ABSTRACT

This chapter explores which ideal images of cremation rituals are, implicitly as well as explicitly, pursued by funeral professionals in the Netherlands. It deploys Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman's dramaturgical principles for analysing social life within companies. While professionals still have a substantial role, recently, from the 1980s and onwards the authority is increasingly also ascribed to the individual mourners creating their own death rituals. Walter demonstrated that despite the ideal of individual mourners creating personalized death rituals, death, dying and disposal are social processes, which are negotiated with other mourners, grief counsellors and funeral professionals. The role of funeral professionals, of religious specialists and of the bereaved in organizing death rituals, changed throughout recent centuries. The attention for a personalized and unique farewell accounts for the funeral, but also for the ash disposal. Moreover, professionals do not indiscriminately follow the company-wide ideals.