Experiencing Loss in Contemporary Worlds: Toward an Anthropology of Grief

Conférence internationale de conclusion du Programme ANR Phantasies "Fantômes ou fantasmes? L’expérience du deuil dans un paysage thérapeutique en mutation", organisé par Serena Bindi, maitresse de conférences en Anthropologie, Université Paris Cité, CANTHEL, et Aidan Seale-Feldman, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame, Etats-Unis.

Conférence ouverte au public.
Inscriptions obligatoires pour les deux journées à l'IEA: voir formulaire en bas de page.
Entrée libre sans inscription pour la journée à l'Université Paris Cité.

Présentation

While funeral practices and sociocultural conceptions of death have long been a central research theme for anthropology, much less attention has been paid by anthropologists to the ways in which the living respond to the loss of a loved one. Nevertheless, a reflection on this theme seems all the more important since, at the present time, the Euro-American world, among others, is crossed by lively scientific and social debates on the ways of coping with the experience of death of a loved one. Mental disorders related to bereavement have recently been included in the two international psychiatric diagnostic manuals, a historic culmination, according to some, of a tendency to medicalize the experience of loss and normalize its course.

But if this experience of loss is indeed universal, is it possible to define absolutely how it is or should be lived? Does the notion of "grief" have the same meaning in every social context? And if specific somatic and emotional responses are considered to be at odds with the experience of loss, how does the management of these body conditions vary across societies? What happens when divergent, even conflicting, loss management methods intersect within the same society? Whether in the context of situations of contact between cultures or due to the co-existence of various institutions (therapeutic, religious, political), grief may take different forms within the same human environment, impacting understandings, perceptions, and the lived experience of loss as well as the "symptoms" which accompany it.

The sessions of this conference will address these questions based on anthropological, theoretical, and empirical contributions, covering a broad range of cultural and geographic locations. The aim of this conference is to invite reflections on the epistemological premises on which an anthropology of loss and grief could be built, as well as the types of theoretical contributions that have already been made by the discipline, and those that might be developed in the future. The conference will also serve to support reflections on the specific methodological techniques used in the study of grief and mourning, as well as the ethical challenges of conducting ethnographic research on this sensitive topic. In this way, the conference seeks to create a space conducive to open and collective reflection around the multiple complex dimensions of the experience of loss, as well as the different ways it is lived, communicated, and given form and meaning.

With the participation of :

1. Serena BINDI (Associate Professor, Université Paris Cité)
2. Robert DESJARLAIS (Professor, Sarah Lawrence College, New York)
3. Devin FLAHERTY (Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas- San Antonio)
4. Alexa HAGERTY (Affiliate Researcher of the University of Cambridge Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy)
5. Claudia LANG (Research Associate Max Planck institute and University of Leipzig)
6. Andy MCDOWELL (Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Tulane University)
7. Todd MEYERS (Professor and Marjorie Bronfman Chair in Social Studies of Medicine & Acting Department Chair, McGill University)
8. Caterina PASQUALINO (Senior Researcher, CNRS, LAP)
9. Sarah PINTO (Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, Tufts University)
10. Christophe PONS (Senior Researcher CNRS, IDEAS)
11. Aidan SEALE-FELDMAN (Assistant Professor, University of Notre Dame)
12. Lotte SEGAL (Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh)
13. Anthony STAVRIANAKIS (Senior Researcher CNRS, LESC)
14. Gilles THOMAS (Historian, Prevention and Protection Department of the Paris City Council)