The problem of death in socio-humanitarian studies during the second half of the 20th century

S.Yu. Malysheva

Kazan Federal University, Kazan, 420008 Russia

E-mail: Svetlana.Malycheva@kpfu.ru

Received November 22, 2016

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Abstract

The paper is devoted to the problem of death as a separate subject of socio-humanitarian studies in the West during the second half of the 20th century.

In the recent decades, thanatological aspects have gained increasing attention in socio-cultural studies. In this regard, the aim of this paper, which seems to be relevant to the field, is to identify the specifics of investigating the problem of death in socio-humanitarian studies using historiographical analysis. The obtained results show that death studies, which were mainly the research on death and funerary rites, appeared in the first half of the 20th century due to anthropologists' efforts. However, a new impetus was given to the research in the middle of the 1950s. The “repression of death” in modern society caused intense debate which triggered the research interest in death on the whole and, in particular, its phenomenon in modern developed countries. Consequently, a number of publications appeared and such of disciplines as death psychology, sociology of death and dying, and historical thanatology were developed. By the turn of the centuries, the intensification of death studies in various disciplines contributed to the transformation of the overall problem of death within the scope of a broad interdisciplinary cooperation. It is important to understand these processes in order to unlock the cognitive potential of socio-humanitarian thanatological studies, as well as to understand the role of their results in historical, cultural, and social research.

Keywords: history, historiography, death studies, historical thanatology, death psychology, sociology of death and dying

Acknowledgments. The study is part of the author's research within the framework of the project “The Red Thanatos: The History and Culture of Death in Soviet Russia (1917–1991)” sponsored by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation (Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Projekt “Der rote Thanatos: Geschichte und Kultur des Todes in Sowjetrussland (1917–1991)”) / Az.20.15.0.045).

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For citation: Malysheva S.Yu. The problem of death in socio-humanitarian studies during the second half of the 20th century. Uchenye Zapiski Kazanskogo Universiteta. Seriya Gumanitarnye Nauki, 2017, vol. 159, no. 4, pp. 1043–1053. (In Russian)

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