Michael J Brennan
Biographic Data
| ID | 713084 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael J Brennan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael J |
| FAMILY NAME | Brennan |
| SIGNATURE | BRENNAN M J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Liverpool Hope University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0637-9387 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1958 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Radiotherapy: Death talk on Primetime National Radio - The Steve Hewlett interviews
Between October 2016 and February 2017, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a series of interviews with presenter Eddie Mair and journalist Steve Hewlett, following Hewlett’s diagnosis with oesophageal cancer. These interviews, which became compelling listening – and for a brief moment, part of public conversation – provide the focus for this article. Three broad but overlapping themes are identified from analysis of the interviews: 1) the subjective lived exp…
Going Public: Performing Dying in the Second Decade of the 21st Century
It is now more than a decade since the death of celebrity television personality Jade Goody - a high water mark in public dying comparable to the watershed moment in public mourning marked by the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, a decade or so earlier. As Walter has noted in this journal, Goody's very public and highly mediated dying will not be the last. With that in mind, this article analyses the sociological significance of public dying in …
The Environmental Roots of Urban Renewal in Boston
This essay argues that discourse related to residents of Boston’s South End as environmental agents justified the removal of minority and working-class residents from the neighborhood, and, in particular, the New York Streets section in the 1950s. It combines analytical approaches of urban ecology and traditional elements of social history to examine how the neighborhood orientated to the city in an economic sense, how residents created a mixed-u…
Emile Durkheim
The basis for a sociology of death lies in Emile Durkheim&s;s analysis of funeral rites. While sociology has until relatively recently tended to neglect death as a social issue, Durkheim was among the first thinkers to consider death as a social problem with social implications. Durkheim identifies four different types of suicide: anomic, egoistic, altruistic, and fatalistic. Anomic suicide, Durkheim contends, results from the upheaval caused by …
Max Weber
Max Weber is generally considered one of the &s;trinity&s; of thinkers of modern social science, the last in the chronology of sociology&s;s &s;founding fathers&s; alongside Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim. This chapter focuses on two of Weber&s;s central concepts, namely rationalization and bureaucracy. His concept of rationalization describes the processes through which Western society has shifted away from a value-laden social system, based upon …
Auto/biographical approaches to researching death and bereavement: Connections, continuums, contrasts
We argue here that auto/biography is an epistemological approach challenging traditional claims to objectivity, recognising the personhood of researchers as well as respondents and the complex relationship between the self and other (in both face-to-face encounters and ‘texts’ of various kinds). After outlining some of the fundamental benefits of an auto/biographical approach – within the social sciences generally, and death studies specifically …
Christopher Hitchens’ Public Dying: Toward a Secular-Humanist Ars Moriendi
This article explores the public dying of journalist, writer, provocateur, public intellectual, and renowned atheist, Christopher Hitchens. It does so primarily through an analysis of television interviews given by Hitchens following his diagnosis with esophageal cancer in June 2010. Four key themes are identified as emerging from analysis of the interviews: (a) Hitchens' explicit sense of mission in challenging myths and superstitions surroundin…
Loss, Bereavement and Creativity: Meanings and Uses
Within the field of death and bereavement studies, the assumption that loss and bereavement provide the spur to creativity has become so widespread as to assume the status of a conventional wisdom. With this in mind, this article surveys the literature on the topic, extant, and contemporary, revealing its diffuseness as well as the multidisciplinary synergies produced by those working in disparate academic and clinical fields of practice. In so d…
Men and Grief: International Conference on Death, Grief and Bereavement, June 2011, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse
Commentaries
International Conference on Death, Grief and Bereavement
Public Mourning and the Legacy of Hillsborough—20 Years on
Mourning and loss: Finding meaning in the mourning for Hillsborough
This paper focuses on the public mourning following the Hillsborough stadium disaster of 1989. It does so in particular by concentrating on two different sites of analysis: the books of condolence signed in its aftermath and the personal and unexpected reactions of the author following the disaster. Each, it suggests, can be seen as exercises in meaning-making: practical and discursive attempts to make death, as well as loss, intelligible. Mourni…
Condolence Books: Language and Meaning in the Mourning for Hillsborough and Diana
This article reports empirical research into public books of condolence signed following two key mourning events within British culture: the 1989 Hillsborough soccer stadium disaster and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. The author suggests that not only do condolence books provide valuable historical record of the way contemporary society mourns, but also that they reflect attempts to language loss in ways that can be used to evalu…
Some Sociological Contemplations on Daniel J. Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners
In this article I examine recent debates surrounding the publication of Daniel J. Goldhagen's controversial book Hitler's Willing Executioners. I do so against the 'backdrop' of contention regarding the (historical) centrality of the Nazi Holocaust and the role played by Holocaust Studies - a burgeoning area of academic special interest, involving mainly historians, but also sociologists, theologians and philosophers. In particular I consider the…
Towards a Sociology of (Public) Mourning
Within the last decade or so there has been a growing recognition among sociologists of the role played by emotions in various aspects of human behaviour (witness, for example, the range of articles appearing in Sociology alone, e.g. Jackson 1993; Craib 1995; Burkitt 1997, and the formation of a BSA study group devoted to the sociology of emotion). This burgeoning focus on emotions has challenged sociology to rethink its dominant conception of th…
Interactive multimedia learning in physics
The potential importance of interactive multimedia in the tertiary environment and in physics education is well recognised world wide, with development projects being funded by universities and government bodies. To date, however, there have been few opportunities to critically assess the importance, acceptability and suitability of these new techniques to physics education. Our study evaluated an interactive tutorial, developed at the Australian…
Welfare Economics and Equity: Panel Discussion
Economics and the Theory of Social Systems
Condolence Books: Language and Meaning in the Mourning for Hillsborough and Diana
This article reports empirical research into public books of condolence signed following two key mourning events within British culture: the 1989 Hillsborough soccer stadium disaster and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. The author suggests that not only do condolence books provide valuable historical record of the way contemporary society mourns, but also that they reflect attempts to language loss in ways that can be used to evalu…
Going Public: Performing Dying in the Second Decade of the 21st Century
It is now more than a decade since the death of celebrity television personality Jade Goody - a high water mark in public dying comparable to the watershed moment in public mourning marked by the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, a decade or so earlier. As Walter has noted in this journal, Goody's very public and highly mediated dying will not be the last. With that in mind, this article analyses the sociological significance of public dying in …
The Environmental Roots of Urban Renewal in Boston
This essay argues that discourse related to residents of Boston’s South End as environmental agents justified the removal of minority and working-class residents from the neighborhood, and, in particular, the New York Streets section in the 1950s. It combines analytical approaches of urban ecology and traditional elements of social history to examine how the neighborhood orientated to the city in an economic sense, how residents created a mixed-u…
Loss, Bereavement and Creativity: Meanings and Uses
Within the field of death and bereavement studies, the assumption that loss and bereavement provide the spur to creativity has become so widespread as to assume the status of a conventional wisdom. With this in mind, this article surveys the literature on the topic, extant, and contemporary, revealing its diffuseness as well as the multidisciplinary synergies produced by those working in disparate academic and clinical fields of practice. In so d…
Public Mourning and the Legacy of Hillsborough—20 Years on
Towards a Sociology of (Public) Mourning
Within the last decade or so there has been a growing recognition among sociologists of the role played by emotions in various aspects of human behaviour (witness, for example, the range of articles appearing in Sociology alone, e.g. Jackson 1993; Craib 1995; Burkitt 1997, and the formation of a BSA study group devoted to the sociology of emotion). This burgeoning focus on emotions has challenged sociology to rethink its dominant conception of th…
Economics and the Theory of Social Systems
Welfare Economics and Equity: Panel Discussion
Interactive multimedia learning in physics
The potential importance of interactive multimedia in the tertiary environment and in physics education is well recognised world wide, with development projects being funded by universities and government bodies. To date, however, there have been few opportunities to critically assess the importance, acceptability and suitability of these new techniques to physics education. Our study evaluated an interactive tutorial, developed at the Australian…
Some Sociological Contemplations on Daniel J. Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners
In this article I examine recent debates surrounding the publication of Daniel J. Goldhagen's controversial book Hitler's Willing Executioners. I do so against the 'backdrop' of contention regarding the (historical) centrality of the Nazi Holocaust and the role played by Holocaust Studies - a burgeoning area of academic special interest, involving mainly historians, but also sociologists, theologians and philosophers. In particular I consider the…
Towards a Sociology of (Public) Mourning
Within the last decade or so there has been a growing recognition among sociologists of the role played by emotions in various aspects of human behaviour (witness, for example, the range of articles appearing in Sociology alone, e.g. Jackson 1993; Craib 1995; Burkitt 1997, and the formation of a BSA study group devoted to the sociology of emotion). This burgeoning focus on emotions has challenged sociology to rethink its dominant conception of th…
Mourning and loss: Finding meaning in the mourning for Hillsborough
This paper focuses on the public mourning following the Hillsborough stadium disaster of 1989. It does so in particular by concentrating on two different sites of analysis: the books of condolence signed in its aftermath and the personal and unexpected reactions of the author following the disaster. Each, it suggests, can be seen as exercises in meaning-making: practical and discursive attempts to make death, as well as loss, intelligible. Mourni…
Condolence Books: Language and Meaning in the Mourning for Hillsborough and Diana
This article reports empirical research into public books of condolence signed following two key mourning events within British culture: the 1989 Hillsborough soccer stadium disaster and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. The author suggests that not only do condolence books provide valuable historical record of the way contemporary society mourns, but also that they reflect attempts to language loss in ways that can be used to evalu…
Public Mourning and the Legacy of Hillsborough—20 Years on
International Conference on Death, Grief and Bereavement
Men and Grief: International Conference on Death, Grief and Bereavement, June 2011, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse
Commentaries
Christopher Hitchens’ Public Dying: Toward a Secular-Humanist Ars Moriendi
This article explores the public dying of journalist, writer, provocateur, public intellectual, and renowned atheist, Christopher Hitchens. It does so primarily through an analysis of television interviews given by Hitchens following his diagnosis with esophageal cancer in June 2010. Four key themes are identified as emerging from analysis of the interviews: (a) Hitchens' explicit sense of mission in challenging myths and superstitions surroundin…
Loss, Bereavement and Creativity: Meanings and Uses
Within the field of death and bereavement studies, the assumption that loss and bereavement provide the spur to creativity has become so widespread as to assume the status of a conventional wisdom. With this in mind, this article surveys the literature on the topic, extant, and contemporary, revealing its diffuseness as well as the multidisciplinary synergies produced by those working in disparate academic and clinical fields of practice. In so d…
Emile Durkheim
The basis for a sociology of death lies in Emile Durkheim&s;s analysis of funeral rites. While sociology has until relatively recently tended to neglect death as a social issue, Durkheim was among the first thinkers to consider death as a social problem with social implications. Durkheim identifies four different types of suicide: anomic, egoistic, altruistic, and fatalistic. Anomic suicide, Durkheim contends, results from the upheaval caused by …
Max Weber
Max Weber is generally considered one of the &s;trinity&s; of thinkers of modern social science, the last in the chronology of sociology&s;s &s;founding fathers&s; alongside Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim. This chapter focuses on two of Weber&s;s central concepts, namely rationalization and bureaucracy. His concept of rationalization describes the processes through which Western society has shifted away from a value-laden social system, based upon …
Auto/biographical approaches to researching death and bereavement: Connections, continuums, contrasts
We argue here that auto/biography is an epistemological approach challenging traditional claims to objectivity, recognising the personhood of researchers as well as respondents and the complex relationship between the self and other (in both face-to-face encounters and ‘texts’ of various kinds). After outlining some of the fundamental benefits of an auto/biographical approach – within the social sciences generally, and death studies specifically …
The Environmental Roots of Urban Renewal in Boston
This essay argues that discourse related to residents of Boston’s South End as environmental agents justified the removal of minority and working-class residents from the neighborhood, and, in particular, the New York Streets section in the 1950s. It combines analytical approaches of urban ecology and traditional elements of social history to examine how the neighborhood orientated to the city in an economic sense, how residents created a mixed-u…
Going Public: Performing Dying in the Second Decade of the 21st Century
It is now more than a decade since the death of celebrity television personality Jade Goody - a high water mark in public dying comparable to the watershed moment in public mourning marked by the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, a decade or so earlier. As Walter has noted in this journal, Goody's very public and highly mediated dying will not be the last. With that in mind, this article analyses the sociological significance of public dying in …
Radiotherapy: Death talk on Primetime National Radio - The Steve Hewlett interviews
Between October 2016 and February 2017, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a series of interviews with presenter Eddie Mair and journalist Steve Hewlett, following Hewlett’s diagnosis with oesophageal cancer. These interviews, which became compelling listening – and for a brief moment, part of public conversation – provide the focus for this article. Three broad but overlapping themes are identified from analysis of the interviews: 1) the subjective lived exp…
Sociology (14 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health (10 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Psychoanalysis (6 works) · Grief (5 works) · History (5 works) · Law (5 works)