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Last night I finished reading Celebrations of Death: The anthropology of Mortuary Ritual by Peter Mercalf and Richard Huntington I have to say I was a little disappointed. I've read some really good books on death rituals, either from the Victorian age or 20Th century China and thought it'd be nice to read something a bit more general. The problem with this book however was that it was a bit too general. It also suffered from the problem of many anthropology texts, repeatedly mentioning theorists and giving examples from all over space and time with no consideration for location or change over time. It also looked in depth at islands in Borneo and talked about the great differences between people on the islands but would refer without a hint of irony to my least favorite phrase, "western tradition". Fortunately as it was written in the early 80's it didn't have any of the popular post-modern theories or linguistic debates that are currently fashionable. Without actually saying it seemed to be symbolic anthropology. Noting the common themes between cultures but explaining how these common things had different symbolic meanings within different cultures. Though it made a point of not trying to give out any universal theories, though it did talk about the fact that red, white and black seem to be fairly world wide colors of mourning. But it did totally fail to mention that white used to be the color of mourning clothes for Europe too, but just talked about black being used in "the west".
There were a few interesting ideas, though these did not belong to the authors, looking at relationships between the decease's spirit, the corpse, and the community and how different aspects involved a discourse between the two. I also liked the idea that the funeral was a rite of passage for the person who passed, and that the rituals were necessary for them to transition between the world of the living and the dead, and that there was a state in the middle that the the dead person occupied, as did the widow/widower. That part was quite interesting, and the examples used were in some ways similar to some Chinese rituals. The authors mentioned a 49 day period of mourning ritual, the same as the traditional Buddhist beliefs, however they saw this time period as a result of "the length of time it takes a corpse to decompose". While spending great detail on the technical aspects of the funerary rituals it seemed like not enough attention was paid to the beliefs behind the rituals. I guess it was due to the functionalist viewpoint of the authors. However, it would have been nice to have had more insight into the relationship between the rituals and the beliefs.
They also included a section on ritual kingship and death. It was interesting to look at the anthropological reaction against Frazer's interpretations in the Golden Bough. But it didn't really fit with the rest of the book. Descriptions were given of Ancient Egypt, Medieval France, modern Africa, and South East Asia. I think I'm simply becoming too much of a historian as the picking and choosing of random examples over time did little to strenghten their argument. Indeed it was hard to think of a reason why they included the material on Egypt, which mainly consisted of a description of the building of the tombs, rather than any beliefs about death or descriptions of any rituals. My rather cynical mind thought that perhaps the only reason was that Egypt is always popular with readers. But the focus of the chapter seemed far more on the divine nature of kingship and the bodies of the kings, than really any particular mortuary rituals.
The last chapter looked at modern American mortuary practice. Not very interesting, except for the modern American obsession with embalming. They made a strong economic argument for the similarity of funerals in America. However, they then seemed to shy away from the economic reasons and look for something else to explain the uniformity of death rituals in the US. They talked of a "popular" religion in the US, the "god" referred to by politicians etc, but gave no convincing evidence about why this should be divided from Christianity.
All in all it was a bit disappointing, too generalized and not enough depth. It did make me realize how glad I am to be doing history instead of anthropology though.
There were a few interesting ideas, though these did not belong to the authors, looking at relationships between the decease's spirit, the corpse, and the community and how different aspects involved a discourse between the two. I also liked the idea that the funeral was a rite of passage for the person who passed, and that the rituals were necessary for them to transition between the world of the living and the dead, and that there was a state in the middle that the the dead person occupied, as did the widow/widower. That part was quite interesting, and the examples used were in some ways similar to some Chinese rituals. The authors mentioned a 49 day period of mourning ritual, the same as the traditional Buddhist beliefs, however they saw this time period as a result of "the length of time it takes a corpse to decompose". While spending great detail on the technical aspects of the funerary rituals it seemed like not enough attention was paid to the beliefs behind the rituals. I guess it was due to the functionalist viewpoint of the authors. However, it would have been nice to have had more insight into the relationship between the rituals and the beliefs.
They also included a section on ritual kingship and death. It was interesting to look at the anthropological reaction against Frazer's interpretations in the Golden Bough. But it didn't really fit with the rest of the book. Descriptions were given of Ancient Egypt, Medieval France, modern Africa, and South East Asia. I think I'm simply becoming too much of a historian as the picking and choosing of random examples over time did little to strenghten their argument. Indeed it was hard to think of a reason why they included the material on Egypt, which mainly consisted of a description of the building of the tombs, rather than any beliefs about death or descriptions of any rituals. My rather cynical mind thought that perhaps the only reason was that Egypt is always popular with readers. But the focus of the chapter seemed far more on the divine nature of kingship and the bodies of the kings, than really any particular mortuary rituals.
The last chapter looked at modern American mortuary practice. Not very interesting, except for the modern American obsession with embalming. They made a strong economic argument for the similarity of funerals in America. However, they then seemed to shy away from the economic reasons and look for something else to explain the uniformity of death rituals in the US. They talked of a "popular" religion in the US, the "god" referred to by politicians etc, but gave no convincing evidence about why this should be divided from Christianity.
All in all it was a bit disappointing, too generalized and not enough depth. It did make me realize how glad I am to be doing history instead of anthropology though.