A short cultural geography of death and the dead

Abstract

Nothing is more natural than to die, but nothing is more cultural either. In front of death, the inequality of human beings is blatant. Life expectancy is one of the most obvious criteria of ‘human development’. It depends upon wealth, health, the way of life and thus, the level of education and culture of persons and societies. Geographers have good grounds for expressing themselves on this spatial inequality, which they do judiciously since a long time. They observe at the same time that the attitudes in front of death differ widely from a social group or territory to the next one. The death perspectives are more or less frightening depending on the significance that human beings give to life and the hope they nurture concerning a beyond of bliss. Death itself is the subject of very diverse rituals of passage which vary from the production of spectacular shows to the conjuring away of the dead in sterilised hospital settings. The author will propose an analysis of the World distribution of these practices, but also the way mourning is lived and dead are handled, as well as spaces which are devoted to them, and vary from the inexistence in the Hindu world which practices the dispersion of ashes to the Korean omnipresence.