Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will provide an overview of what the 'new' perspectives are that we have in mind when trying to understand contemporary practices of post-mortem body donation for therapeutic, research and educational purposes.

Paper long abstract:

Demand for cadaveric human tissue to serve biomedical need for therapeutic, research and educational purposes, is growing both internationally and transnationally. It is our contention that encouragement to engage in, or merely contemplate, cadaveric donation, or what we refer to as corporeal charity, is having wide-ranging consequences for the way in which death, mortuary rituals and immortality are currently conceived and practiced. The paper will set the scene for a discussion of just what these consequences are and how we might study 'death itself' ethnographically in the 21st century.