4 Topic: Death and Dying as a Social Problem
We will be exploring the social problems of death and dying. Some of us have lived with a lot of death in our lives. The experience is familiar, even though every death is painful. Some of us have never even thought about death. Please remember to practice good self-care as you walk with us through this material. And, as much as we once knew about the process of dying and death itself, dealing with death during the COVID-19 pandemic brings its own set of challenges.
To put this story in a wider context, over 767 million people contracted COVID-19 worldwide as of August 2023. Nearly 7 million people worldwide died from COVID-19. (World Health Organization 2023). That’s about half the population of the Pacific Northwest or just under twice the population of Los Angeles. Although some people would have died anyway, many of these deaths were unexpected. Sociologists call this pattern excess death, the difference between the observed numbers of deaths in a particular period and the expected deaths for that same period (CDC 2023).
The level of illness worldwide overwhelmed our healthcare system. The amount of unexpected death overwhelmed our end-of-life systems as well. Hospitals in New York and elsewhere needed to park morgue trucks in their parking lots to handle the number of bodies. Spiritual care staff, including chaplains, pastors, ministers, rabbis, and other religious leaders, performed funerals on Zoom and prayed over burials in uncountable numbers. Every country has been impacted by unexpected deaths due to COVID-19. You can see the cumulative death per million people on the map.
As we consider what may be the most personal of all human experiences, death, we also see that death is a social problem. We notice that where you live, and by country, changes the likelihood that you will die of COVID-19. Even by this simple measure, death is also a social problem.
Death and Dying as a Social Problem
“Nothing is certain but death and taxes.” This phrase summarizes some of the wisdom of living in a modern economy. If we think back to the sociological imagination, we know that of course, death is personal. It happens to each of us diversely and individually. However, death is also a social event. Our families, friends, and communities walk through the process with us. We depend on the social institutions of hospitals and hospices and the businesses of more deaths and funeral homes to care for deaths. Even the government must issue death certificates for deaths to be considered valid. In this sense, death is also a social problem.
Beyond the Experience of the Individual
Death is one of the most intimate and personal issues a person will ever confront. What happens to an individual is affected by the social context within which it takes place, but death also has broader social implications. At a micro level of analysis, death, and the dying process involves the loss of social roles and a shift in existing rol