Placemaking by the Dead: Cemeteries as Emotional, Moral, and Ritual Places
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3986/SMS20262904Keywords:
cemetery, agency of the dead, deathscapes, continuing bonds, vernacular religion, spatial anthropology, SloveniaAbstract
This article examines cemeteries in north-eastern Slovenia as deathscapes where the dead act as emotional, moral and ritual agents. Drawing on ten months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2024, the study explores how relationships with the dead are maintained, transformed or disrupted through spatial practices and affective encounters. Everyday acts of care, such as tending graves or communicating with the deceased sustain cemeteries as places of moral continuity and family responsibility. At the same time, some encounters with the dead reveal more unsettling aspects of these relationships, where unresolved ties extend beyond death and require ritual intervention. Approaching continuing bonds from a spatial perspective, the article argues that relationships with the dead persist also through embodied practices tied to place.
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