1. research
matters
go.bath.ac.uk/ior
Ted, socially dead!
Jana Kralova, Department of Social & Policy Sciences
Imagine a world where refugees, homeless, elderly people, people with disabilities, teenage mothers, single parents,
addicts, gay / lesbian / trans people, sufferers of dementia, those who have been raped, victims of domestic violence,
poor people, those with mental health problems and others … are treated as human.
Imagine a world where they are not stigmatised and where they don’t suffer from severe social exclusion, simply
because of who they are.
What the social death idea has found is that you can dehumanise people in an infinite amount of ways, with countless
acts of cruelty, but the most extreme cases always end up the same: with the person as a worthless nobody, a ghost
or a living dead. Unearthing social death is the key to helping these ghosts.