Organizer: Eriberto P. Lozada, Jr., Harvard Unversity
Chair: Clark W. Sorensen, University of Washington
Discussant: James L. Watson, Harvard University
The heightened penetration of national and global processes into local communities throughout East Asia has caused a transformation of even the most culturally-conservative cultural practices, such as funerary ritual. In some areas, funerary ritual has been revived and transformed as a result of modernization processes and changing patterns of state involvement in the management of cultural practices. In other areas, funerary ritual practices have changed as a result of its increasing commodification. Especially crucial to recent cultural transformations is the proliferation of non-indigenous mass media and transnational organizations that have expanded the imagined possibilities of cultural practices. This panel will address recent research on contemporary funerary practices in north and south China and Japan to show the impact that state formation, commodification, and other global processes have had on the revival and transformation of funerary ritual. Although funerary ritual has been a well-studied domain in the Asian academic literature, previous studies focused on the normative aspects of death ritual, analyzing how death ritual reinforces traditional patterns of kinship and cultural ideals. The papers on this panel, from different locations throughout East Asia, will focus on such topics as the commodification of funerary ritual, the revival of tradition, and the role of the state in changing funerary practices. How has modernization influenced the form and content of funerary ritual? What is the impact of state or market penetration on the ritual practices of rural communities? What does the transformation of funerary ritual say about changes in the local social context?
Ellen Oxfeld, Middlebury College
As prosperity has grown, and state control of religious practice has waned, traditional practices associated with the worship of the dead have been greatly reinvigorated in rural areas of Mei Xian, a Hakka area of Guangdong. However, a closer examination of death ritual in this area of China reveals that its role is more complex than a mere revival of tradition. First, an analysis of death ritual in Mei Xian reveals that "traditional" aspects of relationships with the dead were never completely discarded, even during the height of the Cultural Revolution. This is particularly the case with the more personal aspects of relationships with the dead, which this paper groups under the heading of "conscience," and which involve smaller scale rituals with little need for overt display. In addition, many revived practices now take on new meanings in a transformed economic, state, and historical context. The importance of death rituals in the maintenance of a family’s status were always salient in this part of China. But now, these aspects of death ritual are incorporated within the process of constructing a new post-reform class structure in the village, a class structure quite different from that of traditional society or the Maoist era. The paper ends by exploring the limits of heterodoxy in contemporary death ritual, focusing on one case of non-conformity.
Eriberto P. Lozada, Jr., Harvard University
Multiple social processes such as modernization, ethnic mobilization, and state consolidation have resulted in vast changes in contemporary Chinese rural social life. Even the most conservative of ritual practices, namely funerary ritual, has been transformed as cultural practices adapt to the changing needs and expectations of villagers in the Chinese countryside. Based on fieldwork conducted in Meizhou Prefecture from 1993–1997, this paper will examine the funerary practices of a Hakka Catholic village to depict the changing nature of rural Chinese social relations. How has the continued participation in a Catholic community, one that was marginalized and persecuted through the Maoist period, affected social relations among villagers, between Catholic and non-Catholic neighbors, and between local residents and non-local Catholics? How have the Deng-era reforms shaped the cultural practices and lifestyle of these Hakka Catholic villagers? Has the emerging mobilization of Hakka ethnicity influenced the local life of these rural villagers? Through the lens of funerary ritual, this paper will argue that the challenges of transnationalism, modernity, and the evolving nation-state faced by the individuals and the village community as a whole are being met through transformed boundary mechanisms that define who is and who is not a member of this community. Faced with processes of deterritorialization and fragmentation, villagers reframe their community through the adaptation of cultural practices (such as funerary ritual) as they contextualize their place in history and implement their visions of the future.
Maris Boyd Gillette, Haverford College
Funerals are about movement: between life and death, between biological death and socially accepted death, between home and final resting place. In the urban community of Chinese-speaking Muslims (Hui) where I conducted fieldwork between 1993 and 1997, the primary goal of funerals was to move the dead into a more Islamic space. This was accomplished by moving the dead both physically and symbolically: the corpse was carried from the home into the mosque and driven from the Muslim district to a cemetery an hour away in the countryside; through symbolic enactments, the dead person was also moved from China to Mecca and from earth to heaven. While Hui described their funerals as traditional, they had been affected by government policies and trends in the Muslim world. Although the government allowed Muslims to practice the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) and to consume Middle Eastern goods and fashions in the Hui district, it still maintained administrative control over the spaces where Islamic practices took place. Focusing on funeral movements, this paper explores the community’s efforts to create a sacred space for the dead in contemporary socialist China.
Hikaru Suzuki, University of Wisconsin, Madison
How did the funerals change in contemporary Japan? In order to answer this question, I went to study the development of funeral companies and the expansion of funeral services at a Japanese funeral company.
Until the post war era began, funerals were primarily the concern of families, relatives, and the community because they all had to share the burden in carrying out the rituals. A close look at the present funeral, a commercialized ceremony, yields a different picture from the past. Who takes care of the deceased today? It is not the families, relatives, nor the community members but the staff from the funeral company who, from the moment when the person is announced dead, treats, handles, and transfers the deceased. Then, what roles do the families play? Of course, they still are mourners, but unlike a couple decades before, their roles have become closer to those of participants rather than central actors. Most importantly, from the funeral industry’s view they are all consumers. The transformation of these new roles expresses the changes in the context and function of funerals. By highlighting the performances of producers and attendants of funeral ceremonies, I will present these changes and their meaning in Japanese society.