Graduation Year

2025

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Science, Technology and Society

Reader 1

Nancy S. B. Williams

Reader 2

Andre Wakefield

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Abstract

This paper examines the social construction of American deathcare and the American funerary industry through two case studies: chemical arterial embalming and green burial. Using the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework, Chapter 1 analyzes embalming’s rise in the late 19th century as a product of social negotiation, not inevitability. Chapter 2 investigates how green burial standards – in particular, those set by the Green Burial Council – reflect consumerist values rooted in traditional deathcare, despite environmentalist aims of the broader green burial movement. Through these cases, the paper explores how sociocultural, aesthetic, and economic values shape and are embedded in American deathcare technologies, industries, and standards, arguing that to die in America is to encounter deeply embedded structures informed by a uniquely American sociocultural, historical, and political landscape.

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