Funerals in Africa. An Introduction

Funerals in Africa An Introduction Michael Jindra and Joël Noret n Africa, the events surrounding death are oten described as the key cultural events of a particular area. Entire neighborhoods and villages are drawn to them, and family members and friends who have migrated to other areas and countries are lured back. he funeral service and burial may only be a small part of such funerary events. From mourning practices to dancing, drumming, drinking, and eating, the events may, in some regions, involve planning post-funerary activities over many months or years. Many have heard about the tremendous resources funerary events oten consume, one example being the fantastically carved and decorated coins of southern Ghana, but this phenomenon only touches on one aspect of a much more complex and involved process. Most visibly, there are status concerns, family bonds, and succession issues at stake, but under the surface—or perhaps better described as hovering above—are the ancestors and other spirits and powers that add to the cultural importance of these events, which across large areas of sub-Saharan Africa have indeed become huge afairs. hese events continue to provide crucial insights into the state of society, as they are integral to social, economic, religious, and political life. For Westerners, among whom death is normally a private and family afair, this is sometimes hard to fathom, but in the African context, funerary rites are oten the communal event sans pareil, with ramiications going well beyond the events themselves.1 It is hard to overestimate their impact, as anyone who has lived for a time on the continent can attest. In many African societies today, funerals and commemorations of deaths are the largest and most expensive cultural events, with families harnessing vast amounts of resources to host lavish events for multitudes. Government and church oicials alike oten decry these events and try to regulate them, oten with little efect. In fact, these elites are regularly the same ones that involve themselves in huge funerals, since burying beyond one’s means and literally “at all costs” (Noret 2010) is oten the implicit social rule. On the world’s most economically frail continent, development experts lament the resources channeled away from productive investment and used instead in consumption of food, imported drinks, entertainment, and funeral I 2 | Michael Jindra and Joël Noret inery. “his is not an eicient allocation of resources,” laments a development economist (Economist 2007; see also Monga 1995). Yet in many places these events keep getting larger. his edited volume brings together scholars who have conducted research across sub-Saharan Africa on funerals and post-funerary events. Speciically, this volume highlights how and why the practices, meanings, and beliefs associated with death have changed over the years, aspects of social change that are little known or understood. he causes are complex and numerous, and vary depending on the region of sub-Saharan Africa. he essays in this volume discuss events from throughout the mortuary or funerary cycle, which can last for years depending on particular regional practices. When funerals are held very soon ater death, they may be relatively small, but grand preparations are oten made for an event held months or years ater the death to “remember” the dead or to mark their passing to the land of the ancestors. In other regions, as in the southern part of the West African coast, the increased use of mortuaries in which bodies are kept frozen means that burials may be delayed while elaborate preparations are made for funerals that can take place weeks, months, or in some cases over a year ater death. In most African regions, certain deceased have long been important because they were central igures in building institutions (especially lineage structures), and thus played a key political role. his social and political prominence was expressed in elaborate death rituals. he social and religious changes of the colonial and postcolonial periods, however, brought about the development of new (and sometimes competing) social hierarchies and further diferentiation of the social and religious worlds, and led to an increased variety of important dead being buried in honoriic ways by those groups who wanted to build their own status. In a sense, we are arguing in this book that there has been a continuing (though changing over time) political signiicance to dead bodies in Africa, a signiicance which involved more and more people as the religious and social diferentiation increased on the continent during these later periods. Additionally, in contrast to older, Durkheimian-inspired understandings of funerals in Africa as moments of social communion in the face of death, we intend to show that funerals are major occasions for the (re)production and the (un)making of both solidarities and hierarchies, both alliances and conlicts (see also Posel and Gupta 2009; Smith 2004 ; de Witte 2001: 51–80; Vidal 1986). With this perspective, we also intend to highlight issues of succession and the reorganization of social and familial positions in dynamic social conigurations, rather than social reproduction stricto sensu. Other areas we address include changes in religious beliefs (e.g., the growth of Christianity and Islam) and social structure (e.g., changes in social hierarchies and social breakdowns), along with processes of colonialism and industrialization, urbanization, technological changes (e.g., the use of mortuaries), Introduction | 3 and the more recent onset of AIDS pandemics, all of which appear as key features in many parts of the continent. In sum, funerals and mortuary rites could be said to comprise a “focal institution” (Adams 1981) that allows us to learn much about the contemporary social and cultural situations on the continent and how they have been shaped by various ideologies and forces: the stalwart traditions, the powerful world religions, and the incessant attractions of education, wealth, and mobility.2 Funerals are part and parcel of the moral orders and “moral economies” of Africa, with the notions and powers of the living and the dead tightly connected to the social organization and hierarchy of a society, expressed in the reciprocities and consumption practices of everyday life. Indeed, the crucial link between the living and the dead should be part of the discussion of African political and economic change, as Chabal and Daloz (1999: 66) have argued. Writing on mortuary rituals his volume follows a long-standing anthropological preoccupation with mortuary ritual, which we can only briely introduce. From the discussion of death rites by Tylor and Frazer to the classic studies by Hertz and Van Gennep, and more recently to Huntington and Metcalf (1979) and Bloch and Parry (1982), there is a considerable corpus of work on the practices, social functions, and meanings of death rites. his is not surprising given the centrality of the institution and the complexity and ambiguity of the practices and beliefs. Ater the classic studies by Van Gennep and Hertz, a series of questions evolved from research on funeral rites. If both Van Gennep ([1909] 1981) and Hertz ([1907] 1970 ), for instance, consider mourning to be a social time corresponding to an assigned social position involving a series of prescriptions (“positive” and “negative” rites, to quote Durkheim’s distinction), Hertz also develops an interest in the articulation of mortuary rites with the “mental work” (Hertz 1970:77) through which the deceased is progressively imagined “in a new world,” by which interest he introduces the classic question of the relationship between funerals and the grieving or bereavement process. However, if attempts to connect mortuary rites and the psychic process of grieving are present in many classic works (Hertz 1970; Malinowski [1925] 1954; RadclifeBrown 1922; Durkheim 1912), the main line of thought in these classic texts is that “society” is shaken by death, and that it progressively rebuilds its unity and strength through mortuary rites that reinforce the group’s integration and cohesion. Death is a crisis that requires a ritual treatment of the social body. hese classic studies of mourning practices and mortuary rituals in anthropology understandably have the weaknesses of the conceptions of society on which they rely. In particular, funerals are scrutinized through the lens of a 4 | Michael Jindra and Joël Noret uniied, harmonious conception of society that downplays the questions of domination, conlict, and change. Working with a vision of society that takes political domination into consideration, Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry have probably produced the most inluential text that reexamines the grand issues laid out by these classic works. Focusing on the symbolism of fertility in death rites, they underline that a fundamental dimension of mortuary rites in many societies was to express an ideology of “regeneration of life.” From death are created regenerative powers, and mortuary rites essentially reairm a social (and political) order and work to perpetuate it beyond the death of individuals and the succession of generations (Bloch and Parry 1982: 15, 35). Speciically, in the same way Geertz (1959) suggested that “classical” anthropological perspectives on ritual have contributed little to understanding the complex relations between “ritual and social change,” Bloch and Parry’s thesis does not really ofer a completely satisfying picture of death rituals in diferentiated societies where the sources of authority and legitimacy are multiple. Both the way authority is legitimized in contemporary African societies and the diferentiation of the African religious landscape lead us to depict a more complex and more fragmented portrait of many current African ritual systems of regeneration of life. First, the political and religious diferentiation of many African societies allows competing ritual systems and burial rites to develop. hese difering ritual practices may then enter into a certain state of symbiosis, uneasy coexistence, or even conlict. What diferent ritual systems aim to regenerate and the kinds of regeneration that are at play may concern diferent social or religious groups: for example, when Catholic (or other Christian) rites are performed alongside (or simply replace) “traditional” lineage rites. Second, in diferentiated (and hence plural) societies, the ritual eicacy of the regeneration processes engaged by burial rites surely depends on the social or cultural legitimacy of the ritual system that is performed. When mortuary rituals engage regeneration processes, the eicacy of the latter inescapably depends on the social status of the ritual. As Katherine Snyder puts it in her critique of Bloch’s theory of ritual, “rituals may lose their power to secure consent when the political-economic context provides actors with alternatives to the world view and ideology communicated through these rituals” (Snyder 1997: 562). In diferentiated societies, the social conditions of the eicacy of rituals (see also Bourdieu [1975] 2001) are surely diferent than in societies where the sources of authority and power are less multiple. For instance, lineage mortuary rites have been increasingly challenged by Christian burials in many regions of the continent throughout the twentieth century. In central Kenya, when colonial authorities banned the practice of abandoning corpses to hyenas, people experienced a radical shit in the way they handled death (Droz, Lamont, this volume). In many other regions, more and more Christians have progressively, Introduction | 5 in the last decades, disregarded the “traditional” ways of regenerating life, while many others engaged in compromises between the path of lineage ritual and Christian or Muslim practices (Langewiesche 2003; de Witte 2001). In the societies we discuss in this volume, the diferent ritual processes of the “regeneration of life” thus appear more fragmented, contested, and negotiated between diferent social and religious groups than in Bloch and Parry’s picture. hus we hope to ofer a more complex picture of the structures of authority and power relations in which mortuary rites actually take place in contemporary Africa. Mortuary rites and funerals on the continent Beliefs and practices surrounding death get at the core of our critical sense of human destiny and purpose. In Africa, however, they go even further, being intimately involved with social structure, group identity, and even politics. Religious traditions, kin groups, and social relationships in general play a stronger role in funerals than in the West, where these events are generally handled in more intimate circles and are usually much smaller. In fact, the grand and spectacular bourgeois culture of death in nineteenth century Europe, epitomized in magniicent upper class tombstones (see Vovelle [1983] 2001: 532–650; Litten 1991; Ariès 1975), has since faded away. A very diferent dynamic has taken place in Africa, where important funerals proliferated throughout the twentieth century, as we see in this volume. In several Western countries, funerals are now regularly held dans l’intimité familiale (among only close family) as the French put it, a desire almost unheard of in Africa. As in Africa (though in contrasting ways), changes in both family dynamics and religion, such as the decline of Christianity in Europe, seem to have played a role here. he “individualization” and “repression” of death due to a number of factors, including longer life spans, are also important, all of which have combined to push death “behind the scenes” (Elias 1985: 12). Additionally, while family members in the West may ind mortuary costs rather high on a personal level, there is no question of these costs having an impact on national development, as is the situation in Africa, where funeral expenses can play a major role in economies (Mazzucato et al. 2006; Monga 1995). Indeed, the central role funerals play contributes to the frustration of development experts and economists, who are regularly disappointed that humans are not homo economicus and that ordinary African rationales concerning funerals are not those of CEOs considering cost-cutting measures. Death may tear a hole in human hearts in the West as it does everywhere, but it does not rip the social fabric to the extent it does in Africa, with its stronger reliance on human relationships for subsistence. 6 | Michael Jindra and Joël Noret Moreover, funerary events in Africa have oten been seen to be a realm of social life that is more “traditional” than others. his is probably why anthropologists and ethnologists have tended to depict them in an ethnographic present with a focus on the complexities of their ritual logics, even in more recent collections (Liberski 1989, 1994; Henry and Liberski 1991). A discussion was oten missing of how these rites evolved in the context of broader social changes in African rural and urban worlds. African mortuary rites can even be considered to be one of the key sites of the anthropological production of the image of “traditional” Africa.3 he place they occupied in this image helps us understand why they have attracted the attention of historians, and of anthropologists more sensible to historical perspectives, only in the last decades. hese events, however, have changed substantially. Answering questions on the evolution of the size of mortuary events, though, is not easy because of a lack of clear historical data about a number of areas, and because accounts of the changes in size of funerals are sometimes ambiguous. Historically, accounts of funerary rites indicate that the wealth of the slave trade enabled lavish funerals (which at the same time were deplored by observers) as early as the late seventeenth century in Angola, for instance (Vansina 2005: 24; see also hornton 2002: 79). Just north along the Loango coast area, cloth (much of it imported) was wrapped extravagantly on corpses at “great man” funerals in the eighteenth century (Martin 1986: 3), and in the late nineteenth century in the Kinshasa and Brazzaville area due to the colonial and mission inlux of wealth, which only intensiied previously existing practices of conspicuous consumption at certain funerals (Vansina 1973: 211f). In the Gold Coast area, accounts from the early eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries indicated that funerals have “always” been “the main social event in the Akan society of Ghana,” evoking the “considerable sums” of money and goods that were spent, and even the phenomena of pawning and enslavement linked to the debts ensuing from funeral expenses (van der Geest 2000: 104–105).4 Similarly, in nineteenth century Yorubaland, paying for funerary expenses was one of the “most common reasons why people went into debt,” and unpaid debts oten led to pawning or even slavery (Peel 2000: 60–62), as it also did in early nineteenth century Angola (Vansina 2005: 24n95). Moreover, funerals of important political igures were also major occasions for human sacriice in nineteenth century Yorubaland (Peel 2000: 66–71), as was also the case during the inal rituals of the funerals of the king in the neighboring Dahomean kingdom (Coquery-Vidrovitch 1964), a practice which of course came to an end by the colonial era. his historical evidence indicates that these events oten changed with changes in religion and the political economy, and they also indicate the long-standing economic, social, and political signiicance of funerals, especially of major social igures along the Atlantic coast.5 Introduction | 7 However, in some regions of the continent, the great size and lavishness of funerals is relatively recent, as older early twentieth century accounts of funerals indicate they were rather small, except funerals given for social or political elites. For instance, many large “death celebrations” of the Grassields in Cameroon look at irst glance to be quite traditional, with the presence of Grassields gowns, performances by dance groups using traditional instruments, speciic foods and drinks, and the iring of old guns. Most observers, including Cameroonians themselves, take these celebrations to be so. But historical research reveals they have changed radically over the past century, not only in the elements of the event, but in their timing, their frequency, and for whom they’re held. hey are not quite so “traditional” as thought (Jindra 2005). Among the Kikuyu and Meru of central Kenya, for instance, only certain old men, and more rarely old women, were buried, the other dead being abandoned to hyenas and failing to become ancestors (Droz, Lamont, this volume). Dramatic long-term changes such as the shit, seen in a number of areas, from the fearful disposal of bodies to ritual and public burial in compounds or cemeteries, has gone largely unnoticed by scholars. In general, a survey of the Africanist literature on funerals6 leaves us with evidence that funerary rites have signiicantly increased in number, size, and cost, even in areas where they had been rather large before. In addition to its lack of sensibility to social change, another classical “bias” of colonial anthropology in Africa was its focus on elite burials, which had the richest symbolism and the most important political implications. his went hand in hand in most cases with a silencing of the voices of “subaltern” people, and with little attention paid to categories such as funerals for the young (see Honwana and De Boeck 2005). So it is common to ind accounts of the deaths of “senior men” (Forde 1962), elites, and rulers, from which we learn much about the structure and ranking of society, but we oten learn very little about the funerary rites of others, in particular women and children. As Vaughan (2008: 393) points out, anthropologist Audrey Richards included a discussion of the death and grand burial of a Bemba paramount chief in her monograph, but let out any mention of the “ignominious” death and burial of a woman who died in childbirth, even though it was recorded in her notes. As the interest in social change developed and more dynamic conceptions of African societies gained space in the wake of the Manchester School, Georges Balandier in France, Marxist (mostly French) anthropology, and historically sensitive symbolic approaches (Fernandez 1978), a whole body of literature linking funerals and social change progressively emerged. he irst chapter of this volume provides an extensive and analytical review of this corpus by examining how and why funerary practices extensively changed in many places across the continent, especially over the last century. Changes in social structures and hierarchies are tied to changes in funerary rituals and processes, 8 | Michael Jindra and Joël Noret while transformations involving the world religions are also highlighted. More contemporary evolutions, such as the use of mortuaries and the rise of AIDS, are also addressed. he diferent chapters of this book build on this in various respects. he study of urban funerals is one example. Consistent with the already mentioned focus of classical anthropology on “traditional” death rites, they received little attention in African studies until recent decades, and a history of funerals in urban Africa is largely yet to be written. Engaging this issue in the impressively well documented second chapter, Terence Ranger shows how, in contrast to common views of townships as places of cultural alienation, crucial social dynamics shaped a new religious and political urban culture of death in colonial Bulawayo. Between the ritual relocations of deceased urban Ndebele to their rural places of origin and the performance of full funerary ceremonies in these rural Ndebele communities, Christian versions of “traditional” Ndebele funerary rites elaborated by “independent” African churches, and liturgies of the mission churches, various methods for digniied deaths and burials have coexisted in the diferent African populations and ethnic groups that have formed the colonial city of Bulawayo. he extensive development of burial societies also played a key role in this process, in providing various forms of assistance to bereaved families, and in making costly funeral feasts possible. Actually, it inally emerges that death is more diicult to dignify in today’s Bulawayo than under colonial rule, since the progress of AIDS, the changes in relations between generations, and increased death rates among young people have led to more casual attitudes towards death in recent days. Terence Ranger’s text is undoubtedly a properly historical one. Nevertheless, most of the following chapters should be considered as “historically minded” anthropology rather than stricto sensu history, and their historical concerns difer, as does the historical depth of the issues they raise. Yvan Droz’s chapter, however, charts signiicant evolutions in the disposal of corpses among the Kikuyu since the 1930s. Mobilizing oral histories and existing studies, Droz irst shows how the system of disposal of corpses in the bush that existed prior to the implementation of burial was grounded in a system of distribution of social status that was tightly linked to age and righteousness: only old people with a certain high status in Kikuyu society were buried, while all the other dead were “thrown” to hyenas and other scavengers. Since the 1930s, however, under the double constraint of colonial administration and Christian missionary concerns, burial was made compulsory. In today’s Kikuyu society, being buried on one’s own plot of land has become the minimum criterion for a digniied burial, at least in rural areas, and a burial in public cemeteries is largely regarded as a sign of the poor management of a person’s existence, or of a bad, untimely death. In that respect, the diverse forms of burial that exist today among the Kikuyu still relect diferent degrees of personal achievement, as Introduction | 9 the distinction between the disposal and burial of corpses did at the beginning of twentieth century. A very complementary chapter by Mark Lamont follows. In this text, Lamont examines the changing conceptions of death pollution among the Meru, a group geographically and linguistically close to the Kikuyu. Indeed, following the implementation of burial by the colonial administration in the central Kenya highlands in the 1930s, the Meru were confronted by the obligation to bury corpses, which were mostly abandoned to scavengers in the preceding decades, as in the Kikuyu case. However, while Droz focuses on the more or less dignifying forms of burials that emerged in the last two-thirds of the last century in the new culture of burial of the Kikuyu, Lamont focuses on how the Meru “pollution complex” was reworked since the 1930s under the triple efect of the enforced shit to burial ordered by colonial authorities, Christianization, and land reforms that increasingly led to a “secondary” use of burials as markers of possession of land in the central Kenyan Highlands in the 1960s. However, Lamont’s vivid ethnography also stresses that death pollution is still an important issue among the Meru today, especially in the case of untimely or “bad” deaths. A decline in death pollution and the generalization of burials are also at the heart of the cultural dynamics that have led to the multiplication of “death celebrations” in the Cameroon Grassields, at the intersection point of West and Central Africa, as Michael Jindra shows in the next chapter. Here, along with a reduction of the fear surrounding death, changes in social structure (marked by a decline of “traditional” hierarchies) and transformations in the conceptions of the aterlife due to the impact of Christianity (and its promise of an aterlife for every human being) in particular have allowed more and more families and individuals to celebrate their dead through “death celebrations” which were celebrated only for a restricted male social elite in the irst decades of the twentieth century. Today, diverse concerns and traditions oten combine quite peacefully at these events, where ambiguities of the local religious context concerning the dead seem to be expressed through respective Christian ideas and ceremonies and the underlying desire for the much sought ater benevolence of the ancestors. Combining, here as in many other places, with status concerns, these diferent motivations are all mixed and impossible to separate when examining the rise of death celebrations, and one should avoid the secular temptation to reduce religious motives to instrumental or functional ones. Even before the systematic colonial enterprise that came out of the Berlin Conference, missionary encounters have largely played their part in framing the evolutions of death rites and funerals to come in the following decades and throughout the twentieth century. his became even more evident when encounters became more properly colonial. In the next chapter, Katrin Lange- 10 | Michael Jindra and Joël Noret wiesche continues to explore the patterns of interaction between religious traditions that research on funerals helps to chart. hrough historical and ethnographic research on obsequies in the Yatenga Province of Burkina Faso, she shows how, in this region historically marked by religious pluralism, the issue is oten the need for religious actors and institutions to reach compromises without compromising themselves. Langewiesche insists on the contextual and pragmatic nature of compromises or arrangements between religious traditions, which sometimes—as was the case for the Catholic Church—preceded the more theoretical developments and relections on “inculturation.” People’s strategic interests play a key role here, as does the changing social status of the diferent religions. he current situation is characterized in particular by the fact that “traditional” religious practices are no longer considered as a suficient, legitimate religious ailiation, and are now commonly performed by people claiming a simultaneous Christian or Muslim identity. Drawing on ieldwork conducted in Benin’s most popular prophetic church, the Celestial Church of Christ, Joël Noret’s chapter engages more directly the debated issue of “syncretism.” As several chapters of this book demonstrate, interactions between religious traditions are common in Africa, and funerals can be key sites of more or less diplomatic debates over proper religious procedures in order to ensure a dignifying burial. Depending on local situations and doctrinal positions, relations between religious groups can be either more or less supple and favorable to entanglement and close cohabitation, or violently “anti-syncretic” in their attitudes. In this range of possibilities, the Celestial Church of Christ has for several decades adopted a clear position of opposition to “traditional” lineage rites, which are emphatically proscribed when the church is in charge of the burial of one of its members, even if compromises with lineage authorities and family members oten remain possible. Moreover, this “anti-syncretic” position combines with a sense of religious synthesis in the ritual framework that the church has established to manage the death of its members. Actually, despite their mostly confrontational discourses on “traditional” lineage rites, Celestials regularly hold conceptions of the igure of the dead that bear the mark of both Catholic Christianity and “traditional” ancestral cults. he last two chapters, by Marleen de Witte and Jonathan Roberts, prolong this interest in the African conception of the dead in two difering ways. Indeed, de Witte evokes the ambiance of lavish display of Asante funerals, where huge sums of money are spent to organize memorable events whose richness will impress the attendees. In the Asante region, the disposal of the corpse acquires a more prominent status the longer it stays in a mortuary before burial, as does the use of various media to capture multiple images of the obsequies. In fact, contemporary funerals produce an idealized image of the deceased to be remembered. he dressing and preparation of the corpse is therefore Introduction | 11 subject to much attention: it must present an image of the good life. Additionally, Christian notions of personhood and of the aterlife continue to have a profound inluence today on the modes of relationships people have with the departed. Current pictures of the dead draw in some respects on past uses of terra-cotta heads during elite burial rites, but also highlight important changes: for instance, photographs now help in remembering the dead ater the funeral, while in the past terra-cotta igures were abandoned ater the ceremonies. In this respect, as we see in other contributions, ancestors may in a sense be more present than in the past, even when they are no more worshipped as such. Finally, in an ethnographically rich chapter, Jonathan Roberts accounts for current Ga death rites in the suburbs of Accra, showing both continuities and innovations in a set of funeral practices mostly thought of locally as inherited from the forebears. he treatment of the corpses and the eschatological stakes of the ceremonies here receive particular attention. Ritually ensuring a transition of the deceased toward the aterlife seems essential in these moments, and this is precisely the dimension of mortuary rituals that fetish interment practices (locally known as agbalegba) mirror at diferent and malevolent ends. Small coins, wooden human igurines, and body parts are essential ingredients for these “shadow ceremonies,” which are secretly held at night and imitate conventional burial rites in order to bring misfortune and death to a targeted person. In fact, such occult uses of mortuary symbolism reveal the expected outcomes of ordinary funerals: not only the peaceful transition of a soul to the aterlife, but also the possible ritual manipulations of this eschatological passage. Putting the spirits of dead people at work for malevolent ends, such widely feared rituals also highlight how serious the power of the dead is in contemporary Ghana. In sum, these chapters cover a wide range of issues related to the current dynamics of African funerals, and we hope these chapters help the reader understand essential dimensions of funerary rites in Africa. here are not many other topics through which one can not only get a sense of the deepest understandings of a people as expressed in such a visual and open way, but also see how these understandings have changed over time. With such a complex phenomenon on such a large, diverse continent, it is impossible to be comprehensive, but this volume should at least provide a framework to understand funerary rites and their histories. We also hope that it encourages future scholars to add further enlightenment to what we have presented here. Notes he volume editors would like to acknowledge Marleen de Witte, Jan Vansina, Benjamin Rubbers, and the anonymous reviewers of this volume for their input. Others who helped in various ways include Betty Videto and the interlibrary loan staf at Spring Arbor University. 12 | Michael Jindra and Joël Noret Some of the major themes of this book were irst presented in a paper by Michael Jindra, “Mortuary Ritual and Religious Change in Africa,” delivered at the Baylor University conference “Global Christianity” in November 2005. A faculty scholarship grant from Spring Arbor University also provided assistance. Finally, the editors would both like to thank their families for their patience while this rather complex project was completed. 1. For instance, see Shipton (2007: 159), who describes the event as the “the biggest deal” among the Luo in Kenya. Similar comments about death rites are oten found in other ethnographies. 2. his volume focuses less on the smaller, more isolated populations that are not as connected to wider networks, such as hunter-gatherers, nomadic groups, forest groups, and other small-scale populations, and more on the bulk of the African population that is more connected to the state and the wider economy, and that usually has at least some members who are teachers, civil servants, businessmen, and other members of the middle class. 3. his is particularly evident in the work of French anthropologist Louis-Vincent homas, who was still lamenting in the 1990s that the traditional wisdom of “ethnic” funerary rites was now confronted by the unprecedented “destructive attacks” of Islam, Christianity, and “Western Civilization” (homas 1995: 64), a perspective that actually ofers little insight into current funerary changes. 4. Kwame Arhin, however, mentions a major change in scale during the irst phase of colonial rule around the turn of the century, as the event became more secularized (1994: 313). 5. At the other end of the social hierarchy, the slave trade prompted a “spiritual cataclysm” when bodies along the trading routes were disposed without ritual treatment (Brown 2008: 43). And at the other end of the slave routes, their centrality to culture was revealed in how Africans in the Western hemispheric diaspora identiied themselves according to difering funerary practices (Brown 2008: 64; hornton 1998: 227). 6. 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