ABSTRACT
Death and the ceremonies of death are a moment of transition for both the individual and the group. From the standpoint of the communities which Robert Herz describes, modern America would appear for the most part as merely a collectivity of strangers, of only accidentally related individuals; and the predominant individualist attitudes to death and dying would confirm them in their view. The conception of death and dying in at least some of such societies is inseparable from a conception of life as divided into determinate stages the each of which specifies a type of role. If one owes participation in the ceremonies of death to others, then once again one can have no right to deprive them or indeed oneself of those ceremonies. In all the conditions physical death has been disjoined from any possible role for the dying man.
