Primary mourners and next-of-kin – how grief practices reiterate and subvert heterosexual norms

Abstract

This article discusses kinship practices in connection with death and mourning. It argues that kinship is an ambiguous and contingent concept, and that rituals done in connection with death and mourning have consequences for how people are acknowledged as bereaved. The discussion is based on data from a Swedish study of bereavement. Besides evincing the salience in death practices of a notion of kinship based on conjugal relations and blood ties, the results of analyses of participant observations in a grief group and in-depth interviews with gay widowers reveal that the dominant kinship norm both constrains and enables differing positions as primary mourners. Drawing on Judith Butler and discourse theory, the study shows that claiming a position as bereaved can entail struggles concerning acknowledgment of kinship, and that examples of denunciation simultaneously stand out as resistance and subversion. To avoid marginalizing prospective mourners, it is important to be aware of how these practices of kinship and grief work together.

Keywords:

• kinship
• bereavement
• grief
• gay widowers
• norms

Acknowledgements

The study was financed by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.

Notes

1. The term ‘grief work’ is used to describe different types of practice, beside funeral customs, such as support groups, self-help groups, and includes the personal endeavours that ‘let go’ of, or develop a new relationship with, the dead person. Lopata (1975) explains the terms as an adjustment to bereavement and it is also used by Stroebe and Stroebe in their article ‘Does “grief-work” work?’ (1991).

2. A comparison with a study of corresponding notices in Jordanian newspapers further discloses the contingency of the concept of primary mourner and family. In Jordanian death advertisements, the deceased is primarily situated within the context of a tribe, not a nuclear family (Al-Ali 2005, pp. 13–14).

3. Between 1995 and 2010, registered partnership was the term for the civil union between same-sex partners. In 2010, Sweden adopted a law of gender-neutral marriage. Following this law, it is no longer possible to become a registered partner.