I have found that many consider the funeral industry to be 'old fashioned' and traditional. Yet this is not really the case as the funeral industry is modern industry, with large international corporations, mass consumption models and so on.
In this essay I apply two key concepts of modernisation to the funeral industry. Essentially both of these concepts come out of tourism and are used to explain modernity in society. You can read my abstract below, and find the link to the whole essay.
Here is the whole essay, the url is provided at the end. It is about 5,000 words long, which might be a bit much considering it is a slower paced essay. So I have provided the abstract bellow which essentially sums it up.
AbstractThere is a common perception that the funeral industry is rather traditional and old fashioned. How it is not really modernised like the rest of society or like other industries (such as tourism). However this is not the case, as the funeral industry is quite modern. It is actually as modern as the tourism industry. To demonstrate this I take two key concepts from modernity, McDonaldization and Disneyization, and apply them to the funeral industry. Some might assume that these concepts would be incompatible, but in fact they fit quite well. Providing strong evidence for the modernisation of the funeral industry and how it is very similar to the tourism industry.
This is my third essay with this theme. The first one compares mourners to tourists and the second one looks at the interaction between mourners and the funeral industry.
To be perfectly honest this was one of the more difficult essays to write and in the end I essentially gave up. It was not tricky, just slow tow write, very slow actually. Normally it takes about two weeks of research and writing to put these essays together, but this one took almost two months. Which has put me behind for other things, so in the end I had to just stick it together and put it out.
Having said that it is not a bad read. It is a bit rushed in places, and poorly sticked together in others areas. But it isn't tricky to read and should be relatively interesting.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10Ldzu5h_5LRmElYRS1WkbKVuqI2dddk7GKaTKgOCEho/edit
An~~
I too believe that funeral industry is not old fashioned, it has progressed a lot in last 2 decades. From funeral program designs to green burials you can see progress in everything in our industry. But yes it is true funeral industry has not so much modernized as compare to other industries.
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