“We've Cared for the Dead since We Started Caring”: COVID‐19 and Our Relationship to Public and Private Deathcare

Abstract

The COVID‐19 pandemic has highlighted public organizations’ challenges related to deathcare. Within the emergency management literature, and specifically within public administration, there is a gap when it comes to planning past death. Using data from interviews with 35 municipal cemetery managers throughout the United States, I show how our unwillingness to talk about or plan for death, coupled with cemetery managers who are underfunded and often left out of emergency management planning processes, needs increased attention. While many deathcare best practices were deployed to respond to the virus, cemetery managers often are not part of the planning process.

Street-Level Bureaucrats at the Forefront of Pandemic Response: A Comparative Perspective

“…Crisis situations therefore intensify the reciprocal dependence of SLBs and decision-makers and the necessity for bi-directional flow of information between policy formation exercised in decision-making venues and on-the-ground implementation. Indeed, government response to emergencies inherently involves complex information management and multifaceted decision-making processes (Henderson 2014;Zavattaro 2020). As demonstrated in several of the papers in this special issue, the downward flow of information is vital because SLBs' understanding of the fast-changing imposed conditions, and, in turn, work efficacy, both depend upon updated, coherent information provided by higher-ups (see also Weick 2012).…”

When Deaths Are Dehumanized: Deathcare During COVID-19 as a Public Value Failure

“…Bozeman (2002) explains there are blurred lines between public and private, and often evaluations of public value rely on assumptions in the private market and thus private value, which ignores the fact that public value can be different from private value. This schism is worsened by the lack of inclusion of many members of the deathcare community, such as cemetery managers in traditional public administration and emergency management planning processes (Zavattaro, 2020).…”

Global Reflection, Conceptual Exploration, and Evidentiary Assimilation: COVID‐19 Viewpoint Symposium Introduction

“…In an essay that takes a different view, Zavattaro (2020) uses interview data from cemetery managers to understand how they can play a broader role in emergency management planning. The pandemic has created a mass fatality management problem, and many of the experts who handle death care are not included in emergency planning, so Zavattaro (2020) offers points to consider when expanding who is in the planning and training room.…”