Death and Bereavement Around the World, vol 4: Asia, Australia, and New Zealand

Reference & Research Book News, August, 2005

BL504

2002-020820

0-89503-235-X

Death and bereavement around the world; v.4: Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.

Title main entry. Ed. by John D. Morgan and Pittu Laungani. (Death, value, and meaning series)

Baywood Publishing Co., [c]2005

159 p.

$35.95 (pa)

Educator and lecturer Morgan, Laungani (multicultural education and counseling, Manchester U.) and their contributors examine how ancient cultural practices and modern methods of care for the dying and the bereaved are combined in the death awareness movement. They note there are four basic considerations in studying death and grief in various cultures, including that culture's presumed life expectancy, exposure to death and grief, assumed control over the forces of nature, and the perception of what it is to be a person. They examine specific cases, such as the power of social influence and history in Australian practices, the way of death in Maori culture, considerations of culture in Hindu funerals in India and in England, changes in care in Japan, the systematic approach of Korea, expressions of grief in the cases of Taiwan and Hong King, and the ways Chinese living throughout Asia adapt their death and bereavement practices.