Following
my Civil Celebrant training, I, with the encouragement of my UKSOC tutor, began
to engage much more than I previously had in and with social media. Having
previously only dabbled in a lacklustre way with my twitter account, I now have
an additional twitter account, a Facebook account and I forward these Blog
entries to both of these. Here, in addition to writing about
issues linked to Civil Celebrancy – e.g. clothing traditions and choices at
weddings and funerals; cultural norms and superstitions; the important of place
and space – more often than not with a sociological slant I’ve also written of
loss and bereavement and the practices and processes of griefwork as identified
by Deborah Davidson (2008) as the work we do with others. Recently I started to
write on a sister blog Arwenack Cerebrals: writing, reading, thinking
http://arwenackcerebrals.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/new-blog-new-musings.html on which I write about (amongst other things) my
fiction and memoir writing.
Obviously I am not the only one who finds Blog writing interesting, helpful, engaging. There are many examples of wellknown Blogs/Bloggers. For example:
Deliciously
Ella http://deliciouslyella.com/
Never
Seconds http://neverseconds.blogspot.co.uk/
Brit Mums http://www.britmums.com/
Geeky
Gadgets http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/
Also and
increasingly there are also calls for academics to share their research
findings in this format and/or via tweets for a more wide-reaching and
immediate ‘impact’ on the world beyond the academy.
My own social world engagement has made me think specifically about virtual world auto/ biographical practices. Within my dedicated Civil Celebrants twitter account I follow other celebrants and other people and groups with an interest in namings, various types of relationship commitment ceremonies and funerals. My dying and death online friends and ‘acquaintances’ (Morgan 2009) are particularly relevant here as Death CafĂ©, Final Fling, Kicking the Bucket, Funeral Funnies, Rated Wedding, WeddingHour etc., clearly report on auto/biographic practices. Many of those I follow and befriend are concerned with the things that Sociologists are – ritual and representation, presentation of self, identity, family practices, stigma and so on. And the social world itself is of interest to Sociologists and to Civil Celebrants in terms of how identities are presented and maintained during and after life. Interesting things to think about here include online memorials and continuing social media presence (I read recently that there are 500 dead people on Facebook), wedding flashmobs on YouTube and drop box accounts charting a child's progress; from birth, to naming ceremony and beyond.
References
Davidson, D. (2008). A Technology of care: Caregiver response to perinatal loss. Women’s Studies International Forum, 31(4), 278-284.
Davidson, D. (2008). A Technology of care: Caregiver response to perinatal loss. Women’s Studies International Forum, 31(4), 278-284.
Morgan, D. (2009) Acquaintances:
The Space Between Intimates and Strangers Buckingham: Open
University
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