Death, actually: Emboldening theory and praxis when death is all around

Abstract

In this article, we seek to illuminate the public sector relevance of the weighty subject of death, and to identify the stakes in avoiding the subject. Our purpose is to unlearn silence about Public Administration’s (PA’s) potential role in understanding, communicating, and addressing the avoidable and unavoidable in human death and suffering. At this time, death seems to be all around, and at the same time, nowhere. Contending that the academic field of PA understates the degree to which death features in actual PA practice, this article establishes death’s relative absence in the journals of the field before examining obstacles to its presence. We identify and critically examine potential barriers to death’s inclusion in PA, suggesting ways forward and intimating that COVID-born openness to recognition and discussion of death is not likely to last without conscious efforts. In illuminating objections and stakes we propose that PA theory and praxis and the public sector itself would benefit by confronting death avoidance, anxiety, and dread with greater and more intentional reflection, deliberation, and literacy on these subjects.

Keywords:

• Death denial
• death avoidance
• mortality
• epidemics
• terror management theory
• role of government
• emotional labor
• theory and praxis

Notes

1 Characteristics of paid jobs that call for emotional labor include, by Hochschild’s (1983) classic definition: Face-to-face or voice-to-voice engagement with the public; being asked to induce or suppress emotional states in others; and employer monitoring and supervision of the details of employee emotions (p. 147).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patricia M. Patterson

P. M. Patterson retired in 2020 from the faculty of the School of Public Administration at Florida Atlantic University, having served as a PAT-net Program Chair, ATP Book Review Editor, and on the ATP Editorial Board. Dr. Patterson writes at the intersection of three concerns: for the power and consequences of the negative emotions in Public Administration and associated social practices; for the realities & ethics of public sector work; and for the dignity of vulnerable, suffering or marginalized persons. Her work has appeared in American Review of Public Administration, Administrative Theory & Praxis, Public Administration Review, PPMR, IJOTB, and other venues.

Ryan J. Lofaro

Ryan J. Lofaro is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Public Administration, Florida Atlantic University. His research interests include public policy, socially equitable emergency management, governmental responses to health crisis events, lived experience representative bureaucracy theory, and narrative inquiry. He has published in Administrative Theory & Praxis, Contemporary Drug Problems, Public Voices, Critical Policy Studies, and the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, among other journals.