AQUI SE JAZ, AQUI SE PAGA: A MERCANTILIZAÇÃO DA MORTE / AQUÍ SE MUERE, AQUÍ SE PAGA: LA MERCANTILIZACIÓN DE LA MUERTE / THE MARKET OF DEATH

Resumo Este artigo busca compreender o que os rituais funerários contemporâneos revelam sobre as maneiras com as quais as pessoas têm lidado com a morte e o morrer na atualidade. Desse eixo surgem reflexões sobre a relação dos homens com a finitude, evidenciando que os modos atuais de lidar com a morte e o morrer envolvem processos de mercantilização, patologização, medicalização e espetacularização. Esta publicação é oriunda de pesquisa de doutorado em psicologia social e apoiada metodologicamente em uma das vertentes da etnografia: a etnografia crítica. Foi realizada entre os anos de 2010 e 2014 no Brasil e em Portugal. O crescente uso de serviços funerários de "tanatoestética" aponta não somente técnicas de maquiagem dos mortos, mas também estratégias de maquiagem da morte. Essa dissimulação é sinalizada pela redução progressiva do espaço que a sociedade contemporânea destina ao luto e ao sofrimento, categorias cada vez mais equiparadas a condições patológicas.

Resumen Este artículo busca comprender lo que revelan los ritos funerarios contemporáneos acerca de las maneras conque la gente ha tratado la muerte y el morir. De este eje surjen reflecciones sobre la relacción del humano con la finitud. Evidenciando que los modos actuales de lidear con la muerte involucran procesos de mercantilización, patologización, medicalización y espetacularización. Esta publicación se origina de una investigación de doctorado en psicologia social y se enbasa metodologicamente en la etnografia crítica. Se realizó entre los años de 2010 y 2014 en Brasil y en Portugal. El cresciente uso de servicios funerarios de "tanatoestética" apunta no solo a la utilización de maquillage de los muertos, como tanbién a estratégias de maquillage de la propia muerte. Esta disimulación és remarcada por la reducción progresiva del espacio que la sociedad contemporánea destina al luto y al sufrimiento, categorias cada vez mas asociadas a condiciones patológicas.

Abstract This paper aims to understand what the contemporary funeral rituals reveal about the ways used by people to deal with death and dying nowadays. From that central concept, new reflections ramify about the relation-ship between men and time and being finite. It's made evident that the modern ways of dealing with death and dying involve flagrant marketing, pathological, medical and speculative processes. The fast growing presence of tanatoaesthetics in funerary services points out not only some make-up techniques of the dead, but also the existence of make-up strategies of death. That conceal is marked by the progressive reduction of the space that our modern society assign to the mourning and the suffering, categories that each day are more often compared to pathologies.

No place, new places: death and its rituals in urban Asia.

In many land-scarce Asian cities, planning agencies have sought to reduce space for the dead to release land for the living, encouraging conversion from burial to cremation over several decades. This has caused secular principles privileging efficient land use to conflict with symbolic values invested in burial spaces. Over time, not only has cremation become more accepted, even columbaria have become overcrowded, and new forms of burials (sea and woodland burials) have emerged. As burial methods change, so too do commemorative rituals, including new on-line and mobile phone rituals. This paper traces the ways in which physical spaces for the dead in several east Asian cities have diminished and changed over time, the growth of virtual space for them, the accompanying discourses that influence these dynamics and the new rituals that emerge concomitantly with the contraction of land space.

Imagining the absent dead: rituals of bereavement and the place of the war dead in German women's art during the First World War.

Drawing on women's visual responses to the First World War, this article examines female mourning in wartime Germany. The unprecedented death toll on the battlefronts, military burial practices and the physical distance from the remains of the war dead disrupted traditional rituals of bereavement, hindered closure and compounded women's grief on the home front. In response to these novel circumstances, a number of female artists used their images to reimagine funerary customs, overcome the separation from the fallen and express acute emotional distress. This article analyses three images produced during the conflict by the artists Katharina Heise, Martha Schrag and Sella Hasse, and places their work within the civilian experience of bereavement in war. By depicting the pain of loss, female artists contested the historical tradition of proud female mourning in German society and countered wartime codes of conduct that prohibited the public display of emotional pain in response to soldiers' deaths. As a largely overlooked body of sources, women's art adds to our understanding of the tensions in wartime cultures of mourning that emerged between 1914 and 1918.

"The last thing that tells our story": the Roodepoort West Cemetery, 1958-2008.

This article attempts to capture some of the complexity in the way that memory, meaning and agenda interact in the history of the cemetery of Roodepoort West. Roodepoort West was the 'old location' where Africans and others lived until 1955, after which a gradual process of removals took place until 1967, when it was finally destroyed. However, not everything was lost of the old location. The cemetery remained, after unrest caused by the proposed removal of the local cemetery during the late 1950s persuaded the authorities to leave it alone. More recently, the cemetery has played a part in land restitution, becoming both a site of tension and remembrance. This article explores the many meanings attached to the old cemetery, and funerals more broadly, over a period of time beginning from the 1950s to 2005. By looking at the history of funerals, and the cemetery, new insights and an alternative understanding of what it meant to live in an urban area in Apartheid South Africa can be gained.

The bones of the body politic: thoughts on the Savorgnan de Brazza Mausoleum.

This essay examines three examples of political treatment of the dead (specifically their bones) in the Republic of the Congo: the return of the remains of its capital's founder, Savorgnan de Brazza; the disappearance of the body of André Matswa, hailed by the people as their messianic 'saviour' guardian; and finally, the treatment of unidentified victims of the various armed conflicts that occurred during the years 1990­2002. These events can be analysed through the prism of two different historical perspectives: in terms of the moyenne durée, the treatment of Matswa's bones paved the way for the subsequent occurrences by creating a precedent; in the context of the 'present of history', the construction of a Brazza mausoleum is contemporaneous with official denial of the presence of human remains scattered across the capital city of Brazzaville as a result of armed conflicts. The comparative analysis of these historical configurations posits a set of circumstances whereby the bones become a symbolic buttress of the capital. The historical puzzle here is to understand how that which came together in claiming Matswa's bones becomes, in the context of democratization of the regime, an aesthetic sense of the 'beauty of death' as expressed by people when they see the shrine as their country's finest architectural accomplishment. Through the splendour of the monument, this aesthetic sense articulates the denial of the presence of the nameless dead.

Confessions of a Wannabe (American Folklore Society Presidential Invited Plenary Address, October 2009).

This paper is a written rendering of a plenary address delivered at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society. Drawing on materials from his forthcoming book Confessions of a Wannabe, the author provides a personal account of the deeply emotional sense of responsibility, obligation, and reciprocity involved in long-term ethnographic research among Native American communities, particularly the Omaha and Pawnee tribes of Nebraska. The author details the ways in which personal relations with the people and communities he has observed have shaped his personal and professional life, and he calls into question the ideal of purportedly neutral or distanced ethnography. Details are provided of the author's experiences in converting his farm into an appropriate reburial site for repatriated Pawnee remains recovered under the aegis of the Native American Graves Repatriation and Protection Act (NAGPRA).

Home-based viewing (el velorio) after death: a cost-effective alternative for some families.

After the death of a loved one, giving an opportunity to view the body helps bring families and friends together to celebrate the life and mourn the passing of a person. This gathering, known as a Wake or a Viewing, precedes the burial and usually lasts from 1 to several days. In the United States, the viewing now takes place in funeral parlors, away from the decedent's home. However, there are still several countries and people who keep the body at home where the family and friends are invited to say their goodbyes. We present here 2 cases for which our Hospice assisted the families with a home viewing. These were indigent people who could not afford embalming or the additional cost of a viewing in a parlor and who, without this opportunity, would have not had time to get together and mourn and celebrate life as friends, family, and community.