Researching death: methodological reflections on the management of critical distance

Abstract

As an academic subject of study, death has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. Yet unlike other topics in the social sciences, death occupies a rather unique status as a research topic. A universal concern that affects everyone, this paper asks whether it is therefore ever possible to achieve a scholarly ‘critical distance’ from studying a place or people associated with death. Drawing on the author’s experience of undertaking an ethnographic study of a London cemetery, the paper reflexively recounts the ways in which the author managed their own critical distance both in and outside of the field. The paper concludes that it is somewhat unrealistic to suggest that a scholar researching death can maintain a complete sense of detachment in light of their awareness of the mortal human condition.

Keywords:

• critical distance
• death
• ethnography
• reflexivity

Notes

1. A readiness or unwillingness to disclose personal experience may be part of the researcher’s disciplinary custom – for example, it is much more widely accepted in social anthropology to critically reflect on how the self is shaped by cultural meaning (Geertz, 1974), and the ways in which the researcher interacts with the research environment, while it is not so popular in positivistic disciplines such as psychology (e.g. Bloor & Wood, 2006).

2. This was an Economic and Social Research Council CASE studentship, co‐funded by the City of London Corporation and the Institute for Cemetery and Crematorium Management.

3. Opened in 1856, the CLCC is one of the largest cemeteries in the UK at over 200 acres, dealing with (on average) 3000 cremations and 1000 burials every year. At the time of the research, around 90 staff was employed at the site – a figure simply unheard of in other cemeteries around the country (for more detail about the CLCC, see Lambert, 2006).