Hannah Gould
Biographic Data
| ID | 161605 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hannah Gould |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hannah |
| FAMILY NAME | Gould |
| SIGNATURE | GOULD H |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Melbourne |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4260-1085 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Buddhism in the Now: Relaunching Contemporary Buddhism for a Changing World
Machine
Girl Mossing, Rotting, and Resistance: Relational Naturalism and Dying Well Together
Living and dying well together in the Anthropocene, in the context of intensifying climate crises, global pandemics, and fast-paced hustle culture, is an increasingly daunting task. While many wellness movements call for strict regimes and vigorous activity, striving for largely unattainable bodily norms and longevity, an emerging trend centres on embracing natural processes and temporalities of resistance focused on relaxation, rest, and even de…
Dying ‘Buddhish’: Death, Diversity, and Worldview Complexity in and Beyond Australia
Buddhism contributes significantly to spirituality and wellness practices in contemporary Australia, influencing a new way of life not just for converts, but also broader society. Less frequently observed, however, is how Buddhism and Buddhist-inspired phenomena contribute to a new way of death or “deathstyle”. This paper examines the position of Buddhism within mainstream end-of-life and death care in Australia, focusing on those phenomena we de…
Becoming a Bone Buddha: Fragmenting and Remaking Death Rites in Contemporary Japan
On Disrupted Death Rites and Covid-19
Concealment and Care in Deathcare During Covid
During the worst months of the COVID-19 pandemic, photojournalistic depictions of the havoc wreaked by the virus became ubiquitous. Images of physically distanced funerals and large-scale body disposal populated newsfeeds, but the labor and experiences of those working within these images-people handling bodies and guiding bereaved families-remained largely hidden from public view. Even before the pandemic, visibility and public recognition were …
Aromas of Asia: Exchanges, Histories, Threats
When Death Falls Apart: Making and Unmaking the Necromaterial Traditions of Contemporary Japan
Stood to rest’: Reorientating necrogeographies for the 21 st century
Human bodies are typically buried underground, horizontally ‘in repose’. To the extent that this orientation has become the standard; it is a non-choice that is under-interrogated by scholars. In this paper, we discuss innovations which allow for the vertical orientation of the body within the earth and for the vertical stacking of remains above the earth in high-rise structures. Both of these boundary-pushing forms of disposition address imminen…
Covid-19 and the mediatization of the funeral industry in Australia and Denmark
This article focuses on the mediatization of funeral practices and customer relations in a business with human care and contact at its centre: the funeral industry. We analyse the impact of Covid-19 on the use of digital media in a comparative study of the deathcare sector in Australia and Denmark. Using surveys within the national funeral industries, qualitative interviews with funeral directors, and news media archives for 2020–2021, we identif…
From a ‘good death’ to a ‘calm heart’: Buddhist retailing meets self-care in contemporary Japan
This article explores how vendors of Buddhist goods, which are traditionally associated with death and funerary rites in Japan, have responded to religious decline by venturing into alternative spirituality, wellness, and home décor markets. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork within Buddhist goods stores, I examine how retailers and artisans have begun re-orientating their business models and product lines from caring for the dead at acute moments…
New life in Japan's 'endingness' business
The Japanese deathcare and Buddhist goods industry is a growing field, emerging out of radical shifts in the socio-economic conditions of everyday life: smaller households, an ageing population and more irregular employment/lifestyle patterns. Based on fieldwork, this article reports tectonic ruptures within Japan's household-based mortuary system and Buddhist practice. It takes readers to ENDEX, the premier convention for Japan's 'ending industr…
The New Death: Mortality and Death Care in the Twenty-First Century
Media, mortality and necro-technologies: Eulogies for dead media
Working at the intersection of death studies and media studies, this article examines what we can learn from the death of media technologies designed for the deceased, what we refer to as necro-technologies. Media deaths illuminate a tension between the promise of persistence and realities of precariousness embodied in all media. This tension is, however, more visibly strained by the mortality of technologies designed to mediate and memorialise t…
Robot death care: A study of funerary practice
Across the globe, human experiences of death, dying, and grief are now shaped by digital technologies and, increasingly, by robotic technologies. This article explores how practices of care for the dead are transformed by the participation of non-human, mechanised agents. We ask what makes a particular robot engagement with death a breach or an affirmation of care for the dead by examining recent entanglements between humans, death, and robotics.…
Re-Feminizing Death: Gender, Spirituality and Death Care in the Anthropocene
Critiques of ecologically harmful human activity in the Anthropocene extend beyond life and livelihoods to practices of dying, death, and the disposal of bodies. For members of the diffuse 'New Death Movement' operating in the post-secular West today, such environmental externalities are symptomatic of a broader failure of modern death care, what we refer to here as the 'Death Industrial Complex'. According to New Death advocates, in its profit-d…
Anthropology and #MeToo: Reimagining fieldwork
MeToo deals in the everyday ambiguous and intersectional, providing a space for discussion of the grey areas of sexual propriety. Since 2017, when the term was mobilised spectacularly in the US entertainment industry, other industries have undertaken an examination of their own practices and norms. In this paper we consider the implications of this political moment for the discipline of anthropology, and specifically the idea of ‘the field’ in th…
Fieldwork at sunset
Most institutional anthropology departments have a website, to tout credentials, attract students, and offer information. These websites also take up the visual task of disciplinary representation, but their images have skipped the scrutiny that is necessary and overdue. Th is article analyzes online images of sociocultural anthropology across one hundred high-ranking universities worldwide. We show how, online, a discipline defined by diversity …
Domesticating Buddha: Making a Place for Japanese Buddhist Altars (Butsudan) in Western Homes
This paper explores how white, Western followers of Japanese Buddhist schools (primarily Sōka Gakkai) practice Buddhism through acts of purchasing, decorating, and positioning altars (butsudan) in the space of their homes. Drawing on a pilot ethnographic study of altar practice, I detail the oft-overlooked dimension of becoming and being Buddhist that is material consumption. Western consumption of Buddhist popular culture is often critiqued as a…
An Interrogation of Sensory Anthropology of and in Japan
Sensory anthropology has quickly become a dynamic and expansive field of contemporary scholarship, with ethnographers increasingly interested in diverse sensory cosmologies as indicative of a "sensory turn" in anthropology. However, there has also been a tendency for these scholars to work in a linguistic silo, and overlook the potential contributions of local knowledge and scholarship. In this article, we begin to address this gap by bringing Ja…
Uploading the ancestors: Experiments with digital Buddhist altars in contemporary Japan
Domestic Buddhist altars have long provided symbolically and materially rich media for venerating the dead in Japan. However, as Japanese household structures and funerary rites are unsettled in the contemporary era, Buddhist altars ( butsudan ) are rapidly being reinvented and digitalized. In this article, we describe the new technologies harnessed in butsudan production, the sensory experiences they offer, and their abilities to both reform and…
Media, mortality and necro-technologies: Eulogies for dead media
Working at the intersection of death studies and media studies, this article examines what we can learn from the death of media technologies designed for the deceased, what we refer to as necro-technologies. Media deaths illuminate a tension between the promise of persistence and realities of precariousness embodied in all media. This tension is, however, more visibly strained by the mortality of technologies designed to mediate and memorialise t…
Uploading the ancestors: Experiments with digital Buddhist altars in contemporary Japan
Domestic Buddhist altars have long provided symbolically and materially rich media for venerating the dead in Japan. However, as Japanese household structures and funerary rites are unsettled in the contemporary era, Buddhist altars ( butsudan ) are rapidly being reinvented and digitalized. In this article, we describe the new technologies harnessed in butsudan production, the sensory experiences they offer, and their abilities to both reform and…
Robot death care: A study of funerary practice
Across the globe, human experiences of death, dying, and grief are now shaped by digital technologies and, increasingly, by robotic technologies. This article explores how practices of care for the dead are transformed by the participation of non-human, mechanised agents. We ask what makes a particular robot engagement with death a breach or an affirmation of care for the dead by examining recent entanglements between humans, death, and robotics.…
Re-Feminizing Death: Gender, Spirituality and Death Care in the Anthropocene
Critiques of ecologically harmful human activity in the Anthropocene extend beyond life and livelihoods to practices of dying, death, and the disposal of bodies. For members of the diffuse 'New Death Movement' operating in the post-secular West today, such environmental externalities are symptomatic of a broader failure of modern death care, what we refer to here as the 'Death Industrial Complex'. According to New Death advocates, in its profit-d…
Fieldwork at sunset
Most institutional anthropology departments have a website, to tout credentials, attract students, and offer information. These websites also take up the visual task of disciplinary representation, but their images have skipped the scrutiny that is necessary and overdue. Th is article analyzes online images of sociocultural anthropology across one hundred high-ranking universities worldwide. We show how, online, a discipline defined by diversity …
Domesticating Buddha: Making a Place for Japanese Buddhist Altars (Butsudan) in Western Homes
This paper explores how white, Western followers of Japanese Buddhist schools (primarily Sōka Gakkai) practice Buddhism through acts of purchasing, decorating, and positioning altars (butsudan) in the space of their homes. Drawing on a pilot ethnographic study of altar practice, I detail the oft-overlooked dimension of becoming and being Buddhist that is material consumption. Western consumption of Buddhist popular culture is often critiqued as a…
An Interrogation of Sensory Anthropology of and in Japan
Sensory anthropology has quickly become a dynamic and expansive field of contemporary scholarship, with ethnographers increasingly interested in diverse sensory cosmologies as indicative of a "sensory turn" in anthropology. However, there has also been a tendency for these scholars to work in a linguistic silo, and overlook the potential contributions of local knowledge and scholarship. In this article, we begin to address this gap by bringing Ja…
Uploading the ancestors: Experiments with digital Buddhist altars in contemporary Japan
Domestic Buddhist altars have long provided symbolically and materially rich media for venerating the dead in Japan. However, as Japanese household structures and funerary rites are unsettled in the contemporary era, Buddhist altars ( butsudan ) are rapidly being reinvented and digitalized. In this article, we describe the new technologies harnessed in butsudan production, the sensory experiences they offer, and their abilities to both reform and…
Domesticating Buddha: Making a Place for Japanese Buddhist Altars (Butsudan) in Western Homes
This paper explores how white, Western followers of Japanese Buddhist schools (primarily Sōka Gakkai) practice Buddhism through acts of purchasing, decorating, and positioning altars (butsudan) in the space of their homes. Drawing on a pilot ethnographic study of altar practice, I detail the oft-overlooked dimension of becoming and being Buddhist that is material consumption. Western consumption of Buddhist popular culture is often critiqued as a…
An Interrogation of Sensory Anthropology of and in Japan
Sensory anthropology has quickly become a dynamic and expansive field of contemporary scholarship, with ethnographers increasingly interested in diverse sensory cosmologies as indicative of a "sensory turn" in anthropology. However, there has also been a tendency for these scholars to work in a linguistic silo, and overlook the potential contributions of local knowledge and scholarship. In this article, we begin to address this gap by bringing Ja…
Anthropology and #MeToo: Reimagining fieldwork
MeToo deals in the everyday ambiguous and intersectional, providing a space for discussion of the grey areas of sexual propriety. Since 2017, when the term was mobilised spectacularly in the US entertainment industry, other industries have undertaken an examination of their own practices and norms. In this paper we consider the implications of this political moment for the discipline of anthropology, and specifically the idea of ‘the field’ in th…
Fieldwork at sunset
Most institutional anthropology departments have a website, to tout credentials, attract students, and offer information. These websites also take up the visual task of disciplinary representation, but their images have skipped the scrutiny that is necessary and overdue. Th is article analyzes online images of sociocultural anthropology across one hundred high-ranking universities worldwide. We show how, online, a discipline defined by diversity …
Media, mortality and necro-technologies: Eulogies for dead media
Working at the intersection of death studies and media studies, this article examines what we can learn from the death of media technologies designed for the deceased, what we refer to as necro-technologies. Media deaths illuminate a tension between the promise of persistence and realities of precariousness embodied in all media. This tension is, however, more visibly strained by the mortality of technologies designed to mediate and memorialise t…
Robot death care: A study of funerary practice
Across the globe, human experiences of death, dying, and grief are now shaped by digital technologies and, increasingly, by robotic technologies. This article explores how practices of care for the dead are transformed by the participation of non-human, mechanised agents. We ask what makes a particular robot engagement with death a breach or an affirmation of care for the dead by examining recent entanglements between humans, death, and robotics.…
Re-Feminizing Death: Gender, Spirituality and Death Care in the Anthropocene
Critiques of ecologically harmful human activity in the Anthropocene extend beyond life and livelihoods to practices of dying, death, and the disposal of bodies. For members of the diffuse 'New Death Movement' operating in the post-secular West today, such environmental externalities are symptomatic of a broader failure of modern death care, what we refer to here as the 'Death Industrial Complex'. According to New Death advocates, in its profit-d…
Aromas of Asia: Exchanges, Histories, Threats
When Death Falls Apart: Making and Unmaking the Necromaterial Traditions of Contemporary Japan
Stood to rest’: Reorientating necrogeographies for the 21 st century
Human bodies are typically buried underground, horizontally ‘in repose’. To the extent that this orientation has become the standard; it is a non-choice that is under-interrogated by scholars. In this paper, we discuss innovations which allow for the vertical orientation of the body within the earth and for the vertical stacking of remains above the earth in high-rise structures. Both of these boundary-pushing forms of disposition address imminen…
Covid-19 and the mediatization of the funeral industry in Australia and Denmark
This article focuses on the mediatization of funeral practices and customer relations in a business with human care and contact at its centre: the funeral industry. We analyse the impact of Covid-19 on the use of digital media in a comparative study of the deathcare sector in Australia and Denmark. Using surveys within the national funeral industries, qualitative interviews with funeral directors, and news media archives for 2020–2021, we identif…
From a ‘good death’ to a ‘calm heart’: Buddhist retailing meets self-care in contemporary Japan
This article explores how vendors of Buddhist goods, which are traditionally associated with death and funerary rites in Japan, have responded to religious decline by venturing into alternative spirituality, wellness, and home décor markets. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork within Buddhist goods stores, I examine how retailers and artisans have begun re-orientating their business models and product lines from caring for the dead at acute moments…
New life in Japan's 'endingness' business
The Japanese deathcare and Buddhist goods industry is a growing field, emerging out of radical shifts in the socio-economic conditions of everyday life: smaller households, an ageing population and more irregular employment/lifestyle patterns. Based on fieldwork, this article reports tectonic ruptures within Japan's household-based mortuary system and Buddhist practice. It takes readers to ENDEX, the premier convention for Japan's 'ending industr…
The New Death: Mortality and Death Care in the Twenty-First Century
Dying ‘Buddhish’: Death, Diversity, and Worldview Complexity in and Beyond Australia
Buddhism contributes significantly to spirituality and wellness practices in contemporary Australia, influencing a new way of life not just for converts, but also broader society. Less frequently observed, however, is how Buddhism and Buddhist-inspired phenomena contribute to a new way of death or “deathstyle”. This paper examines the position of Buddhism within mainstream end-of-life and death care in Australia, focusing on those phenomena we de…
Becoming a Bone Buddha: Fragmenting and Remaking Death Rites in Contemporary Japan
On Disrupted Death Rites and Covid-19
Concealment and Care in Deathcare During Covid
During the worst months of the COVID-19 pandemic, photojournalistic depictions of the havoc wreaked by the virus became ubiquitous. Images of physically distanced funerals and large-scale body disposal populated newsfeeds, but the labor and experiences of those working within these images-people handling bodies and guiding bereaved families-remained largely hidden from public view. Even before the pandemic, visibility and public recognition were …
Buddhism in the Now: Relaunching Contemporary Buddhism for a Changing World
Machine
Girl Mossing, Rotting, and Resistance: Relational Naturalism and Dying Well Together
Living and dying well together in the Anthropocene, in the context of intensifying climate crises, global pandemics, and fast-paced hustle culture, is an increasingly daunting task. While many wellness movements call for strict regimes and vigorous activity, striving for largely unattainable bodily norms and longevity, an emerging trend centres on embracing natural processes and temporalities of resistance focused on relaxation, rest, and even de…
Sociology (15 works) · History (12 works) · Aesthetics (9 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Buddhism (8 works) · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health (7 works) · Law (7 works) · History (6 works) · Medicine (6 works)