"Yours Virtually Forever": death memorials and remembrance sites in the WWW

Abstract

Contents 1. Death memorials as significant objects of societal and macrocultural studies; 2. The basic significance of the Internet for increasing the permeability between private and public spheres; 3. The phenomenology of Web Remembrance Sites; 4. The socio-cultural antecedents, functions and consequences ofWeb Memorial Sites: some macro- and microsociologal considerations; 4.1 Completing the dissociation of mourning from the physical body and grave; 4.2 Encouraging more complex and reflective responses by loosening the pressures of time; 4.4 Extensive mobilization of psychological support; 4.5 "Mourning" as an increasingly partialized and temporalized social role; 4.6 Typifying biographies and democratizing canonization; 5. Conclusions.