Funeral of Mr. Wang : : life, death, and ghosts in urbanizing China / / Andrew B. Kipnis.

• VerfasserIn: Kipnis, Andrew B.,
• Place / Publishing House: Oakland, California : : University of California Press,, [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (ix, 163 pages) :; illustrations, maps

"In rural China funerals are conducted locally, on village land by village elders. But in urban areas, people have neither land for burials nor elder relatives to conduct funerals. Chinese urbanization, which has picked up drastically in the past decades, has involved the creation of cemeteries, state-run funeral homes, and small private funerary businesses. The Funeral of Mr. Wang examines social change in urbanizing China through the lens of funerals, the funerary industry, and practices of memorialization. It analyzes changes in family life, patterns of urban sociality, transformations in economic relations, the politics of memorialization, and the echoes of these changes in beliefs about the dead and ghosts"-- Provided by publisher.

Table of Contents

The funeral of Mr. Wang -- Of transitions and transformations -- Of space and place : Separation and distinction in the homes of the dead -- Of strangers and kin : moral family and ghastly strangers in urban sociality -- Of gifts and commodities : Spending on the dead while providing for the living -- Of rules and regulations : governing mourning -- Of souls and spirits : secularization and its limits -- Of dreams and memories : a ghost story from a land where haunting is banned -- Epilogue.