Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

Domesticating Deathcare: The Women of the U.S. Natural Deathcare Movement

  • Published:
Journal of Medical Humanities Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This article examines the women-led natural deathcare movment in the early 21st century U.S., focusing upon the movement’s non-coincidental epistemological and gender-political similarities to the natural childbirth movement. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and drawing upon the author’s intensive interviews with pioneers and leaders of the U.S. natural deathcare movement, as well as from the author’s own participation in the movement, this article argues that the political similarities between the countercultural natural childbirth and natural deathcare movements reveal a common cultural provocation—one that spans the natal transition and the fatal transition.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Belk, Donna et al. 2009. Undertaken with Love: A Home Funeral Guide for Congregations and Communities. Austin, TX: Home Funeral Committee Manual Publishing Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bordo, Susan and Leslie Heywood. 2004. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and The Body, 10th Anniversary Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • Browne, Amy, Jeremy Kaplan, Tony Hale, and Brian Wilson. (co-directors). 2013. A Will For the Woods (documentary). Brooklyn, NY: Overwhelming Umbrella Productions.

  • Cahill, S. 1999. “The Boundaries of Professionalism: The Case of North American Funeral Direction.” Symbolic Interaction 22 (2): 105-119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • DeVries, Raymond. 1981. “Birth and Death: Social Construction at the Poles of Existence.” Social Forces 59 (4): 1074-93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ehrenreich, Barbara and Deirdre English. 2010. Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, 2nd Edition. New York: The Feminist Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Faust, Drew G. 2008. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harris, Mark. 2007. Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial. New York, Scribner.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, Janet. 1997. “The Technological Regulation of Death: With Reference to the Technological Regulation of Birth.” Sociology 31(4): 719-735.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Howarth, Glennys. 1996. Last Rites: The Work of the Modern Funeral Director. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laderman, Gary. 1996. The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes Toward Death, 1799-1883. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2003. Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lambert, D. 2011. “Alkaline Hydrolysis: Why Are We Talking About It?” In The Funeral Director’s Guide to Alkaline Hydrolysis, edited by Tanya Kevevich, 48-49. Wall, NJ: Kates-Boylston.

  • Lay, Mary M. 2000. The Rhetoric of Midwifery: Gender, Knowledge, and Power. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lie, Merete and Knut Sørensen, eds. 1996. Making Technology Our Own? Domesticating Technology into Everyday Life. Oslo, Norway: Scandinavian University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitford, Jessica. 2000. The American Way of Death Revisited. New York: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Olson, Philip. 2014. “Flush and Bone: Funeralizing Alkaline Hydrolysis in the U.S.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 39 (5): 666-693.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015a. “Knowing ‘Necro-Waste’.” Social Epistemology. doi: 10.1080/02691728.2015.1015063.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015b. “Custody of the Corpse: Controlling Alkaline Hydrolysis in U.S. Deathcare Markets.” In Death in a Consumer Culture, Routledge Interpretive Marketing Research, edited by Susan Dobscha, 75-88. New York: Routledge.

  • Parmalee, Thomas. 2011. “Jeff Edwards: Trailblazing Professional Remains a Controversial Figure.” In The Funeral Director’s Guide to Alkaline Hydrolysis edited by Tanya Kevevich, 23-26. Wall, NJ: Kates-Boylston.

  • Prothero, Stephen. Purified By Fire: A History of Cremation in America. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • Rothman, Barbara K. 1982. In Labor: Women and Power in the Birth Place. London: Junction Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rundblad, Georganne. 1995. “Exhuming Women’s Premarket Duties in the Care of the Dead.” Gender and Society 9 (2): 173-192.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rush, Merilynne. 2012. Home Funeral Guides: Illuminating the Path. A self-published, serialized subscription eBook available at http://afterdeathhomecare.com/ebook/. Accessed October 20, 2015.

  • St. Pierre, Joellyn. 2009. The Art of Death Midwifery. A self-published book (ISBN-13: 9781439229064) available through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Death-Midwifery-Introduction/dp/1439229066#reader_1439229066.

  • Sandel, Michael. 2012. What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silverstone, Roger and Eric Hirsch, eds. 1992. Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic Spaces. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sweeney, Kate. 2014. American Afterlife: Encounters in the Customs of Mourning. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trompette, Pascale and Mélanie Lemonnier. 2009. “Funeral Embalming: The Transformation of a Medical Innovation.” Science Studies 22 (2): 9-30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ulich, Laurel T. 1990. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812. New York: Vintage Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Watson, James L. 1988. “Funeral Specialists in Cantonese Society.” In Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, edited by James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski, 109-134. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wertz, Richard and Dorothy Wertz. 1977. Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in America. New York: The Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Westrate, Elizabeth, dir. 2004. A Family Undertaking (documentary). Brooklyn, NY: Fanlight Productions.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Philip R. Olson.

Ethics declarations

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by the author.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Olson, P.R. Domesticating Deathcare: The Women of the U.S. Natural Deathcare Movement. J Med Humanit 39, 195–215 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-016-9424-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-016-9424-2

Keywords

Navigation