This book explores grief as a social emotion. Thematically organised, it considers the historical changes in our understanding of grief, literary treatments of grief, contemporary forms of grief and grief as a perspective from which to engage in critique of society.

Introduction: Towards a Sociology of Grief: Historical, Cultural and Social Explorations of Grief as an Emotion Part 1: Grief and History 1. Grief in Modern History: An Ongoing Evolution 2. Diversity in Human Grieving: Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspectives 3. The Impact of he Two World Wars on Cultures of Grieving: Grief in England, 1914-1980 Part 2: Grief and Literature 4. Magical Thinking: Experiences of Grief and Mourning in George Saunders' Lincoln In The Bardo and Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing 5. A Story of Loss: Self-Narration of Grief and Public Feeling Rules 6. Writing Grief: The Fraught Work of Mourning in Fiction Part 3: Forms of Grief 7. The Denial of Grief: Reflections from a Decade of Anthropological Research on Parental Bereavement and Child Death 8. Public Mourning: Displays of Grief and Grievance 9. Grief in Human and Companion-Animal Loss, Bonding and Dividual Pet-Personhood Part 4: Grief and Social Critique 10. The Medicalisation of Grief 11. Suffocated Grief, Resilience and Survival Among African-American Families 12. Grief in an Individualised Society: A Critical Corrective to the Advancement of Diagnostic Culture