Grave Matters: A Lively History of Death Around the World

by Nigel Barley

Takes a light-hearted yet sympathetic look at death and death rituals in various societies as an example of the variety and inventiveness of human culture. Much of the material is based on the author's experiences in traditional African cultures. For general readers. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Genres: Nonfiction, Anthropology, Death

240 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1997

About the author

Born 1947. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Ba...

Reviews

[Loren · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I couldn't get into this one. The subtitle is "A Lively History of Death Around the World," which didn't explain that it was a gloss of anthropological studies around the world. I think the author's tone is meant to be humorous, but it struck me as condescending. I struggled through the first chapter, in which he makes the point that humans grieve different deaths in different ways in different societies around the world -- and anthropologists almost always misinterpret what they're seeing because they can't escape their own cultural preconceptions. But once I grasped that, I didn't need it reiterated for pages and pages afterward.

The most interesting thing I read: "In Java, you do not seek out the dead without due cause. 'You cannot go to a cemetery,' said my shocked host. 'I cannot take you. People would see us. They would think we were mad, witches looking for fresh corpses to eat.'" I guess if the book had gone on to be an exploration of how cultures around the world visit their grave sites, I would have been fascinated.

[Jillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed this one overall (as much as you can enjoy reading about death, anyway). While some of the organization seems illogical or repetitive, the information Barley has collected here is fascinating. You can also tell he had an enjoyable time in the writing, making puns about modern Western philosophy “putting Descartes before the hearse” and commenting on wax effigies of deceased royals that “seem merely to be playing Errol Flynn rather badly.” Barley also isn’t afraid to challenge and mock anthropologists (including himself) in a way that is occasionally too condescending but mostly amusing and apt. There are serious and insightful observations here too, though, about the nature of life, death, and mourning. An informative and entertaining read.

[Willa Guadalupe Grant · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh- looks like thoughts strung together without any connections. Kind of stream of consciousness but not as entertaining. I was really not taken with this book. Death is one of my favorite subjects but this one is a miss.

[Jeremiah Mustered · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting anthropological stories in a stream of conscious book. If it was reorganized or refocused I think it would have been a much better read.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

"The one universal fact of life is death. Yet different cultures define and react to death so variously that the events surrounding it are a key indicator of the exuberant inventiveness of each society. In Madagascar the bereaved may be required to engage in drunken incest, in contemporary America to watch the postmortem video. The Yoruba of Nigeria mourn the young but joyfully celebrate the life and death of the old. In Melanesia, the Dobu stress 'replacement': the living stepping into the shoes of the deceased, regardless of the havoc wrought on the rules of kinship.

"Death is shown to be more than an individual experience. Anthropologist Nigel Barley writes that his colleagues long ago decided to give it a big role in the collective drama of life. Malinowski, for example, saw it as the origin of all religion, and later ethnologists have seen the fear an denial of death as the origin of all culture.

"Grave Matters reveals that the body may be preserved or obliterated, transformed into furniture or eaten. Everywhere death is not just a window on eternity but a mirror in which we see ourselves in all our human diversity and the variety of our purposes. 'If there were no funerals,' say the Torajans of Indonesia, 'none of us would ever get married.' "

"Not one to slight death's sting (or its caress by the overly solicitous mortuary industry), Nigel Barley agrees with Aristotle that humor is also a key distinguishing feature of humanity. And what keeps us reading Grave Matters is the author's delicious sense of irony and ready wit."
~~front flap

A very exhaustive presentation of the various traditions & practices around death in various cultures (including our own.) And certainly written with "the author's delicious sense of irony and ready wit."

I much prefer his books that recount his adventures in the field -- they're much funnier and more easily read.

[Dianah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really enjoy Dr. Barley's writing when he's in autobio mode, but as a scientific treatise this is a disorganized mess. "Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual" by Metcalf and Huntington is better organized, better written, and all-in-all better book. I think Barley tried to create a book more accessible to the masses than what many of anthropology tomes are, but the problem is that the audience doesn't change. Trailer Park Tracy isn't going to wander into a bookstore and pick up a book about how different cultures mark the passage of death so writing one targeted at her is just a waste of time. And Barley doesn't accomplish that either. Like a good scientist he uses lots of references as marks them appropriately and goes into way too much detail on some tiny facet that intriques him more than it will anyone reading about it. Having said that, Barley has so poorly organized the book that you can't even feel his passion for the subject.