This fascinating book explores how death rituals (wakes, funerals and burial practices)are entwined with everyday life, and help to give it meaning in poor urban communities on the outskirts of the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca. "Oaxacan death-related ritual performances can be seen as emanating organically from everyday life". (p. 114) Rituals of death are not "exotic" or "backward" (and even less "pure" or "authentic" representations of a timeless past), but are " a vital dimension of the down-to-earth reality of poor social groups." (p. 268) In Oaxaca, the dead remain "social actors" and continue to exist in the lives of their surviving relatives; they are social beings every bit as much as the living. We learn how values and social identity are formed among poor Oaxacans by their rites and beliefs concerning death. Through these practices, poor Oaxacans make moral distinctions between themselves and wealthier, elite residents of the city. Ethical ideals of generosity and care for members of the community are reinforced. Tellingly, the popular or folk practices examined here belong to the community, and are not official church-sponsored practices. These rites are self-sufficient in relation to the official Church, and are enacted outside its orbit.
Eschewing tired Western stereotypes, Norget insists that there is no "Mexican attitude toward death", no universal thing called "Death in Mexico". She rejects common generalizations of stoic indifference toward death, or melancholic fatalism. Instead, the dead are embraced tenderly among the living, and death in Oaxaca is felt deeply.
The festivities of the Day of the Dead are analysed here in depth, but popular stereotypes and misconceptions are challenged. By including discussion of the Day of the Dead among other popular religious practices, Norget situates it in its social context, and makes it comprehensible, and not purely "exotic". Norget rejects the common notion of a persistent, unchanging past, and aims, on the contrary, to show how death rituals relate to modernity, in a process in which "traditional" and "modern" jostle together.
Refreshingly for the non-academic reader, the book is short on theory, and long on lived reality. It is also elegantly written and graced by some nice turns of phrase: "living is such that even the dead must pull their weight, and death is such that even the living must contribute to the welfare of the dead." Or "death became a gathering rather than a scattering". (p. 266)
Perhaps the book's most salient characteristic is that it is highly personal. Norget's own experience of death in her family during her research enabled her to relate in a deeply personal and humane manner to the people and rituals she observed. She discusses how her experiences addressed her "need to learn how to mourn".She concludes this moving book: "The death rituals I encountered in Oaxaca showed me the wisdom of regular acts of remembrance and devotion; such acts help the living stay alive by keeping the dead alive inside them." (p. 269)
ISBN-13:
978-0231136891
ISBN-10:
0231136897
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