Publications

These pages will include CRG publications and new books that will be of interest. Please do get in touch if you have books you would like to advertise here.

We will also be announcing new publications in the international series Routledge International Focus on Death and Funeral Practices. Texts are currently in production for New Zealand, Finland, the Northern Indian States, Japan and Norway.

If you would like to author a book in the series, contact:

julie.rugg@york.ac.uk and terry.clague@tandf.co.uk

Emerald Publishing published the first four books in the series (2018-22):

‘Clear and concise accounts…creating a repository of information on funeral practices and the legal, cultural, historical, and religious contexts in which the funeral practices were developed, changed, and maintained over the last century and a half’.

Dennis KlassOmega – Journal of Death and Dying.

 


Death and Funeral Practices in Poland

Anna E. Kubiak, Anna Długozima & Agnieszka Wedeł-Domardzka (2023) Death and Funeral Practices in Poland, London: Routledge.

New Perspectives on Urban Deathscapes

D. House & M. Westendorp w. A. Maddrell (eds) (2023) New Perspectives on Urban Deathscapes: Continuity, Change and Contestation, Edward Elgar Publishing.

Establishing a new set of international perspectives on experiences of death, disposition and remembrance in urban environments, this book brings deathscapes – material, embodied and emotional places associated with dying and death – to life. It pushes the boundaries of established empirical and conceptual understandings of death in urban spaces through anthropological, geographical and ethnographic insights.

Death and Funeral Practices in Portugal

Rafaela Ferraz Ferreira, Ana Júlia Almeida Miranda & Francisco Queiroz (2022) Death and Funeral Practices in Portugal, London: Routledge.

 

The Funeral of Mr. Wang: Life, Death, and Ghosts in Urbanizing China

Kipnis, A. B. (2021) The Funeral of Mr. Wang: Life, Death and Ghosts in Urbanizing China, Oakland CA: University of California Press.

This text examines social change in urbanizing China through the lens of funerals, the funerary industry, and practices of memorialization. It analyzes changes in family life, patterns of urban sociality, transformations in economic relations, the politics of memorialization, and the echoes of these changes in beliefs about the dead and ghosts.

Listen to Andrew Kipnis discuss his book with anthropologist Suvi Rauto on the New Books Network.

Death and Funeral Practices in Russia

Sergei Mokhov (2022) Death and Funeral Practices in Russia, London: Routledge.

Funerary Practices in Serbia

Aleksandra Pavićević (2021) Funerary Practices in Serbia, Emerald Insight: Bingley.

Funerary Practices in the Czech Republic

Olga Nešporova (2020) Funerary Practices in the Czech Republic, Emerald Insight: Bingley.

 

 

The Chinese Deathscape: Grave Reform in Modern China

Mullaney, Thomas S. (ed.) (2019) The Chinese Deathscape: Grave Reform in Modern China, Stamford University Press.

This remarkable interactive publication is readable online and combines narrative analysis, visualized data and dynamic maps.

Visit the New Books Network to listen to Thomas S. Mullaney discuss Chinese funeral practices with Kristian Peterson.

Book cover showing a blossom tree and headstones

Érwige Ruhe? Concessions à perpétuite?

S. Kmec, R.L. Philippart & A. Reuter (eds) (2019) Érwige Ruhe? Concessions à perpétuite? Grabkulturen in Luxemburg und den Nachbarregionen/Cultures funéraires au Luxembour et dans les regions voisines, Luxemburg: Capybara Books.

Death is part of human existence, in the world, in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and in its neighbouring regions. But what happens afterwards? Where and how are the dead prepared for eternal rest? Would this rest be truly eternal? Not at all. The mortal remains of some deceased leave on a journey – sometimes even on several occasions. No wonder, then, that for centuries, law and religion were preoccupied with death and the afterlife, as is literature, cinema, and the material arts. This book brings together 49 texts devoted to the subject of funerary art, the iconography of death, letters, the natural phenomena that death represents, faith and law. This book represents an overview of the different types of funerals and burial customs through the ages whilst distinguishing these practices in the light of different religious confessions and their very specific funeral rites.

Chapters are in English, French and German.

 

Funerary Practices in England and Wales

Julie Rugg & Brian Parsons (2018) Funerary Practices in England and Wales, Bingley: Emerald.

 

Is the Cemetery Dead?

Sloane, D. C. (2018) Is the Cemetery Dead? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Visit the New Books Network to listen to David Charles Sloane discuss his book with Michael O’ Johnson .

Cemetery and Churchyard: Tradition and Modernity in Rural North Yorkshire

Julie Rugg (2013) Cemetery and Churchyard: Tradition and Modernity in Rural North Yorkshire, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

This key text explains the operation of the Burial Acts in England by tracing the history of burial in over 200 villages and towns in rural North Yorkshire. 

‘Anyone bent on writing seriously about almost any aspect of burial ground provision in England and Wales from the 1850s onwards will ignore this book at their peril.’

Stephen White, Ecclesiastical Law Journal.

Purchase the hardback via a local independent bookstore at the reduced cost of £30

Grave Memorials as Cultural Heritage in Western Sweden

Gustavsson, A. (2014) Grave Memorials as Cultural Heritage in Western Sweden with a Focus on the 1800s. A Study of Materials, Society, Inscribed Texts and Symbols, Oslo: Novus Forlag.

 

The objective of this book is to study grave memorials as cultural expressions of the time in which they were erected. The period under study extends from the early 1800s, when permanent grave memorials began to be erected at cemeteries in Sweden, to the 1900s. The analysis concentrates on the following aspects of the topic: materials, social differences, gender, age, view on life/afterlife, protection, anonymity-collectivity-individuality. As a result of the analysis of messages on grave memorials, the author also addresses cultural heritage issues: what should be selected and defined as cultural heritage and thus should be preserved and made available for posterity?

Cultural Studies on Death and Dying in Scandinavia

Gustavsson, A. (2011) Cultural Studies on Death and Dying in Scandinavia, Oslo: Novus Press.

Anders Gustavsson, (b. 1940), professor of cultural history at the Department of Cultural Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, 1997-2010 and senior professor since 2011. PhD from the University of Lund, 1972, then reader in ethnology at Lund, part time also in Gothenburg and Bergen; professor of ethnology, University of Uppsala, 1987-1997. His research has concerned popular religion, popular movements with emphasis on temperance and revivalistic movements, coastal culture, cultural meetings, tourism, border cultures, rites of passage, gravestone symbolism, memorial internet websites, popular paintings, fieldwork methodology, etc. This text brings together papers delivered at the International Society for Folk Narrative ­Research, SIEF (The Society Inter­national of Ethnology and Folklore) and NNT (Nordic Network of Thanatology) and translated into English.