Making sense of mortality

Abstract

This paper focuses upon the collection and processing of government mortality statistics, and especially upon the organisational and theoretical contexts within which such statistics are assembled. Two items of mortality data in particular are examined with a view to illustrating the broader issues: medical cause of death, and social class of deceased. Using a 10 per cent sample of 1981 Belfast death certificates as a base, the paper attempts to trace the specific stages through which the cause of death and social class data have to pass prior to their incorporation into mortality reports. The paper indicates that there are numerous grounds for believing that both kinds of data are flawed at their points of origin, and that the transformations which the data undergo during coding procedures leads to further distortions of our image of mortality and its social base. It is argued that these flaws and distortions are only partly due to technical and organisational shortcomings, and more likely due to weaknesses in the theoretical frameworks through which the data are sifted. The paper concludes by suggesting that the existing arrangements for registering deaths, dominated as they are by the principles of forensic medicine, are more properly viewed as a system for policing the dead, than as a mechanism for generating worthwhile data about diseases and their social distribution.

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