Cross-cultural aspects of bereavement. I: A conceptual framework for comparative analysis

This paper reviews some key conceptual questions in the study of cross-cultural aspects of bereavement, including whether individuals in all societies share the same private experience and public expression of grief.

Abstract

This paper reviews some key conceptual questions in the study of cross-cultural aspects of bereavement. Six questions are reviewed in cross-cultural perspective: whether individuals in all societies share the same private experience and public expression of grief; whether the stages of grief occur in the same sequence and at the same rate in all cultures; the nature of the relationship between the individual's private grief and his public mourning; the reactions of children to death, and the reactions of adults to the death of children; the role of religious belief; and the possibility that an ethnic group can experience collective grief in response to uprooting.