Modernity in the Funeral Industry: A look at Disneyization and McDonaldization in the Australian funeral industry

    This is my third essay on modernity in the funeral industry.  In these essays I am taking concepts from tourism studies and applying it to the funeral industry to show how the two industries are quite similar.

    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.

Gazing Mourners: Exploring the relationship between mourners and the funeral industry

    This is the second essay where I compare the funeral industry with the tourism industry.  Surprisingly enough the two are such similar industries in almost every way.  This essay looks at the idea of funeral companies shaping the industry at the mourners expense.

    Follow the links below to read the essay.  Or read my short abstract if you dont want to read the whole thing.

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.

The Naked Dead: How we engage with the dead through their nakedness

    I have written a short essay on how we engage and entangle with the world around us.  Specifically I look at nakedness and the dead body.  Through this I explore the idea that we connect with the dead body before us and bring it into our being.  We feel its nakedness and exposure, so we cover it up.


    This is the first 'formal' essay I have written on the funeral industry and for this blog.  It was rather interesting and fun to write, so I hope it's fun to read.  The essay itself is not too long but I have provided a short summary anyway.