We Will All Go, But What We All Seek Is Good Death”

Cultural Notions of Good Death And Related Mortuary Rituals Among the Akan of Ghana

Dados Bibliográficos

ID13628165
AutoresMensah Adinkrah (0000-0003-1689-7329, Central Michigan University, autor correspondente)
Ano2022
Volume89
Fascículo3
Páginas833-855
Data de publicação2022-04-04
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoOMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0030-2228 • E-ISSN: 1541-3764
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/00302228221082417
PMID35373637
OpenAlexW4225827160
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas22

Thanatologists who have researched mortuary beliefs and practices from around the world posit that many societies differentiate between good and bad deaths. The current study utilized in-depth interviews with 30 Akan culture experts to investigate what the Akan ethnic group of Ghana considers to be good death. The results show that Akan good death is natural harmonious death that occurs at advanced age. The deceased would also have experienced a meaningful life devoid of immorality or turpitude. While the bodies of decedents of Akan bad deaths are interred without much ceremony, good deaths are associated with elaborate burial rites and funerary obsequies that serve to honor the decedent. Findings show that Akans generally aspire to achieve a good death, be granted solemn burial rites, and to receive a fitting funerary celebration that would launch them on a journey to join ancestral kin in the hereafter

Archaeology · Ceremony · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Good death · Honor · Immorality · Morality · Natural (archaeology · Natural death · Political science · Sociology · Anthropology · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · History · Law · Medicine