[Discussion] Making Sense of: Dying and Death

[sule tarakcioglu]

3rd Global Conference
*Making Sense of: Dying and Death*

Thursday 2nd December - Saturday 4th December 2004 Vienna, Austria

This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary research and publications
project aims to create a forum for examining the links between living
and dying, and some of the contradictions and paradoxes which arise that
we appear to accept without question.

For 2004, special preference will be given to papers dealing with issues
surrounding the death of the unborn (e.g., stillbirth, miscarriage,
pre-natal death, death in utero) and death by violence (to self as well
as others). These issues - and the links between them - have so far been
largely neglected in interdisciplinary conferences and publications. Yet
it is only in such settings that the arbitrary curtailment of human life
can be fully explored in all its forms and implications. The Steering
Committee wish to encourage a forum which offers the possibility of
bringing to the fore much of the full significance of these matters for
the human condition today.

Papers, presentations, reports and workshops are also warmly invited on
any of the following indicative themes (or their combinations):

1. Kinds of Deaths: for instance, euthanasia, abortion, suicide,
homicide, neonatal and infant death, accidents, natural disasters,
sudden death, terminal illness/death, capital punishment, acts of
terrorism; death of a child, parent, spouse.

2. Philosophical, Ethical and Religious Issues in Dying and Death ; the
nature of dying and death (e.g. does an aborted foetus die?);
philosophies of dying and death; grounds for justifying and/or condoning
death (e.g., suicide, euthanasia); the difference between seeking death
and facing death bravely. When is living to be feared more than death -
or vice versa? Facing, or even choosing, death in order to kill others.
Concepts of afterlife and their influence on the dying, theologies of
death, near death experiences; faith and secularism in death rituals;
the role of hope, expiation and forgiveness.

3. Bereavement; Grief, loss and anger; 'models' and theories of grief
and their adequacy with respect to different kinds of deaths; can grief
be shared? Grief counselling and grief therapy; forms of remembrance,
sites of remembrance, what do they reveal and what might they conceal?

4. The Representation of Dying and Death - art, all forms of literature,
cinema, music, radio and television; death and dying in children's
literature; children's concepts of mortality, violence and death.

5. Contradictions and Paradoxes: examples may include sudden death Vs
our ability or desire to postpone death; horror at genocide Vs our
appetite for films about ending lives in violent ways; respect for
horror and grief Vs the tendency to wallow in their "mediatised" forms;
terrorism Vs warfare; being informed Vs being de-sensitised by the media.

6. Technology, Dying and Death; the impact of advances in medical
technology; social expectations of medical possibilities; the
double-edged sword - technology as helper Vs technology as killer (e.g.,
lethal injection, vaginal aspiration, gas chambers).

7. The Management of Dying and Death. Hospitals and the limits of
responsibility, e.g. (the imposition of) intensive care and aggressive
treatment for dying patients; unacknowledged euthanasia; ageing and
dying; care homes or waiting rooms for death; the hospice movement;
limits to the humanising of death; whose decisions?

8. Legal Issues in Dying and Death; legal definitions of death, court
rulings and decisions, the right to die, natural death and brain death
statutes, advance directives and living wills; organ donation, organ
transplantation; who 'owns' the corpse?

Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts
should be submitted by Friday 3rd September 2004. If accepted for
presentation, 8 page draft conference papers should be submitted by
*Friday 19th November 2004*. Abstracts should be submitted to Dr Rob
Fisher and will be reviewed by the Organising Committee;

Organising Committee:

Mira Crouch
School of Sociology
The University of New South Wales
Sydney,Australia

Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House, Freeland
Oxfordshire,United Kingdom

Asa Kasher
Laura Schwarz-Kipp Professor of Professional Ethics and Philosophy of
Practice and Professor of Philosophy
Tel-Aviv University, Israel

Abstracts should be submitted by email in Word, WordPerfect, PDF or RTF
formats; alternatively the abstract may be placed in the body of the
email. Please send submissions to:
Dr Rob Fisher
rf@inter-disciplinary.net

A themed hard copy volume has been published from the first meeting of
this project; an ISBN eBook has been published and a hard copy themed
volumed is in preparation from the second conference. All papers
accepted for and presented at this conference will be published in an
ISBN eBook. Selected papers accepted for and presented at the conference
will be published in a hard copy themed volume(s).

For further information about the project, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/mso/dd/dd.htm

For further details about the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/mso/dd/dd3/dd3cfp.htm

	Dr Rob Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House
149B Wroslyn Road
Freeland
Oxfordshire
OX29 8HR

Phone: +44 1993 882087
Fax: +44 870 4601132
Email: rf@inter-disciplinary.net <mailto:rf@inter-disciplinary.net>
Visit the website at
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/mso/dd/dd3/dd3cfp.htm