Death Positivity and Death Justice in the Anthropocene

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Jorgensen Skakum
  • Danika V

• The Death Positivity Movement is a relatively new group of advocates who argue for greater death acceptance in Western society. This thesis explores how the Death Positivity Movement might help humans respond justly to mass death in the Anthropocene, when gross ecological change threatens human extinction and the extinction of other species. Using a number of sociological texts to contextualize the movement’s claims —in turn gathered from a swath of popular news articles and the movement’s online material — this thesis concludes that the Death Positivity Movement might practically apply to death denial in the Anthropocene, described by the author as the refusal to acknowledge those deaths associated with environmental change and reliance on techno-scientific geoengineering solutions. However, this thesis also draws significantly from Donna Haraway’s use of the “compost” to expand the Death Positivity Movement’s understanding of social justice and a “good death for all” for a non-human context as well.

• Date created

  2018-01-01

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Death Positive Movement
  • Anthropocene
  • Compost

• Type of Item

  Report

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-2c7z-qd84

• License

  Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.