Urban cemeteries in Swaziland: materialising dignity

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Periodical article

Title:	Urban cemeteries in Swaziland: materialising dignity
Author:	Golomski, Casey
Year:	2015
Periodical:	Anthropology Southern Africa (ISSN 2332-3264)
Volume:	38
Issue:	3-4
Pages:	360-371
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Swaziland - Eswatini
Subjects:	cemeteries funerals pictorial works (form)
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1080/23323256.2015.1087322
Abstract:	This photo essay traces the materiality of urban cemeteries in Swaziland to underscore the production of dignity in contemporary funeral culture. Increasingly, death and burial in town are realities for many people who have lost social ties or land tenure in rural areas where burials customarily take place. Urban burials register anxieties about cultural and socio-economic change and the value of human life, but new mortuary consumer markets have incited novel commemorative practices that qualify these burials as dignified. The photos derive from long-term ethnographic research in Swaziland on transformations of dying, death and funerals in the wake Southern Africa's HIV/Aids epidemic. Bibliogr., notes, sum. [Journal abstract]