What makes conversations about death with strangers enjoyable? : Applying a neo-tribal lens to the Death Café interaction
Zibaite, Solveiga (2024) What makes conversations about death with strangers enjoyable? : Applying a neo-tribal lens to the Death Café interaction. Mortality. pp. 1-24. (https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2024.2386563)
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Abstract
Death Café is a not-for-profit international social franchise founded in 2011 in London. This paper is based on the most extensive empirical research of Death Cafés to date, examining the content of Death Café conversations. I interrogate the finding that, alongside talking directly about death and dying, people at a Death Café consistently talk about the value of being at a Death Café and about the value of talking about death. I introduce three main ways that talking about the value of conversations about death appears in a Death Café and, most importantly, I argue that talking about the value of conversations about death is an enjoyable part of the conversation in its own right. I use neo-tribal theory and its concept of aesthetics as ‘a way of feeling in common’ and ‘a means of recognising ourselves’ to examine this further. When talking about the value of conversations about death, Death Café participants reflexively consider the activity they are engaging in= together, which strengthens the feeling of collectivity, and bonds them into a neo-tribe. This paper demonstrates that Death Café is a valued form of social interaction, moving it away from the current academic attempts to discover Death Café’s instrumental utility.
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Item type: Article ID code: 90107 Dates: DateEvent1 August 2024Published1 August 2024Published Online24 July 2024AcceptedSubjects: Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > PsychologyDepartment: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) > Psychological Sciences and Health > Psychology Depositing user: Pure Administrator Date deposited: 02 Aug 2024 09:27 Last modified: 10 Oct 2024 07:06 URI: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/90107