XII Colloquium of the Medical Anthropology Network (REDAM) NEW APPROACHES TO THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF DEATH   Tarragona, June 7 and 8,  2012 Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) Aula Magna Campus Catalunya Av. Catalunya, 35, 43002 Tarragona   http://antropologia.urv.es/12coloquio

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The twelfth annual conference of the Medical Anthropology Network (REDAM) will focus on new approaches to the study of death in the social sciences, health sciences, and the humanities. Interest in death, a classic object of study, has waned in recent years, and this interdisciplinary symposium is intended to correct this oversight. Death and funerary ritual continue to generate cultural meanings and social responses ranging from avoidance to commodification.

The recent emergence of postmodern perspectives on death is evidence of the important place it has occupied in social thought over the past century. Today the sanitization of death invites analysis in terms of consumerism and aesthetic considerations. Once an occasion of social unity, death now separates people not only socially, but also culturally and in religious terms. Secularized rituals coexist with renewed interest in religious ceremonies, and institutionalized spaces of death with alternative spaces for the commemoration of the deceased. In multicultural societies, the presence of new rituals and meanings in relation to death raises issues that go beyond legal considerations and the practical management of death. Belonging and identity, for both the deceased and the mourners, are expressed in the last act of life and define the ritual process.

Anthropologists and other social scientists, health scientists, and scholars in the humanities are invited to bring their analytical attention to bear on these questions of current interest. Panels will be organized around the following topics: the cult of memory; the management of death; private enterprise and public funeral services; the corpse as anatomical object; ritual and ceremonial pluralism; spaces of death; and new strategies of mourning.