The contemporary funeral industry exists in a restive, unsettled state within late capitalism. Drawing on a multi-sited ethnography, I discuss recent crises that have revealed apparent cultural contradictions in the funeral industry. The funeral industry mediates and transforms these inherent contradictions as evidenced by the meanings made available to the consumer (via consumables). I argue that many of these constructed meanings are at odds with one another while still permitting consumers to occupy multiple positions simultaneously. This is accomplished in part due to the incorporation of amusement along multiple levels of the funerary apparatus, from the institutional logic of the industry, to the enacted bereavement rituals of participants. Amusement, then, works to resolve, bracket, and perpetuate contradictions.

This article explores the ways in which interpassivity, as conceptualized in the work of Robert Pfaller and Slavoj Žižek, can contribute to understanding the role of brands in today’s commodity form. Interpassivity, like interactivity, implies an active relationship between an actor and an external entity. Interpassivity, however, suggests that the actor is active in order to take on a passive role. As it is used here, it refers to a condition in which a consumer actively delegates her or his emotional expressions to a brand. The integration of brands in funerals is appealing given the abject nature of deathcare, the affective intensity of dealing with loss, and the increasingly rationalized role of the funeral industry in deathcare. Based on a multi-sited ethnography, the author discusses the ways in which brandscapes are becoming more widespread in funeral products and services and are even contributing to ‘themed’ funerals and funeral settings. The author argues that these developments are conducive to conditions of interpassivity and they further the ongoing colonization of capital into human emotion.

Nationwide, academic sociologists at all types of higher education institutions face the challenge of working to improve students’ writing skills. In this article, we describe a collective effort by a group of faculty members in one undergraduate sociology program to implement several effective writing-improvement strategies. We advocate aiming to improve students’ writing by working together on a united front rather than working in isolation. After explaining the origins of the collective emphasis on writing that emerged in our group and briefly outlining the writing-improvement strategies that we utilize, we use student survey data to reflect on major themes before concluding with a discussion of the merits of our collective approach.

The corporate megachurch represents a pecuniarily driven institution that both emphasizes marketing for the purposes of constant growth, and focuses on the manufacture and delivery of consumer-centric goods and services. This article draws on the theory of the non-place as conceptualized by Augé, who argues that the non-place is a direct effect of contemporary capitalism’s incessant incursion into ever more areas of life. The non-place refers to any variety of transitory sites that lack historical, cultural, or geographic reference points, and while they seem to be everywhere one is left with the sense of being ‘nowhere’ in particular. One such place that lacks distinguishing features and fails to provide any contextual reference is the corporate megachurch. Because of its strategic work to distance itself from traditional Christian churches and focus instead on creating homologies with entertainment, self-help, and retail, the non-place church normalizes the banality of consumer capitalism.

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