Sustaining the contemporary cemetery: Implementing policy alongside conflicting perspectives and purpose

Abstract

Cemeteries garner considerable academic attention as anthropologists, landscapers, archaeologists, sociologists, geographers and historians examine their layout, purpose and use. Emerging from these studies is a body of literature that considers cemetery and burial ground design, memorialisation, mourning behaviour and ‘dark tourism’. Beyond interdisciplinary journals such as Mortality and edited multi-disciplinary books however, the insight generated in this literature can be fragmented through publication in discipline specific periodicals. As a result cemeteries are often analysed and presented as places that contain, for example, design or tourism and heritage or emotion and mourning. Framed by concerns over the sustainability of cemeteries nationwide, this paper considers the contemporary English cemetery as a simultaneous space of emotion, commerce and community. Using data from an ethnographic case study of a cemetery in East London, it illustrates the contestation that can result from these concurrent contrasting interpretations. The paper concludes that care needs to be taken when implementing initiatives and policy to balance the varying demands and expectations of a cemetery's purpose and use.

Keywords:

• cemetery
• commerce
• community
• emotion
• ethnography
• policy

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the ESRC, City of London Corporation and Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management for their funding of this project, and the two anonymous referees for their constructive reviews.

Notes

[1] This is not surprising given the vivid descriptions of the conditions of the nineteenth century that led to the formation of cemeteries (see Penny, 1974, p. 61).

[2] Foucault has not been the only scholar who has examined the complex nature of places, spaces and landscapes. This has been a preoccupation in cultural geography (see Hetherington, 1997, p.4) and anthropology in particular (see Augé, 1995; Bender, 1993, 2006; Hirsch & O'Hanlon, 1995; Low & Lawrence-Zúñiga, 2003). A useful insight into the nature of space, what it constitutes and how it is interpreted has come from de Certeau (1984), who argued that a space can be understood as ‘practiced place’ (p. 117). Arguing that spaces can have multiple readings depending on the ‘story’ that the individual creates in order to see that place and function within it, de Carteau reflected on the way in which space is ‘legislated’ through the narrative(s) that individuals use to lay claim to that space (p. 122).

[3] This originates from the 1850s Burial Acts.

[4] In 2001 the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs (ETRA) Committee (vol. 1) concluded that the long-term solution to running out of burial space was the re-use of (private) graves. It took a further three years for the Home Office to issue a public consultation to examine how the general public felt about re-use as a potential legal change. It was not until 2007 that asignificant milestone was passed whereby, in London at least, the reuse of burial space was permitted through the London Local Authorities Act – and it remains to be seen how feasible re-use will be.

[5] The cemetery can therefore be regarded as akin to any other workplace in which the management of emotion takes place (see Bolton, 2005).

[6] The intention was that once cars were prohibited at the weekend, a communal bus service would be offered which would leave the main gate area every 15 minutes and take a predetermined route around the grounds. Visitors could use this to travel to the area they wished to visit, and then wait along the bus route to be picked up and taken back to the main gates. This would, it was envisaged, encourage walkers into the site and of visitors to view the cemetery as a landscape conducive to recreation.

[7] This argument could be extended in future investigation into potential contestation regarding older cemetery memorials when it comes to their preservation or re-use.