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A truism of ethnology is that death rituals and related practices are oriented more toward the living than the dead; that they seek to re-organize social relationships that have been damaged by the death of a loved one. This chapter shows how Garhwali beliefs and practices relating to death, ghosts, and exorcism accomplish this task. Fundamentally, they do so by transforming the ambivalent, dangerous ghost into a beneficent, auspicious ancestor.

This chapter investigates the social and religious understanding of death in England during the 16th and 17th centuries. It analyses the issue from theological and liturgical perspective and as a secular social activity. It covers several death ritual topics including the separation of body and soul, the conflict between the traditional and reformist modes of burial, the handling of the mortal body, and the evaluation of the disposition of the soul.

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about courtship, marriage, birth, and death rituals and traditions in Tudor and Stuart England. This book traces the history of these traditions from the reign of Henry VIII to the reign of Queen Anne, highlighting the controversies surrounding the Act of Uniformity of 1559 to the Toleration Act of 1869. It analyses how these traditions and rituals were influenced by Protestant Reformation, the Revolution, and the Restoration. This book also examines the emergence of individualism and defiance of these rituals.

Chapter four explores the second set of ethical performances and debates among the Jēnu Kuṟumba, the death rituals. These rituals constitute arenas of elaborate ethical argumentation and they are a vital part of the ritual performances conducted by the Jēnu Kuṟumba people. The death rituals include extensive verbal dialogues between a shaman and the relatives of the dead person. The chapter examines the poiesis and the rhetoric of the ethical imagination performed in these rituals and shows how concepts of a good life are articulated. It also gives a detailed discourse analysis of the indigenous debates and it represents these voices in detail. In addition a set of symbolic actions is performed which also serve as arguments in the moral debate.

More than a third of a short paper from 1984, first published in the Cambridge Review, is given over to a succinct review of changing modes of dying, death, and associated rituals from prehistoric times to the late nineteenth century — in the main based upon the work of Philippe Arie's and his concept of the shift from ‘tamed’ to ‘forbidden’ death. The chapter concludes with reference to recent studies by Ford and Pincherle as well as by Cartwright and colleagues — the latter revealing ‘many sad inadequacies’ in the care system.

This chapter examines the rituals for death or the process of separating from life in the U.S. It explains that in a culture as diverse as the U.S., the rituals for separating from life are also diverse and distinct and that a commonality often referred to only lies in the analogy of death and sleep. It suggests that the three categories of funeral rites have metamorphosed into a different schema in the individualistic American culture and the vanity-driven culture has turned people inward making them resistant to generalized traditions. It presents observations on how an American family deal with last illness and the death of a loved one.

The significance of ancestor rites is commonly believed to lie in Confucian ways of thought. This chapter argues that they also feature in shaman traditions. Though the syncretic nature of religious thought and practices on the Korean Peninsula makes any clear separation of Confucian, shaman, and Buddhist worldviews tenuous, shamanic death rituals aimed at appeasing the spirits of the dead filled an important emotional gap for Chosŏn people. In examining the specific components of shamanic funerary rites, such as cleansing the living of the influence of the dead, the treatment of the corpse, and sending the spirit of the dead to the next world, the chapter discusses the motivations behind such rituals and explains how they were carried out. Particular attention is given to the Chinogwi Kut, one of the most representative of shamanic death rites. Normally performed only in the case of a “bad” death, it offers the spirit of the dead a chance to air its grievances, and it was believed that doing so restored harmony among the living and the dead.

This chapter examines the politics of death in Illinois coal mining communities during the period 1883–1910, with particular emphasis on how miners and their families experienced death in one of the country's most dangerous occupations. It explores three causes of death in coal mines and how they shaped miners' experiences with death: mass-fatality mine disasters, the deadly hazards in everyday mining, and the violent confrontations between miners and employers. It also discusses the coal miners' political and cultural responses to the deaths of their coworkers, focusing on the emergence of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), which combined previous burial practices established by churches, fraternal societies, and other unions to lay the foundations for a coherent set of ritual practices for union coal miners. Finally, it describes the coal miners' creation of a repertoire of rituals of death that melded religious, fraternal, and immigrant traditions. The Illinois coal miners' experiences with death and dying highlights the human and emotional impact of industrialization.

This chapter examines the steelworkers' experiences with death and dying in western Pennsylvania, and more specifically in Monongahela Valley, during the period 1892–1919. It begins by recounting the Homestead strike of 1892, which pitted the wealthy owners of the Carnegie Steel Company against the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. It then considers other factors that shaped steelworkers' experiences with death after the defeat at Homestead, including work life and life outside of work. It also explores the responses of steelworkers and their families to death, focusing on their creation of networks of mutual aid by turning to religious and secular fraternal societies to help care for the sick and bury the dead. It also discusses the McKees Rocks strike of 1909 and the themes of death and dignity that defined it before concluding with a look at the story of steelman Joe Magarac and its similarities to steelworkers' experiences in turn-of-the-century steel mills. The steelworkers' rituals of death and dying suggests that death provided a key place where they nurtured spirits of resistance.

Kwan Mun Hau, an original village and research focus, was re-sited in 1964, as the villagers could no longer tolerate the flooding in the old village resulting from unplanned development of surrounding areas, and government hopes to rationalize the development of the central area where the village had been located. This sealed the villagers’ move to a cash economy, a mixed benefit, with many employed in industry and some receiving rents from tenants of diverse origins, many of whom ran small factories. The lineage trusts were also converted to rent-yielding urban property. Families were still large, with many children, but their structures were limited by the configuration of the new houses. Interest in birth control was high. All children now went to school, studying in Cantonese, the lingua franca, which was also promoted by the increasing presence of television. Western medicine was readily available, but the very old were still cared for at home.

This book examines the rituals of dying and the politics of death among the working class during the period 1865–1920. It considers how wageworkers and their families experienced death in the United States between the Civil War and the end of World War I by focusing on John Henry—one of the hundreds of thousands of workers who died in service to industrialization—and the lack of surviving accounts about what happened to his dead body. The book draws on case studies to investigate how workers used the rituals of death to interpret, accommodate, and resist their living and working conditions; the ways social class shaped Americans' attitudes toward death; and the social and cultural contexts that shaped interpretations of workers' deaths resulting from work accidents. The book shows how rituals of death reflected the ways that working communities articulated beliefs about family, community, and class and negotiated social relationships—how common people interpreted their roles in the industrial republic.

This book concludes by summarizing developments that made death a contested terrain of political authority and ideology containing elements of class, gender, ethnicity, race, and religion during the period 1865–1920. It begins by focusing on the exhortation by American Federation of Labor's Samuel Gompers at the International Labor Congress in 1893 that “the lives and limbs of the wage-workers shall be regarded as sacred as those of all others of our fellow human beings.” It then discusses the emergence of class-based rituals of death and dying as an undercurrent of industrialization from the end of the Civil War to the close of the Progressive Era as working communities infused their funerals, processions, and memorials with meanings and invented traditions that became customs used by the working class to measure the dignity and respect paid to the deceased. The book also considers how labor conflict such as strikes produced an array of funerary tableaus in the years leading to American participation in World War I.

This chapter sheds light on a widely misinterpreted aspect of Korea's premodern history by exploring Buddhist impact on early mortuary rituals. As the influence of Buddhism grew on the ruling powers of the peninsula, Buddhist beliefs and customs came to affect many aspects of society, including the ways in which death was dealt with. This has led to the common perception that Buddhism significantly impacted death rituals. However, an examination of Greater Silla and Koryŏ cremation practices, presents an altogether different picture. Drawing largely on historical records such as the Samguk sagi (History of the Three Kingdoms), the Samguk yusa Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms), and the Koryŏsa (History of Koryŏ), the chapter argues that although cremation may have been widespread among common people from the seventh century onward, it did not become customary among the clergy until the mid-eleventh century. Even in the Koryŏ period, when Buddhism dominated, cremation never became commonplace. The reason behind this may be rooted in traditional beliefs that emphasized the importance of preserving bones to ensure passage to the afterlife.

Death can be induced—a death to self that makes a man a renouncer, a sannyasi. This chapter chronicles this sort of death ritual, describing the radical reconstruction of personhood that made it possible to become a sannyasi: ritual death on a full-moon midnight in Banaras's main cremation ground. Brahminical texts position this act of renunciation as the beginning of the fourth and final stage of life, suggesting that one has to have lived through the rest and performed all the duties pertaining thereunto before one has a life truly worth renouncing. For millennia, Hindus have believed that to die in Banaras, city of Shiva and the Ganges, is to secure for oneself the best chance of a favorable rebirth—or, better yet, release from the cycle of birth and death altogether.

This chapter examines how workers used the rituals of death to interpret, accommodate, and resist their living and working conditions during the period 1873–1913. It first traces the history of the American cemetery, and especially its rise as a cultural institution, before turning to Chicago's cemeteries as social and cultural spaces on the city's landscape. It then discusses how broader tensions in industrial society were reflected in the processes of death and burial. It also looks at the ways that Chicago's working classes turned to cemeteries to extend the terrain of contemplating the consequences of industrialization; the importance of religion, ethnicity, and race in the establishment and use of Chicago's cemeteries; and how Waldheim Cemetery became a space that linked anarchism, the labor movement, and radicalism in Chicago to similar movements across the globe. Finally, the chapter cites the case of the Haymarket memorial in Waldheim to show how the meanings of life and death came to be expressed in Chicago's cemeteries as the nation marched into the twentieth century.