The Roles of Social Actors in Accounts of Near-Death Experiences: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of France and the United States

Abstract

This chapter presents a sociological analysis of the actors present in a sample of 99 primarily American English-language and 82 French-language accounts of near-death experiences (NDEs). Family members, supernatural beings, and humans in general turned out to be the key actors. For the NDErs, the family provided an arena for three functions: meeting family members who had died, drawing NDErs back to life by the existence of living family, and, for some, triggering feelings that the family left behind in the living world was no longer relevant. Humans in general were depicted as having low levels of social differentiation in contrast to the complex division of labour that marks life in society today. Supernatural beings included God, Jesus, and angels, with the first representing notions of oneness and the second fulfilling the role of ideal friend. The English-language and French-language accounts were generally similar, but the role of the father was greater in the French while the notion of God as love was more prevalent in the English. Angels were present in some Anglophone accounts but not at all in the Francophone. The cross-language and cross-cultural comparison suggests that more needs to be done to differentiate between universal and local elements of accounts of near-death experiences.