Commodified kin: death, mourning, and competing claims on the bodies of organ donors in the United States.

Abstract

A pronounced disjunction characterizes symbolic constructions of the cadaveric donor body in the United States, where procurement professionals and surviving donor kin vie with one another in their desires to honor this unusual category of the dead. Of special concern is the medicalized commodification of donor bodies, a process that shapes both their social worth and emotional value. Among professionals, metaphorical thinking is key: death and body fragmentation are cloaked in ecological imagery that stresses renewal and rebirth. Such objectification also obscures the origins of transplantable organs, renders individual donors anonymous, and silences kin who mourn their dead. In response, donor kin have grown increasingly assertive, generating alternative public mortuary forms that exclude professional mediators. In so doing, they challenge the medical assumption that anonymity is central to transplantation's continued success. Through donor quilts and Web cemeteries, they proclaim the personal identities of donors who, at times, may speak beyond the grave, offering critiques of donation as socio-medical process in the United States.