Celebrations of Death

INDIA: Traditions of Burial

"Life becomes transparent against the background of death, fundamental social and cultural issues are therefore revealed in death rituals" (25)

History of the Study of Religion:

• Tylor & Intellectualism
• religions arouse out of the contemplative states of death and dreaming which identified two worlds, This led to ideas of the afterlife and worlds of the dead.
• religion was created through and intellectual exercise that precluded scientific knowledge (erroneous)
• interested in bizarre and exotic beliefs of the uncivilized. (what these antiquated practices and beliefs couls say about the past)
• Durkheim & the Sociology of Religion
• religion expresses the moral cohesion of society, rather than the fears and imaginings of individuals.
• death presents a FUNDAMENTAL problem, because it highlights the individual in society and threatens the integration of individuals through solidarity (mechanic or organic).  
• death rituals present "collective representations" which repair society and reintegrate individuals into the structure. 
• interested in how ritual (and religion) acted to integrate individuals (the glue) into society
• "collective effervescence"- emotional arousal and alignment to create solidarity.
• Arnold Van Gennep: Rites of Passage 
• Identified a class of rituals that marked TRANSITIONS from one stage (status) to another (e.g. initiation, marriage, annual round, death).
• Transition rituals all share a common tripartite structure:
• Separation
• Transition (liminal)
• Reincorporation
• The schema imagines that transitions begin with a distinction marked by"separation", Distinguish and mark stages of transition between the two categories (read Structuralism and its binary opposition-Levi Strauss) during the "transition" stage, which is inherently "liminal" (dangerous), and successfully conclude by passing  through this liminal stage to reintegrate (read Durkheim) an individual or group of individuals back into society in their altered status-thus preserving social solidarity). example:
• death                            ONE DISTINCTION                    marriage
• alive/dead                    TWO CATEGORIES               single/married
• alive>dying>dead          THREE STAGES            single>engaged>married
• Death and birth (rebirth) for cultures everywhere provide a METAPHOR through which to understand and imagine other (lesser) transitions.
• Interested in providing a FRAMEWORK for understanding rituals within a particular social context-including our own. (Rituals EVERYWHERE can be understood through the same logical framework). 
• Significance:
• the integration of the individual into society
• the nature of SYMBOLISM
• the moral relativity of cultures
• LIMINALITY: building on Van Gennep, American Anthropologist Victor Turner elaborates on the concept of Liminality as: 
• "a state of transition, the inhabitants of which are BETWIXT and BETWEEN normal social roles, and close to some transcendent core of sacred moral value" (Turner 1967:94).
• As such, liminality is sometimes autonomous of ritual, but is always a component in it. (structuralist)---marginal people, outcasts, bisexuals, biracial...etc.
• To Van Gennep, liminality is always part of ritual and never autonomous (structural functionalist)
• "communitas"- sense of emotional and social collectivity and belonging (in some ways the mirror image of Durkheim's "anomie"-the failure of society to integrate individuals into it's collective structure- to create a sense of belonging).
• Robert Hertz: The Study of Secondary Burial

SECONDARY BURIAL IN TAIWAN

• Focusing on funeral *(death rituals) in his study of ritual transitions and their functions, Hertz discusses societies that do not see death as instantaneous
• INTERMEDIARY PERIOD (when the individual is neither alive or dead -liminal)
• SECONDARY BURIAL at the end of this period there is a "great feast", where the remains are recovered, ritually processed and moved to a new location.
• drawing principally from Indonesian culture, particularly Borneo, Hertz noted that minimally, the time between the two event had to be sufficient to have the flesh rot away and only dry bones remain. 
• The fate of the corpse mirrored the fate of the soul. 
• during this liminal intermediary phrase elaborate care is taken to avoid harm that the dangerous un-dead might inflict, unable to enter the land of the dead.
• reincorporation reestablishes normal relationships among members of society
• this special case was viewed as a way to see the GENERAL TENDENCY to view death through a method of manipulation of the corpse (how about American culture then!?)
• Central Asia, North America, Indonesia, South America, Melanesia, and Greece
• SYMBOLISM OF CORPSE (borrowed from Marcel Mauss: objects must be destroyed in this world in order to pass into the next. (sacrifice, slow decay, processing).