12016-05-03T11:29:54-07:00Amber Ziegler1fe9a69aefc5a5a36b9a3cbda6ff3497759951a090911Amber Ziegler. 2012. All rights reserved.plain2016-05-03T11:29:54-07:00Amber Ziegler1fe9a69aefc5a5a36b9a3cbda6ff3497759951a0
History of modern deathways (Modernity: Deathways often informed by empiricism, rationalism [scientific knowledge and institutions])
Deathways in mainstream contemporary America are standardized and commodified. People tend to die in hospitals, and their corpses are then transported to funeral homes where most are embalmed for short viewings, then cremated or buried (Doughty 2014). This is a change from the 19th century, when most corpses were cared for by their family and/or community. In modern America, most people feel intense discomfort at the idea of touching or interacting with any corpse, including that of a loved one.
Professionalization of funeral processes/institutional boundaries
Rigorous (though porous) boundaries surrounding corpse care and disposition – credentialed experts (Cahill 1995)
Application of logic of science and rationalization to death process / establishment of science
Interview with Bob Warnock, Kimball Funeral Home
Commodification of death / alienation of corpses from social and ecological contexts
$20.7 billion a year industry, providing products and services
Salvage accumulation – corpses not an inherent part of capitalist system, but there’s a multi-billion dollar industry built from their care and disposal
Alienation of corpses occurs through the professional and cultural boundaries surrounding coprse care and disposition – bureaucratization
Embalming only became a mainstream process after Civil War, into the early twentieth century (Cahill 1995)
Historically families and communities cared for unpreserved bodies, typically keeping them on ice to reduce rate of decomposition
Naturework: technology as mediator
Now most corpses in American have their blood removed and replaced with preservative fluids, using specialized technology (Doughty 2014)
Embalming results in a simulacrum of the living person, before death
Much like our relations with nature, individual and social relations with death and corpses in mainstream USA are overseen, curated, and regulated by credentialed experts and agencies.
This has changed over time - cemeteries historically served as gathering places
Natural/wilderness areas – managed specifically by agencies with credentialed experts; lay people only allowed access under certain circumstances, may only interact with landscape in approved ways