Across the world, each culture has its own worldview, a core set of beliefs that describe people’s place in the world. Central to these worldviews are beliefs about death, it’s meaning, and the role it plays in our culture. Whether or not people believe in an afterlife, religious or otherwise, can affect their behaviour and the decisions they make in their day to day lives. It can also define the public and private grieving process, the handling of the dead and the ways in which death is portrayed through cultural rituals, both formal and informal.
Understanding death in a cultural context is integral to all anthropological studies as it is one of the only two experiences that are universal - the other being birth. No matter what culture a person belongs to, or what beliefs they have, they will experience death. However, cultures vary in how they conceptualise death and what happens when a person dies. It’s how a culture that deals with the experience of death that allows us a valuable insight into that culture.
Anthropologist and philosopher Martin Heidegger suggested we live in a state of ‘being towards death’, and that an authentic human life can only be found be accepting the inevitability of death and finding meaning in that inevitability, because he believes that the idea of mortality is the one which we shape our lives around. This would explain why some people choose to follow a set of religious beliefs, that to them, give death meaning. Ernest Becker, another anthropologist, suggests that people follow religion to engage in what he terms an ‘immortality project’ - this is where people try to create or become a part of something that is eternal in order to ‘live beyond death’. It usually manifests itself in art, music, literature, political movements and perhaps most commonly, religion. Such legacies, they believe, give their lives meaning.
Regardless, religious beliefs about death are fundamental to society. It gives life a sense of meaning at times of suffering and sadness - this especially is key to beliefs surrounding death if you consider that death and grief are two of the most painful experiences a person can go through. Believing that you or a loved one will experience some kind of spiritual paradise or rebirth after death can be a comforting thought and sentiment, and provides a reason to follow the particular set of rules that your religion has given you in order to lead a ‘holy’ or good life. Those may be the Buddhist eight-fold path, the Christian ten commandments, or the five pillars of Islam to give a few examples. Sociologist Durkheim also argued that religion never concerns only belief, but also encompasses regular rituals and ceremonies on the part of a group of believers, who then develop and strengthen a sense of group solidarity. These rituals are necessary to bind together the members of a religious group, and they allow individuals to escape from the mundane aspects of daily life into higher realms of experience - for some religious believers, this higher realm of experience may be enlightenment or an afterlife. Sacred rituals and ceremonies are especially important for marking occasions such as births, marriages, times of crisis, and of course, deaths.
Between religions there is a variation of beliefs on what happens after death. Some religions believe in an afterlife that takes place in a land of paradise and sanctuary. Christians believe in heaven, those who follow Judaism believe in Gan Eden, for Muslims, there is Jannah. There is a strong belief here that one singular God decides what happens after death and there is no need for human intervention or questioning. Alternatively, the religions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism believe in reincarnation (‘rebirth’) so do not see death as a finality. There is belief that if you produce good karma in your lifetime you may reach enlightenment which is effectively the ‘release’ from the cycle of life. In this way, death is seen as positive, as it is a movement towards the end of your life. However, you don’t necessarily have to follow a religion to believe in an afterlife. Many people have spiritual beliefs about the soul of the deceased living on another plane of existence. This can be a healthy way of coming to terms with death and dealing with grief. Religious approaches to death can be seen as treating life as a rehearsal for the afterlife, or otherwise as a chance to prove our virtue and worth as an individual.
The ways in which the body is handled after death can reveal important beliefs and traditions about what occurs after death and how important a part the corpse plays in the cultural experience of death and grief. This includes how the body is cleansed, dressed and handled, as well as whether or not the body is burned or cremated. In the UK, it is the mortician that cleanses the body, applies makeup and cosmetic changes, and dresses the body in an outfit picked out by the family. Religious perspectives can play a role in the way in which the body is dealt with. Most Christians say cremation or burial is fine - prayers are said in the church and again at the crematorium or graveside. Hindus cremate the body to allow the soul to leave it, prayers and hymns are sung. Muslims do not believe in cremation as they believe on the Day of Judgement there will be a physical resurrection. When you consider that the body is a visual metaphor for the life of an individual, it’s treatment is particularly central to understanding the place of death in our culture.
Death is the final life transition, so the funeral is often considered a celebration of a rite of passage for both the deceased and the living. Arguably the most prominent way of understanding and dealing with death in our culture is through the investigation of the cultural practices of the funeral. Cultural funeral rites are key to seeing death through a cultural lens for two reasons:They show respect for the dead and the ways in which people communicate death and grief, and in some religions, including various ceremonies which people believe are necessary to ensure that people go on to whatever their next life will be, giving us a greater understanding of religious and cultural ideas surrounding the afterlife. These funerals allow the deceased's loved ones to express and communicate their grief, as mourning is a highly important part of dealing with death.
For the most part, funeral services in Britain tend to rather subdued. Traditionally, dark clothing tends to be worn during ceremonial services although this trend has shifted in recent years to a more colour-based wardrobe focused on creating an atmosphere of celebration and hope. After the cremation or burial ceremony is followed by a gathering at the home of the deceased, which is sombre and quiet affair. However, this reserved way of grieving is not necessarily the same in other cultures. In some cultures, showing grief, including wailing, is expected of mourners as a way of showing how loved the deceased was. In other cultures, restraint is expected. Rules in Egypt and Bali, both Islamic countries, are opposite; in Bali women may be strongly discouraged from crying, while in Egypt women are considered abnormal if they don’t nearly collapse from weeping. This shows that expressions of grief aren’t necessarily linked to religion. In Japan, it is extremely important not to show one’s grief for a number of reasons, as here death is seen as a time of liberation rather than sadness, and should be accepted with strength. Different again is the grieving expressions of Latino cultures, it may be appropriate for women to wail, but men are not expected to show overt emotion to retain a strong masculine image. Stranger still is China, where hiring professional wailers may be customary in funerals.
The ways in which people of different cultures express their grief can make for interesting ethnography comparisons, enabling us to further understand death’s place in our culture. Compared to the more conservative British culture surrounding funerals and death rites, other cultures strike us as odd. Anthropologist Kelli Swazey studied the Tana Toraja culture in eastern Indonesia, who propose a different approach to the depressing British funeral. There, funerals are rather exciting affairs involving the whole village, lasting anywhere from days to weeks. Families save up for many years to raise the resources for an expensive and luxurious funeral, where sacrificial water buffalo will carry the deceased’s soul to the afterlife. Until the funeral, which can take place years after physical death, the dead relative is referred to simply as a “person who is asleep.” They are laid down in special rooms in their families, where they are symbolically cared for, talked to and taken out, and so remain main very much a part of their relative’s lives. Whilst these practises are so different to our own, it can be argued the Tana Toraja culture takes the sentimental metaphor of our loved ones ‘living on with us in memory and spirit’ once they have died, and makes it more literal through the treatment of the corpse.
For the most part, British culture has an understanding that when a loved one dies, a period of privacy will ensue. Other cultures take a far more public approach to the acknowledgement of death. Perhaps the most famous is the Mexican ‘day of the dead’ celebrations , where there is a whole day meant specifically for celebrating the dead and your ancestors. This is a joyful occasion with bright colours, music, parades and is a very public day for grieving. Nobel prize-winning Mexican writer Octavio Paz explains the Mexico’s cultural relationship with death rather well: "The Mexican ... is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. True, there is as much fear in his attitude as in that of others, but at least death is not hidden away” - he suggests that this positive way of dealing with death allows it to be treated as an exciting experience, and suggests that we should find joy in the spiritual release of death rather than a sadness - not dissimilar to the Buddhist beliefs surrounding death. Furthermore, Paz suggests the acceptance and embrace of death is healthy for a culture as it prepares people for the finality of death, whether that be their own or that of their loved ones.
Anthropologist Claudio Lomnitz correctly points out, this "playful familiarity and proximity to death" in contemporary Mexican culture is all the more unusual to us because so much of British 20th century thought has been about denying death, but I would argue that this acceptance of death is far more pleasant than the more depressing attitude towards death we see in British culture - an attitude that perpetuates a sense of fear surrounding death. Even though there is evidence of people fearing death in almost every society, cultures vary widely in the magnitude to which this anxiety is expressed. Some cultures appear to manage the idea of dying comparatively well (they are referred to as death-affirming societies) whereas in other cultures, the aversion to the idea of dying is so strong that they can be classified as death-denying or death-defying cultures. Mexican and Tana Toraja cultures can be seen as falling into the former group, whilst British culture falls into the latter, with religious cultural beliefs falling somewhere in between.
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. Even though all humans may experience death, conceptions about death and how we respond to issues of death and dying vary widely across cultures. As the world is increasingly shrinking due to the extensive interaction of people from cultures across the world (what Marshall Mcluhan defines as the global village) it is important to understand the complexities that surround the issues of death, just as we do the issues of life. This will better prepare us to respect and understand people from other cultures, and respond to them in ways that are meaningful to them, especially when discussing a topic as sensitive as death.
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