contexts, the authors question the applicability of the principle of anonymity alongside pressures to disseminate widely. In so doing, the article considers anonymity in relation to the following: demonstrating value for money to funders; being accountable to stakeholders; involvement in knowledge transfer; and the demands of putting as much information ‘out there’ as possible, particularly on the internet. In light of these pressures, the article suggests that the standard of anonymity in the context of the 21st century academic world may need to be rethought.

Reflecting on death: The emotionality of the research encounter

Abstract This paper considers some of the issues encountered when researching a particular space in which death is engaged: a cemetery landscape. Building on literature available on research and reflexivity, the paper addresses some of the challenges the author dealt with when both in and away from the cemetery field site. At the core of the paper is the recognition that emotional responses can both contribute and distract from the research process. It is the extent to which emotional baggage enlightens and/or diverts from the research process and the data being generated that underpins this paper.

Sustaining the contemporary cemetery: Implementing policy alongside conflicting perspectives and purpose

Abstract Cemeteries garner considerable academic attention as anthropologists, landscapers, archaeologists, sociologists, geographers and historians examine their layout, purpose and use. Emerging from these studies is a body of literature that considers cemetery and burial ground design, memorialisation, mourning behaviour and ‘dark tourism’. Beyond interdisciplinary journals such as Mortality and edited multi-disciplinary books however, the insight generated in this literature can be fragmented through publication in discipline specific periodicals. As a result cemeteries are often analysed and presented as places that contain, for example, design or tourism and heritage or emotion and mourning. Framed by concerns over the sustainability of cemeteries nationwide, this paper considers the contemporary English cemetery as a simultaneous space of emotion, commerce and community. Using data from an ethnographic case study of a cemetery in East London, it illustrates the contestation that can result from these concurrent contrasting interpretations. The paper concludes that care needs to be taken when implementing initiatives and policy to balance the varying demands and expectations of a cemeterys purpose and use.

Private Grief in Public Spaces: Interpreting Memorialisation in the Contemporary Cemetery

Much more than a static landscape of headstones, benches and rose gardens, the contemporary cemetery is a dynamic space filled with assumptions, activities and perspectives, some of which are contradictory. This chapter sheds light on these contradictions through examining the material culture of the cemetery landscape, particularly at the site of the grave. It does so based on the proposition that the cemetery is a space in which private emotion (grief) and public behaviour (mourning) intersect in potentially problematic ways.

Researching death: methodological reflections on the management of critical distance

As an academic subject of study, death has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. Yet unlike other topics in the social sciences, death occupies a rather unique status as a research topic. A universal concern that affects everyone, this paper asks whether it is therefore ever possible to achieve a scholarly ‘critical distance’ from studying a place or people associated with death. Drawing on the author’s experience of undertaking an ethnographic study of a London cemetery, the paper reflexively recounts the ways in which the author managed their own critical distance both in and outside of the field. The paper concludes that it is somewhat unrealistic to suggest that a scholar researching death can maintain a complete sense of detachment in light of their awareness of the mortal human condition.

A Golden Silence? Acts of Remembrance and Commemoration at U.K. Football Games

This article reviews the use of minute’s silences and applause at football (soccer) games in the United Kingdom, considering why acts of remembrance take place and for whom. Examining the variation in commemoration, the article explores the extent to which these acts serve as liminal events to reinforce or diminish football fans’ sense of (“fictive”) kinship and cohesion. Uncertainty about how to conduct them, and their purpose, is complicated by the way in which they are now used for a wide variety of people, regardless of their affiliation to a club, alongside their organization and spontaneity.

Disposal or dispersal? Environmentalism and final treatment of the British dead

Abstract In current environmental discourse, disposal does not remove and destroy waste but rather transforms it into something useful or harmful and/or re-locates it. This article shows how this operates when the ‘waste’ comprises human remains, specifically how innovative ‘dispersal’ practices are now challenging the ‘disposal’ discourse of nineteenth-century burial and twentieth-century cremation which contained the dead within special death spaces separated from everyday environments for living. Since the 1990s, disposal practices have been supplemented by practices with an entirely different rationale. Instead of containing the dead in safe, out of the way places, new practices disperse human remains back into environments that sustain the living, whether this be via natural burial, new cremation practices or new technologies currently being developed, namely alkaline-hydrolysis and freeze-drying. Promoters of all these innovations appeal to ecological usefulness, blurring the boundary between the living and the dead, thereby positioning the dead body as a gift to the living and/or to the planet. Thus, a new ecological mentality is increasingly framing the management of all the dead – not just those interred in natural burial grounds. In the light of this, we reconsider land use policy, and question death studies’ use of the term ‘disposal’.

The material presence of absence: A dialogue between museums and cemeteries

This is an exploratory paper that aims to stimulate a dialogue between those interested in two particular spaces in society: the museum and the cemetery. Using empirical evidence from two research projects, the paper considers similarities and differences between the two sites, which are further explored through theoretical ideas about the social life of things and the agency of absence. Examining the materiality of these spaces, the paper addresses the role of objects in these two spaces and their respective associations with death, either through the dead themselves or the representation of those who have once lived. In particular, it explores the ‘presence of absence’ through three key points: its spatiality, its materiality, and its agency. Museums and cemeteries are, in this sense, directly comparable, as both spaces are shaped by and built upon the practice of making the absent present. Called ‘heterotopic’ by Foucault (1986) in that they are layered with multiple meanings, this paper will also argue for an understanding of museums and cemeteries as being able to transcend absence. Underpinning this is the belief that there remains much scope for future connections to be made between these two sites, theoretically, politically and practically.

Funeral Welfare to the Grave

At the time of writing the average UK funeral costs around £3,500 (Sunlife, 2014). While much is known about the ritual components of a funeral and their purpose (Holloway, 2007), the role of the funeral director in the event (Howarth, 1996) and the benefits associated with funeral participation (O’Rourke et al., 2011), very little is known about how individuals and families determine and plan for the financial costs associated with a funeral, and how they afford them. Moreover, compared with well-established areas of social policy, academic insight into state support for funerals is virtually non-existent. While funeral costs can be a potential source for tension within a family (see Corden et al., 2008), the most comprehensive studies of funeral costs and state provision to date have shown that there are considerable issues with the way in which the state administers its funds in this area (see Drakeford, 1998; Foster and Woodthorpe, 2013; Woodthorpe et al, 2013).

A missing link? The role of mortuary staff in hospital-based bereavement care services

Abstract In this paper we argue that anatomical pathology technologists (APTs) have been overlooked as a key group of healthcare practitioners who play a role in bereavement care. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of a mortuary team in a large urban hospital, we examine the technical and emotional components of the APT role, including how the concept of patient care is utilised in the mortuary. We argue that their work with other healthcare practitioners and professionals illustrates how APTs offer a ‘bridge’ between the immediacy of a death, after-death care and subsequent viewing of the deceased person, thereby providing a vital and under-acknowledged service for bereaved people. We conclude that through education and the promotion of mortuary activities APTs are developing a ‘community of practice’ that moves beyond an outdated perception of ‘dirty work’ towards a more enlightened vision of mortuary settings and APTs as important components of hospital-based bereavement care services.