Paper short abstract:

Taking the example of Cape Verdean funerals in Luxembourg, the paper asks whether post-modern spaces allow for pre-modern beliefs and practices.

Paper long abstract:

While we observe new forms of spirituality and a simultaneity of secular and post-secular attitudes and practices - and also a growing scholarly interest in these forms, e.g. in spiritism and the therapeutic effect of summoning and communicating with the dead - traditional or pre-modern beliefs and practices, like those one can encounter among Cape Verdeans in Luxembourg who experience the enduring and ambiguous presence of the spirit of a deceased relative, cannot easily become part of modern urban deathscapes.

The paper looks at the negotiation of funeral aesthetics, comprising the materiality of the grave and ritual/ceremonial practices, as well as at the concrete social encounters involved and the spaces created by these encounters. It argues that Cape Verdean funeral practices in Luxembourg are characterized not only by pre-modern spirituality but also by forms of pre-modern sociality that put into question clear distinctions of public/private and sacred/mundane spaces.

Paper short abstract:

This ethnographic account of France's first natural cemetery examines how the transnational natural death movement has been translated into a local context, by highlighting the economic, spiritual and ecological drivers behind this urban space for a greener future of re-enchanted cemeteries.

Paper long abstract:

Starting in the 1990s in England, a silent revolution of funerary practices and cemetery design labeled as the "natural death movement", swept over various national contexts, creating a transnational narrative embedded and expressed in local funerary cultures. France, hopping on the natural funeral hearse fairly recently by opening its first natural cemetery "Cimetière naturel de Souché" in Niort in 2014, adapted an approach to laying their dead to rest which combines an urban scarcity of space with a desire for autonomy from economically and ecologically costly funeral practices. This ethnographic account took the cemetery as a starting point to examine and reflect the changes in the material as well as immaterial funeral culture in a contemporary, European city. By using qualitative methods specific to anthropology, insights about conceptualizations and notions such as continuity, nature and culture, gift giving and reciprocity, purity and respect, memorialization, as well as attitudes about death and the afterlife could be gained and compared to the broader movement. Informants ranging from two generations of Niort's cemetery management, employees of funeral homes, gravediggers, as well as visitors share a space with heterogenous approaches to its utilization and (meta-)physical qualities. This natural cemetery as an urban deathscape and heterotopia, extends meaning making processes beyond its biodegradable fences to reflect pressing objectives concerning urban planning, landscape regeneration, waste management and the need for spiritual interconnectedness between humans, nature and the dead.

Paper short abstract:

The role of urban cemeteries often exceeds their primary function as burial grounds. While a majority of scholarship on the use of cemeteries focuses on Northern Europe, this paper discusses empirical evidence from a cemetery in Russia and explores the variety of ways people use and experience it.

Paper long abstract:

The way in which we deal with the deceased is fundamental for our societies, and cemeteries are clear spatial manifestations of this. However, the role of urban cemeteries, which occupy vast territories in the cities, often goes beyond their primary functions as burial grounds and places for remembrances, and includes, for example, recreational activities. The extent to which different functions coexist in an everyday deathscape varies significantly among cultures and can provide useful insights into the society it represents. While a majority of scholarship on the use of cemeteries focuses on Northern Europe, this paper brings forth empirical evidences from a cemetery in Russia. It describes the policy context around Moscow cemeteries and explores how visitors use and experience Vvedenskoe cemetery. The study is ethnographically informed and involves a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, including systematic and participant observations of people's activities, semi-structured interviews and observations of photos and texts shared by cemetery visitors in social media. Although visiting a grave was the most frequent reason for coming to the cemetery, people were also engaging with the deathscape in other ways. For many of the interviewees and users of social media the cemetery was included into their everyday life as a place for promenades, contemplation and contact with nature. A special spiritual atmosphere, monumental heritage and graves of famous people also make Vvedenskoe cemetery an attractive place for excursions, especially focused on arts and history. The findings show that the role of Vvedenskoe cemetery is multifaceted and compliments its primary function as a burial ground.

Paper short abstract:

We describe and analyse practices of Muslim burials in North-West Europe, and explore negotiations between cultural and religious tradition, place and identity, and the regulation of cemeteries and burial, to demonstrate the complex ways death is encountered, negotiated, and governed.

Paper long abstract:

Places shape and are shaped by personal and collective identities and experiences mediated by the state and other actors, and this not only pertains to life, but also to matters related to death. Cemeteries are imbued with emotion, meaning and associations, and are often subject to social contestation and power. This paper starts from the observation that cemeteries are regulated in how they are managed, and experienced. These regulations are in many ways plural: they can be secular or religious, formal or informal, (trans)national or local, collective or individual. In the context of diverse and diversifying North-West Europe, complex experiences of these spaces and regulations arise which can be both limiting and enabling, including and excluding.

We explore contemporary cemeteries and their multi-level regulative systems in medium to large-sized towns in Scotland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Sweden, and Norway. Specifically, we look at how Muslim burial is practiced and experienced in these contexts, and how cultural and religious traditions and norms are flexible and responsive to these regulatory contexts. In particular, we pay attention to the significance of space and place in relation to death, mourning and remembrance (Kong 1999; Madrell and Sidaway 2010), and how this sits in tension and dialogue with the assumptions of the dominant culture of these countries, preferences of Muslim communities, and practical constraints. By bringing together these experiences, we demonstrate how complex and nuanced the negotiation of death is for minority and/or migrant communities.

Paper short abstract:

In the wake of downsizing sociality, single living and dying is rising in Japan. As more and more Japanese face the precarity of "nowhere to go" and "no one to depend upon" at death, new mortuary provisions are arising that offer a social prosthetics to caregive the remains of the deceased.

Paper long abstract:

Once dependent on family to bury and memorialize the dead, caregiving the deceased has become increasingly precarious in the wake of a low birthrate/high aging population, a trend towards single households, and downsizing of social relationality including the long-standing ties to temples and priests that handled mortuary rituals in the past. In the new "ending" marketplace emerging today to help Japanese manage how, and by whom, their remains will be handled post-death, one new initiative are high-rise columbaria that offer customers a burial spot in a convenient urban setting where ashes, interred in a deposit box, get automatically transferred to a grave upon visitation. Aesthetically upscale and housed in temples though run by corporations, these new-style graveparks advertise their services as easing the stress of having "no where to go" upon death. Once interred here, one is in a place where the graves are well-maintained and all those interred given Buddhist memorials (kuyō) by the facility itself. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the essay examines the just-in-time delivery system at work in automated graves, arguing that the mechanism serves as a social prosthesis, propping up the allure of caregiving the dead for even those whose ashes are never visited by intimates. As a new-style burial ground, automated graves—starting in 1996 and now numbering over 30 in Japan—are a sign of changing relationality between the living and dead in the state of becoming otherwise.

Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the relationship between state and civil society using an example of All Things Bukit Brown (ATBB), a civil society group that advocates for the preservation of Bukit Brown Cemetery (BBC), a disused municipal Chinese cemetery located in central Singapore.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses the relationship between state and civil society using the example of All Things Bukit Brown (ATBB), a civil society group that is advocating for the preservation of Bukit Brown Cemetery, a disused municipal Chinese cemetery in central Singapore that was open for burial from 1922-1973. ATBB's advocacy is controversial on four points: a) the Singapore state has already made a firm decision to completely clear the cemetery by 2030 for public housing and has already completed the construction of an eight-lane highway and a shell train station in anticipation of increased population needs; b) ATBB's expectation that the state preserve a Chinese cemetery with rich heritage clashes with the state's housing policy that espouses multi-ethnic harmony in which different races are required to live together; c) it unravels the conflict between what is perceived to be national heritage versus community heritage arising from collective groups in society, and d) it evokes questions on state-society relations which have been characterised by antagonism and paradoxically, partnerships. This paper contributes to emerging anthropological literature on civil society in Singapore by examining the structure, composition, operations, and management of ATBB as an example of a civil society group that carries out its advocacy under Singapore's strict and constraining legal regulations as well as within the backdrop of an increasingly vocal society of educated individuals.

Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that diversity-ready cemeteries and crematoria are a necessary part of changing socially and culturally-inclusive urban topographies.It showcases good practice in cemetery and crematoria design and management,urban planning, plus emerging minority-majority blended ritual practices.

Paper long abstract:

Building on work which has highlighted the longevity of minority religious deathscapes in the UK (e.g. Ansari 2007), the politics of planning processes for specific minority religious buildings (Naylor and Ryan 2002; Gale and Naylor 2002), and the contestation of sites for minority burial (Hunter 2016) and the scattering of cremated remains (Maddrell 2011), this paper draws on an AHRC-ESRC study of minority cemetery and crematoria provision across in medium sized towns in England and Wales. Using mapping, focus groups, key participant and biographical interviews across four case study towns, it argues that diversity-ready cemeteries and crematoria are a necessary part of changing socially and culturally-inclusive urban topographies. Reflecting postcolonial negotiations of 'throwntogetherness' (Massey 2005), local-transnational diasporic identity (Brah 1999) and 'living with difference' (Amin 2002), it showcases examples of good practice in terms of cemetery and crematoria design and management, and urban planning, as well as examples of emerging minority-majority dialogue and blended ritual practices in a postsecular context.

Paper short abstract:

Historic cemeteries originally had one purpose but to ensure their survival, a number of historic cemeteries are now offering a diverse range of experiences for visitors. This paper will explore how this transition occurred; from a space with one defined purpose, to site of leisure and engagement.

Paper long abstract:

In the UK and Ireland, historic cemeteries are increasing joining the ranks of sites that people visit for leisure, entertainment and tourism. As traditional burial places many historic cemeteries have been neglected and abandoned as they fail economically. To ensure their survival a number of historic cemeteries are now offering a diverse range of experiences for visitors including tours, talks, film, theatre, dance, arts and crafts, exercise classes and exhibitions. Within academia these spaces are sometimes regarded as 'dark tourism or dark heritage' as they are places of the dead; although this may not be strictly accurate they are not places of death or tragedy.

As the tradition role of historic cemeteries changes in an attempt to revitalise these historic spaces through public engagement, this paper will explore how and why this transition is occurring from a space with one defined purpose, to site of entertainment. Is the presence of the human remains part of the draw to these sites, or a hindrance to their new, alternative use? Drawing from experiences of researching and working in historic cemeteries, this paper explores the transition from cities of the dead to places for the living and looks at a selection of sites that have capitalized on the darker side of the historic environment.