The Work of Grief: Practices of Grieving in the village tradition

The expression of emotions (including grief) differs from culture to culture and depends on the historical context. The life-world defines the grieving practices, and the social system regulates them.

Child death is a taboo topic for urban discourse. However, during folklore and anthropological expeditions in the Russian North, we noticed that women were ready to talk about it and shared their personal experience of bereavement of their children (or their siblings).

The focus of our attention is on the practice of grieving in the village community. Materials for the analysis are the records from the open electronic archive "Russian Everyday Life", which were made on the territories of the Arkhangelsk and Vologda regions from 1980 to 2021 inclusive.