Thinking about death:

This work is performed as a literature survey on the anthropological understanding of the historical and cultural construction of death, in society, and how social groups and health professionals understand its meaning. Thus, the texts read and indicated here point to: a cultural system of death that gives meaning to death and dying; in Western societies, the meaning of death is so; that it is possible to identify configurations of death, as traditional, modern and contemporary; to each configuration social agents insert themselves in the experience of dying and death; changes in the spatiality and place of death. Thus the work is intended to make the subject of death socially more visible, so that it is structured in the theoretical sense and experienced "naturally", as an event that is part of the cycle of life. The meaning of death was seen as changeable from time to time in Western society being possible to identify its configurations, at each configuration social agents insert themselves into the experience of dying and death; changes in the spatiality and social place of death.