Encyclopedia of Sociology

DEATH AND DYING

REFERENCES

Bauer, R. A. (ed.) 1966 Social Indicators. Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press.

Cavalli, A. 1972 ‘‘La Sociologia e le Altre Scienze Sociali.
Prospettive di Integrazione Interdisciplinare.’’ In P.
Rossi, ed., Ricerca Sociologica e Ruolo del Sociologo.
Bologna: Il Mulino.

Cooley, R. E., and N. S. Ryn 1985 ‘‘An Information
Technology Strategy for Social Scientists.’’ University
Computing7.

Deutsch, K. 1970 ‘‘The Impact of Complex Data Bases
on the Social Sciences.’’ In R. L. Bisco, ed., Data
Bases, Computers and the Social Sciences. New York: Wiley.

Garvel, S. 1989 ‘‘National Archives and Electronic Rec-
ords: Where Are We Going?’’ IASSIST Quarterly 3–4.

Gioja, M. 1852 Filosofia Della Statistica. Torino.

Henrichsen, B. 1989 ‘‘Data from the Central Bureau of
Statistics to the Social Science Community: The Nor-
wegian Experience.’’ IASSIST Quarterly fall–winter.

IFDO 1991 ‘‘IFDO Survey of Computerized Catalogues.’’
IFDO News September.

Kuhn, T. 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lucci, T., and S. Rokkan (eds.) 1957 A Library Center of
Survey Research Data. New York: Columbia Universi-
ty Press.

Mochmann, E. 1998 ‘‘European Cooperation in Social
Science Data Dissemination.’’ Working paper, round
table meeting on infrastructures for social economic
research. Koln, 29–30 June.

Rokkan, S. 1976 ‘‘Data Services in Western Europe.’’
American Behavioral Scientist 19:443–454.

Tannenbaum, E. 1989 ‘‘Sharing Information Begets
Information.’’ IASSIST Quarterly, Summer.

Unwin, D. 1991 ‘‘Geographical Information Systems
and the Social Science Research.’’ ESRC Data Archive
Bulletin 48.

GUIDO MARTINOTTI

SONIA STEFANIZZI

DEATH AND DYING

This essay asks three questions about death and
dying: 1) Why should an entry on such phenome-
na, which are clearly of interdisciplinary interest,
appear in an encyclopedia of sociology? 2) What

related topics have been studied by sociology? 3)

What issues are currently pending that call for

sociological attention?

DEATH AND DYING AS A FIELD OF

SOCIOLOGICAL INQUIRY

The answer to the first question is not readily

found in the history of sociological thought, al-

though Victor Marshall once bemoaned the fact

that Georg Simmel in 1908 had identified but had

not pursued the topic as suitable for sociological

inquiry, and a half century later the topic was

thought to be a neglected area for sociology (Faunce

and Fulton 1958). On other hand, Fulton reminds

us that ‘‘sociological interest in death is coexistent

with the history of sociology’’ (Fulton and Bendiksen

1994; Fulton and Owen 1988). Both Marshall and

Fulton are correct in that the ‘‘interest’’ has typi-

cally been peripheral. Herbert Spencer had noted

that social progress depended on the separation of

the world of the living from the world of the dead,

but that was hardly his central theory. Emile

Durkheim’s Suicide depends on an elaborate theo-

ry of ‘‘anomie,’’ not on any theory of death. Max

Weber deals with the fact of death in that it

interrupts the pursuit of one’s calling—a basic

observation later developed by Talcott Parsons.

William Graham Sumner wrote widely about such

death-related topics as fear of ghosts, mortuary

rituals, widowhood, infanticide, war, and even the

right to die, but all such references were illustra-

tive of some more general point. In 1956 Herman

Feifel chaired a conference on death for the Ameri-

can Psychological Association.

There may well be other precursors, but a bit

of history suggests how and when sociology may

have staked out its disciplinary claim in a field that

had long been cultivated by medicine, theology,

ethics, philosophy, law, and psychology.

In May 1967, as part of a new program on

‘‘Death Education’’ at the University of Minnesota,

Robert Fulton, a sociologist, arranged perhaps the

first interdisciplinary conference on death and

dying in the United States. Fulton had just pub-

lished his ground-breaking book Death and Identity

(1965), the purpose of which was to help in ‘‘pre-

serving rather than losing... personal identity

.. .’’ when facing death. It was a time of broad and
diverse interest in the subject. Examples had been
popping up in many domains: Jay Lifton’s notes