Towards a Sociology of (Public) Mourning?

Abstract

Anthony Elliott, The Mourning of John Lennon, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, $45.00 hardback ($17.95 paperback), xi+219 pp. (ISBN 0-520-21549-4)

Adrian Kear and Deborah Lynn Steinberg (eds.), Mourning Diana: Nation, Culture and the Performance of Grief, London: Routledge, 1999, £13.99 paperback, xi+218 pp. (ISBN 0-415-19393-1)

Tony Walter (ed.), The Mourning for Diana, Oxford: Berg, 1999, £14.99 paperback, xiii+286 pp. (ISBN 1-85973-238-0)

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 the human subject as governed by rational and conscious thought alone. In so doing it has raised a question mark both against the adequacy of the (theoretical) tools used for analysing emotions which have developed from these premises and the ability of sociology in general to provide answers to such questions.