Abstract
In this talk we are primarily suggesting some logics when it comes to the concepts oftaboo and ghetto in relation to grief. We are looking at the kind of loss and grief surrounded with the most taboo and stigma: the loss of a child. There is an anomaly of the death of a child: biologically, children are not supposed to die before their parents, old people are supposed to die. Losing a child cuts to the core of human existence. A 100 years ago, the most common death was a child. Today, it is an old person. So the percentage of parents who have suffered the death of a child is comparably small compared with people who have lost an old relative. Moreover, the traditional view for socially accepted grief and mourning (at least in protestant Nordic countries) is often that you should not to grieve for too long, not too intensely or not to publicly.
A taboo can be said to be a rule against something that in other contexts are totally ordinary. In the case of a child’s death you might say that in grieving too long or too intensely or too publicly is a taboo. We have been studying different contexts of bereaved parents online communities in Denmark and Sweden we see that there are different de-tabooing practices going on. In everyday interaction in the physical world there is a taboo against performing parenthood once your child is dead. It is normal for a parent to talk about their children extensively, as long as it lives. What is to be considered normal, or accepted, is a matter of perspective. A ghetto if labelled from the outside is a negative term. it is superimposed on a community by those who are not afflicted or part of that community onto those who are. The wall themselves in a perform weird things. When it comes to grieving for the death of a child a common conception is that online groups and forums for grief and bereavement practices are places where parents and dwell in extensive and exaggerated grief. However, defined from the inside, the ‘grief ghettos’ are seen as safe havens where parents are empowered to express their loss and find ways of negotiating and performing parenthood,and coping with their grief, it is a place for doing de-tabooisation.
We are using data from different contexts of online grief communities in Denmark and Sweden. There are de-tabooing practices that we see are going on in a number of different online fora with different conditions for participation and sharing. We have data from a number of case studies, 3 open and one closed that we are looking into.
From Denmark we have data from open fora in 3 categories:
• online memorial site (Open group on a website where you can design individual memorial sites for lost ones (mindet.dk)
• designated forums for parents who have lost a child (Open forum (Babyornot.dk)
• subgroups in discussion forums for expecting parents (Open forum on commercial site for expecting parents (minmave.dk)
In a Swedish setting we have a Closed group on Facebook which is maintained by a Swedish peer grief support community (VSFB).
In the data we have differences concerning who the actors are in the various contexts, and sometimes also who the audience is. Whether the forum is open or closed, moderated or non-moderated also come into play affecting which kinds of practices are performed and how norms for grieving and coping are negotiated. (VSFB) Members in VSFB have as a basic condition that they are communicating with peers (i.e. everyone has experienced the loss of a child), even though… In the open fora are in that sense more complex and diverse group of members (expecting parents, people who have living children, people who have dead children). Practices: Photos of dead children, messages addressed to the dead children and so on. In VSFB and mindet.dk what is in common are the de-tabooing practices and the safe haven of knowing that everyone else here shares the experience of having a dead child, or claiming parenthood of a child who is no longer alive. But in contexts not specifically dedicated to bereaved parents or the memorialisation of dead children (commercial sites): these are not safe spaces limited to the communication of having lost a child. We can see that the practices in the fora are different from what is accepted outside”, so to speak. And we see that the moderators of VSFB are playing a role in negotiating norms for conduct, for instance, and this is one of the things that we intend to look into in more detail.
The de-tabooisation is also a process of negotiation the tabooisation of yourself as a parent to a dead child (“Am I a real parent”?). The de-tabooisation among the peers in the grief communities (norms and practices of performing grief or coping with grief). The de-tabooisation between those who have lost and who have not lost (in the open, “mixed” forums where parents who have not lost are communicating with parents who have lost, or never came to be parents): out-of-the-ghetto de-tabooisation.
A taboo can be said to be a rule against something that in other contexts are totally ordinary. In the case of a child’s death you might say that in grieving too long or too intensely or too publicly is a taboo. We have been studying different contexts of bereaved parents online communities in Denmark and Sweden we see that there are different de-tabooing practices going on. In everyday interaction in the physical world there is a taboo against performing parenthood once your child is dead. It is normal for a parent to talk about their children extensively, as long as it lives. What is to be considered normal, or accepted, is a matter of perspective. A ghetto if labelled from the outside is a negative term. it is superimposed on a community by those who are not afflicted or part of that community onto those who are. The wall themselves in a perform weird things. When it comes to grieving for the death of a child a common conception is that online groups and forums for grief and bereavement practices are places where parents and dwell in extensive and exaggerated grief. However, defined from the inside, the ‘grief ghettos’ are seen as safe havens where parents are empowered to express their loss and find ways of negotiating and performing parenthood,and coping with their grief, it is a place for doing de-tabooisation.
We are using data from different contexts of online grief communities in Denmark and Sweden. There are de-tabooing practices that we see are going on in a number of different online fora with different conditions for participation and sharing. We have data from a number of case studies, 3 open and one closed that we are looking into.
From Denmark we have data from open fora in 3 categories:
• online memorial site (Open group on a website where you can design individual memorial sites for lost ones (mindet.dk)
• designated forums for parents who have lost a child (Open forum (Babyornot.dk)
• subgroups in discussion forums for expecting parents (Open forum on commercial site for expecting parents (minmave.dk)
In a Swedish setting we have a Closed group on Facebook which is maintained by a Swedish peer grief support community (VSFB).
In the data we have differences concerning who the actors are in the various contexts, and sometimes also who the audience is. Whether the forum is open or closed, moderated or non-moderated also come into play affecting which kinds of practices are performed and how norms for grieving and coping are negotiated. (VSFB) Members in VSFB have as a basic condition that they are communicating with peers (i.e. everyone has experienced the loss of a child), even though… In the open fora are in that sense more complex and diverse group of members (expecting parents, people who have living children, people who have dead children). Practices: Photos of dead children, messages addressed to the dead children and so on. In VSFB and mindet.dk what is in common are the de-tabooing practices and the safe haven of knowing that everyone else here shares the experience of having a dead child, or claiming parenthood of a child who is no longer alive. But in contexts not specifically dedicated to bereaved parents or the memorialisation of dead children (commercial sites): these are not safe spaces limited to the communication of having lost a child. We can see that the practices in the fora are different from what is accepted outside”, so to speak. And we see that the moderators of VSFB are playing a role in negotiating norms for conduct, for instance, and this is one of the things that we intend to look into in more detail.
The de-tabooisation is also a process of negotiation the tabooisation of yourself as a parent to a dead child (“Am I a real parent”?). The de-tabooisation among the peers in the grief communities (norms and practices of performing grief or coping with grief). The de-tabooisation between those who have lost and who have not lost (in the open, “mixed” forums where parents who have not lost are communicating with parents who have lost, or never came to be parents): out-of-the-ghetto de-tabooisation.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Publication status | Published - 2015 |
| Event | 2nd Death Online Symposium - Kingston University, London, United Kingdom Duration: 17 Aug 2015 → 18 Aug 2015 |
Conference
| Conference | 2nd Death Online Symposium |
|---|---|
| Location | Kingston University |
| Country/Territory | United Kingdom |
| City | London |
| Period | 17/08/2015 → 18/08/2015 |