Death and Dying A-Bi Anthropological Perspective

Anthropological Perspective
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It is rather hard, if not impossible, to answer the question of
how long anthropology has existed. Should social scientists
consider anthropology the detailed descriptions appearing
in the work of ancient and medieval historianswhich deal
with the culture of certain ethnic groups, such as their
death rites, eating habits, and dressing customsjust as
they consider the eldwork reports based on long-term
participating observations published in the twenty-rst
century? Although it is not easy to nd the unambiguous
answer to this question, it is obvious that no work in history
of science can lack a starting point, which helps its readers
pin down and comprehend its argumentation. During the
mid-1800s anthropology rst appeared as a "new"
independent discipline in the fast-changing realm of social
sciences.
The Evolutionist Perspective
Searching the origins of society and religion, writing the
"history of their evolution," seemed to be the most popular
topic of nineteenth-century anthropology. Death and the
belief in the soul and the spirits play important roles in the
evolutionist-intellectual theories of origin written by
Edward Burnett Tylor in 1871 and other scholars of the
nineteenth century.
Tylor assumed that in the background of the appearance of the soul beliefs, there may
be such extraordinary and incomprehensible experiences as dreams and visions
encountered in various states of altered consciousness, and the salient dierences
between the features of living and dead bodies. In his view, "the ancient savage
philosophers" were only able to explain these strange, worrying experiences by
considering humans to be a dual unity consisting of not only a body but of an entity
that is able to separate from the body and continue its existence after death (Tylor
1972, p. 11). Tylor argues that this concept of spirit was later extended to animals,
plants, and objects, and it developed into "the belief in spiritual beings" that possess
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supernatural power (polytheism) (ibid., p. 10). Eventually it led to monotheism. Tylor,
who considered "the belief in spiritual beings," which he called animism, the closest
denition and starting point of the concept of religion, argues that religion and notion
of death were brought into being by human worries concerning death.
Tylor's theory was attacked primarily because he did not attribute the origin of religion
to the interference of supernatural powers but rather to the activity of human logic. He
was also criticized on the grounds that a part of his concept was highly speculative and
unhistorical: He basically intended to reconstruct the evolution of religion from
contemporary ethnographic data and through the deduction of his own hypotheses.
Although most of these critiques were correct, Tylor can only partly be grouped among
the "armchair anthropologists" of his time.
Two other individualsJohann Jakob Bachofen and James G. Frazerare also
acknowledged as pioneers during this early period of anthropology. Bachofen prepared
a valuable analysis of the few motives of wall paintings of a Roman columbarium in
1859 such as black-and-white painted mystery eggs. He was among the rst authors to
point out that the symbolism of fertility and rebirth is closely connected with death
rites. Based on his monumental collection of ethnographic data from several cultures,
Frazer, in the early twentieth century and again in the 1930s, intended to prove that
the fear of the corpse and the belief in the soul and life after death is a universal
phenomenon.
The French Sociology School
The perspective of the authors of the French sociology school diered considerably
from the primarily psychology-oriented, individual-focused views of these evolutionist-
intellectual anthropologists. mile Durkheim and his followers (including Robert Hertz
and Marcell Mauss) studied human behavior in a "sociological framework," and focused
their attention primarily on the question of societal solidarity, on the study of the
social impact of rites, and on the various ties connecting individuals to society. In other
words, they investigated the mechanisms by which societies sustain and reproduce
themselves.
In his monumental work The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915), Durkheim
argues that the most important function of death rites and religion in general is to
rearm societal bonds and the social structure itself. In his view, a society needs
religion (totem as a sacral object in this case) to represent itself in it, and it serves to
help society to reproduce itself. In his other work of the same subject (Suicide: A Study
in Sociology, 1952) Durkheim studies the social and cultural determination of a
phenomenon that is considered primarily psychological.
However, it was undoubtedly the 1907 work of Durkheim's disciple, Robert Hertz, that
has had the most signicant impact on contemporary anthropological research
concerning death. Hertz primarily built his theory on Indonesian data, and focused his
attention on the custom of the secondary burial.
Hertz discovered exciting parallels among (1) the condition of the dead body, (2) the
fate of the departing soul, and (3) the taboos and restricting measures concerning the
survivors owning to their ritual pollution. In his view, where the custom of the
secondary burial is practiced, the moment of death can be considered the starting point
for these three phenomena: the corpse becomes unanimated and the process of
decomposition starts; the taboos concerning survivors become eective; and the soul
starts its existence in the intermediary realm between the world of the living and the
deceased ancestors. (In this liminal state of being the soul is considered to be homeless
and malignant.) This intermediary period ends with the rite of the secondary burial,
which involves the exhumation of the corpse and its burial in a new, permanent tomb.
This rite also removes the taboos of the survivors, thus cleansing them from the
pollution caused by the occurrence of the death. The same rite signals, or performs the
soul's initiation to the realm of the ancestors, by it the soul takes its permanent status
in the other world.
Hertz argues that the most important function of these death rites is to promote the
reorganization of the social order and the restoration of faith in the permanent
existence of the society, which had been challenged by the death of the individual. In
addition to these functions, they serve the conrmation of solidarity among the
survivors.
The utmost merit of Hertz's work is undoubtedly the novelty of his theoretical
presuppositions. Like Durkheim, he concentrated on the social aspects of death and not
on its biological or psychological sides. Hertz was among the rst to point out how
human death thoughts and rituals are primarily social products, integrated parts of the
society's construction of reality that reect the sociocultural context (religion, social
structure). According to Hertz, the deceased enters the mythic world of souls "which
each society constructs in its own image" (Hertz 1960, p. 79).
Hertz emphasized that social and emotional reactions following death are also
culturally determined, and called attention to numerous social variables that might
considerably inuence the intensity of these reactions in dierent cultures (i.e., the
deceased person's gender, age, social status, and relation to power).
In one and the same society the emotion aroused by death varies extremely
in intensity according to the social status of the deceased, and may even in
certain cases be entirely lacking. At the death of a chief, or of a man of high
rank, a true panic sweeps over the group . . . On the contrary, the death of a
stranger, a slave, or a child will go almost unnoticed; it will arouse no
emotion, occasion no ritual. (Hertz 1960, p. 76)
From the commentaries on Hertz's work, only one critical remark needs mentioned,
which calls attention to the problem of exceptions and the dangers of the
overgeneralization of the model of secondary burials.
Arnold van Gennep and the Model of the Rites of Passage
In his book The Rites of Passage (1960), Arnold van Gennep places the primary focus
on rites, in which individualsgenerally with the proceeding of timestep from one
social position/status to another. (Such events are birth, various initiations, marriage,
and death.) The author considers these "border-crossings" crisis situations.
Van Gennep claims that these rites accompanying transitions generally consist of three
structural elements: rites of separationpreparing the dying person, giving the last
rite; rites of transitionfor example, the nal burial of the corpse in the cemetery or
the group of rites that serve to keep the haunting souls away; and the rites of
incorporationa mass said for the salvation of the deceased person's soul. In the case
of a death event, the individual leaves a preliminary state (living) by these rites and
through a liminal phase in which the deceased usually is in a temporary state of
existence between the world of the living and the dead), and reaches a post-liminary
state (dead).
Van Gennep argues that these rites socially validate such social/biological changes as
birth, marriage, and death. They also canalize the accompanying emotional reactions
into culturally elaborated frames, thus placing them under partial social control,
consequently making these critical situations more predictable. His theory served as a
starting point and pivot of several further rite studies (including the liminality theory
of Victor Turner in 1969), inspired the study of the rites' symbolic meanings, and
promoted research that investigated the ways of an individual's social integration.
The British Functionalist School
While the evolutionist-intellectual anthropologists were interested in nding the reason
of the origin of religion and the followers of the French sociology school concentrated
on the social determination of attitudes concerning death, members of the British
functionalist school were concerned with the relation of death rites and the
accompanying emotional reactions. They focused their attention on the question of the
social loss caused by death (such as the redistribution of status and rights).
The two most signicant authors of this school had opposing views of the relationship
between religion/rites and the fear of death. Bronislaw Malinowski considered the
anxiety caused by the rationally uncontrollable happenings as the basic motivation for
the emergence of religious faith. He suggested that religion was not born of speculation
and illusion,
but rather out of the real tragedies of human life, out of the conict
between human plans and realities. . . . The existence of strong personal
attachments and the fact of death, which of all human events is the most
upsetting and disorganizing to man's calculations, are perhaps the main
sources of religious belief. (Malinowski 1972, p. 71)
In his view the most signicant function of religion is to ease the anxiety
accompanying the numerous crises of a life span, particularly the issue of death.
However, according to Arnold Radclie-Brown in the case of certain rites, "It would be
easy to maintain . . . that they give men fears and anxieties from which they would
otherwise be freethe fear of black magic or of spirits, fear of God, of the devil, of
Hell" (Radclie Brown 1972, p. 81).
It was George C. Homans in 1941 who succeeded in bringing these two competing
theories into a synthesis, claiming that they are not exclusive but complementary
alternatives.
From the 1960s to Present
There has been continual interest in the anthropological study of death, marked by the
series of books and collections of studies published. Among these works, scholars note
the 1982 collection of studies edited by Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry that intends
to provide a comprehensive coverage of one single area: It studies how the ideas of
fertility and rebirth are represented in the death rites of various cultures. The equally
valuable book Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual (1991) by
Richard Huntington and Peter Metcalf, which relies extensively on the authors' eld
experience, discusses the most important questions of death culture research
(emotional reaction to death; symbolic associations of death, etc.) by presenting both
the corresponding established theories and their critiques.
See also: Afterlife in Cross-Cultural Perspective ; Cannibalism ; Durkheim, MILE ;
Gennep, Arnold van ; Hertz, Robert ; Human Remains ; Omens ; Rites of Passage ;
Sacrice ; Voodoo
Bibliography
Bachofen, Johann Jakob. "An Essay on Ancient Mortuary Symbolism." In Ralph
Manheim trans., Myth, Religion, and Mother Right. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1967.
Bloch, Maurice, and Jonathan Parry, eds. Death and the Regeneration of Life. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Durkheim, mile. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952
Durkheim, mile. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1915.
Frazer, James George. The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead. 3 vols.
London: Dawsons, 1968.
Frazer, James George. The Fear of the Dead in Primitive Religion. 3 vols. New York: Arno
Press, 1977.
Gennep, Arnold van. The Rites of Passage, translated by Monika B. Vizedom and
Gabrielle L. Caee. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1960.
Hertz, Robert. "A Contribution to the Study of the Collective Representation of Death."
Death and the Right Hand, translated by Rodney and Claudia Needham. Glencoe, IL:
Free Press, 1960.
Homans, George C. "Anxiety and Ritual: The Theories of Malinowski and Radclie-
Brown." American Anthropologist XLIII (1941):164172.
Huntington, Richard, and Peter Metcalf. Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of
Mortuary Ritual, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. "The Role of Magic and Religion." In William A. Lessa and Evon
Z. Vogt eds., Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach. New York:
Harper and Row, 1972.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. Magic, Science, and Religion. London: Faber and West, 1948.
Name: Type the code shown:
Metcalf, Peter. "Meaning and Materialism: The Ritual Economy of Death." MAN 16
(1981):563578.
Radclie-Brown, Arnold. "Taboo." In William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt eds., Reader in
Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process. Chicago: Aldine, 1969.
Tylor, Edward Burnett. "Animism." In William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt eds., Reader in
Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.
Tylor, Edward Burnett. Primitive Culture. London: John Murray, 1903.
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