Paper short abstract:

Death and grief are phenomena that take center stage in the face of the pandemic caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19). Both are studied as a social phenomenon, which opens the doors to an empirical-reflexive proposal from different angles. In this case as a social-cultural construction.

Paper long abstract:

In most cases death, grief and mourning have a ritual component which gives substance and form to the beliefs that are entangled around death and the process of dying. They also give a pattern to a double bind, where beliefs related to death serve as a basis and support to show it as a universal and natural phenomenon; but at the same time they deny it, through ideas that revolve around the continuity of life. Death and grief are phenomena that take center stage in the face of the pandemic caused by COVID-19. Ancestral cultures developed significant contributions about mourning and death, this leads us to reflect on the structures that are at the base of the construction that we have on death, and, consequently, mourning. This proposal starts from the construction of a few concepts: a) the "universe of certainties", which consolidates in individuals a prospective vision of their lives; b) the "horizon of continuities" where people visualize their future next to loved ones, ideals, personal projects, among others. But once the mourning occurs, the horizon of continuities is altered, it is at this moment where people struggle to rebuild this horizon, repeating ideas of the deceased person, merging their life project with the life project of the loved one, sometimes struggling to resemble the deceased in a biosimilar way (third concept). My presentation seeks to show a theory about grief as a social-cultural construction, and how it affects the lives of individuals in a significant way.