Wednesday 18 October 2006
6:00pm – 8:00pm
Perspectives on Death and Dying
Daiwa Foundation Japan House
Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation in association with The Japan Society
This ‘chronological’ series on aspects of demographic change has inevitably taken us from the consideration of declining birth rates to that of death and dying in the UK and Japan. How each society deals with terminal illness, death, and the rituals of dying represents unspoken challenges and sometimes taboos. Debates on suicide and euthanasia are common in both the UK and Japan but this seminar provides a rare opportunity to parallel and to explore different cultural approaches to the subject of death. The specific areas of expertise of our speakers and chairperson will contribute complementary perspectives on this important theme.
About the contributors
Dr Glennys Howarth
Dr Glennys Howarth is Reader in Sociology and Head of the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath. She is Director of the Centre for Death and Society, launched at the University in September 2005. She has been researching and publishing in the field of death and dying for almost twenty years. She is a founding editor of Mortality, the first European journal of death studies, and has edited various books on death, including The Encyclopedia of Death and Dying (Routledge, 2001). Her latest book, Death and Dying: A Sociological Introduction (Polity Press) will be published in September 2006.
Dr Hikaru Suzuki
Dr Hikaru Suzuki is an assistant professor of anthropology at Singapore Management University. She graduated with a BA in Chinese History from Beijing University, receiving a PhD in Anthropology from Harvard University and an MBA in Marketing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of The Price of Death: The Funeral Industry in Contemporary Japan (Stanford, 2000). Her fieldwork research has included placements with Sun Ray Inc, a provider of Japanese Ceremonial Services in Japan, and she has written numerous articles on Japanese funerals and their rituals.
Deborah Annetts
Deborah Annetts (chair) is Chief Executive of Dignity in Dying. She read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University before joining the NHS. Following this she became a solicitor and was a partner at Stephens Innocent, a leading human rights practice. She has worked as the “legal eagle” for LBC and Talk Radio, has appeared on the Today programme and Newsnight. She has spoken both nationally and internationally on end of life decision making from the perspective of the patient and is the leading expert in this area.