Between life and death: the permanence of things as continuity in a familiar context

Abstract

This article, the result of an ethnography in a family context, investigates the relationship between people and objects of deceased loved ones. The research focuses on an ecological approach to this relationship, seeking to understand how things become part of both the world of the living and the world of the dead, ensuring us a sense of continuity. Starting from an ethno- graphy from within, scrutinizing people’s daily relationships with their things, it is possible to see that preserving them is a way of negotiating absence and maintaining the presence of the decea- sed in family life. Things, endowed with life and active participan- ts in our constitutions as beings, become evidence of a life lived and shared, allowing the living to maintain a bond with the dead. Through a dialogue with the anthropology of death, we seek to contribute, in part, to the understanding of the complexity of the relationship between the living and the dead, highlighting the fun- damental role of things in this context. The research reveals the importance of considering things in their relationship with memory and everyday rituals as constitutive elements of the human expe- rience in the face of death and loss.