Attitudes towards cremation in contemporary Romania

Abstract

Cremation in Romania is shaped by several distinctive issues in comparison to Western societies, not least the existence of a single operating crematorium for 20 million inhabitants (in 2011). The most critical problem of the Romanian death system is the lack of available burial places in urban areas, a crisis that could be solved through the acceptance and expansion of cremation as an alternative solution. The goal of this paper is to analyse attitudes towards death in Romania, particularly focusing on the issue of cremation. The main conclusion is that the position of the Romanian Orthodox Church and its influence in Romanian society is the major explanation for the current situation. The lower degree of secularisation in Romanian society compared to other European countries is an important factor in shaping the specificity of Romanian practices in relation to death and cremation.

Global Digital Death and Glocal Dying: Theoretical Challenges and Possible Research Directions

“…In 2018, during our Romanian postdoctoral research (Toplean 2018), we have identified many ambiguous aspects of local death that have been inadequately or irrelevantly theorised precisely because local research (sociologies of death and religion, political sociology, history of ideologies etc.) follows too closely Western research trends and priorities, thus failing to identify and analyse local problems as they emerge in local dynamics (Rotar, Bodrean 2009;Rotar 2013Rotar , 2015Rotar , 2021Rusu 2020c). We need not only more adequate methods and betterfitted concepts, but also more locally relevant research topics.…”