Funeral Culture

Casey Golomski

Description

Contemporary forms of living and dying in Swaziland cannot be understood apart from the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, according to anthropologist Casey Golomski. In Africa's last absolute monarchy, the story of 15 years of global collaboration in treatment and intervention is also one of ordinary people facing the work of caring for the sick and dying and burying the dead. Golomski's ethnography shows how AIDS posed challenging questions about the value of life, culture, and materiality to drive new forms and practices for funerals. Many of these forms and practicesnewly catered funeral feasts, an expanded market for life insurance, and the kingdom's first crematoriumare now conspicuous across the landscape and culturally disruptive in a highly traditionalist setting. This powerful and original account details how these new matters of death, dying, and funerals have become entrenched in peoples' everyday lives and become part of a quest to create dignity in the wake of a devastating epidemic.

Acknowledgements

Note on Transliteration

Introduction Funeral Culture: Dignity, Work, and Cultural Change

Chapter 1 Reckoning Life: Dying from AIDS to Living with HIV

Chapter 2 Religious Healing and Resurrection: "Faith Without Work is Dead"

Chapter 3 The Secrets of Life Insurance: Savings, Care, and the Witch

Chapter 4 Grounded: Body Politics of Burial and Cremation

Chapter 5 Life in a Takeaway Box: Mobility and Purity in Funeral Feasts

Chapter 6 Commemoration and Cultural Change: Memento Radicalis

Conclusion The Afterlives of Work

Appendix

I. siSwati-American English Glossary

II. List of Abbreviations

References

Index

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Santé du quotidien
• African Studies
• Ethnic Studies
• afterlife
• Traditions
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• VIH
• AIDS pandemic
• Cremation
• Customs
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• Christianity
• HIV

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 04 juin 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253036483
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

FUNERAL CULTURE
FUNERAL CULTURE
AIDS, Work, and Cultural Change in an African Kingdom
Casey Golomski
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
© 2018 by Casey Golomski
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-03644-5 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-03645-2 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-03646-9 (ebook)
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Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Introduction: Funeral Culture: Dignity, Work, and Cultural Change
1 Reckoning Life: Dying from AIDS to Living with HIV
2 Religious Healing and Resurrection: “Faith without Work Is Dead”
3 The Secrets of Life Insurance: Saving, Care, and the Witch
4 Grounded: Body Politics of Burial and Cremation
5 Life in a Takeaway Box: Mobility and Purity in Funeral Feasts
6 Commemoration and Cultural Change: Memento Radicalis
Conclusion: The Afterlives of Work
Appendix
I. siSwati-American English Glossary
II. List of Abbreviations
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
C OOPERATION, COLLEGIALITY, FRIENDSHIP , and love are qualities that I value in mutual relationships and are what I received from many people as I developed robust interests in culture and humanitarian concern into ethnographic research for this book. I have been waiting to graciously thank many of them here. Siyabonga tsine .
Doing sociocultural anthropology as a richly descriptive comparative study of human being means learning about, listening to, and empathizing with others around us. I learned these skills first from my family: my dad, Kenneth Edwin Golomski, or “G,” a social studies educator and coach, and my mom, Monica Kathleen Brady Berg Golomski, a business educator and heartening citizen. Our own rituals together of dinners, holidays, and Friday-night football games gave me grounds to think creatively about the cultural and ritual life of our own communities and others. I have to begin with them, because they gave me life and let me become who I am.
In Swaziland, people who gave me a hand, a chance, and a tip or two were: Darrin Adams, Doug and Jen Armitage, Ivy Bennett, Nelly Bennett, Teresa Bennett, the late Phil Bonner, George Choongwa, Bongani Dlamini, Lindiwe Dlamini, Mlungisi Dlamini, Velabo Dlamini, Rebecca Fielding-Miller, Simphiwe Groening, Barb Houle, Shorty Khumalo, Hlanhla Lukhele, Mzwandile Lukhele, S. T. Lukhele, Zodwa Mabuza, Nkosingiphile Makama, Veli Matsebula, Themba Mavuso, Vusi Mbatha, Nokuthula Mbatha, Vukile Mbatha, Vusi Mbatha, Almon Bingo, S’thembile Mbingo, Esther Mbuli, Bill and Erin McCoy, Bakhetsile Mdluli, Buhle Mdluli, Busi Mdluli, Sizwe Mdluli, S’busie Mpungose, Cebsile Ndzinisa, Thabile Ngubane, Fire Ngwenya, Comfort Ngwenya, Lindiwe Ngwenya, Phindile Nsibande, Buhle Shongwe, Khole Shongwe, Martha Shongwe, Mbabane Shongwe, Phumlani Shongwe, Sebenele Shongwe, Xolani Shongwe, and Martha Vankampen Hertslet.
Thank you to the staffs at the United States Embassy and the National Archives, and to Rosemary Andrade and Donald Nkonyane at the National Museum for access to the collections and coordinating illustration permissions with Aleta Armstrong. Nicodemus Fru Awasom, Nhlanhla C. Dlamini, Hebron L. Ndlovu, and Sonene Nyawo at the University of Swaziland’s Department of History and the Department of Theology and Religious Studies were all innovative interlocutors, pushing me to rethink my understanding of culture and Swaziland.

Colleagues I met on a postdoctoral fellowship in South Africa at the University of the Witwatersrand from 2014 on enlightened me and continue to inspire me. The university is a cosmopolitan place drawing in itinerant citizens who are also well imbricated in the lifeworld I describe in this book. On cold Johannesburg evenings over dinner and glasses of red wine, in the office, and in seminars, the times I spent together with the following people encouraged me to forward my work as part of a shared humanist and social scientific endeavor: Max Bolt, Cath Burns, Sharad Chari, David Coplan, Gabby Dlamini, Claudia Gastrow, Kelly Gillespie, Pamila Gupta, Julia Hornberger, Deborah James, Lenore Manderson, Achille Mbembe, Fraser McNeill, Dilip Menon, Nolwazi Mkhwanazi, Polo Moji, Danai Mupotsa, Kirk Sides, Robert Thornton, Daria Trentini, Joshua Z. Walker, Hylton White, Tim Wright, and Eric Worby; the staff of the Department of Social Anthropology, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research and its Humanities Graduate Centre; and colleagues at several writing retreats and workshops, including the 14th and 15th Johannesburg Workshops in Theory and Criticism.
I learned siSwati by way of isiZulu. Many of my first words in these tongues I spoke with Zoliswa Mali and Beth Restrick at the Boston University African Studies Center, where I also thankfully met Parker Shipton. A Fulbright-Hays grant and the United States Department of Education sponsored my isiZulu language training at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Pietermaritzburg with Audrey Nonhlanhla Mbeje and Thabile Mbatha Ngubane. From there, T. J. Tallie, Joseph D. Napolitano, and April Sizemore-Barber became ongoing language and writing partners. Martha Shongwe and Cebsile Ndzinisa were also special teachers of siSwati.
My early academic mentors, the late Anthony Galt, Sabine Hyland, and Victoria B. Tashjian, and at Brandeis University Mark Auslander, Elizabeth Ferry, Charles Golden, David Jacobson, Nina Kammerer, Sarah Lamb, Janet McIntosh, Rick Parmentier, and Ellen Schattschneider helped cultivate my interests and analyses. My Brandeis peers and I prided ourselves on celebrating an inclusive, supportive, and rigorous environment, and I am very proud to see where it has gotten us all in life. I also thank my colleagues at the Departments of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and the University of New Hampshire for being encouraging and for inspiring me to write beyond borders. At Harvard Divinity School, the theory, thoughtfulness, and kind words of Michael D. Jackson lit my path forward.
Delivering paper presentations based on this work to best reshape it for a wider audience was helpful. I was able to do so for meetings of the International Research Network on Religion and AIDS in Africa, the African Studies Association, the Society for Cultural Anthropology, the American Ethnological Society, the South African Visual Arts Historians and Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art, and the American Anthropological Association. I received exceptional feedback from audiences at invited talks based on this research. I presented these talks for Nhlanhla C. Dlamini and the University of Swaziland History Staff Seminar Series, Alan Whiteside and the University of KwaZulu-Natal Westville’s Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division (HEARD), Boston University’s African Studies Center Walter Rodney Seminar Series, and the University of the Witwatersrand’s Department of Anthropology and Centre for Indian Studies in Africa.
Dee Mortensen thankfully saw my ethnographic vision. At Indiana University Press, she, Paige Rasmussen, Rachel Rosolina, Stephen Williams, and Julie Davis helpfully guided me. Jessica Vineyard and the staff at Ninestars were exceptional copyeditors, and Cyndy Brown was a stellar indexer. Several colleagues and friends from different seasons of my life read specific parts of the manuscript, wrote comments, and helped revise it overall, securing its growth from early ideas and chapters to book proposal, revisions, and completion: James Amanze, Joel Cabrita, Shelby Carpenter, Arianna Huhn, Anna Jaysane-Darr, Casey J. Miller, Smita Lahiri, Vito Laterza, Mrinalini Tankha, Allison B. Taylor, Daria Trentini, Laura Ann Twagira, Ilana van Wyk, Hylton White, and Eric Worby. Melissa Clark helpfully produced the map. Others, such as Eric Kuzma and Teri Del Rosso made the intersection of personal life and writing extraordinary. For their final editorial efforts, wisdom, and well wishes at the very end of it all, I am indebted to Rebecca Fielding-Miller, Jessica A. Hardin, Ieva Jusionyte, George Paul Meiu, Robin Root, and April Sizemore-Barber. I am forever grateful for your gifts.
Note on Transliteration
Transliteration—notes on pronouncing siSwati words, including places and people’s names: c The written consonant “c,” as in umcwasho (national chastity rites), is pronounced as a dental click by clicking the tip of the tongue on the back of the front teeth. hl The written consonant pair “hl” is a fricative. It is pronounced like a lisp, by flattening the tip of the tongue on the roof of the mouth, then exhaling and articulating the “l,” and is followed by a vowel, as in sihlahla (“tree”). ph The written consonant pair “ph” is pronounced as a normal “p,” exhaling to emphasize the “h.” th Like “ph,” “th” is pronounced as a normal “t,” exhaling to emphasize the “h.”
FUNERAL CULTURE
Introduction: Funeral Culture: Dignity, Work, and Cultural Change
I NSIDE AN INKY copy of the Swazi Observer , one of the two newspapers in the Kingdom of Swaziland, the op-eds are just before the obituaries. Some op-eds are inspirational and others cheeky, as in one series called “Societal Scales” by Mr. Dumisa Dlamini, about the ways women and men don’t get along. “Does a Man Love His Car More Than His First Lady?” (2007) and “The F