Afterword: The Social Construction of Death: Reflections from a Quantitative Public Health Researcher

Abstract

With this book the editors have envisaged to enrich the research field of thanatology with a social constructionist approach¹ to the study and understanding of death and dying. Of course, an approach to death and dying from a social constructionist perspective is not new. But after reading all draft chapters of this edited volume, I can only conclude that I do not know of any work in the field that so systematically and methodically explains and illustrates the positions underlying the social constructionist approach, its meanings and possible applications within the light of death studies, and the necessity of adopting some of its insights and methods to understand (at least some) aspects of death and dying within societies. As such, I believe the editors have potentially greatly contributed to a step forward in the (social) study and interpretation of death and dying. I add ‘potentially’, because I also see a risk that the book may eventually address an audience of (mostly qualitative) social scientists already convinced of the merits of a social constructionist approach; a community sharing — albeit in implicit ways — its paradigm and epistemologies. There is, however, definitely also a need to address quantitative thanatologists, a community that is particularly active in the field of end-of-life care research where scholars above all aim at policy advice and care improvement.