Doctoral Dissertation Research: Crisis and community response in death and grieving practices

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

This doctoral dissertation project considers how a crisis has prompted changes in the ways people and communities care for their dead. With social distancing protocols prohibiting in-person funerals during the COVID-19 pandemic, much attention has focused on overflowing mortuary facilities and the use of technology in modified mourning rituals. However, far less consideration has been given to natural deathcare practices that take place outside of typical settings such as hospitals or funeral homes. This ethnographic research project examines the work of end-of-life care providers, many of whom are amateur or paraprofessional caregivers providing physical, emotional, and informational support during the dying process. The research advances theory in political and medical anthropology by examining whether and how natural deathcare affects concepts of death and the process of mourning and how individual and community attributes interact with deathcare to affect these outcomes. In addition to training a doctoral student, the findings will be disseminated broadly to diverse stakeholders and audiences.

Specifically, this study examines how COVID-19 has impacted alternative ways of handling and framing death. It goes beyond a typical emphasis on virtual funerary practices to ask how individuals and communities committed to natural deathcare have adapted to the crisis. The research asks (1) whether and how experiences of crisis transform deathcare, (2) what rituals this involves, (3) how natural deathcare is positioned among alternatives to serve grieving communities, and 4) how these factors intersect to affect concepts and expressions of death. The study is being conducted in communities with diverse alternative practices to understand how community-level factors affect the availability and concepts of deathcare. Additionally, the research investigates whether and how individual social identity affects end-of-life choices and outcomes, to provide a nuanced understand of shifting definitions in what constitutes a good death. The investigators use participant observation, interviews, focus groups, and archival research among deathcare practitioners, students, and deathcare clients, and within the context of a natural cemetery collective. Findings from this research provide insight into diverse experiences of the pandemic and the significant cultural shifts the pandemic has inspired within some communities. This research contributes to recent anthropological calls to expand how death is understood and to improve institutionalized experiences of death by exploring the contributions of external caregivers.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.