Paper short abstract:

How do developing burial rituals challenge authority regulation and cultural norms? I discuss ash scatterings as an arena for negotiating individual authority over death and colliding ideals of order and dignity.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I discuss how developing ritual practices exist in relation to, and in tension with, authority regulation and the law, from the example of ash scatterings and other post cremation rituals and practices.

In societies highly characterized by individualism, individuals frequently encounter opposition as the handling of human remains, burial-places and memorials are strictly regulated in law texts as well as in the rules and established practices of official authorities. Ash scatterings and other post-cremation rituals and practices offer striking examples of a conflict present in the West today; as ever growing postmodern ideals of individualistic death practices collide with the laws and routines of modernity. In Sweden, as in most of the other Nordic countries, ash practices are strictly regulated. Here I discuss recurrent cases where interviewed surviving relatives have somehow broke the rules and thereby possibly the law, as they scattered ashes in the shoreline or covertly divided it into smaller parts.

Although passage rites are held to include liminal stages of norm breaking, they are generally considered to confirm and reinforce social order and roles. There is a need for further research into how passage rites can transcend not only cultural norms but also laws and regulations. How do relatives, professionals and official authorities negotiate conceptions of authority over death? And how are varying cultural conceptions of order in relation to the remains established and challenged?