Cemeteries By Bourdieu: A Cultural Analysis

Death has long remained a significant part of each culture’s history. Regardless of the rituals and certain events that are performed when death occurs in a civilization, burying their dead is the one thing they all have in common. It is a form of disposing bodies because the belief that it is intolerable to have the company of a dead person among the living. Cemeteries are a way political and economical powers are exhibited within cultural societies. In which case, Bourdieu has symbolized the differences between bourgeoisie and pauper societies in his writing on the relations among language, power, and politics. He also establishes that language usage fluctuates in classes and genders. However, Gramsci is vital in this essay to understand the distinction between “traditional” and “organic” intellectuals. His theory of cultural hegemony had awoken the public of how states use inappropriate methods to maintain power in capitalist societies. Foley supports the other two authors’ interpretations by providing ethnographical research towards the inequality of racial classes. Thus, people of higher statuses (mainly, privileged whites) are automatically capable of

The Greek word of koimeterion and the Latin word of coemeterium held the definition of “sleeping place”. One also has to be careful of labeling a cemetery as burial ground, graveyard, churchyard, and necropolis because they are concepts closely related but is not what defines a cemetery. Burial grounds (or graveyards) are typically unplanned places for entombments. Churchyards, which is obvious by its’ word, are graveyards retained by churches and/or attached to church buildings. Necropolis (Greek for “city of the dead”) as instated by its’ name, are large graveyards. Initially, a cemetery was located on the bounds of a borough and not always considered as