2012/03/01 by Marcel Reyes-Cortez · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Psychology · #Anthropological Studies and Insights #Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration #Vietnamese History and Culture Studies #Dead body #Megalopolis #Objectification #Dead sea #Sociology #Politics #Social life #Aesthetics #Anthropology #Art #History #Archaeology #Law #Geography #Political science
paper · doi:10.1080/14755610.2012.658420
openalex publication_date 2012/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Cemeteries could be regarded as non-social spaces due to a believed negligible amount of daily social activity between the living, the dead and the space. At the same time, the spaces of the dead are regarded as spiritually charged, dangerous and even polluted. My paper suggests that the spaces of the dead, such as the cemeteries of Mexico City, are clear examples of dynamically active memory-making spaces in which the dead are daily revered, socialised and memorialised through a combination of secular and religious contemporary funerary practices, the daily interaction between the living, the dead, the ánima and material culture. The paper analyses the phenomenon, socio-cultural and political conditions of the objectification of the dead in the internal and external spaces of the cemetery. The paper includes the investigation of life histories of its workers, mourners and daily visitors in order to explore why various communities in Mexico City have embraced and revered the materialisation and objectification of the dead such as the following of the Santa Muerte. This paper then digs deeper into the array of meanings interwoven into the fabrics of social life and spiritual stability of the living, in which the widespread embrace of material culture plays a dynamic role in the contemporary social rituals dedicated to the dead in the cemeteries of a megalopolis.