The Production of Value in Corpse Disposal

The argument of this thesis is that corpse disposal in England is a production process where value is generated out of the waste materials of the dead body. I make this argument by analysing the concept of value in two contemporary corpse disposal cultures; cremation and natural burial. This is because the concept of value has been effective for providing a critique of production as a process (Marx, 2013), as well as the management of materials more widely (Hetherington, 2004; Gibson, 2008). Throughout this thesis, I focus on two elements of investigating value in cremation and natural burial. The first of these questions how value is generated out of the waste materials of the corpse. I have found that the quantification of waste materials, their containment, and the labour techniques used to manage them each reflect a process of rendering. This is where a waste material is opened up to new uses and avenues of exchange, enabling value to be generated from it. The second focus is on the values that are attached to the waste materials of the corpse that remain after this production process has generated a funeral commodity (Olson, 2016a). Through their management, these waste materials are attached with any combination of moral, emotional, and economic values, but it was rare to find consistency in this attachment. The findings of this thesis offer future avenues of thought in Sociology, particularly in the fields of death, waste, value, and disposal. Contributions to the area of death and waste come from the application of work on waste analogies of the corpse into an empirical setting. I also develop on the literature concerning the relationship between waste and value, showing how disposal holds a vital role in the generation of value out of a waste material.