Death, Anthropological Perspectives

Death is not a new interest for anthropologists, but how it is depicted has changed. Typically, earlier ethnographers inserted death, a biological given, into their descriptions of rituals, religious beliefs, and memorial practices. Few theorized death itself. Since the latter part of the 20th century, however, physical death as a topic in its own right has become prominent, due in part to critical theory and concepts of biopower and biopolitics taken from the work of Michel Foucault. Other factors are the aging of the American population, new technologies for sustaining life, and the rise of palliative and hospice care. More recent anthropology explores death and clinical medicine, endof-life decision making, the consequences for patients and families of life-extending technologies, changing styles of grief and bereavement, and ways the dying body is subjected to manipulation and variable interpretation. Controversies surrounding physician-assisted suicide, organ donation, and the highly publicized deaths of individuals trapped in long-term persistent vegetative states fuel this newer interest as well. This entry reviews first the ethnographic coverage of death in selected cultures. The work of anthropologists who study dying and its complications in the postmodern world of sophisticated technology and institutional medical management also is covered.

Theorizing Death

One of the earliest and still influential attempts to theorize death was that of Robert Hertz, a French anthropologist who in 1907 puzzled over secondary burial, reported among various groups in Sarawak. In this practice, bodies of the deceased are stored in large jars buried in the ground. After a time they are disinterred, the bones cleaned, and skulls displayed in the houses of their former owners. Versions of secondary burial are widespread in human societies (the medieval European traffic in sacred relics is an example), and Hertz argued they are more than mere curiosities. He saw the death beliefs and practices of any culture as elements in a coherent system built around three relationships: that between the living and a corpse; the inert body's release of vital spirit and its transition to a place of repose; and ongoing connections between these transported spirits or souls and remembering survivors. While the details and emphasis of course vary from place to place, the underlying system creates an orderliness that structures the sense of loss that any death inspires.

While not all subsequent ethnographers adopted the Hertz model, the abundance of ethnographic material they gathered can be conveniently presented in terms of its three-part relationships. The first, the preparation and disposal of a corpse, is foundational; body handling is an indicator of the significance of the deceased in life and an occasion for status display by the surviving family. That point is obvious enough if we compare the funeral practices associated with the death of a president with those for a pauper. It is equally evident in any funeral company's showroom, where caskets range from simple wood boxes to the expensively elaborate, and survivors are advised to choose something appropriate for the deceased. That pattern fits the expectations of a market-driven economy in which choice is one measure of consumer satisfaction. But even in an industrial society, it is not everyone's preference. Very much a [Page 266]contrast is the intensive, ritually driven body washing and wrapping that is the task of a chevra kaddisha, a traditional Jewish burial society. Here the goal is to efface social markers, thereby purifying the corpse according to the principles of an ancient tradition. Simplicity is what matters; in preparation to meet its divine source, the self must be freed of the clutter of the mundane. That is true also for Hindus, who bring their dying to Banaras on the river Ganges. For them, the purifying agent is not water but fire. As death nears, the dying shun food and water, an austerity that will speed the departure of the pran (vital breath) from the corpse when it is burned on a pyre at the river's edge.

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