The Civil Governance of Death: The Making of Chinese Political Subjects at the End of Life

This article discusses how the Chinese Communist Party governed death in Shanghai during the first half of the People's Republic of China. It examines how officials nationalized funeral institutions, promoted cremation, and transformed what they believed to be the unproductivity of the funeral...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of Asian studies 2021-02, Vol.80 (1), p.49-71
Main Author: Liu, Huwy-Min Lucia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal husbandry
Anthropology
Asian studies
Breeding of animals
Burials
Cemeteries
Communism
Cremation
Cultural Revolution
Death & dying
Death rituals
End of life decisions
Funeral industry
Funerals
Governance
Human remains
Nationalization
Politics
Productivity
Professionals
Religion
Rituals
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Summary:This article discusses how the Chinese Communist Party governed death in Shanghai during the first half of the People's Republic of China. It examines how officials nationalized funeral institutions, promoted cremation, and transformed what they believed to be the unproductivity of the funeral industry into productivity (by raising pigs in cemeteries, for instance). I show how each of these policies eliminated possible sources of identity that were prevalent in conceptualizing who the dead were and what their relationships with the living could be. Specifically, in addition to the construction of socialist workers, the state worked to remove cosmopolitan, associational, religious, and relational ideas of self. By modifying funerary rituals and ways of interment, the Chinese state aimed to produce individualized and undifferentiated political subjects directly tied to the party-state. The civil governance of death aimed to produce citizen-subjects at the end of life.
ISSN:0021-9118
1752-0401
DOI:10.1017/S0021911820002260