Overview

This book is a groundbreaking study of a major ideological shift in the 1990s centered on birth, death, and parentage. Since then, fathers have been encouraged to cut the umbilical cord, and mothers urged to breastfeed, practice skin-to-skin contact, and even contemplate the placenta. Parents are encouraged to see and touch their stillborn child.  Viewing the deceased has become a moral obligation, and cremation tends to be viewed as detrimental to the “grieving process.” Physical access to biological parents has become essential to those adopted or born through gamete donation. In short, in most Western countries, there has been a shift toward focusing on the body as the foundation of social bonds. Why have mental health, healthcare, and funeral professionals created these new practices? To understand this, author Dominique Memmi observed numerous gestures whose convergence had gone previously unnoticed. With a wealth of information, a narrative style, and an interdisciplinary analysis, this book will be of interest to researchers and students in sociology, anthropology, social psychology, and history. First published in 2014 in French, this groundbreaking work is now available to an English-speaking audience.

Full Product Details

Author:   Dominique Memmi
Publisher:   Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Imprint:   Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN:  

9783032282521

ISBN 10:   3032282527
Pages:   238
Publication Date:   31 July 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

PART I. THE REINCARNATION OF THE DEAD.- I.1.Care professionals: the second life of dead babies.- I.2.Psychological professionals: mourning “through the body”.- I.3.Funeral professionals: tracing the dead.- I.4.Cultural intermediaries: “impossible mourning"".- I.5.Transplant professionals: when the Other is in the organ.- PART II. THE REINCARNATION OF THE LIVING.- II.1.“Body to body” with newborns.- II.2.The reincarnation of filiation: adopted children, children born under X and children born by sperm donation.- PART III. AGENTS OF CIVILISATION.- III.1.The profane didn't ask for so much.- III.2.Professional activism often goes unnoticed.- III.3.The social identity of agents of civilization.- III.4.Nature “all the same”: lay bricolages.- PART IV. A GREAT PLACENTAL REVERIE.- IV.1.“Rebiologize”, “renaturalize” or “reincarnate”?.- IV.2.Restoring gravity to being, and weight to time.- IV.3.Restoring a little autonomy to “life itself”: a long-range interpretation.- Conclusion. Putting flesh back into the social bond.

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Author Information

Dominique Memmi, Director of Research in Social Science at the National Center for Scientific Research, Paris, France, has published widely on the social administration of life and death. Her books include Les Gardiens du corps (1996), Faire vivre et laisser mourir (2003), Le Gouvernement des corps (co-edited with Didier Fassin, 2004), La Seconde Vie des bébés morts (2011), and La vengeance des femmes (2025).

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