Körper | Kultur | Konflikt

Society's view of dying and death no longer corresponds to the fixed images with which the corresponding areas of knowledge were associated until a few years ago. For a long time, the supposedly ›unambiguous‹ levels of meaning of this complex issue were stable enough to paralyse social scientific research. For some time now, however, discourses have been emerging that (re)question the normative elements of funeral culture, the treatment of dead bodies and cremation ashes, the labelling of medical diagnoses, and the determination of the boundary between life and death. Today, there is a—quite productive—tension between real practices and cultural guidelines.