The Living and the Dead examines the complex barriers and boundaries between the worlds of life and death.

The book draws upon philosophy, ethnography, literature and natural science in order to suggest that rather than being seen as opposing terms, life and death are better understood as continuous tendencies acting upon one another in a relationship where neither can be seen as passive. Arguing that the failure to think the relationship between that which is living and that which is not leads to situations where both life and death are degraded, The Living and the Dead, proposes that to confront the challenges of our times—the dominance of economism, the ecological crisis, technological advancement—we need to develop a more nuanced, complex, and fluid understand of the relationships between life and death.