by madradavid
8 subcomments
- I am Ugandan. These kind of burials are unheard of in my country. The Author is labeling this an “African” thing which is just the usual daft nonsense. A number of Ghanaian and Nigerian tribes bury their dead like this , it is more a celebration of life. This is like taking something a small town in Louisiana does and declaring it an “American” tradition.
- The factual material about funeral spending costs is very interesting, but when it gets into "Kinship societies are wealth-destroying societies" it seems rather… unsupported? That's a sweeping statement that actually requires understanding the whole picture, and the whole picture is not being presented. Is there reason to think the author truly has all the context to make these claims?
by levocardia
4 subcomments
- >Kinship societies are actively hostile to economic growth, because economic growth undermines the basis of kinship: that is why kinship societies demand constant, visible sacrifices of wealth—funerals being the most spectacular—that make it extraordinarily difficult for any individual to accumulate capital, reinvest their assets, and pull ahead. The funeral is a window into a system of wealth destruction that serves, above all else, to keep people poor
This reasoning is flawed. Consumer spending is not "wealth destruction" -- who makes the fantasy coffins? Who prints the banners? Local businesses!
Ghana is sitting at a 5.6% GDP growth rate; for reference developmental success India is at 6.5%. Ghana's GDP in 2000 was $5B, today it's $82.B. Its per-capita GDP has more than doubled in the same time period.
- > Modernity is about not doing what your family says
The flip side is that rich and modern people feel lonely and sad that they don't have strong social bonds.
- I am a Ghanaian, and what the article describes is inaccurate. Lavish funerals are only specific to the Akan ethnic group (Fante and Ashanti; there are 70+ distinct ethnic groups) and, to some extent, Christians. Usually, the Clan shoulders the cost of the casket, with the nuclear family covering the remaining expenses. As always, the family expects sufficient donations (nsawa) from the attendees (relatives, friends, associations, extended family) to offset the costs.
What many people miss is that the funeral almost always reflects the life of the deceased - wealthy, social status (e.g., a king or playing a significant societal role), the number of children, age (funeral for the elderly is very different from the young), etc.
We have a popular saying that only in the Ashanti region can one profit from a funeral. They’re the only ethnic group with the most expensive funerals.
by forthwall
8 subcomments
- This article seems to establish that kinship leads to the failure of wage growth and ultimately wealth, people will hide their wages because people will ask for money. This seems like the issue rather is is that wealth accumulation in sub-saharan africa is limited to a small subset of population, I don't think this wealth tax by family members exists when you have a larger group of individuals making more money.
You can observe this in the US, and presumably in the rest of the world, when wealth is concentrated to individuals, your family will probably ask you for money. The difference is here, there is less income inequality and more people have the ability to make more money.
I do like the look into funeral culture, but I don't think this assumption that kinship and family-peity is the cause of the lack of economic mobilty.
by Bombthecat
1 subcomments
- Wife is from Africa, buried her dad and mom.
If she wouldn't have put down her foot, they would have sucked her dry ( our money) we set a budget and they got what they got... But I can easily see other people/ wifes not setting boundaries and spending a ton of money..
- That was a very interesting read. I appreciate when anyone tries to dig into the actual why of culture instead of just leaving it at face value. I get the impression this is more of a working theory than factual on the sociological side, because I do think there's a lot of counter-arguments to be made about strong kinship networks that are otherwise wealthy and prosperous.
And there's a pretty obvious parallel in wealthy nations: the lavish wedding. There are many examples of otherwise modest to low income couples, even with support of their families, putting on weddings they can't really afford but they do it anyway because of social mores. Maybe there's a clear connection between those examples and strong kinship networks. Or maybe its back to peer pressure and keeping up with the joneses.
by orbital-decay
1 subcomments
- The author is trying to generalize this narrative, but it still sounds pretty specific to Ghana and some other African societies. Chechnya and Dagestan are mentioned, but I struggle to remember any demonstrative wealth destruction practices there. Also what about other historic kinship societies (e.g. Scottish, Italian?)
by technothrasher
3 subcomments
- Basically my whole family have signed our bodies over to the local medical school. They make all the arrangements and pay for everything as soon as they're notified upon death. They'll normally give you the ashes upon cremation after a year or so, but personally I've given them permission to completely skeletonize me and keep the skeleton indefinitely.
This helps society by helping student doctors learn, and it removes all funeral hassles and expenses. We can still do more low-key memorial ceremonies without needing a body. I realize this path doesn't work for everybody, especially those with certain religious beliefs, but we all just love the idea.
- There's an interesting film focused on this topic:
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1499420/
The author traveled through Cameroon and documented, among other things, the realities of having a backlog of dead one must properly bury.
Turns out not everyone can afford putting their deceased relatives in a freezer - especially for extended periods of time, so sometimes the dead are stored in a separate storage area next to the home until the living gather the necessary funds.
- In America we spend that money on weddings. Lots of young people wipe their savings on getting married, at one of the most critical times in life (just before starting a family). It often prevents them having kids or buying a home for years.
by AussieWog93
1 subcomments
- The article talks about the failure mode of kinship groups, but doesn't go into the fact that new migrants often enter into kinship networks that help them succeed. You see the same in religious communities as well - people pitching in not to leech off one another but to help everyone move ahead.
Maybe the problem is with Ghanaian values and not kinship itself.
- Very loosely related novel recommendation: "Ways of Dying" by South African author Zakes Mda was a revelation. I've since read a few other books by him and he's become one of my favorite novelists.
I'm your usual HN-brained copious scifi novel/science non-fic reader, typically.
- My mom's funeral was ~23k in Chicago, US.
As a reference to how much that is - she made minimum wage her whole life (<44k).
It's obscene how much money there is in death.
- This was an eye-opener for me when I read C.A. Gregory's Savage Money.
Our values, i.e. the things we do to gain the approval of each other, has a huge effect on how we live. Much larger than I had expected.
Some people (not limited to Africa -- common also in e.g. rural India) value lifecycle rituals, like coming-of-age parties, marriages, and funerals. Those are the reasons they make money. They don't make money for something else and then blow it on a funeral. They made money specifically for the funeral.
I make money to be able to eventually unchain myself from the daily grind and spend my later years doing armchair research. Some people near me make money to buy a fancy home and pay eyewatering amounts of mortgage interest to their bank. And some people further from me make money to spend on lavish funerals.
It's easy to feel superior about any of these, but I struggle to see how one is better than the other. They're all restricting the way we live and imposed on us from society, they're just different from each other.
by wewtyflakes
0 subcomment
- I found a lot of the points being made against kinship networks are also easily made against traditional wealth-oriented cultures.
"The kinship network has a strong interest in preventing any of its members from becoming prosperous enough to no longer need it"
Seems like the exact monetary pressures someone from the west would feel, except it comes from bosses rather than family. Minimum wage needing to exist as a thing is a clear example of that.
by whalesalad
1 subcomments
- Meanwhile I want to be tossed into a hole bare naked with a tree planted on top of me.
- In South Africa, health insurance is prohibitively expensive, but you can get funeral insurance as a value added service from your data plan provider, bank, or even your favourite football team. It is extremely common, so there’s just more money going around. That said all the other points made around the kinship society are still valid. Its also very like that they contribute to the proliferation of funeral insurance themselves.
- People should look again at how we Muslims bury. Not only is it much "green" but also cheap and doesn't waste land forever. There is wisdom in simplicity.
- Reminds me of that article from a few days ago about Chinese people buying apartments to store cremated ashes due to high cemetery costs: https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/arti...
by Wolfenstein98k
0 subcomment
- I always wonder how much of the West's wealth(- holding capabilities) come from centralising and rationalising our superstitions through central authorities like the church.
- sub-saharan africa a place with more landmass & diversity than most continents
reduced to a monolith by a someone who has never lived in africa for more than a year.
if that's not patronizing and stupidity - IDK.
by jamesfinlayson
0 subcomment
- Interesting - I knew about the fancy coffins (I'd seen pictures of them years ago) but had no idea about the rest of it.
by voganmother42
1 subcomments
- when I'm dead just throw me in the trash
- Colonialism blocked endogenous capitalist classes from developing freely in Africa. Internal dynamics should be understood in the context of the actual history of Africa.
by mystraline
0 subcomment
- Sounds like failed priorities, spending that much on dead people, rather than the living.
by thelock85
8 subcomments
- It’s interesting how this is framed as a “bad deal” (being apart of a kinship society) without taking time to breakdown the cost of being on your own in Ghanaian society, especially when healthcare, credit harm and other emergencies are broadly unaffordable in individualist, capitalist American society.
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by nmbrskeptix
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by imadierich
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by onlyjanand
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- the western mind cannot comprehend kinship...
by mohamedkoubaa
1 subcomments
- Call it a membership fee to an institution that actually cares about you and everyone you care about for life.
Over here we have extractive taxation
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