Rites And Profits:Funeral Economy In Nanjing

This paper is the ethnography study of the funeral consumption in Nanjing.The author tries to show the interaction between the costumers and the intermediary businesses who make the death consumption into the consumption of death.Funeral ceremony is a ritual for death event with a whole set of complex process.People who participate in those rituals are acting as performers,and they focus on the various details of the ritual.The funeral intermediaries with rich funeral experience play an important role.They follow the traditional ceremony and avoid taboo,so that the ancestors can be pleasured.It is noteworthy that all the industries make money from the funeral.Cemetery prices continue to rise.The memorial hall’s rental fees are also getting higher and higher,which make people generally complain.In addition to the cemetery and funeral parlor,the one-stop funeral intermediaries earn a lot.And more and more people join this industry and make the vicious competition fiercer.Intermediaries rely on funeral parlor to get their own resources,and then provide one-stop services.In addition,the intermediaries use low prices to attract costumers to choose their services,and then sell expensive casket and funeral supplies.The funeral rite and the extravagant waste of funeral supplies turn the original service for the dead to a performance ceremony.Over time,in the pursuit of maximizing the benefits,the funeral information asymmetry makes the funeral consumption into the consumption of death.In the author’s view,the funeral consumption is the money must be spent,and the consumption of death is over-commercialization.In the process,the intermediaries have become the leader of funeral consumption,and costumers are in a passive position.Although the government has advocated to simplify the funeral and introduced a set of funeral management regulations and policies,the funeral parlor and one-stop intermediaries intervene peoples’ choices in the actual operation.They even induced high-grade and high-priced services.The funeral businesses,with high fees and complicated procedures,make people suffer a lot.In order to fill the high costs,peoplel must raise enough money,and even when the dead in the living time has begun to save money for the cost of death.In this whole event of funeral consumption,we can see game among the costumers,the funeral businesses and the government.The costumers hope have appropriate funerals and thus bless future generations.Businesses want to earn the most money and the government wants to reform the funeral customs.But in fact,the information asymmetry makes consumption of death become a fact.