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Why People Don’t Die ‘Naturally’ Anymore: Changing Relations between the Individual and the State in Post-Socialist Bulgaria

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Why People Don’t Die ‘Naturally’ Anymore: Changing Relations between the Individual and the State in Post-Socialist Bulgaria
Author(s)Kaneff, Deema
AbstractThis article explores the theme of death as a means of illuminating the changing relationship between ‘the individual’ and ‘the state’ in the context of post-socialist Bulgaria. Previous research carried out on rituals and socialist society indicates a close connection between state ideology and the socially constructed ‘natural’ order — an order partly reproduced through engagement in state-sponsored life-cycle rituals, such as funerals. By focusing on the way in which funerals are presently carried out, and more specifically on the way in which villagers talk about death, I suggest that new discourse reveals important changes: a reordering of the relationship between ‘the individual’ and the socially constructed ‘natural’ order. The state is no longer such a strong mediating force in this relationship. Post-socialist reform, therefore, involves more than ‘just’ political and economic change; it represents a more general breakdown in the total set of relations that constituted the socialist world.
IssueNo1
Pages89-105
ArticleAccess to Article
SourceJournal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
VolumeNo8
PubDateMarch 2002
ISBN_ISSN1359-0987


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