Death and Digital Media provides a critical overview of how people mourn, commemorate and interac... more Death and Digital Media provides a critical overview of how people mourn, commemorate and interact with the dead through digital media. It maps the historical and shifting landscape of digital death, considering a wide range of social, commercial and institutional responses to technological innovations. The authors examine multiple digital platforms and offer a series of case studies drawn from North America, Europe and Australia. The book delivers fresh insight and analysis from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on anthropology, sociology, science and technology studies, human-computer interaction, and media studies. It is key reading for students and scholars in these disciplines, as well as for professionals working in bereavement support capacities.
Aggression: Conflict in Animals and Humans Reconsidered, 1988
Clears up popular misconceptions about aggression, traces the development of aggression in animal... more Clears up popular misconceptions about aggression, traces the development of aggression in animals, and offers suggestions on taking advantage of our natural potential for cooperation.
Extending the Boundaries of ‘Care’: Medical Ethics and Caring Practices,, 1999
How is the concept of patient care adapting in response to rapid changes in healthcare delivery a... more How is the concept of patient care adapting in response to rapid changes in healthcare delivery and advances in medical technology? How are questions of ethical responsibility and social diversity shaping the definitions of healthcare?In this topical study, scholars in anthropology, nursing theory, law and ethics explore questions involving the changing relationship between patient care and medical ethics. Contributors address issues that challenge the boundaries of patient care, such as: - HIV-related care and research- the impact of new reproductive technologies- preventative healthcare- technological breakthroughs that are changing personal-caring relationships.Chapters range from a consideration of the practicalities of nursing and family healthcare to a debate about ‘universal human needs' and patients' rights.This book is a provocative exploration of the ways in which healthcare models are socially constructed. It will be of interest to policy-makers, medical practitioners and administrators, as well as students of sociology, anthropology and social policy.
The Discipline of Leisure: embodying cultures of 'recreation', 2007
The burgeoning social scientific study of tourism has emphasized the effects of the post-industri... more The burgeoning social scientific study of tourism has emphasized the effects of the post-industrial economy on travel and place. However, this volume takes some of these issues into a different area of leisure: the spare-time carved out by people as part of their everyday lives - time that is much more intimately juxtaposed with the pressures and influences of work life, and which often involves specific bodily practices associated with hobbies and sports. An important focus of the book is the body as a site of identity formation, experience, and disciplined recreation of the self. Contributors examine the ways rituals, sports, and forms of bodily transformation mediate between contemporary ideologies of freedom, choice and self-control.
Death and Digital Media provides a critical overview of how people mourn, commemorate and interac... more Death and Digital Media provides a critical overview of how people mourn, commemorate and interact with the dead through digital media. It maps the historical and shifting landscape of digital death, considering a wide range of social, commercial and institutional responses to technological innovations. The authors examine multiple digital platforms and offer a series of case studies drawn from North America, Europe and Australia. The book delivers fresh insight and analysis from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on anthropology, sociology, science and technology studies, human-computer interaction, and media studies. It is key reading for students and scholars in these disciplines, as well as for professionals working in bereavement support capacities.
This book provides a critical overview of the changing ways people mourn, commemorate and interac... more This book provides a critical overview of the changing ways people mourn, commemorate and interact with the remains of the dead, including bodies, materials and digital artefacts. It focuses on how residues of death persist and circulate through different spaces, materials, data and mediated memories, refiguring how the disposal of the dead is understood, enacted and contested across the globe. The volume contains contributions by scholars from a number of disciplines and includes a diverse range of case studies drawn from Asia, Europe and North America. Together they reveal how rapidly changing practices, industries and experiences around death’s remains involve the entwining of digital technologies with other material and ritualised forms of commemoration, as well as with shifting boundaries between the sacred and the profane, the institutional and the vernacular, the public and the private.
Sounding Out Japan: A Sensory Ethnographic Tour, 2021
This book takes the reader on a sensory ethnographic tour in Japan and describes the many ways so... more This book takes the reader on a sensory ethnographic tour in Japan and describes the many ways sounds seep into everyday experiences. So many ethnographies describe local worlds with a deep attention to what is seen and what people say, but with a limited understanding of the broader sonic environments that enrich and inform everyday life. Through a focus on sounds, both real and imagined, the volume employs a critical ear to engage with a range of sonically enriched encounters, including crosswalk melodies in streetscapes, announcements and jingles at train stations, water features in gardens, dosimeters in nuclear affected zones, sounds of training in music and martial arts halls and celebrations under blossoming cherry trees. The authors use various analytic frames to understand the communicative and symbolic aspects of sounds and to sense the layers of historical meaning, embodied action and affect associated with sonic environments.
Human bodies are typically buried underground, horizontally ‘in repose’. To the extent that this ... more Human bodies are typically buried underground, horizontally ‘in repose’. To the extent that this orientation has become the standard; it is a non-choice that is under-interrogated by scholars. In this paper, we discuss innovations which allow for the vertical orientation of the body within the earth and for the vertical stacking of remains above the earth in high-rise structures. Both of these boundary-pushing forms of disposition address imminent shortages in the land allocated for cemeteries in the context of intense urbanisation and a peaking death rate. They also promise to transform the necrogeography of contemporary cities and intimate relations between the living and the dead. This paper is a collaboration between the DeathTech Research Team and the Managing Director of Upright Burials, where the dead are ‘stood to rest’ in shaft graves. The pragmatic advantages of vertical burial are easily explicated, but in this paper, we focus on the cultural and symbolic dimensions of this largely unfamiliar spatial relation and the challenges of ‘reorienting’ the public towards this new form of disposition
Death and Digital Media provides a critical overview of how people mourn, commemorate and interac... more Death and Digital Media provides a critical overview of how people mourn, commemorate and interact with the dead through digital media. It maps the historical and shifting landscape of digital death, considering a wide range of social, commercial and institutional responses to technological innovations. The authors examine multiple digital platforms and offer a series of case studies drawn from North America, Europe and Australia. The book delivers fresh insight and analysis from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on anthropology, sociology, science and technology studies, human-computer interaction, and media studies. It is key reading for students and scholars in these disciplines, as well as for professionals working in bereavement support capacities.
Aggression: Conflict in Animals and Humans Reconsidered, 1988
Clears up popular misconceptions about aggression, traces the development of aggression in animal... more Clears up popular misconceptions about aggression, traces the development of aggression in animals, and offers suggestions on taking advantage of our natural potential for cooperation.
Extending the Boundaries of ‘Care’: Medical Ethics and Caring Practices,, 1999
How is the concept of patient care adapting in response to rapid changes in healthcare delivery a... more How is the concept of patient care adapting in response to rapid changes in healthcare delivery and advances in medical technology? How are questions of ethical responsibility and social diversity shaping the definitions of healthcare?In this topical study, scholars in anthropology, nursing theory, law and ethics explore questions involving the changing relationship between patient care and medical ethics. Contributors address issues that challenge the boundaries of patient care, such as: - HIV-related care and research- the impact of new reproductive technologies- preventative healthcare- technological breakthroughs that are changing personal-caring relationships.Chapters range from a consideration of the practicalities of nursing and family healthcare to a debate about ‘universal human needs' and patients' rights.This book is a provocative exploration of the ways in which healthcare models are socially constructed. It will be of interest to policy-makers, medical practitioners and administrators, as well as students of sociology, anthropology and social policy.
The Discipline of Leisure: embodying cultures of 'recreation', 2007
The burgeoning social scientific study of tourism has emphasized the effects of the post-industri... more The burgeoning social scientific study of tourism has emphasized the effects of the post-industrial economy on travel and place. However, this volume takes some of these issues into a different area of leisure: the spare-time carved out by people as part of their everyday lives - time that is much more intimately juxtaposed with the pressures and influences of work life, and which often involves specific bodily practices associated with hobbies and sports. An important focus of the book is the body as a site of identity formation, experience, and disciplined recreation of the self. Contributors examine the ways rituals, sports, and forms of bodily transformation mediate between contemporary ideologies of freedom, choice and self-control.
Death and Digital Media provides a critical overview of how people mourn, commemorate and interac... more Death and Digital Media provides a critical overview of how people mourn, commemorate and interact with the dead through digital media. It maps the historical and shifting landscape of digital death, considering a wide range of social, commercial and institutional responses to technological innovations. The authors examine multiple digital platforms and offer a series of case studies drawn from North America, Europe and Australia. The book delivers fresh insight and analysis from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on anthropology, sociology, science and technology studies, human-computer interaction, and media studies. It is key reading for students and scholars in these disciplines, as well as for professionals working in bereavement support capacities.
This book provides a critical overview of the changing ways people mourn, commemorate and interac... more This book provides a critical overview of the changing ways people mourn, commemorate and interact with the remains of the dead, including bodies, materials and digital artefacts. It focuses on how residues of death persist and circulate through different spaces, materials, data and mediated memories, refiguring how the disposal of the dead is understood, enacted and contested across the globe. The volume contains contributions by scholars from a number of disciplines and includes a diverse range of case studies drawn from Asia, Europe and North America. Together they reveal how rapidly changing practices, industries and experiences around death’s remains involve the entwining of digital technologies with other material and ritualised forms of commemoration, as well as with shifting boundaries between the sacred and the profane, the institutional and the vernacular, the public and the private.
Sounding Out Japan: A Sensory Ethnographic Tour, 2021
This book takes the reader on a sensory ethnographic tour in Japan and describes the many ways so... more This book takes the reader on a sensory ethnographic tour in Japan and describes the many ways sounds seep into everyday experiences. So many ethnographies describe local worlds with a deep attention to what is seen and what people say, but with a limited understanding of the broader sonic environments that enrich and inform everyday life. Through a focus on sounds, both real and imagined, the volume employs a critical ear to engage with a range of sonically enriched encounters, including crosswalk melodies in streetscapes, announcements and jingles at train stations, water features in gardens, dosimeters in nuclear affected zones, sounds of training in music and martial arts halls and celebrations under blossoming cherry trees. The authors use various analytic frames to understand the communicative and symbolic aspects of sounds and to sense the layers of historical meaning, embodied action and affect associated with sonic environments.
Human bodies are typically buried underground, horizontally ‘in repose’. To the extent that this ... more Human bodies are typically buried underground, horizontally ‘in repose’. To the extent that this orientation has become the standard; it is a non-choice that is under-interrogated by scholars. In this paper, we discuss innovations which allow for the vertical orientation of the body within the earth and for the vertical stacking of remains above the earth in high-rise structures. Both of these boundary-pushing forms of disposition address imminent shortages in the land allocated for cemeteries in the context of intense urbanisation and a peaking death rate. They also promise to transform the necrogeography of contemporary cities and intimate relations between the living and the dead. This paper is a collaboration between the DeathTech Research Team and the Managing Director of Upright Burials, where the dead are ‘stood to rest’ in shaft graves. The pragmatic advantages of vertical burial are easily explicated, but in this paper, we focus on the cultural and symbolic dimensions of this largely unfamiliar spatial relation and the challenges of ‘reorienting’ the public towards this new form of disposition
The internet has steadily become integrated with our everyday lives, and it is scarcely worth rem... more The internet has steadily become integrated with our everyday lives, and it is scarcely worth remarking that the quotidian footprint we leave is increasingly digital. This being the case, the question of what will happen to our digital legacy when we die is an increasing important one. Digital accounts containing emails, photos, videos, music collections, documents of all kinds, social media content, eBooks and the like, all trace the life we have led, and if they are to be conserved and bequeathed, if family and friends are to benefit from this often highly emotive and evocative desiderata, if history is to be recorded, we need to prepare these accounts and assets for the inevitability of death. A difficulty though, is that the demands of curating such a legacy are formidable, the importance of creating digital archives from personal data contained in online accounts is not well-established in the public arena, and the products and services available to facilitate this are largely ...
Digital Death: Mortality and Beyond in the Online Age, 2014
In this chapter, we explore the emergence and growth of the digital cemetery by exploring some re... more In this chapter, we explore the emergence and growth of the digital cemetery by exploring some recent examples of digital applications, products, and services. Here, the rituals associated with interring the dead so that they may rest or repose within the cemetery shifts to accommodate an increasingly “restless” posthumous existence. The restless dead are both emerging through these hybrid interfaces of the digital and the physical, materialised in more lively forms of media and exhumed within a network of social and technical connections previously delimited by cemetery geography and physical inscription in stone. We argue here that the deployment of digital cemetery technologies points toward an individuation of the commemoration of death (in contrast to an institutionalised commemoration), toward an ongoing temporality (in contrast to permanence), and toward animation (in contrast to repose).
1994 KOHN, T. Incomers and Fieldworkers: A Comparative Study of Social Experience, in K. Hastrup ... more 1994 KOHN, T. Incomers and Fieldworkers: A Comparative Study of Social Experience, in K. Hastrup and P. Hervik (eds), Social Experience and Anthropological Knowledge (EASA volume), London: Routledge, 13-27.
... island context at least, tourism can be seen as one element in larger process of shifting ide... more ... island context at least, tourism can be seen as one element in larger process of shifting identities, whereby incomers may become islanders. It shows how tourists over time may possibly become part of and thus create the host community. From a historical perspective, tourism ...
Selected Papers of Internet Research 15.0: Boundaries and intersections (IR15), 2014
In this paper we examine the controversies surrounding the posting of online ‘selfies at funerals... more In this paper we examine the controversies surrounding the posting of online ‘selfies at funerals’ that sprung up in late 2013. We argue that the controversies reveal a form of ‘boundary work’ though which participants and publics are negotiating the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate online practices, as well as legitimate and illegitimate responses to death and the rituals associated with death. In Gieryn’s writing, ‘boundary work’ refers to the rhetorical labour scientists engage in to demarcate legitimate science from illegitimate non-science. We use the term to refer to the rhetoric used by participants to position online practices as acceptable or not, especially those associated with grief, bereavement and other matters deserving of gravitas and respect. Woven through these debates are competing threads in which evolving forms of online and youthful expression become entangled with established notions of respectful mourning.
Uploads
Books by Tamara Kohn
Papers by Tamara Kohn