Bereavement: An anthropological approach

ABSTRACT

The literature on bereavement has been dominated by psychology. Social science has expanded that perspective by illustrating the ways in which the bereaved maintain continuing bonds with the deceased. In this article I build upon the social science literature from an anthropological perspective. I focus upon how the bereaved must learn to live in the social environment without the deceased in what I call a “new normal.” The connections to their social environment have been altered as a link in those connections has been broken. The bereavement process requires repairing that rupture and developing a new way in which to adopt a new sense of self. This article mainly focuses on issues involved with the loss of a spouse.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Betty Wolder Levin for helpful suggestions to this article.

Notes

¹In this article, I use the term family to denote all persons who are close to the deceased, whether biological or fictive kin, and/or close friendships.