The next Social Context of Death, Dying and Disposal conference (DDD17) will be held in Utrecht next year. The conference website includes the call for papers. The conference theme is ‘The politics of death’:

The politics of death

Despite appearing as a universal biological event, death is and has never been neutral. Instead, it is deeply entwined with issues of (in)equality, access, and power dynamics. In today’s world, death is perhaps more politicized as it ever was before. Wars, environmental crises, global migration patterns, and failing states bring death close to our homes. At the same time, technological, digital, and medical advancements alter our approaches to dealing with, thinking about, researching, and working with death. Such developments are equally inherently political, both in their origins and their applications.

As practitioners and scholars, how do we navigate the political dimensions of death? How does the political shape our engagement with death? And how can we reflect on and potentially change our own positions within this political landscape?

Death is political and performs the political. This is evident not only in death itself, but also in the dead (who can become political actors), their bodies, the process of dying (which is, amongst others, infrastructurally related to political discourse and inequalities), and bereavement (which can also become a political act). The political aspects of this theme extend beyond national or international political institutions (such as governments, state actors, multinational corporations, or political or religious alliances) to encompass everybody and everything that has to do with (the exercise of) power and moralities, e.g., families, kin, neighbourhoods, friendship networks.