Itinerary of the Dead Body and the Outsourcing of Care:

Death as a Business

Abstract

This paper addresses upon the care of dead bodies, focusing on the delegation of responsibilities from the family and community to third-party services. Social transformations throu- ghout the 20th century led to the growth of the funeral market in Brazil, especially from the 1980s onward. The research on which this article is based aims to trace the itinerary of the dead body to show how care for the deceased is carried out through outsourced services, from the moment of death to the final destination, whe- ther burial or cremation. The article provides a contextualization of studies on the topic and presents data from ethnographic resear- ch conducted in a cemetery located in the municipality of Nova Friburgo, in the mountainous region of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This study highlights the commodification of death, asso- ciated with the production of consumer goods, which seeks to dis- sociate the phenomenon of death from suffering.