Unequal Before Death

Book excerpt: Death has been deemed the “great equalizer,” but each journey towards our shared, ultimate fate is unique. The length of our lives, the quality of our last days, how our deaths are perceived by others, and the handling of our remains are governed by nature and many socio-cultural factors. Unequal Before Death is an edited collection that addresses inequalities surrounding death from the perspectives of scholars in a wide range of humanistic and social science disciplines, including art history, anthropology, Film and media studies, political science, popular culture, psychology, religion, sociology, and statistics. The majority of the chapters of this interdisciplinary anthology are revised versions of papers presented at the second Austin H. Kutscher Memorial Conference, entitled “Unequal Before Death,” organized by the Columbia University Seminar on Death in March 2010 and attended by leading experts in academia, healthcare and the not-for-profit sector. The purpose of this volume is to bring attention to the many inequalities affecting the end of life experience and to encourage collaborative research and action that can improve the experience for the dying and those around them. This volume does not question the truism of death as the ultimate equalizer but rather, seeks to explore the many ways in which the final journey is not equal.