THE IMPACT OF SECULARIZATION AND SPIRITUALIZATION ON DEATH MEANINGS AND PRACTICES, AMONG CONTEMPORARY ROMANIANS
THE IMPACT OF SECULARIZATION AND SPIRITUALIZATION ON DEATH MEANINGS AND PRACTICES, AMONG CONTEMPORARY ROMANIANS
Author(s): Adela TopleanSubject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: NEW EUROPE COLLEGE - Institute for Advanced Studies
Keywords: Death Studies; sociology of death; religious studies; secularization; spirituality; personal death ways; post-communism
Summary/Abstract: With this study, I intend to focus on the challenges of secularization and spiritualization impacting the traditional ways in which most people approach death in contemporary Romania. As it has become all the more evident after Colectiv nightclub tragedy, Romanians’ religiosity can no longer be un-problematically linked to institutional religion. If the growing number of non-dogmatic experiences of the sacred and, consequently, the multiplication of personal death ways have long been an acknowledged reality in the Western world, Romania is still uncomfortably stuck in the interstice between two major death patterns (traditional and modern) both being perceived as menacing and unconvincing. This may have led to conflicting versions of “good death” that have created small, unstable comfort zones, and fast, unpredictable swings from meaningful to meaningless versions of dying.
Journal: New Europe College Stefan Odobleja Program Yearbook
- Issue Year: 2017
- Issue No: 2016+17
- Page Range: 275-306
- Page Count: 32
- Language: English