Death. So what? Sociology, sequestration and emancipation

The paper argues for the widely unacknowledged importance of death in the m otivation of human conduct and the significance of the sequestration of dea th for sociological theory. Sociological studies that illuminate modern str ategies for coping with death also contribute to its sequestration as they routinely naturalise the contemporary commonsense understanding of death as something negative that must be coped with. The (negative or morbid) repre sentation of death, it is argued, should be re-cognised as a social product , not reproduced in sociological studies as something that is seemingly inn ate to the human condition. Otherwise, a commonsense representation of deat h as unequivocally negative is reinforced rather than scrutinised; and alte rnative understandings of the significance of mortality for analysing every day life and human emancipation are suppressed.