ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how death is viewed as a key example of the loss of shared meanings, or deskilling, in modernity, and as a core life-political issue in the theory of late or reflexive modernity. Death is one of the few certainties that we face in living, and it has been argued that we can judge a culture by the ways in which it deals with death. How we view death, several theorists argue, has a crucial influence on the social life we make together (Seale 2001: 98), and modern culture itself has been viewed as an attempt to deny death (Bauman 1992b). The loss of shared meanings and rituals around death in modern societies, and modern discomfort with it are, some theorists argue, indicative of modernity’s collective deskilling in relation to core life issues (Bauman 1992b). The heightened risks that encounters with human mortality produce for a sense of personal instability in late modernity have also been a theme of theoretical discussions. Such discussions conjure up images of atomized and lonely modern individuals who are left without meaning and are thrown back on their own resources when faced with their own mortality. They suggest a modern world where people are disconnected from each other and where there is a loss of shared values. In the reconstructive theory of reflexive modernity, however, death and the personal challenges and insecurities it gives rise to become the focus of ‘life-political’ endeavours aimed at remoralizing social life. While dying in modernity is something to be managed and controlled away from the day-to-day business of life, in reflexive modernity, Giddens’ argument implies, there are life-political pressures to incorporate it into day-to-day living through the remoralizing of social life.
