Death in social anthropology : Three recent book

Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual, by Richard Huntington and Peter Metcalf; Mortality and Immortality: The anthropology and archaeology of death, by S. C. Humphreys and Helen King; Death and the Regeneration of Life, by Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry (orgs.)

Abstract

Although social anthropology and archaeology never stopped concerning with the subject, it is historiography which impels the renewed interest of social sciences in the study of death. Mostly Philippe Ariès' works and also those of Michel Vovelle acted as catalysts of such an interest from both history and the other social sciences. While recovering a strong tradition whose sources go up to Frazer, and on the traces of which Robert Hertz' works are he great classics of anthropological literature on death, the three works now commented can be considered as an anthropological answer to the present wave of interest in the subject.