Sustaining cemeteries: The user perspective

Abstract

Burial sites have been a long-standing focus for cross-cultural research. The cemetery activities and dispositions of people who visit and tend graves in urban, Western society have not, however, commanded parallel attention. Findings obtained through ethnographic methods at the graveside in six London cemeteries illuminate current cemetery behaviour. While the visitor-or user-perspective is brought into sharp focus to gain first-hand understandings of underlying meanings and uses of cemeteries for different cultural and ethnic groups, the cemetery landscape is ever present as the material outcome of sets of interests and influences which, over time, may be complementary or competing. Thus, users' perspectives are considered alongside perspectives which concern cultural practices, propriety, time, ownership, accountability and responsibility. The material shows that cemeteries sustain important, largely unacknowledged functions in personal, family and community life. The meanings and multilevelled uses of cemeteries are charted to reveal how current and proposed policies may, inadvertently, undermine these functions. The findings caution against blanket policies of grave re-use and the case is made for new constituencies of visitors to be enlisted to support policy formulation for revised practices which are more democratic, more multicultural and more responsive to cemeteries as important and valued public resources.

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