JOUR1111 - Reflective Blog Pt II

A post reflecting on the Jour1111 lectures for term 2, 2012.

Lecture 8 – Ethics

Clearly, the purpose of this lecture was to get us to think further about how ethics might affect our work in journalism; our journalistic integrity and our ability to effectively critique journalistic trends.

The ethical theories dictating what we deem “right” or “wrong”, in the objective sense, are broken into three distinct modes: Deontology, Consequentialism, and Virtue.

Deontology is the belief that following the rules, principles or duties laid out for you constitutes doing the right thing. In journalistic terms, this implies that ethical reporting would involve following established rules and procedures which, to my mind, is a corruption of the idea of a free press, as it allows room for restrictions on what content can actually be reported. I firmly believe any step towards censorship is a dangerous, backwards move. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it does seem flawed.

Consequentialism is the idea that doing what is right is essentially to do whatever is necessary to get the “right” result. The quote used to illustrate this in the lecture was:

“What’s good for GM (General Motors) is good for America.”

I love this quote, for a number of reasons. For one, it is actually a misquote (the actual quote, according to Wikipedia, was in fact: “…because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa”) which has been used, alternately, to demonise corporate America or to boost support for government subsidies and bailout packages. Its versatility is boundless, both as a sardonic missile for the anti-corporate left, and as a pillar of commercial economics for those with an interest in where money comes from.

But I digress. The idea of Consequentialism as a guiding light bothers me, because this kind of utilitarianism, referred to in the lecture as the Tyranny of Majoritarianism, is the same kind of thinking that has led to some of the worst acts humans have ever committed. The Final Solution, for instance, wasn’t an evil act for the sake of doing something terrible. It was the result of committees and boards trying to solve a problem, which, evidently, was “What to do about all these damn people.” So, in short, Consequentialism seems like a bit of a shit way to conduct oneself.

Virtue, on the other hand, is a simple guiding factor to decision-making that is available to all but the deeply sociopathic, and is reliant on simple habits of behaviour designed to cause no harm and express the finer aspects of human character, listed in the lecture as: courage, justice, temperance and prudence. I could go on about these ideas for a while, but I would hope any readers would have an understanding of what these terms mean in a practical sense. We’ve all seen movies, we know what these traits look like. The term “Golden Mean” was used, and I think it gives the concept a beautiful symmetry to think that these character traits represent a mean average and that there is a certain balance to life that we intrinsically recognise and adhere to. I think it’s nonsense, as a nihilist and a fan of chaos, but as a guiding set of virtues it both keeps us on an even keel and allows a certain wiggle-room to do what is necessary. In a journalistic sense, that allows a great deal of room to work without compromising our virtues or our integrity, which is important to me.

The ethical theories covered in the lecture – Deontology, Consequentialism and Virtue – lie at the heart of religious and ethical philosophy, but I’ve honestly never considered their place in the theoretical framework of journalism. I’ve always instinctively known what was ethical and what was in poor taste. I’ve not always cared, but I’ve always felt I could recognise it. I, personally, operate with a degree of poor taste but I always try to maintain an ethical stance in both my writing and my personal interactions, otherwise known as “moral superiority”, or “being an uppity prick” – a trait which should get me punched more often than it does.

Incidentally, the Sam Kekovitch lamb advertisement and the anti-smoking ads kind of made me want a cigarette and a nice lamb roast.

Lecture 9 – News Values

News values is a concept which seems very fluid. There is an ever changing impact on what we, as consumers, want to know. And, clearly, there is an ever changing influence on that because of what people want us to know, or sometimes what they don’t.

The first principle of agenda setting that I learned, and is still a prevalent principle in agenda setting for content, is the old doctrine “If it bleeds it leads.” It’s a fairly crass way to think about news, but it’s also somewhat accurate about audiences. There are obviously exceptions, but I remember the week that Michael Jackson died. I don’t remember anything else that happened that week, and I’m sure some important stuff happened, I just remember that Michael Jackson died. And I don’t even care that Michael Jackson died. I’m a cynical shithead, for want of a better term, and his death didn’t particularly interest me. But news networks, social media, newspapers – everyone – was talking about Michael Jackson dying. Like nobody thought it would happen.

I use this example because it segues neatly into the twelve identified factors of news values and what makes news. The twelve factors are:

Negativity

Proximity

Recency

Currency

Continuity

Uniqueness

Simplicity

Personality

Expectedness

Elite Nations/People

Exclusivity

Size

We can use the death of Michael Jackson, and the unbelievably thorough media coverage of it, to illustrate what these terms mean and how they translate to content.

First we start with Negativity, of which there are a couple of factors where Jackson is concerned. There is, of course, his tragic death on the eve of his final ever concert tour. There is also the erratic and bizarre behaviour he had exhibited in the years leading up to his death. Those things combined to make amazing fodder for media all over the world.

Proximity was less of a factor, unless you count all the people who say things like “He was in my heart” or some other esoteric weirdness. I won’t debate that right now, because it actually aids my point that his death fulfilled another factor of news value.

Recency and currency are obviously relevant because his demise was reported immediately and coverage simply accelerated from there. Continuity comes from the fact that his death brings with it questions regarding the cause, his estate, his family and, in some cases, the future of pop music. As a side note, Microsoft Word clearly doesn’t think “recency” is a real word.

Uniqueness is a factor that Michael Jackson had a good grip on, given that he was a white black man without a nose who made his children wear veils while he tested the effects of gravity on them from hotel balconies.

Simplicity, perhaps, is a debatable factor given the mystery surrounding his death, but it is also best summed up by the simple headline, used by publications all over the world, which read “The King Of Pop Is Dead.”

The factor of Personality is another easy one, and here we would look directly at Louis Theroux’s interview with Michael Jackson, the confused man-child with the Peter Pan complex, who was once the biggest child star and pop singer on the planet and was later accused of multiple acts of child endangerment and molestation. In terms of a cult of personality, you couldn’t get a more dynamic character.

Expectedness was another factor, because while his death was sudden and the timing tragic, given his upcoming live tour – which seemed as if it was to be a kind of redemption for all the years of weirdness –, he was also a visibly frail man who had suffered a number of health scares and who had been plagued by unsubstantiated rumours of prescription drug abuse for years. People could kind of see this coming.

One factor which relates neatly is the factor of Elite Nations or People. Michael Jackson was, after all, the King of Pop, he once owned a tiger and a chimpanzee. Hell, he purportedly owned the Elephant Man’s deformed skeleton. If that doesn’t make you an Elite Person, I simply don’t know what will.

Exclusivity is a factor which was only relevant as the story progressed. After the initial story broke, the race was on to find anyone related to or employed by Jackson who might be willing to speak, as well as to find anyone within the police or medical examiners offices who might be able to shed some more light. As events unfolded, more and more news outlets broke minor exclusives with minor players to keep the momentum rolling.

And finally, Size. Well, he was a small man, so that’s not it. Although, there was that giant gold statue in his likeness on the cover of the “HIStory” album. But I don’t think that counts. The King of Pop status would account for it though, as his death relaunched his albums – most particularly “Thriller” – back into the charts all over the world, illustrating that his sheer influence was massive.

And so, we can see exactly why nothing else seems to have happened that week in the public consciousness. Michael Jackson’s death simply covered all of the necessary bases and nothing else needed to happen. He had us sorted. Good looking out, Jacko. Thanks.

Lecture 10 – Agenda Setting

I hate charts. This lecture started out well with a very funny video but was followed with a bunch of charts. A gaggle of charts. An unkindness of charts. I’m not sure what the plural is for a group of charts but whatever it is, I hate it. Here, I even made a chart illustrating how much I hate charts.

My only note in my book at this point was:

“So bored already, I think I’ll make a chart.” Then I drew a flying whale instead.

The different modes of agenda setting were interesting, and having them broken into their respective categories (ie. Public, Policy, Corporate and Media agendas) makes it easier to compartmentalise issues by their relevance to each agenda.

I’ll be honest and say I wasn’t completely awake or concentrating for this lecture so I did write down the name Harold Laswell followed by the words “Hypodermic Model” and “Magic Bullet Theory”. I think I understood the idea as a distillation of ideas ‘injected’ into the media for a specified purpose, but I might have misunderstood because at this point I started sketching Lee Harvey Oswald cooking black tar heroin while trying to shoot the president. I might have drifted off a little.

However, eventually I turned all of my mental faculties towards the lecture again and caught up with the notion that there are two distinct types of agenda setting theory. The first level of agenda setting is what the public should focus on, in terms of actual content. The second level is how the public should focus on it, in terms of coverage and, to a degree, stylistic content. There was a nice quote from economic/media/political commentator and regular talking-head Noam Chomsky but when I looked up some interview footage with Mr Chomsky, the first result I got on Youtube was a less than helpful interview with Ali G. So, I abandoned that idea in favour of more Ali G. I’m sure everybody understands.

The idea of agenda setting as propaganda is an interesting one with significant implications for world media. There have already been a number of examples of it, and the example given in the lecture is the famous Nazi propaganda film, Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl. I actually have this on a DVD playing in the background as I type this. I bought it in a box-set which also included Glen Or Glenda, Plan 9 From Outer Space, The Fatal Glass Of Beer and House On Haunted Hill. How those things are connected is beyond me, but I have no doubt that Triumph…’s inclusion is another step in the Third Reich’s heinous master plan. I just haven’t figured out how yet.

There was more in the lecture, including some talk about agenda surfing or bandwagon jumping, of which the clear example is the goddamn motherfucking Kony2012 farce. But if I’m honest, at about this point I sort of lost focus again. I have notes, but they don’t completely make sense and they’re littered with drawings of eyes and spiders. It was not my most diligent effort, I must admit.

Lecture 11 – Investigative Journalism

Investigative journalism is, I guess, where my core interest lies. I regard investigative journalism as a pivotal factor in our society’s system of checks and balances. Covered in this lecture was the “deeper meaning” of investigative journalism, which I found to be a concise disambiguation of what I mean when I refer to journalism as such. As listed in the lecture, the four purposes of investigative journalism are:

-Critical and thorough journalism, to provide “active intervention” on public thought, if not on an act itself.

-Custodians of Conscience, or the keepers – and, to some degree, publicity agents – of public morality.

-To provide a voice to those without one and to hold the powerful to account, a concept favouring public interest where the practical application in news media is self-explanatory.

-Fourth Estate/Watchdog, a role designed to keep a close eye on the decision makers and alert the public to wrongdoing or travesty.

There are questions raised about this role, regarding the extent to which a journalist may be allowed to stretch the rules and laws established by the very people one intends to watch as a matter of public interest, as pointedly illustrated by the Julian Assange/Wikileaks affair.

I won’t weigh in on that debate right now, as that would extend this essay by a good few thousand words, but I will say that I am encouraged that the public responded to the Wikileaks scandal so vociferously – on both sides of the debate – because it means people are paying attention.

However, for me, the guiding light of investigative journalism is scepticism and, perhaps to a degree, cynicism. One of the quotes given in the lecture illustrated this brilliantly:

“If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

As such, I have launched a full-scale investigation on my mother and I’ve found instructions on how to build a lojack-tracking device from a crystal-radio kit which I will fit to her car so I know her movements through the day. I will also endeavour to locate any potential secret families that she may be hiding, and, working off a monetary scale and an estimate of fiscal-representations of love, I will mathematically establish whether she loves me, or if she loves her secret son more.

Lecture 12 – What’s In It For Me?

This lecture, delivered by special guest Steven Molk, was focused on controlling your brand and using that image to gain employment. This immediately got me thinking.

And I’m beginning to think that my literary style is simply too hostile for regular employment so I will have to bend to some conventions to become employable as a journalist, despite my ability to effectively distil news and my interest in current affairs.

For one, I joke where it’s objectively inappropriate. And I appreciate cursing as a poetic form of its very own; a linguistic element that I am so familiar and comfortable with that I barely even notice when I swear. I’m currently limited in the people who will speak to me for an interview, as I’m still only a student and at first glance I’m a hairy liberal berk with occasional crazy-eyes. The only people who are happy to speak to that guy are musicians, and everybody is a music journalist.

So, I’m left in a bit of a stylistic void, where I’m trying not to ape Hunter Thompson or Tom Wolfe, but I’m left with similar interests and what could objectively be called a sardonic, vitriolic style not unlike those people I’m trying not to be. However, I’m seemingly incapable of becoming Laurie Oakes because I simply am not that organised, and I don’t’ want to cut my hair.

I guess I have to play a little with my style and work on my ability to reign myself in. But I can’t escape the innate appeal of being one of the fearless outsiders of the journalistic community who bring you the insane, dangerous and terrifyingly funny tales of what is happening in the parts of the world normal people avoid.

I think of John Safran, the journalist/television-presenter/white-rapper/radio-host, when he spoke about his time on ABC TV’s Race Around The World. In this series, contestants were provided with a video cameras and sent to various locations around the world where they were given a short amount of time to complete a video about their location. During this series, John Safran showed viewers how to break into Disneyland, amongst other insane feats of journalistic gratuity. But one particular incident caused him to break what he referred to as his “Fear Barrier”. This, naturally, involved streaking naked through Jerusalem as crowds of angry locals began baying for his blood. This made for interesting television, and gave us an insight into why cricket isn’t huge in Israel. Since that day, he has revealed a loophole in Ku Klux Klan law that would allow a Jewish male to join under certain circumstances, explored the inner workings of the music industry by door-knocking for the Jehova’s Witnesses dressed as Prince, and had himself crucified in the Philippines.

I’m not sure what being crucified would say from a journalistic standpoint, but maybe there’s a career in that. I’ll look into it.

Karl Anderson (s4288383)

Why Today May Be Shit: Govt to Axe Hundreds of Jobs

Do you work for Queensland’s Department of Education, Training and Employment? Are you on a temporary contract? You should probably brace yourself for a bad day.

According to insiders, Director-General of DETE Julie Grantham is due to announce today that no temporary contracts would be renewed and that no part-time or casual employees will be retained. 

This might not sound like that big a deal to some, but it should be noted that by some estimates temporary contracts make up to 75% of the department’s workforce. This means that, at some time today, hundreds of government employees will be told they are no longer employed and will be forced back into the job market during what is, both statistically and anecdotally, one of the most competitive and difficult employment markets Australia has ever seen.

There is no escaping the irony that the Department of Education, Training and Employment is preparing to force redundancy on hundreds of educated, highly trained and – until today – gainfully employed professionals. I want you to understand, too, that these are not simply typists and lollypop ladies that are being made unemployed. I have worked in the department (back when it was called the Department of Education and the Arts) and can assure you that many of the people who will lose their jobs today are overqualified for the jobs they’re doing already. These people have degrees in law, economics and accounting. They can design bridges, speak French and think in binary code. They are already overworked and underappreciated, and this time next week, they’ll be serving Big Macs and mopping floors like the rest of us.

All of this comes as part of the NewMan Government’s Mandate For Change, which is revealing itself to be a catch-all policy of deregulation and decommissioning in what this author can only assume is a ploy to keep people confused and distracted until the last koala is dead and being used as a coal substitute. Worse, this is only the beginning, as this policy of cancelling all temporary contracts is to be applied across the board, government-wide and in every department so things will only get more desperate and difficult.

Admittedly, I could be sensationalising this a little. But then, it’s also possible I haven’t gone far enough. Only time will tell. In the meantime, I’m memorising Mad Max/The Road Warrior so I have the edge when the country finally becomes a simmering furnace of road-violence and highway crime spurred on by desperation, starvation and the search for fossil fuels.

“Better call the meat truck. Charlie’s copped a saucepan in the throat.”

Bollocks,

Karl “Nightrider” Anderson

Further Preparations For A Life Of Crime: Annotated Bibliography Assignment - JOUR1111

ABC News. (2009, November 18). Xenophon attacks Church of Scientology. ABC News. Retrieved from: http://abc.net.au/news/2009-11-17/xenophon-attacks-church-of-scientology/1146154

This article, found online at abc.net.au had no author listed, however the veracity of the source should not be questioned as ABC News have a well established reputation for journalistic integrity, certainly as compared to some of the other sources listed below.

The article regards a statement made by independent South Australian senator, Nick Xenophon, decrying the tax-exempt status of the Church of Scientology in Australia in light of alleged revelations of abusive practices and criminal activities. In the statement, Mr Xenophon created some controversy by referring to the already much-maligned Church of Scientology as a “criminal organisation”.

The article is noteworthy as not focusing on that particular phrase and instead focusing more broadly on Mr Xenophon’s calls for a parliamentary enquiry into the Church’s tax-exempt status as a registered religious group. The author takes a decidedly unsensational approach, instead reporting on the parliamentary proceedings rather than the potential for controversy.

Cole, P. and Harcup, T. (2010). Newspaper Journalism. (pp.114 – 116). London: Sage

This source is an academic text written by highly regarded members of the University of Sheffield Department of Journalism Studies. Peter Cole is the Director of Journalism for the University of Sheffield and Tony Harcup has been a senior lecturer at the university since 2005. Both are members of various journalism and press associations and have extensive experience in the field of news values and education.

The text discusses the relationship between politics, politicians and the press, citing the example of British minister Tony Blair, in the lead up to his leaving the office of Prime Minister, speaking about the changing face of journalism as business and the effect on sensationalist “impact-driven” (p.114) political journalism. The author states that there is now “as much interpretation of what a politician was saying as coverage of them actually saying it” (p.114), the implication being that interpretation and, potentially, misinterpretation are significant factors in modern news media, and may in fact cloud the perception of the actual message. Mr Blair is quoted as describing the political press as “like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits” (p.114). The text also offers excerpts of responses from a number of major British news outlets, including a quote from The Express responding to Mr Blair’s comments, saying: “in the animal kingdom, the opposite of feral is tame” (p.115).

Nadin, M. (2012, May 3). Senator caught in Muslim slur row. The Australian, p. 5

This article, published in The Australian this year, follows the story from a slightly different angle, with some new developments which serve as an example of the effects of compromising journalistic integrity for the sake of sensation.

The article reports on a Malaysian news outlet, New Straits Times – reportedly Malaysia’s oldest English-language newspaper – , falsely reporting Nick Xenophon’s statements about the alleged criminality of the Church of Scientology as being directed at the religion of Islam, which is extremely prominent in Malaysia. The article published in the New Straits Times quotes Mr Xenophon’s statements from 2009 but simply replaces the word “Scientology” with the word “Islam”.

The sensationalism of this story works on a number of levels; not simply the Malaysian newspaper’s deliberate misquoting to create controversy, but the way in which this article has been constructed to give the minimum of background information, neglecting to make any mention of Mr Xenophon’s call for a parliamentary enquiry into the Church of Scientology, the original intended purpose of the statements to parliament.

There has also been some small effort to create sensation in the initial promotion of this article. The front-page headline leading to this article reads,

“Muslim Slur: Malaysian newspaper verbals Xenophon”.

This is interesting wording for the article as the word “verbal” used as a verb in that context is widely understood in this country to be a prefix for phrases like “verbal abuse” or “verbal attack”, which gives the article a home-spun vernacular to describe an aggressive action, adding to the subtle sensationalism.

All of this fails to successfully report on the facts of the original story, instead focusing on impact-based reporting providing maximum controversy with minimum fuss and only the barest need to provide background information to put the story in its proper context.

Wright, A. (2009, Novermber 18). Senator Nick Xenophon brands Scientology a ‘criminal organisation’. Herald Sun. Retrieved from: http://heraldsun.com.au/news/senator-nick-xenophon-brands-scientology-a-criminal-organisationl/story-e6frf7jo-1225799028615

This article, published the same day as the ABC News article above, covers the same story about Nick Xenophon’s statements in parliament regarding the Church of Scientology, although in a slightly different and possibly more inflammatory manner.

The author, Anne Wright, is a member of the Australian Associated Press and still writes for the Herald Sun newspaper with an apparent focus on Australian politics.

The story leads in with mention of Mr Xenophon’s statement about the Church of Scientology being a “criminal organisation” and focuses on Mr Xenophon’s statements about the inherent criminality of the church, with only passing mentions of his concerns regarding their tax-exempt status, which was the purpose of his statements to parliament. The matter of tax-status is almost completely ignored when the author selects quotes from a statement released by the Church of Scientology in response to Mr Xenophon’s speech, stoking the fire of controversy by including a quote describing Mr Xenophon’s statements as “fascistic”.

It seems that the original purpose of Mr Xenophon’s statement to parliament has been lost amongst the discussion about the language used, and the idea espoused in Newspaper Journalism (Cole, P & Harcup, T., 2010) that the drive to create sensation can compromise the faculty to report the news accurately as selective editorialising makes it more valuable to talk, in this instance, about the potentially inflammatory language of the statements rather than the central news story, which would ultimately impact more people but doesn’t feature as many controversy-keywords for pre-distilled conflict.

Karl Anderson (s4288383)

Further Preparations For A Life Of Crime: Introduction to the Anthropology of Funeral Ritual Or Some Shit

“Now as life draws to its close

My slothfulness is past. Grant that steadfast I may live long

As long as life shall last

Come thou down, most precious lama

Thou my shelter be, From life’s endless round, Chenresi

Highest one, deliver me.”

That was a fragment from a Tibetan funeral hymn translated into English by Sir Charles Bell and adapted by Wiliam Lamers. This passage is read over the deceased by a lama, or Buddhist holy man, before the body is taken to its final resting place (Habenstein & Lamers, 1960, p.77). The reading of religious scripture or culturally significant folk hymns is common to almost all religions, with most people in western culture at least aware of some of the Christian prayers and hymns, if nothing more than for their objectively inappropriate use in movies about gangsters and such.

According to Professor Robert Habenstein and William Lamers, immediately after death, a Tibetan Buddhist will pass through a state called “bardo”, which they refer to as being a journey “Between the Two”, referring to the journey of the soul from life to the afterlife to receive their judgement.

This begins with what Lamers calls a “Passing Ceremony”, whereby the lama performs a private ritual to allow the soul to leave to body, conducting a magical ceremony which again has parallels in almost all other religions and cultures.

The Tibetan death ritual – or more particularly, rituals – last a total of 49 days, with ceremonies and prayers performed and repeated for the duration, and involving purification rituals and offerings of food to see the deceased symbolically fed until “bardo” ends and he or she finally makes the final transition to the afterlife. This belief in a soul or spirit separate from one’s own body is called “animism” (Kottak, 2009, .p484) and is the most basic tenet of religious anthropology.

There are four main modes of disposal of the dead in Buddhist Tibet: earth burial (or inhumation), air burial, water burial, and cremation, with embalming performed extremely rarely and reserved for a select few noble families and particularly highly regarded lamas.

Cremation is uncommon in Tibet due to the relative unavailability of wood for burning, and dung is considered inappropriate material for burning the dead. Cremation is, however, utilised occasionally; again for highly regarded lamas.

Water burial is more common, but is, according to Lamers, now prohibited in the more developed regions surrounding the capital, Lhasa, to prevent pollution of water supply, however the practice is still commonly used in less developed areas and usually provided for lepers, the indigent and sometimes infants (Habenstein & Lamers, 1960, p.81-82).

Earth burial, the traditional method most recognised in western countries, is fairly rare in Tibet, largely due to the impracticality of burying the deceased in frozen or rocky ground. Elsewhere, where the environment makes it easier, burial is amongst the most commonly practiced modes of disposal.

According to Lamers and Habenstein, by far the most common, and easily the most memorable (if I’m allowed to refer to something so objectively horrific as ‘memorable’) method of disposal in Tibet is “Air burial”, called “Ja-Tor” (Habenstein & Lamers, 1960, p.83). By this method, a body is prepared, often including dismemberment, and then laid out in a designated place, one of many scattered all over Tibet, to be eaten by carrion or dogs.

All of this grim business is designed with deeply religious motivations, with bodily disincorporation and destruction being a necessary aspect of the Tibetan religion. Lamers and Habenstein quote German explorer Heinrich Herrer as saying, “The Tibetans wish to leave no trace after death of their bodies which, without souls, have no significance.” (Habenstein & Lamers, 1960, p.84)

This simplified breakdown of the main Tibetan Buddhist funerary rites serves as a broad example and gives an interesting view of the nature of burial rituals and their development over the millennia.

Many of these funeral practices are familiar to people of all religions, with a few philosophical differences of varying degrees of significance. Burial and cremation are commonly used methods for the disposal of dead bodies in almost all cultures, ubiquitous from the east to the west, with notable exceptions being people of Islamic and Sikh faith. Muslims cannot be cremated, and Sikhs are almost never buried (Church of England, 1985, p.28).

Water burial is slightly less common in other places, almost never practiced in western cultures, with exception to burial at sea for those lost on the ocean. It is still widely practiced in Japanese Shintoism, as well as other religions, although its popularity has waned. One of the significant reasons for water burial, for instance in the Hindu religion, is the belief in purifying the body. This translates to the Catholic ritual of washing the body, sanctifying the flesh.

Air burial, which is by far the least common mode of disposal in western culture, is still found in other cultures. It is a widely popularised aspect of Norse Viking culture, and continues to be used by Zoroastrians of India, with elaborately constructed altars, called “Towers of Silence”, built as a final resting place atop mountains scattered all over the country where carrion birds can scavenge flesh from the corpses before putrefaction can take place, which is regarded as bad for the escaping spirit. An important aspect of air burial in those religions that practice it is the belief that letting birds and other animals devour your flesh allows you to be re-incorporated into the environment and commit the final selfless act of providing nourishment for the creatures of earth, but in Zoroastrianism it is designed as a means of guiding the soul safely to the afterlife by preventing decomposition (Habenstein & Lamers, 1960, p.179-181).

What is interesting is how different religions, and different peoples, spread across the globe with different environmental and social factors informing their decisions and cultures, still came to develop burial rituals with striking similarities despite oceans and generations between them.

There are two significant factors that have led to the traditions we now know across the world; one is the pure religious aspect, designed as veneration of the dead for the purpose of easing the deceased’s transition to the next world, whatever that may be, and to provide comfort for the bereaved. The second significant factor is, of course, the environmental, with some cultures clearly unable to adopt certain methods of disposal for various reasons, and other events causing a change to funerary practices, like the spread of the bubonic plague in 14^th century Europe which caused people to be buried six feet underground to prevent spread of infection; a tradition which the Catholic Church carried on, and which ultimately became a phrase that is still used as a popular euphemism for death.

There are other significant developments in burial practices; notable amongst them is the emergence of consecrated cemeteries and the early tombs, such as the Mycenaean “tholos” tombs, dating as far back as 1600 BCE (Grinsell, 1975, p.144), the basic “Protogeometric” model (Kurtz & Boardman, 1971, p.26) for art and design, which re-emerged in later Greek tombs, as well as bearing some basic commonalities in function to modern mausoleums. This would speak to another tenet of the veneration of the dead: preservation.

One of the core differences between religions is simply the relationship of the body to the soul. Some cultures regard the body as sacred and wish to preserve the corpse as a mark of love and respect or because they believe that preserving the body will ease the transition to the afterlife, as with the well-documented Egyptian embalming technique, whereas some cultures regard the body as little more than a vessel for the soul, such as Buddhists with their various methods of disposal, again a prime illustration of animism.

But there are still the emotional aspects to consider on the part of the bereaved, and the impact that religious ritual, particularly where death is concerned, might have on them.

In Peter Metcalfe’s anthropological study, Celebrations of Death, he talks about the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, and his theories about the social reaction to religious ritual and the effect of commonly held beliefs creating “collective representations” that could unite individuals for a kind of emotional support while compartmentalising the individual and, in a sense, insulating the individual from the grief and emotional distress of death (Metcalfe, 1991, p.28-29).

Effie Bendam, in her 1930 study, Death Customs, simplifies this idea to its spiritual core, saying that the “great importance attached to the disposal of the body seems to be universal. We may state that the principle is invariably the same – the dead would ‘walk’ unless the body is disposed of with the appropriate ceremony” (Bendam, 1930, p.45). This, of course, brings us to ghosts and supernatural beings, another important element of animism and, to some degree, totemism, or the belief that animals or objects can harbour the spirits of ancestors.

Put simply, the significance and influence of the funeral ritual doesn’t change a lot from one culture to the next – with a few outstanding exceptions –, with the core values, traditions and rituals remaining largely the same within a few key variations, albeit with widely different expressions; but the influence of culture has a significant impact on the funeral ritual with environmental and historical influences dictating certain changes in the course of funerary culture all over the world.

Karl Anderson

Bibliography

Bendamm, Effie; Death Customs: An Analytical Study of Burial Rites Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930

 

Church of England; Funerals and Ministry to the Bereaved London: Church House Publishing, 1985

Grinsell, Leslie; Barrow, Pyramid and Tomb: Ancient Burial Customs in Egypt, the Mediterranean and the British Isles Boulder: Westview Press, 1975

Habenstein, Robert W and Lamers, William M; Funeral Customs the World Over Milwaukee: Bulfin Press, 1960

Huntington, Richard and Metcalfe, Peter; Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual London: Cambridge University Press, 1979

Kurtz, Donna C and Boardman, John; Greek Burial Customs Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971