‘Dead society’ in a ‘cemetery city’: The transformation of burial rites in Kinshasa

In recent decades, the meaning of death seems to have changed in profound ways in Kinshasa and indeed in the whole of Congo. The changing practices surrounding the place of death in the city will be analysed as specific, sometimes surprising and even shocking, ways by means of which young Kinois urbanites not only contest the realm of official politics and dominant religious discourses and practices, but also use the instance of death to rethink and reposition themselves in the light of a broader crisis of society and the implosion of the state.