SPONTANEOUS MEMORIALIZATION - VIOLENT DEATH AND EMERGING MOURNING RITUAL

Violent deaths stand out in stark relief against the contemporary soci al climate of controlled private death and grieving. Both uncontrolled and public violent deaths call into question some of our most fundame ntal cultural values and prompt spontaneous rituals to publicly expres s individual and collective grief. We refer to these new rituals as sp ontaneous memorialization and to the impromptu shrines that result fro m this memorialization as spontaneous memorials. In this article, we i ntroduce both concepts, delineate the characteristics of this emerging American mourning ritual and use it to illustrate out contention that death ritual is important in the contemporary United States but that it is changing form in response to the needs of a changing society.