Exiled Bodies and Funeral Homes in Aotearoa New Zealand

<p>Within the hidden space of the embalmer's room the most abject of objects comes to rest. Embalming rooms, and the funeral homes that house them, are liminal zones, and the dead and decaying bodies that come to occupy them are, for many outside the funeral service industry, objects and spaces of mystification. Situated within contradictory discourses, the dead body is understood as an object/subject to be revered, whilst at the same time bringing to the living a degree of discomfort and fear. The body's decomposition reminds us that nothing can bring the dead back, thus representing the ultimate human fear - one's inevitable annihilation. It is therefore deemed necessary to remove this destabilising object/subject to a safe and contained space. This thesis opens up and explores such a space: the contemporary funeral home, with particular attention given to the principles and practices of embalming rooms, as these rooms represent possibly the most abject space of the funeral home. In doing so it excavates the historical, social and cultural constructs that have come to underpin contemporary funeral service provision and embalming practices, uncovering the various intrinsic dualisms that operate within the spaces of the funeral home - such as the public/private, contaminated/contained, life/death, inside/outside. The central question of the thesis asks: what can an exploration of the abject spaces and bodies of the funeral home in Aotearoa New Zealand offer to understandings about embodied geographies? For even as many geographers increasingly challenge the marginalisation of certain bodies and the spaces they inhabit, little attention is given to the dead body. Employing primarily the theoretical perspectives of emotional/psycho-geography and feminist geography, the thesis brings a reading of the ways in which death, decaying bodies, and the spaces within which they are separated, marginalised, and othered come to be understood by those within the funeral industry, and thus those who utilise its services. These theoretical approaches also challenge many of the dichotomies that form a major basis for the justification of contemporary funeral practices such as embalming. Through interviews with a variety of key stakeholders in both the traditional and alternative funeral sectors in Aotearoa New Zealand, and close readings of funeral industry texts, it is found that the dead body, embedded within totalising discourses on death, and contained and closeted away in the back rooms of funeral homes, is forced to undergo extensive, invasive practices that sanitise and transform it in order to eradicate any obvious traces that it is now a dead body. In the spaces of the funeral home the material and symbolic manifestations of death are continually regulated, contained, and referred to euphemistically, all the while retaining clear distinctions between what has been constructed as sacred and profane, public and private, clean and unclean. Ultimately, it is the contention of this thesis that the liminal spaces of the funeral home preserve certain knowledges and practices that ensure that the contemporary Westernbased funeral industry retains a monopoly over the bodies of the dead.</p>

Exiled Bodies and Funeral Homes in Aotearoa New Zealand

<p>Within the hidden space of the embalmer's room the most abject of objects comes to rest. Embalming rooms, and the funeral homes that house them, are liminal zones, and the dead and decaying bodies that come to occupy them are, for many outside the funeral service industry, objects and spaces of mystification. Situated within contradictory discourses, the dead body is understood as an object/subject to be revered, whilst at the same time bringing to the living a degree of discomfort and fear. The body's decomposition reminds us that nothing can bring the dead back, thus representing the ultimate human fear - one's inevitable annihilation. It is therefore deemed necessary to remove this destabilising object/subject to a safe and contained space. This thesis opens up and explores such a space: the contemporary funeral home, with particular attention given to the principles and practices of embalming rooms, as these rooms represent possibly the most abject space of the funeral home. In doing so it excavates the historical, social and cultural constructs that have come to underpin contemporary funeral service provision and embalming practices, uncovering the various intrinsic dualisms that operate within the spaces of the funeral home - such as the public/private, contaminated/contained, life/death, inside/outside. The central question of the thesis asks: what can an exploration of the abject spaces and bodies of the funeral home in Aotearoa New Zealand offer to understandings about embodied geographies? For even as many geographers increasingly challenge the marginalisation of certain bodies and the spaces they inhabit, little attention is given to the dead body. Employing primarily the theoretical perspectives of emotional/psycho-geography and feminist geography, the thesis brings a reading of the ways in which death, decaying bodies, and the spaces within which they are separated, marginalised, and othered come to be understood by those within the funeral industry, and thus those who utilise its services. These theoretical approaches also challenge many of the dichotomies that form a major basis for the justification of contemporary funeral practices such as embalming. Through interviews with a variety of key stakeholders in both the traditional and alternative funeral sectors in Aotearoa New Zealand, and close readings of funeral industry texts, it is found that the dead body, embedded within totalising discourses on death, and contained and closeted away in the back rooms of funeral homes, is forced to undergo extensive, invasive practices that sanitise and transform it in order to eradicate any obvious traces that it is now a dead body. In the spaces of the funeral home the material and symbolic manifestations of death are continually regulated, contained, and referred to euphemistically, all the while retaining clear distinctions between what has been constructed as sacred and profane, public and private, clean and unclean. Ultimately, it is the contention of this thesis that the liminal spaces of the funeral home preserve certain knowledges and practices that ensure that the contemporary Westernbased funeral industry retains a monopoly over the bodies of the dead.</p>

‘My Memories of the Time We Had Together Are More Important’: Direct Cremation and the Privatisation of UK Funerals

Funerals have long been of interest to social scientists. Previous sociological work has examined the relationship between individuality, belief and tradition within funeral services, founded on the assumption that public rituals have psycho-social benefit for organisers and attendees. With the introduction of direct cremation to the UK, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on funeral service attendance in 2020 and 2021, critique of this assumption is now needed. Drawing on interviews with recently bereaved people who organised a direct cremation in late 2017, this article illustrates how compromise, control and consistency are key drivers for not having a funeral service. The article argues that a declining importance in the fate of the body and a move towards ‘invite-only’ commemorative events represents a waning need for social support offered by a public, communal funeral service. In turn, this indicates a sequestration, or privatisation, of the contemporary funeral.

Views from a Black Artist in the Century of Light

Twelve years ago, while planning the funeral service for my father, an artist and author born in Philadelphia in 1937, I found within the pages of one of his journals a phrase that caught my eye: The Sorrow Songs. Beneath it were the words Steal Away, which he’d underlined three times....

His Holiness Patriarch Joseph: Demise, Burial and Memory in History

Цель исследования - описание последнего этапа жизни и посмертного почитания свт. Иосифа, патриарха Московского. С помощью сопоставления фактических сведений, почерпнутых из исторических источников, складываются в единую картину кончина, погребение и почитание предстоятеля. Показана роль царя Алексия Михайловича в отпевании и почитании памяти патриарха Иосифа. Таким образом, в статье подробно восстанавливается фрагмент истории Русской Православной Церкви. The purpose of the study is to describe the last stage of life and posthumous veneration of St. Joseph, Patriarch of Moscow. By comparing factual information gleaned from historical sources, they form a single picture of the demise, burial and veneration of the primate. The role of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in the funeral service and veneration of the memory of Patriarch Joseph is shown. Thus, the article reconstructs in detail a fragment of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Burial of the Dead in Mann’s The Magic Mountain

During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, readers of modernist literature have often been reminded of the flu epidemic of 1918-1920. Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain (1924) anatomizes pre-war bourgeois society as represented by the inmates of a tuberculosis asylum in Davos, Switzerland. The novel typifies a concern in modernist fiction with the proper rites for the burial of the dead, which I explored in an earlier study, Religious Experience and the Modernist Novel. This essay argues that that Mann sees the novel, as a genre, as having a particular ability to represent the process of mourning because of its powers of ironic distancing: it can represent both the public ritual of the funeral service and the private thoughts of the mourner, which may or may not accord with official sentiment. More generally, the modern novel shows how we project our own desires and fears onto the dead.

KONTRIBUSI DARI RETRIBUSI IZIN PELAYANAN PEMAKAMAN TERHADAP PENDAPATAN ASLI DAERAH KOTA PALEMBANG TAHUN 2015-2019

The era of decentralization and regional autonomy is a challenge for every region to take advantage of opportunities in exploring regional potential. Efforts to increase local revenue (PAD) can be done by increasing the effectiveness of receiving retribution from PAD sources, especially local fees. This study aims to determine and analyze the contribution of funeral service permit fees to the local revenue of Palembang City in 2015-2019. The collection of user fees has been regulated in Regional Regulation Number 12 of 2015 concerning charges for funeral services and asylum which is a basic reference for maximizing administrative services managed by Ilir Barat Satu Sub-district, Palembang City. This research uses descriptive quantitative analysis method. The data collection technique is done by using secondary data through documentation techniques. The data used is a funeral service permit retribution. The analysis method used is contribution analysis, which is an analytical tool used to determine how much the contribution of levies is to local revenue. The result of the research is that the contribution value of funeral service permit fees shows a tendency to fluctuate each year. The average percentage contribution of receiving funeral service permit fees with good enough criteria reaches 20.17% which means it contributes to the Regional Original Income of Palembang city.