Ruth McManus
University of Canterbury

Ruth McManus is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. She researches on social aspects of death and dying, and is inaugural President of the New Zealand Society for Death Studies. Her current projects include disaster memorialisation and new 'green' technologies for body disposal. Her books include Death in a Global Age (Palgrave-MacMillan 2012) and Death Down Under (Cambridge Scholars 2019), Exploring Society: Sociology for New Zealand Students (Auckland University Press, 2019) and her research profile is here: here.

Abstract: Greening of Death

While eco-lightbulbs, tiny homes and bans on single use plastic bags nibble at the edges of our profligate ways, ecological and social sustainability is beginning to profoundly challenge long-standing conventions in end-of-life care, grieving, bodily disposal and memorialisation. This presentation explores how new forms of, and attitudes to bodily disposal are emerging. It takes the widespread cultural shift toward sustainability and charts how this is taking shape in the tangible world of cemetery development. As land and resources become scare and sustainability seeks to shift from rhetoric to practice, new sites and forms of interment are being muted, but must negotiate existing traditions and conservatism in ways that can allow for cultural departures and syntheses. This talk explores ways in which three independent outfits (a church, a nurse and quarry business) are emerging as NZ pioneers in sustainable body disposal.