ABSTRACT
Underlying the kaleidoscope of death perspectives are hints of a multidisciplinary core. Indeed, into the family of deterministic theories in the social sciences—those paradigms that feature some central force underlying the human condition, such as sociobiology in biology, psychoanalytic theory in psychology, communications and transportation determinism in technology studies, and materialism in sociology and anthropology—has arrived thanatology, perhaps the most unifying of the lot. People’s ideas and fears of death are not innate but rather are learned from their social and cultural environments. Thus to study such matters as the psychology of dying or grief separate from individuals’ social, cultural, and historical contexts is analogous to conducting an ethological study in a zoo. Death’s omnipresence forced them to come to terms with their inevitable limits. The United States ranks third in the world in crude homicide rates, following only the Bahamas and Ecuador.
