The Death Café Movement

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxiii

   PDF

2. Coffee and Death

   • Jack Fong

   Pages 1-34

3. Baby Boomers and the Death Café

   • Jack Fong

   Pages 35-52

4. Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action and the Colonization of the Lifeworld

   • Jack Fong

   Pages 53-86

5. Death Sentiments and Death Themes

   • Jack Fong

   Pages 87-169

6. Enhancing Habermas with Erich Fromm and Kurt Wolff

   • Jack Fong

   Pages 171-200

7. Enhancing Habermas with Ray Oldenburg

   • Jack Fong

   Pages 201-226

8. Decolonizing the Lifeworld of Death

   • Jack Fong

   Pages 227-261

9. Back Matter

   Pages 263-284

   PDF

This sociological work examines the phenomenon of the Death Café, a regular gathering of strangers from all walks of life who engage in “death talk” over coffee, tea, and desserts. Using insightful theoretical frameworks, Fong explores the common themes that constitute a “death identity” and reveals how Café attendees are inspired to live in light of death because of death. Fong examines how the participants’ embrace of self-sovereignty and confrontation of mortality revive their awareness of and appreciation for shared humanity. While divisive identity politics continue to foster neo-tribalisms and the construction of myriad “others,”  Fong makes visible how those who participate in Death Cafés end up building community while being inspired toward living more fulfilling lives. Through death talk unfettered from systemic control, they end up feeling more agency over their own lived lives as well as being more conscious of the possibility of a  good death. According to Fong, participants in this phenomenon offer us a sublime way to confront the facticity of our own demise—by gathering as one.

• Dying
• death talk
• quality of life
• Bernard Crettaz
• imagery of death
• “good death”
• Jürgen Habermas
• Erich Fromm
• Kurt Wolff
• Ray Oldenburg
• Decolonizing the Lifeworld
• mortality

“This is an interesting book, offering a theoretical approach to the death café movement that requires further exploration.” (Glenys Caswell, Mortality, Vol. 24 (3), 2019)

“This work takes readers on a remarkable journey across the terrain of social responses to mortality through the distinctive Death Cafe movement. It demonstrates how the movement confronts core challenges of mortality, as well as the deleterious grip that the market, medicine, and media arms have on our thinking about death and life. Through Jack Fong's incisive ethnography, a major step forward in the development of a 21st century humanistic social science is illuminated.” (Dr. John Brown Childs, Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, at the University of California, Santa Cruz and author of Transcommunality: From the Politics of Conversion to the Ethics of Respect) 

“For many, the prospect of death and dying in post-industrial society is as terrifying as it is isolating. Employing Habermas, Fromm, and Wolf, Jack Fong's analyses illuminates how the media, medicine, and market sanitizes the subjectivity of dying, and how the Death Cafe movement is responding by inspiring itsmembers to reimagine and reclaim what it means to be mortal. Fong's nuanced, timely, and empathetic sociological study is of the highest, most urgent order.” (Dr. Kevin McCaffree, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne and author of The Secular Landscape: The Decline of Religion in America) 

“Fong views the death café movement as a social movement which involves communities around the world. He argues that, in this role, the death café simultaneously acts as a critique of contemporary risk society and a celebration of the ability to transcend risk society. Through communicative action, participants in the death café, largely strangers to each other, bridge the gap between fear and acceptance of their own dying. In doing so, they are sometimes able to generate a degree of ontological security which enables them to feel secure in their worlds. This is an interesting book, offering a theoretical approach to the death café movement that requires further exploration.” (Dr. Glenys Caswell, Mortality, Vol. 24 (3), 2019; University of Nottingham) 

“Fong published The Death Café Movement: Exploring the Horizons of Mortality, the first such work on the topic. In researching the book he attended seven three-hour-long Death Cafés. During discussions Fong focused on spotting recurring themes and observing how participants interacted with one another. Much of the book is a critique of modernity's relationship with death...the "trinity of the market, media, and medicine," the key outlets through which polite societies acknowledge death. Such institutions, Fong writes, serve more to terrify and keep us in the dark than nurture acceptance, understanding or comfort.” (Brent Crane, Folks: A Pillpack Magazine, December 5, 2017) 

“Partly as a nod to the ‘death café’ movement (Fong, 2017; Miles and Corr, 2017), partly because I enjoy the small, simple rituals of hosting people, and partly because of my assumption that the cemetery space would need an added element of comfort in order to make the meetings successful, I decided that all the meetings would feature café-like table settings, hot beverages, and snacks such as homemade baked goods, fruit, crackers, or squares of dark chocolate. From a utilitarian standpoint...these hosting efforts felt important as a way of creating a welcoming and cozy atmosphere, as a way of encouraging embodied learning, and as a signal that the Cemetery Café was worthy of some fuss.” (Matthew Bailey-Dick, in Pedagogy of the Deceased: The Cemetery as a Classroom for Community Development and Hope, doctoral thesis submitted to the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto) 

“Jack Fong, an American sociologist who gathered regularly at Death Cafe events to collect data, ended up defining the phenomenon as a social movement whose participants, in our age of individuality, are inspired by death when talking about living a more rewarding life, and thus became aware of the potential of a good death while building a community in the process.” (Milja Vaipuro and Leena Voutilainen, in "Puhutaan kuolemasta: Käsittelyssä kuolemanpelko, menetelmänä Death Cafe" ("Let's talk about death: Dealing with the fear of death as a method of the Death Cafe"), 2019 Education Programme thesis on elder care submitted to Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Finland) 

• Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Psychology & Sociology California State Polytechnic University, Pomona CA, USA

  Jack Fong

Jack Fong is Associate Professor of Sociology at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, USA. 

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