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Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca

Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca

by Kristin Norget
Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca
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ISBN-10:
0231136889
ISBN-13:
9780231136884
Pub. Date:
12/13/2005
Publisher:
Columbia University Press
ISBN-10:
0231136889
ISBN-13:
9780231136884
Pub. Date:
12/13/2005
Publisher:
Columbia University Press
Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca

Days of Death, Days of Life: Ritual in the Popular Culture of Oaxaca

by Kristin Norget

Overview

Kristin Norget explores the practice and meanings of death rituals in poor urban neighborhoods on the outskirts of the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork in Oaxaca City, Norget provides vivid descriptions of the Day of the Dead and other popular religious practices. She analyzes how the rites and beliefs associated with death shape and reflect poor Oaxacans' values and social identity.

Norget also considers the intimate relationship that is perceived to exist between the living and the dead in Oaxacan popular culture. She argues that popular death rituals, which lie largely outside the sanctioned practices of the Catholic Church, establish and reinforce an ethical view of the world in which the dead remain with the living and in which the poor (as opposed to the privileged classes) do right by one another and their dead. For poor Oaxacans, these rituals affirm a set of social beliefs and practices, based on fairness, egalitarianism, and inclusiveness.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780231136884
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication date: 12/13/2005
Pages: 336
Product dimensions: 0.88(w) x 9.00(h) x 6.00(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Kristin Norget is associate professor of anthropology at McGill University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Death and Life in Oaxaca
Part I Rites of Popular Life in Oaxaca
1. Anthropology in a Mexican City
2. Practicing Popular Religion in Oaxaca
Part II Rites of Popular Death in Oaxaca
3. Living with Death
4. The Drama of Death
Part III Living the Day of the Dead
5. Days of the Dead in Oaxaca
6. Spectacular Death and Cultural Change
Epilogue: Life in Death
Notes
References
Index

What People are Saying About This

Roger Bartra

There is no better way to understand the symbols of death than to immerse ourselves in the realities of everyday life. Kristin Norget does this as she takes us on an unsettling voyage through the ritual experiences of death in Oaxaca. The resulting book challenges the reigning stereotypes of 'Death in Mexico' and illuminates the relationship between popular religiosity and alienating modernity. Written in an agile and accessible style, this is an excellent and original contribution to the study of Mexican culture.

— Roger Bartra, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, author of Blood, Ink, and Culture: Miseries and Splendors of the Post-Mexican Condition

Claudio Lomnitz

This study is a singular contribution to the study of death and deathways in contemporary urban Mexico. Kristin Norget has produced a poignant and personal account of how the people of urban Oaxaca deal with death both in ritual and in their day to day lives. Her book moves beyond the colorful description of the Day of the Dead ritual, to the presence of death in everyday life.

— Claudio Lomnitz, New School for Social Research, author of Death and the Idea of Mexico

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