Burying at all costs: investing in funerals in southern Benin

Abstract

Drawing on research conducted in southern Benin since 2000, this article explores the entanglements between grief, social status and funerals, and accounts for the conditions and the motives of the massive and multifarious investments – inextricably psychic, social and economic – in funerals that can be witnessed locally. I argue that, far from being mere ‘conspicuous consumption’, funeral expenses should be understood as the product of a number of intersecting dynamics, as the lavishness of these events cannot conceal the burden they represent and the anxieties they feed. In fact, filial duties and politics of reputation often entwine to give an existential dimension to these occasions, reinforcing one another to lead social subjects to engage important economic means and to bury their dead ‘at all costs’. In fact, as internalized norms and social pressures finally convince most mourners to organize obsequies beyond their means, the psychic and social tensions of funerals regularly constitute the all too common hidden face of the more commonly reported lavishness.