Books by Margaret M Gibson
Living and Dying in a Virtual World: Digital Kinships, Nostalgia, and Mourning in Second Life, 2018
T
Objects of the Dead examines a universal and poignant experience - the process of living with, so... more Objects of the Dead examines a universal and poignant experience - the process of living with, sorting through and discarding the objects that are left behind after a loved one dies. How and when family property is sorted through is often fraught with difficulties, regrets and disagreements. Through personal stories, film and memoir, Margaret Gibson reveals the power of objects to bind and undo relationships.
"This is a remarkable reflection on grieving - of both saying goodbye and living with death".
Papers by Margaret M Gibson
Thesis Eleven
This introduction positions the special issue by highlighting the inherent relationality of place... more This introduction positions the special issue by highlighting the inherent relationality of place as well as how place is not just an object of analysis but something that shapes thinking, writing and experiences of the world. We reflect on why sociology has found it somewhat more difficult than its social science counterparts to give place the centrality it merits, and discuss whether this reflects a problem with dealing with questions of ‘scale’ and thinking the ‘in-betweenness’ of place. We assess important formulations of place in recent place theories, including non-essentialist framings of place such as ‘progressive’ and as ‘assemblage’. We make a case for seeing the articles in this special issue (and Thesis Eleven’s own long history of publishing writing on the topic of place) as resonating with the themes of place as materiality, atmospheres and spaces of belonging.
Mortality, 2018
This paper is based on interviews with self-identified surfers from both
Australia and Hawaii who... more This paper is based on interviews with self-identified surfers from both
Australia and Hawaii who have extensive histories of participation in
the surfing funeral or post-funeral ritual of the paddle-out ceremony.
The paddle-out is an ocean-based death ritual in which the deceased
are symbolically, and often materially through cremains, placed in
the ocean and farewelled through highly physical ritual actions. In a
paddle-out, surfing communities located at specific, and sometimes
multiple places, come together to acknowledge, remember and
tell stories of a member who is missing in the line-up. As a rite of
passage, the paddle-out does not neatly fit anthropology’s, and
particularly van Gennep’s idea of the funeral as primarily a separation
ritual. Indeed, our research suggests that ideas of separation and
connection, departure and continuing to mingle with the living
all operate in how the ritual is experienced and interpreted. While
co-extensive with Hawaiian surfing traditions, the paddle-out is also
an adaptive, modern, flexible ritual open to personalisation in its form
and meaning. The paddle-out ceremony is a rite passage for both
the living and the dead and the deeply physical nature of the ritual
provides a transformational experience of emotional release while
also creating and renewing bonds and group solidarity. The circle
formation, a key symbolic practice in the ritual, is central to production
and self-recognition of community as participants face each other
with the bereaved often placed inside the circle’s centre in a visual,
physical act of support. The deceased are also symbolically placed in
the centre as the ritual mourns their loss and invariably celebrates
their life and surfing identity.
Palgrave Macmillan memory studies, 2018
Palgrave Macmillan memory studies, 2018
Palgrave Macmillan memory studies, 2018
The nascent field of Memory Studies emerges from contemporary trends that include a shift from co... more The nascent field of Memory Studies emerges from contemporary trends that include a shift from concern with historical knowledge of events to that of memory, from 'what we know' to 'how we remember it'; changes in generational memory; the rapid advance of technologies of memory; panics over declining powers of memory, which mirror our fascination with the possibilities of memory enhancement; and the development of trauma narratives in reshaping the past. These factors have contributed to an intensification of public discourses on our past over the last thirty years. Technological, political, interpersonal, social and cultural shifts affect what, how and why people and societies remember and forget. This groundbreaking new series tackles questions such as: What is 'memory' under these conditions? What are its prospects, and also the prospects for its interdisciplinary and systematic study? What are the conceptual, theoretical and methodological tools for its investigation and illumination?
Palgrave Macmillan memory studies, 2018
Palgrave Macmillan memory studies, 2018
In 2017 Bandai America released a 20th anniversary edition of the ubiquitous 1990s toy, Tamagotch... more In 2017 Bandai America released a 20th anniversary edition of the ubiquitous 1990s toy, Tamagotchi. 1 This toy, beloved by a generation, simulates the experience of owning a pet. It is a physical object through which the user can feed, wash, and otherwise care for a black-and-white digital creature. The pet on the Tamagotchi screen hatches, lives, and dies. At every stage of its life cycle, it demands care and attention. In 1999, the website Neopets was launched, allowing children to create their own digital pets. Like Tamagotchi pets, Neopets required daily acts of care and attention. Unlike Tamagotchis, Neopets could not die. Wrye has suggested that such virtual pets challenge notions of pets as inherently and necessarily existing as living creatures. Instead, she argues that pets should be understood in relation to an idea of petness which would encompass such virtual creatures. 2 Sherry Turkle noted that children had, by the turn of the twenty-first century, learned to differentiate between types of
Palgrave Macmillan memory studies, 2018
The nascent field of Memory Studies emerges from contemporary trends that include a shift from co... more The nascent field of Memory Studies emerges from contemporary trends that include a shift from concern with historical knowledge of events to that of memory, from 'what we know' to 'how we remember it'; changes in generational memory; the rapid advance of technologies of memory; panics over declining powers of memory, which mirror our fascination with the possibilities of memory enhancement; and the development of trauma narratives in reshaping the past. These factors have contributed to an intensification of public discourses on our past over the last thirty years. Technological, political, interpersonal, social and cultural shifts affect what, how and why people and societies remember and forget. This groundbreaking new series tackles questions such as: What is 'memory' under these conditions? What are its prospects, and also the prospects for its interdisciplinary and systematic study? What are the conceptual, theoretical and methodological tools for its investigation and illumination?
The Moral Uncanny in Black Mirror, 2020
Journal of Sociology, 2016
Through a qualitative study of YouTube bereavement vlogs and posts by young people about parental... more Through a qualitative study of YouTube bereavement vlogs and posts by young people about parental death, this article examines the rise and significance of intimate mourning between strangers. An unexpected finding of this research has been the speed with which young people create vlogs or post messages of their bereavement; very often within hours of a death. The question of time in relation to bereavement grief is thus a feature of this article’s analysis. The article argues that YouTube, like other social media, exposes and contests the disenfranchising of grief in offline social settings and relationships while, at the same time, enfranchising disaffected and excluded bereavement discourse via media sociality. It also argues, conversely, that YouTube, like other social media, is now a primary social space (not secondary or supplementary); it provides the where and how and who to connect with regarding personal grief and bereavement.
The Social Construction of Death
Mortality, 2004
ABSTRACT Through psychoanalytical concepts, interview research and biographical text, this paper ... more ABSTRACT Through psychoanalytical concepts, interview research and biographical text, this paper discusses the importance of objects in the lives of the bereaved. DW Winnicott's concept of the transitional object is used to analyse grief work through objects. Like the transitional ...
Mortality, 2007
On 4 September 2006, Steve Irwin, otherwise know as the ‘‘crocodile hunter’’ and ‘‘wildlife warri... more On 4 September 2006, Steve Irwin, otherwise know as the ‘‘crocodile hunter’’ and ‘‘wildlife warrior,’’ died after being fatally wounded from a stingray barb. Since his death there has been a huge outpouring of public grief in Australia and overseas. The extent and reach of Irwin’s popularity among adults and particularly, children, was perhaps not fully known and registered until his passing. Glaringly obvious in the media frenzy is the commercial gains to be made by celebrity deaths. On the same day as his death, eBay was auctioning off t-shirts, mugs, and other memorabilia. Significant deaths have the power to create ‘‘communities of mourning.’’ These communities surface quickly with flowers, cards, and other paraphernalia of grief laid at significant sites. In the case of Steve Irwin, Australia Zoo became the main site of pilgrimage. Once the process of pilgrimage starts it tends to build as people enjoy a rare opportunity to generate, through their own action, a bond of shared feeling among strangers. What all these strangers have in common is a powerful identification with a celebrity or a world leader—someone they believe in, trust, or admire because of the work they do or simply because of who they are. In recent years, various communities of mourning on a global scale surfaced in response to Princess Diana’s death (1997), Mother Teresa’s death (1997), the tragedy of September 11 (2001), and the death of Pope John Paul II (2005). At the same time, modern media, far from documenting a process outside its own making, creates and enables this phenomenon. Communities of mourning have a period of intensity and then they dissipate. The main event, usually the memorial service or funeral, marks the climax. Once the cameras are turned off and the headline stories change, the deep grieving begins for those whose connection was close and heartfelt. Death is reported everyday in the media because of wars, civil unrest, disasters, accidents, and disease. Celebrity deaths, however, are of a different order. Celebrities have the power to harness and sustain the attention of large populations across the globe. From these deaths, media corporations create news headlines, programmes, stories, and products for profit. Just days after Steve Irwin’s public memorial service at Australia Zoo, negotiations were already underway to produce a DVD of the event. While the proceeds of the DVD will no Mortality, Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2007
The shifting cultural landscape of human sexuality has undergone significant movement over the la... more The shifting cultural landscape of human sexuality has undergone significant movement over the last 50 years. This thesis addresses an important gap within this landscape: the work that is involved in the construction of femininities. The study navigates the complex human capacities of female sexuality by deploying critical theory relative to the ways that understandings of sexuality have changed in modern social and intellectual history. Twenty heterosexual and lesbian-identified women were interviewed and their narratives form the basis of this thesis. It is evident from these narratives that, through upbringing, experience and education, discourses are socially mediated in complex ways to generate our individual worlds. The thesis tells the stories of the women who participated in the study and reveals their experiences of growing up as girls against the backdrops of time, context, and social interaction. This research utilises Foucault's work on technologies of the self, and...
Journal of Sociology, 2021
The title of this article is deliberately provocative aiming to trouble the imposition of identit... more The title of this article is deliberately provocative aiming to trouble the imposition of identity fixations and reductive assumptions on creative endeavours and outputs. This article is based on a research project which investigated the identity negotiations and representational responsibilities of women visual artists of Muslim faith and/or cultural background practising and exhibiting their artwork in Australia. This article shows how artists sometimes embrace certain identity markers in order to gain opportunities and promote forms of visibility and debate. At the same time, artists can feel the limitations of being pigeonholed and scrutinised because they have not met the normative and moral expectations of their cultural and religious communities as well as those of communities and organisations associated with the arts sector they have been associated with or with which they may wish to have a future association.
Death and disposition of remains are universal problems that touch every culture. Although every ... more Death and disposition of remains are universal problems that touch every culture. Although every culture organises and packages dying and death each manages disposition in a different way. When Māori die in Australia it tests the strength of their resolve to be Māori and differentiate between cultural and national identities and their veneer of Australian-ness. This research engages with constructivism, grounded theory and kaupapa Māori frameworks in order to determine factors that influence repatriation of cremated Māori remains to New Zealand. At the core of this research is the attribution of identity to cremated remains (cremains) as it determines how they will be treated and cared for. Interment decisions have significant cultural and economic impacts, but the main contribution of this thesis is these decisions may redefine Māori cultural and spiritual conceptions of deceased and so homelands. Data was collected for a period of six months through an online questionnaire deploye...
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Books by Margaret M Gibson
"This is a remarkable reflection on grieving - of both saying goodbye and living with death".
Papers by Margaret M Gibson
Australia and Hawaii who have extensive histories of participation in
the surfing funeral or post-funeral ritual of the paddle-out ceremony.
The paddle-out is an ocean-based death ritual in which the deceased
are symbolically, and often materially through cremains, placed in
the ocean and farewelled through highly physical ritual actions. In a
paddle-out, surfing communities located at specific, and sometimes
multiple places, come together to acknowledge, remember and
tell stories of a member who is missing in the line-up. As a rite of
passage, the paddle-out does not neatly fit anthropology’s, and
particularly van Gennep’s idea of the funeral as primarily a separation
ritual. Indeed, our research suggests that ideas of separation and
connection, departure and continuing to mingle with the living
all operate in how the ritual is experienced and interpreted. While
co-extensive with Hawaiian surfing traditions, the paddle-out is also
an adaptive, modern, flexible ritual open to personalisation in its form
and meaning. The paddle-out ceremony is a rite passage for both
the living and the dead and the deeply physical nature of the ritual
provides a transformational experience of emotional release while
also creating and renewing bonds and group solidarity. The circle
formation, a key symbolic practice in the ritual, is central to production
and self-recognition of community as participants face each other
with the bereaved often placed inside the circle’s centre in a visual,
physical act of support. The deceased are also symbolically placed in
the centre as the ritual mourns their loss and invariably celebrates
their life and surfing identity.
"This is a remarkable reflection on grieving - of both saying goodbye and living with death".
Australia and Hawaii who have extensive histories of participation in
the surfing funeral or post-funeral ritual of the paddle-out ceremony.
The paddle-out is an ocean-based death ritual in which the deceased
are symbolically, and often materially through cremains, placed in
the ocean and farewelled through highly physical ritual actions. In a
paddle-out, surfing communities located at specific, and sometimes
multiple places, come together to acknowledge, remember and
tell stories of a member who is missing in the line-up. As a rite of
passage, the paddle-out does not neatly fit anthropology’s, and
particularly van Gennep’s idea of the funeral as primarily a separation
ritual. Indeed, our research suggests that ideas of separation and
connection, departure and continuing to mingle with the living
all operate in how the ritual is experienced and interpreted. While
co-extensive with Hawaiian surfing traditions, the paddle-out is also
an adaptive, modern, flexible ritual open to personalisation in its form
and meaning. The paddle-out ceremony is a rite passage for both
the living and the dead and the deeply physical nature of the ritual
provides a transformational experience of emotional release while
also creating and renewing bonds and group solidarity. The circle
formation, a key symbolic practice in the ritual, is central to production
and self-recognition of community as participants face each other
with the bereaved often placed inside the circle’s centre in a visual,
physical act of support. The deceased are also symbolically placed in
the centre as the ritual mourns their loss and invariably celebrates
their life and surfing identity.