The Commodification and Consumerization of Death, Mortuary Rituals and Funerary Practices.

I am currently, writing a chapter on: "The Commodification and Consumerization of Death, Mortuary Rituals and Funerary Practices." For my dissertation (which is on the contest and interplay between the city authorities, death care companies, and society in Johannesburg), in which I observe that: in Johannesburg like anywhere else “mortuary rituals, disposal of the body, and the memorialization of the dead were often matters of family and community concern” (Boret, Long and Kan, 2017:8). This shows that death, like birth has historically always been a domestic familial phenomenon, where the family and community had priority and right over treatment of the body, burial, the final whereabouts of dead, and their commemoration. However, few decades, after the discovery of the gold in the 19th century, and the subsequent gold rush attracting people from all over the world with varied beliefs and burial needs (Maytum 2014). And further complicated by rapid industrialization and the resulting institutionalization of life and death. Together with the rise of the modern state and its associated sovereignty, increasing globalization, scientific and technological development, along with urbanization and rise of specialists. And more recently the colonial and postcolonial turn (see, Robben 2018; Stepputat 2014; Kellehear 2007, Lee and Vaughan 2008), which have impacted on how the city has and continue to conceptualize death and act upon it. Buttressed by both archival and ethnographic data (that I have generated in the past 9 months, from 2 of the oldest and biggest death care companies in South Africa), I argue that the professionalization and commodification of death, and the availability of deathcare services have contributed to the alienation of death from society and its denial. As Becker (1974) has articulated:?“the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation…” and it appears death care companies are doing a good job in helping society to avoid the anxiety of death, dying, dealing with ours and others loss, and the existential artery rupture that it usually inflicts upon survivors. Similar to what Giddens has rightfully equated to "purchasing ontological security through institutions and routine that protects us from such things as criminals, madness, and death.”(1999). To corroborate this, during in-depth interview, I asked one of my interlocutors that (i.e., a regional manager of one of the death care companies in South Africa): despite the legislative and health related reasons which prohibits ordinary members of society from handling, transporting, booking a grave, and directly burying their loved one’s body without assistance from a registered funeral parlour. Whether their services were necessary for society beyond the aforementioned legislative and health reasons? He said “absolutely “and he continued during the greatest crisis which is when someone dies, whether in hospital, on the street, or at home. Were the first person to help the family of the deceased to process and deal with the situation much effectively. Through removal, transportation, and storage of the body until the funeral. Not to mention the paper work relating to burial, and we also provide bereavement counselling to the family of the deceased. ?

Another interlocutor, with more than 30 years of experience in the death care industry summed it up when he said: “I in actual fact: handle your families’ filth (here by filth he means it literally and metaphorically). Through treating and preparing your deceased child, husband, mother and relatives corpse for a fee.” ??

From this, it is not hard to see that consumerization of death is encouraged by the state all in the name of the “medicolegal” and potential health threat that death and bodies poses to society. Furthermore, the death care companies provide their services to generate profit and exert their influence on funerary culture in Johannesburg. Far from advocating dogmatic moralism, or in the words of Ferguson “blanket denunciation of capitalism, the consumer society, and everyone in it”. (2013) Rather, what is of major concern to me is the level in which society has been isolated from Jean- Jacques Rousseau's and Kant's sense of moral discourse and praxis surrounding “proper” conceptualizations and treatment of the dead” in society and the implications this might have for life itself. To regress back to Ernest Backer, despite us using death care companies to shield ourselves from the anxiety that death invokes and our apparent restricted legal capacity to bury our dead without the help of funeral profession. However, it is illuminating to note that according to Becker: “…it is life itself which awakens” …this very anxiety (1974). Instead of involving the bereaved, mourners, and society in the death process, we have prepared the foundation for what Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard (1979) has eloquently identified as a world substantially dominated by experts and expertise of a kind that most of us are not in a position to review- or to approve or oppose. Death not for us, but about us. ????????