When commerce meets care: Emotion management in UK funeral directing

Abstract

This article explores the conflict of commerce and care in funeral directing, from the theoretical perspective of emotion management. Funeral directing literature often suggests that funeral directors may feel compassion but are ultimately salespeople: that is, funeral directors can be expected to prioritise pecuniary over philanthropic emotion management. However, other commercial workers have been shown to reverse these priorities when dealing with bereaved consumers, giving reason to investigate emotion management in funeral directing more carefully. This study focuses on experiences of the initial arrangement meeting with clients, and finds that philanthropic emotion management predominates among funeral arrangers. This finding is used (i) to challenge the assumption that funeral directors' motivations are primarily commercial, (ii) to show that they exercise care directly of the client rather than through caring for the deceased person, and (iii) to explain how it can be that funeral directing is generally suspected of profit seeking even while mourners experience funeral directors as personally caring.

Keywords:

• funeral directing
• funeral director
• funeral arranger
• emotion management
• emotional labour

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Tony Walter, Bas Verplanken and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. My special thanks go to the funeral arrangers who assisted me with this research.

Notes

Notices which commemorate the anniversary of someone's death, or their birthday.