Week 5

5.2 The Significance of Studying Cultural Patterns

• ethnocentrism, when you do not understand and adopt a judgemental approach to different cultural patterns and practices

• chapter will focus on death related practices in hispanics, black americans, asian americans and native americans

5.3 Hispanic Ameircans

• largest ethnic minority in the usa

• With relatively low death numbers, average life expectancy (ALE) for Hispanic Americans is high at an estimated 81.8 years. Still, after the impact of COVID-19 and other factors on all population groups in the U.S., ALE for Hispanic Americans declined by nearly 4 years to 77.9 years in 2020

  • factors contributing to low death rate

    • immigrants self selected for good health

    • some choose to return to home country when ill

    • population pyramid skews young

    • white hispanics have lower death rate than other hispanic racial groups

  • causes of death

    • hispanics have high age adjusted death rates for cancer, heart disease diabetes and dementia

    • “obesity, poor access to health services, and lack of health insurance have placed Hispanic Americans at a disadvantage.”

    • homicide for young hispanic men

• hispanic american attitudes toward death

  • importance of family, family should be involved extensively in planninga nd providing care

  • role of religion: some mexican american communities 90% roman catholic

  • relationship between life and death: continious relationship between life and death, death transformative and life changing instead of single event

  • fatalism and anticipatory grief: diseases viewed as death sentence

• death related practices hispanic americans

  • care for the dying role of women and girls

  • precense at deathso unresolved conflicts can be worked on

  • bereavement experiences Results emphasized the relevance of cultural beliefs about death, rituals, religion, and Latino values (i.e., familismo, respeto, simpatía, personalismo) as common themes in the included studies, along with expressions of grief (e.g., Ataque de nervios, somatization) that vary by gender and acculturation.”

  • mourning practices: open expression of grief for women, machismo for men not expected to grieve openly

  • ongoing connections and presence of the deceased

black americans

• attitudes toward death

  • importance of family

  • suspicion of medical communtiy

• death related practices among black americans

Asian Americans

• only group where cancer is leading cause of dath and not heart disease

  • death related attitudes

  • communication issues

    • restrained in communicating their feelings

    • conservative

Unique death rituals fromt his video

• dominican funerals in house, someone stays in house for 9 days and then the door stays shut for 9 days. when door opens back up for 9 days it is a big deal because soul opens back up

• touching the body so it does not haunt you

how do cultural rituals and religious traditions overlap

• putting things in the casket so they can take them to heaven with them

• the mexican girl who had the alter for the day of the dead but it remained because they are catholic and they just transformed it for dotd

what else stood out

• connection this has with other diaspora groups since hispanics as an amalgalation of all

• native americans circular life