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Contact info
For Library research help, please contact Moninder Lalli, Librarian for Sociology / Anthropology by email moninder_lalli@sfu.ca or Ask a librarian.
Research process
Start Your Research Here - This page gives you an overview of the research process, or in other words how to find materials for your essay.
Selected reference works
Encyclopedias, handbooks or textbooks provide overviews, definitions and identify key authors and ideas.
- A Companion to the Anthropology of Death
- Dealing with death a handbook of practices, procedures and law
- Death and bereavement across cultures
- Handbook of the sociology of death, grief, and bereavement : a guide to theory and practice
- Helping grieving people : when tears are not enough : a handbook for care providers
- Oxford handbook of the philosophy of death
- Palgrave Handbook of Anthropological Ritual Studies
- Palgrave Handbook of Dark Tourism Studies
- Routledge companion to death and dying
- Routledge handbook of death and the afterlife
- Routledge handbook of museums, heritage, and death
Databases for journal articles
How to find journal articles" tutorial.
The databases below will provide articles on information technology and society. If the full-text of the article is not available, use the "Get@SFU" link to find it. For more examples of search strategies and the keyword combinations that you could try, see the examples under the section, "Finding books - Keyword searches for topics" in this guide.
Example: "video games" AND (sociolog* OR anthropolog* OR ethnolog* OR social OR societ*)
- Anthropology Plus - Key database for Anthropological journal articles.
- AnthroSource - Full-text access to journals produced by the American Anthropological Association
- ProQuest Sociology Collection - for issues related to class, gender, racism, sexuality and sexism and theoretical and applied sociology, social science, and policy science.
- Social Sciences Full Text Multi-disciplinary database
For a more complete list, see Anthropology databases
Find books in the Library
Library Catalogue search guide
Search the SFU Library Catalogue. You can also use SFU Library Catalogue: Advanced Search
Books by title
Books can be searched by title using the "Browse by title" search, Catalogue Search or the Advanced Search. The "Browse by title" will not show book chapters or book reviews.
Keyword searches for topics
- ethnogr* AND theor* AND (death OR dying)
- (ethnograph*) AND (death OR dying OR bereave* OR grief OR greaving)
- ethnograph* AND (cultur*) AND (death OR dying OR bereave* OR grief OR greaving)
- ethnograph* AND mourn*
- ethnograph* AND (death OR dying) AND (child* OR parent* OR mother OR father OR friend)
- ethnograph* AND (death OR dying) AND (religi* OR faith OR church OR mosque OR temple)
- (sociolog* OR anthropol* OR ethnol*) AND (death OR dying OR bereave* OR grief OR greaving)
Combine different concepts using AND
Combine same concepts using OR
Use quotation marks to search for a phrase
Use brackets for synonyms
Use asterisk (*) for different endings of words
Note: For Catalogue Search, when combining concepts, use CAPITAL letters ( "OR", "AND")
Selected books
- At Home with Grief : Continued Bonds with the Deceased
- Being dead otherwise
- Death
- Death and dying : views from many cultures
- Death and religion in a changing world
- Day of Shelly's death : the poetry and ethnography of Grief [print]
- Death, society, and human experience [print]
- Dying : Facing the Facts
- Japanese Culture of Mourning Whales: Whale Graves and Memorial Monuments in Japan
- Managing Death: International Perspectives
- Matter of death : space, place and materiality
- Life and Death in Freud and Heidegger
- Narratives of Parental Death, Dying and Bereavement: A Kind of Haunting
- New death : mortality and death care in the twenty-first century
- Non-Shia practices of Muḥarram in South Asia and the diaspora : beyond mourning
- On (Writing) Families: Autoethnographies of Presence and Absence, Love and Loss
- Passages and afterworlds : anthropological perspectives on death in the Caribbean
- Political lives of dead bodies : reburial and postsocialist change [print]
- Post-Conflict Memorialization: Missing Memorials, Absent Bodies
- Presence of the dead in our lives [print]
- Sorrow and solace : the social world of the cemetery
- World of Bereavement: Cultural Perspectives on Death in Families
- Writing the self in bereavement : a story of love, spousal loss, and resilience
Browse search
Choose: Browse tab, change "title" to "subject"
- Bereavement
- Death
- Death - [geographic region or country]
- Death -- Social aspects
- Death -- Religious aspects
- Mourning customs
Presentation skills and writing help
See the Student Learning Commons for expert and friendly help with academic writing, learning, and study strategies.
- Resources on developing your participation skills
- Resources to help you improve your presentation skills
Library guides
- Library Research Tutorials. Animated tutorials on search techniques for finding books and journal articles.
- Annotated bibliographies
- Evaluating sources
- How to find journal articles
- Library Catalogue search guide
- What is a scholarly (or peer-reviewed) journal?
- What is plagiarism? Guide to common forms of plagiarism and how to avoid them
Writing help
Student Learning Commons provides assistance and numerous, helpful guides.