Death and Dying, Sociology of
crematoria (although Hindus are likely to stay to
watch the burning body). Except for the practice of
dispersing ashes in places of personal significance,
only a tiny minority perform alternative do it yourself
ceremonies ( Walter 1994).
8. AIDS and the Imagined Community of
Mourners
The AIDS epidemic has refocused interest on the way
we die (Nuland 1994) and the social meaning of such
deaths (Ariss 1997). The shared fate of HIV infection
has consolidated a local sense of community and at
times a larger global one. One of the most poignant
exemplars of such a community of living and the dead
is the AIDS Memorial Quilt, begun in 1987 by gays
and their friends to commemorate the lives of indi-
viduals who died of AIDS. By 1992, the Quilt had
more than 20,000 memorial panels. The quilt
shows how death of the most fearful kind can
draw people together ( Walter 1994, pp. 1945).
Likewise the dramatic sudden death of high profile
individuals (e.g., President Kennedy, Princess Diana)
may temporarily recreate the solidarity of an
imagined community of mourners who vicariously
participate in traditional ceremonies via television and
the Internet. This analysis recalls the seminal work of
the great French sociologist, Emile Durkheim (1995)
who showed how mourning ritual reinforced the
cohesiveness and core values of the social group.
While the Internet is becoming an important focus of
investigation, many traditional sociological topics
(gender, ethnicity, social class) remain relatively neg-
lected (Cline 1996).
A central task for the sociologist is to explore the
dialectic of how death can threaten the basis of society
or, alternatively, enhance its solidarity.
See also: Aging and Health in Old Age; Death and
Dying, Psychology of; Death Penalty; Euthanasia;
Mortality, Biodemography of; Mortality of the Oldest
Old
Bibliography
Aries P 1974 Western Attitudes Toward Death. Marion, London
Ariss R M 1997 Against Death: The Practice of Li!ing with
AIDS. Gordon and Breach, Amsterdam
Bastide R 1968 Religions africaines et strutures des civilisations.
Presence Africaine 66: 82105
Becker E 1973 The Denial of Death. Free Press, New York
Cline S 1996 Lifting the Taboo: Women, Death and Dying.
Abacus, London
Durkheim E 1995 [1912] The Elementary Forms of the Religious
Life. Free Press, New York
Elias N 1985 The Loneliness of the Dying. Blackwell, Oxford,
UK
Glaser B, Strauss A 1965 Awareness of Dying. Aldine, Chicago
3270
Glaser B, Strauss A 1968 Time for Dying. Aldine, Chicago
Gorer G 1965 Death, Grief and Mourning in Contemporary
Britain. Cresset, London
Kearl M 1989 Endings: A Sociology of Death and Dying. Oxford
University Press, Oxford, UK
Kubler-Ross E 1969 On Death and Dying. Macmillan, New
York
Lifton R J 1978 The Broken Connection: On Death and the
Continuity of Life. Simon and Schuster, New York
Mitford J 1963 The American Way of Death. Simon & Schuster,
New York
Nuland S 1994 How We Die. Chatto & Windus, London
Parkes C M 1986 Berea!ement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life.
Penguin, Harmondsworth, UK
Seale C 1998 Constructing Death: The Sociology of Dying and
Berea!ement. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
Walter T 1994 The Re!i!al of Death. Routledge, London
H. Abramovitch
Death, Anthropology of
All human cultures struggle to deal with the inevi-
tability and mystery of death. The anthropology of
death explores how human societies around the world
respond to death. It is concerned with both the
conceptual and organizational aspects, that is, what
people believe about death and the afterlife, as well as
what they actually do when faced with the crisis of
death. Two main methodological approaches used are
the ethnographic and the comparative. The ethno-
graphic approach examines how single cultures cope
with the demise of members, while the comparative
approach tries to make sense of the enormous cultural
variation in issues such as the disposing of the corpse,
the expected behavior of the bereaved, and the ongoing
relations between the living and their dead (see
Anthropology; Ethnography; Ethnology).
Although elaborate death rituals are probably a
defining aspect of human culture, comparative studies
have revealed few, if any, universal practices. Even the
widespread practice of crying at a funeral is actively
discouraged, for example, among the Balinese. Never-
theless, anthropologists have uncovered a number of
key metaphors, which help to make sense of the
enormous diversity of mortuary rituals. The anthro-
pology of death takes as its task to understand the
phrase: All humans die, yet in every culture, each dies
in their own way (see Death and Dying, Sociology of;
Ancestors, Anthropology of).
1. Centrality of the Death Ritual
In the West, death and mourning rituals are often
considered to be private, and Western ethnographers
have often reported a reluctance to intrude into this

seemingly intimate realm (Palgi and Abramovitch
1984; see Fieldwork in Social and Cultural Anthro-
pology). In many traditional cultures, however, death
rituals stand at the center of social life. Most societies
use expensive and elaborate mortuary ritual as a way
of demonstrating status and power, so that the expense
incurred is often an enormous financial burden. The
atmosphere is not always sad or somber, but may even
take on a festive atmosphere so that one may speak of
celebrations of death (Huntingdon and Metcalfe
1991).
The impact of the death is related directly to the
social status of the deceased. Death is likely to be seen
as particularly disruptive when it strikes persons who
are most relevant for the functional and moral
activities of the social order: At the death of a chief, or
man of high standing a true panic sweeps over the
group (Hertz 1960, p. 76). The elaborate funeral rituals
and pyramids of Ancient Egypt are outstanding
examples of this ethos. Likewise, the death of a spouse
often leads to a long period of taboos and restricted
activity. On the contrary, the death of a stranger,
slave or child will go almost unnoticed; it will arouse
no emotion, occasion no ritual (Hertz 1960, p. 76). In
regions of high mortality, the death of an infant who is
not yet considered a social person may have no for-
mal ritual or mourning. Bereaved parents often exper-
ience their loss privately, without ceremony, in what
has been called death without weeping (Scheper-
Hughes 1992). The simple funerals of some hunter
gatherers, such as the Baka Pygmies of the Central
African rain forest, are notable exceptions to the
widespread pattern of elaborate and complex mor-
tuary rituals (Bloch and Parry 1982; see Hunting and
Gathering Societies in Anthropology).
2. Death as an E!ent !s. Death as a Process
In the West, despite recent legal and medical contro-
versies (see Euthanasia) death is considered as occur-
ring at a specific identifiable moment, symbolized by
the time of death on the death certificate. This
punctual view of death (Bloch 1988) in which a person
is thus either alive or dead is not shared by many
cultures. Physiological demise and social death do not
necessarily coincide. Instead, death is seen as part of a
long, complex, and even dangerous process, with no
sharp boundary between life and death. Cultures
express the degree of alive!dead using different meta-
phors. The Merina of Madagascar, for example, use
the image of wet!dry to indicate degrees of alive!dead.
A newborn infant is very wet and thus very alive; in
contrast, a shriveled elderly person, almost totally dry,
is mostly dead. The process of drying, and hence
dying, will be only completed long after biological
death when the bones are dug up and placed in
communal tombs (Bloch and Parry 1982).
Death, Anthropology of
3. Theoretical Approaches and Key Metaphors
Few areas of contemporary anthropological inquiry
are still so dominated by fin de sie! cle thinking as is the
study of death and mortuary ritual (Palgi and
Abramovitch 1984, p. 387). The three traditional
paradigms are: French sociological school (Durkheim,
Hertz), early British functionalists (Malinowski,
Radcliffe-Brown) and rite of passage approach (Van
Gennep) (see Anthropology; Structuralism; Func-
tionalism in Anthropology; Liminality; Personhood,
Anthropology of; Ritual; ).
3.1 Hertzs Analysis of First and Second Funerals
The single most influential text in the anthropology of
death was written by a brilliant disciple of Durkheim,
Robert Hertz, who was killed on the battlefield of
Verdun in World War I. Many of the central ideas in
the anthropology of death: That death is widely
perceived as a process and not as an instantaneous
event, that death is the starting point of a ceremonial
process whereby a dead person becomes an ancestor,
and that death is akin to an initiation into a social
afterlife and hence resembles a kind of rebirth, all
derive from his seminal monograph (Hertz 1907). His
study focused on the widespread custom of second
funeral, or more correctly, secondary treatment of the
remains. One of the main ideological reasons for a
double ceremony, often separated by years, has to do
with the dual nature of the person as composed of both
body and spirit (or soul). Dead bodies or corpses are
usually associated with ritual pollution and sorrow.
The first funeral, in a literal and symbolic sense seeks
to get rid of these polluting and sorrowful aspects. The
second funeral is focused on the initiation of dead
peoples spirits into the realm of the ancestors, where
they will continue to serve as a cultural resource,
watching over and guiding the living. This structuralist
perspective highlighted parallels between the de-
composition of the corpse and the fate of the soul.
3.2 Death Rituals and Core Values
In many societies, the occurrence of a death disrupts
social life severely, so that it is stricken in the very
principle of its life in the faith it has in itself (Hertz
1960, p. 78). A functionalist perspective stressed how
mortuary rites served to resolve the disruptive tenden-
cies that operate at times of social crisis. Malinowski
demonstrated how ceremonies counteract the centri-
fugal forces of fear, dismay, and demoralization
associated with death, and provide a powerful means
of reintegration of the groups shaken morale (Palgi
and Abramovitch 1984). These rituals must provide an
answer to the meaning of life for the community at a
3271
Death, Anthropology of
time when it is most threatened. As a result, the study
of such death rituals provide a unique opportunity for
studying the core values of any culture. The functio-
nalist perspective emphasized the problem of death for
society, and especially the issues of inheritance, re-
distribution of rights, and statuses, as well as the
reintegration of mourners into day-to-day life.
3.3 Death as a Journey or Rite of Passage
Most cultures conceptualize death as a transition, or
rite of passage. In many cultures, this transition is seen
as a journey to an ultimate destination that may
culminate in rebirth, ancestral abode, reunion with
nature or Divinity, or indeed total oblivion. Death
rituals, like all rites of passage, have a three-part
structure, first delineated by Van Gennep: Separation,
liminality, and reincorporation (Huntingdon and Met-
calfe 1991). The spirits of dead people must be
separated from their social roles as members in the
community of the living and enter an undefined in-
between state, finally being reincorporated into a new
status as the end of the journey. Often, the fate of the
soul is modeled on the fate of the body. Just as the soul
of the deceased is formless and repulsive, as in Borneo
when the dead are left to ferment in large jars, so the
soul of the deceased is seen as homeless and the object
of dread. Only when the bones alone are left can the
ritual journey be completed (Huntingdon and Metcalfe
1991). Likewise, the ritual status of the mourners is in
turn linked to the fate of the corpse in its process of
decay, and the soul in its progress on its journey. Some
cultures do have a specific tie-breaking ritual, which
symbolizes both the end of mourning for the bereaved,
and the end of the journey for the soul or spirit of the
deceased. The living are often required to nurture the
deceased at each stage along the journey through the
afterlife and this conception helps to explain why the
dead take up so many economic, emotional, and
spiritual resources.
3.4 The Danger of the Unincorporated Dead
From this rite of passage perspective, it is possible to
understand why the unincorporated dead, trapped
permanently in the liminal realm, are often considered
as dangerous. These wandering spirits, for whom no
rites were performed, may act as hungry ghosts. They
yearn to be reincorporated into the world of the living,
and since they cannot be, they behave like hostile
strangers who lack the means of subsistence which
other dead find in their own world, and consequently
must find at the expense of the living. Many cultures
use elaborate strategies to confuse the spirit of the
deceased so that it will not return to the realm of the
living. Illness, misfortune, and associated healing
rituals are often attempts to incorporate these lost
souls (see Health: Anthropological Aspects; Sham-
anism; Spirit Possession, Anthropology of; Magic,
3272
Anthropology of; Witchcraft). The tomb of the Unkn-
own Soldier in modern states, provides a resting-place
for unincorporated spirits of the war dead (see
Collecti!e Memory, Anthropology of).
3.5 Parallels to Other Life Cycle Rituals
Anthropologists have also noticed how death rituals
often parallel other life cycle rituals, notably births
and weddings. Conceptually, death is often seen as a
rebirth into another world, while birth is viewed as the
literal rebirth of a deceased ancestor (see Birth,
Anthropology of). Likewise, for weddings, just as a
bride may leave her family, so too the soul of the
deceased departs for another world. In rural Greece,
for example, the same lyrics are sung at both weddings
and funerals (Danforth 1982).
3.6 Emotional Response of the Mourners
The comparative study of how mourners respond to
loss and bereavement has attracted considerable at-
tention (Parkes et al. 1997). Almost all cultures allow,
or even encourage, the expression of crying, as well as
fear and anger by mourners. Women tend to cry and
self-mutilate, while men express anger, or direct
aggression away from themselves. Yet most societies
have developed mechanisms and institutions to con-
trol the anger of the bereaved, especially via the use of
ritual experts (Rosenblatt et al. 1976). In many
cultures, there is no cultural category of a natural
death; rather, each death is akin to murder in that a
culturally sanctioned cause of death must be un-
covered. Almost all societies concern themselves with
the spirits of the dead, which probably give expression
both to the unfinished business between the living
and the dead, and the fact that death does not end a
relationship. The more complicated the relationship
and unfinished business in which the dead are dis-
possessed in favor of the living, the greater will be the
dread and concern about ghosts (see Psychological
Anthropology).
3.7 Good Death !s. Bad Death
Recent interest has focused on cultures conception of
what constitutes a good death or a bad death. A
good death represents a cultural ideal that enacts a
symbolic victory over death, and the regeneration of
life (Bloch and Parry 1982). A bad death does the
opposite, leaving survivors despairing, helpless in the
face of meaninglessness, evil, or nothingness. Unpre-
dictability, violence, or intentional harm are wide-
spread attributes of a bad death. Archetypal examples
of bad death include suicide, homicide, and death in
traffic accident. A good death is the mirror image of a
bad death: An expected, painless death of an elderly
individual with a multitude of descendants in at-

tendance. But a good death has culture-specific as-
pects, such as the setting, timing, physical posture,
thoughts and actions at the final moment, and other
near death experiences, as well as a preferred cause
and manner of death (Abramovitch 1999). An Indian
Hindu ideally should die in the open air, as an act of
self-sacrifice, abandoning life to the sound of the
chanting of the names of God, for his thoughts at that
moment may determine his subsequent fate and
rebirth (Parry 1994).
3.8 Future Directions
The anthropology of death traditionally focused rela-
tively narrowly on the death of single individuals in
small-scale societies. Future research, in contrast, will
need to investigate how local cultural traditions
interact with the wider collective and global context.
The study of mass death, in the form of epidemics,
natural disasters, or political violence, provides one
stimulating area of investigation (see Genocide: An-
thropological Aspects; Holocaust, The; Collecti!e
Memory, Anthropology of; Terrorism; Disasters,
Sociology of). The diverse impact of new technologies
may provide another intriguing area for understa-
nding how conceptions of death are changing. Web
pages on the Internet provide for new forms of
commemorating the dead. Organ donation allows a
bad death to be transformed into a good death as a
posthumous act of self-sacrifice, literally dying so that
others may live. Cloning awakens in some the myth
of eternal life; while artificial life support has created
a new state in which persons are neither alive nor
dead.
Death will always remain a mystery; nevertheless,
the cross-cultural investigation of death will continue
to provide insights into how humans cope with that
mystery.
Bibliography
Abramovitch H 1999 Good death and bad death. In:
Malkinson R, Rubin S, Witztum E (eds.) Traumatic and Non-
traumatic Loss and Berea!ement. Psychosocial Press, New
York
Arie" s P 1974 LHomme de!ant la Mort. Editions du Seuil, Paris
[Republished, trans. Weaver H 1982 The Hour of Our Death.
Knopf, New York]
Bloch M 1988 Death and the concept of person. In: Cederroth S,
Corlin C, Lindstrom J (eds.) On the Meaning of Death: Essays
on Mortuary Rituals and Eschatological Beliefs. Uppsala
Studies in Cultural Anthropology, 8. Acta Universitatis
Upsaliensis, Uppsala, Sweden
Bloch M, Parry J (eds.) 1982 Death and the Regeneration of Life.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK
Danforth L 1982 The Death Rituals of Rural Greece. Princeton
University Press, Princeton, NJ
Hertz R 1907 Contributions a" une e# tude sur la representation
collective de la mort. Anne$ e Sociologique. 10: 48137 [Repub-
lished, trans. R Needham, C Needham 1960 Death and the
Right Hand. Free Press, New York]
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
Death Penalty
Humphreys H, King H (eds.) 1981 Mortality and Immortality:
The Anthropology and Archeology of Death. Academic Press,
London
Huntingdon R, Metcalf P 1991 Celebrations of Death: The
Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual, 2nd edn. Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, Cambridge, UK
Palgi P, Abramovitch H 1984 Death: A cross-cultural per-
spective. Annual Re!iew of Anthropology 13: 385417
Parkes C, Laungani P, Young B (eds.) 1997 Death and
Berea!ement Across Cultures. Routledge, London
Parry J 1994 Death in Benares. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, UK
Rosenblatt P, Walsh R, Jackson A 1976 Grief and Mourning in
Cross Cultural Perspecti!e. Human Relations Area Files Press,
New Haven, CT
Scheper-Hughes N 1992 Death Without Weeping: The Violence
of E!eryday Life in Brazil. University of California Press, Los
Angeles
H. Abramovitch
Copyright ! 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Death Penalty
1. The Death Penalty and Democracy
Almost alone among so-called Western, liberal demo-
cracies the USA continues to use the death penalty
(Zimring and Hawkins 1986, White 1991). As a result,
researchers are increasingly directing their attention
not only to the efficacy of capital punishment but also
to its compatibility with democratic values and its
impact on the cultures in which it is used (see Zimring
1999). This research is animated by the recognition
that the right to dispose of human life through
sovereign acts was traditionally thought to be a direct
extension of the personal power of kings (Foucault
1979). With the transition from monarchical to demo-
cratic regimes, one might have thought that such a
vestige of monarchical power would have no place
and, as a result, would wither away. Yet, at least in the
USA, the most democratic of democratic nations, it
persists with a vengeance.
How are we to explain this and what are its
consequences for the political system and the values
and norms of the cultures which practice state killing?
What judgments can we make about the political and
cultural consequences of capital punishment?
It may be that the persistence of state killing in the
USA is paradoxically a result of a deep attachment to
popular sovereignty (Sarat 1995). Where sovereignty
is most fragile, as it always is where its locus is in the
People, dramatic symbols of its presence, like capital
punishment, may be most important. The main-
tenance of capital punishment is, one might argue,
essential to the demonstration that sovereignty could
reside in the people. If the sovereignty of the people is
to be genuine, it has to mimic the sovereign power and
prerogatives of the monarchical forms it displaced and
about whose sovereignty there could be few doubts.
3273
ISBN: 0-08-043076-7