Mourning Tourists: A comparison between the mourner and the tourist

    This is my second 'formal' essay about the funeral industry, and it is rather different to the first one.  While the first essay was about the nakedness of dead bodies and how we interact with the world around us this is about modernity and the funeral industry.  About how the modern funeral industry works and operates and what a modern funeral is.  In this essay I explore the idea of "the mourner" and what it is by comparing the mourner with the tourist.  As the essay is quite long I have provided a summary (or abstract) below along with a link to the full essay.

    This essay compares the mourner and the tourist to define and understand the mourner.  I not only demonstrate that the two are quite similar but that this method is a good way to understand the modern funeral.  There will be more essays like this in the future (when I get time) as tourism is well researched (unlike funerals) and so similar to the funeral industry.  The two are pretty perfect for each other.

You can read the full essay by clicking here, or copy and paste the url provided at the bottom.

Abstract:

The modern funeral is largely misunderstood and underexplored.  There is little to no background research about it, and it is a complex topic.  Thus alternative methods need to be looked into when examining the funeral industry.  One such method is a comparison with the tourism industry.  In this essay I compare the tourist with the mourner to better understand the mourner.  This method proves to be both viable and practical for understanding the funeral industry.  Tourism and funerals are very similar in many ways, from how they operate to what they desire.  Through this simple comparison we can start to explore deeper and more complex aspects of the modern funeral.  It also demonstrates that further research on the funeral industry is needed.

    It is a rather long essay, just under 6,000 words (making it double my last essay).  But the ideas and execution are fairly simple.  So while long it should at least be a nice and easy read!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Zoa9Jy8uHM9PQpG1_Zl2hqQPpBJD68hTXLyQLjpAlXM/edit?pli=1


An~~