Abby Burnett
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781628461114
- eISBN:
- 9781626740624
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628461114.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
The complicated process of preparing the dead for burial is now the province of funeral industry professionals, but this is a recent development. Until the end of World War II, especially in rural ...
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The complicated process of preparing the dead for burial is now the province of funeral industry professionals, but this is a recent development. Until the end of World War II, especially in rural parts of the South and documented here across the Arkansas Ozarks, members of the deceased’s community performed all of the jobs required for a burial. This was done to relieve the family but, in many places, taboos forbid their participation. This book documents death, burial and mourning customs in the Arkansas Ozarks for 1850 to 1950. It examines the traditions that governed sitting up with the sick and dying, laying out the body prior to viewing and burial, building the coffin and digging the grave. It also documents parallels between funerals and the Southern custom of Decoration Day. Preceding these subjects is an examination of the therapies, folk cures and superstitions believed to save or prolong life. Other subjects include maternal and infant mortality, obituaries, as well as the burial customs of African Americans, which generally paralleled those of whites. One chapter is devoted to disenfranchised death, deaths that could not be mourned according to tradition, such as ones occurring during epidemics and wartime. The book concludes with an examination of the ways in which, by the 1950s, the funeral industry had assumed all of the many labor-intensive jobs once performed within the community. The transition was a gradual one, but ultimately succeeded with offering of offering embalming, factory-made caskets, burial insurance and other goods and services.Less
The complicated process of preparing the dead for burial is now the province of funeral industry professionals, but this is a recent development. Until the end of World War II, especially in rural parts of the South and documented here across the Arkansas Ozarks, members of the deceased’s community performed all of the jobs required for a burial. This was done to relieve the family but, in many places, taboos forbid their participation. This book documents death, burial and mourning customs in the Arkansas Ozarks for 1850 to 1950. It examines the traditions that governed sitting up with the sick and dying, laying out the body prior to viewing and burial, building the coffin and digging the grave. It also documents parallels between funerals and the Southern custom of Decoration Day. Preceding these subjects is an examination of the therapies, folk cures and superstitions believed to save or prolong life. Other subjects include maternal and infant mortality, obituaries, as well as the burial customs of African Americans, which generally paralleled those of whites. One chapter is devoted to disenfranchised death, deaths that could not be mourned according to tradition, such as ones occurring during epidemics and wartime. The book concludes with an examination of the ways in which, by the 1950s, the funeral industry had assumed all of the many labor-intensive jobs once performed within the community. The transition was a gradual one, but ultimately succeeded with offering of offering embalming, factory-made caskets, burial insurance and other goods and services.
Belden C. Lane
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- April 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190842673
- eISBN:
- 9780190936402
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190842673.003.0013
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion, World Religions
Does a mountain topography lend itself to group solidarity, ecstatic spiritual experience, and social isolation? The author asks this question as he compares Pentecostal communities in the Arkansas ...
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Does a mountain topography lend itself to group solidarity, ecstatic spiritual experience, and social isolation? The author asks this question as he compares Pentecostal communities in the Arkansas Ozarks to the rise of the Hasidic movement in Carpathian Mountains of eighteenth-century Ukraine. Mountains have been universally revered as places of divine/human encounter—from Machu Picchu in Peru and Mount Olympus in Greece to Mount Sinai in Egypt and the five sacred mountains of China. Mountains are places of transformation. Alchemists in the Middle Ages regarded the mountain peak as “the philosopher’s oven.” The Baal Shem Tov, founder of the modern Hasidic movement, argued that authentic spiritual knowledge was best found among the simple, unpretentious people of the mountain villages. These were the shoemakers, chicken farmers, tailors, and innkeepers who made up his followers. He pointed out that God had appeared to Moses in an ordinary thorn bush, set aflame in the desert. “It is in the simple folk—the ‘lowly’ thorn-bush,” he said, “that this insatiable Divine flame is found.”Less
Does a mountain topography lend itself to group solidarity, ecstatic spiritual experience, and social isolation? The author asks this question as he compares Pentecostal communities in the Arkansas Ozarks to the rise of the Hasidic movement in Carpathian Mountains of eighteenth-century Ukraine. Mountains have been universally revered as places of divine/human encounter—from Machu Picchu in Peru and Mount Olympus in Greece to Mount Sinai in Egypt and the five sacred mountains of China. Mountains are places of transformation. Alchemists in the Middle Ages regarded the mountain peak as “the philosopher’s oven.” The Baal Shem Tov, founder of the modern Hasidic movement, argued that authentic spiritual knowledge was best found among the simple, unpretentious people of the mountain villages. These were the shoemakers, chicken farmers, tailors, and innkeepers who made up his followers. He pointed out that God had appeared to Moses in an ordinary thorn bush, set aflame in the desert. “It is in the simple folk—the ‘lowly’ thorn-bush,” he said, “that this insatiable Divine flame is found.”
