Introduction: Continuity, Change and Contestation in Urban Deathscapes

Abstract

Places associated with death, dying and the dead are all around us. This is perhaps especially so in urban contexts, where land scarcity and population density bring places to work, live, play and mourn near each other. In our edited volume, we bring together international perspectives on urban deathscapes: deathscapes located in and marked by the urban. Bringing together different empirical understandings of death within urban contexts, we highlight three insights: urban deathscapes are produced and constructed by multiple actors; they reflect dynamic social and cultural spatial and temporal factors; and they are influenced by certain local, national and international death mentalities. Taking these three aspects together, we consider urban deathscapes to be physical, embodied, material, and virtual spaces reflecting contemporary dynamics, marked by diversities, multiplicities and fluidities which are common to areas of high population density. In these spaces, change, contestation and/or continuity happen, through time and simultaneously.