Social Status and Rites of Passage: The Social Context of Death

Abstract

This investigation was designed as a test of the hypothesis that the higher a person's social status in his group or community, the more his funeral ritual proliferates and expands. The independent variable of social status is defined as an individual's prestige ranking in a social group relative to the positions of others in the group. The dependent variable of rites of passage is defined as those public ceremonies and activities that function to ease and expedite the transition of a subject from one social field or status to another. Observations were made and tabulated on visits to a sample of 30 funerals in a community of 20,000 population. Intercorrelation analysis of the data reveal a strong positive relationship between a person's social status and the amount of funeral rites of passage that accompany his burial.