Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Return of the Flesh: Birth, Death, and Parentage in Question

The Return of the Flesh: Birth, Death, and Parentage in Question

Memmi, Dominique

Hardcover

Series: Palgrave Studies on Norbert Elias

Public HealthAnthropologyGeneral Sociology

ISBN10: 3032282527
ISBN13: 9783032282521
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: Jul 31 2026
Pages: 238
Weight: 0.99
Height: 0.74 Width: 6.25 Depth: 8.27
Language: English
This book is a groundbreaking study of a major ideological shift in the 1990s centered on birth, death, and parentage.

Since then, fathers have been encouraged to cut the umbilical cord, and mothers urged to breastfeed, practice skin-to-skin contact, and even contemplate the placenta. Parents are encouraged to see and touch their stillborn child. Viewing the deceased has become a moral obligation, and cremation tends to be viewed as detrimental to the grieving process. Physical access to biological parents has become essential to those adopted or born through gamete donation. In short, in most Western countries, there has been a shift toward focusing on the body as the foundation of social bonds. Why have mental health, healthcare, and funeral professionals created these new practices? To understand this, author Dominique Memmi observed numerous gestures whose convergence had gone previously unnoticed.

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