‘Den sociale død' - ‘det sociales død'

It is now almost a quarter of a decade ago since Norbert Elias proposed his famous thesis in The Loneliness of the Dying. In this book he sketched the contours of a society in which the elderly and the dying would increasingly become marginalized and institutionalized leading to heretofore unprecedented sensations of loneliness and social isolation. In continuation of this thesis, this article deals with the notion of ‘social death'.