Relational Accounting in the Aftermath of Death: A Qualitative-Computational Study of Memorial Crowdfunding

• In Event: 20420 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 10: Text Analysis

Abstract

My paper extends the concept of relational accounting into funeral expenditures, often studied in surveys as a consumer expenditure, or as part of cost-of-living burdens and socioeconomic inequalities. In contrast, a relational accounting perspective “locates individual decision-making in the moments of the lifecycle that are culturally meaningful and collectively enforced and in overarching moral structures” (Wherry 2017). I argue that, as a life-course event involving care work and administrative and financial involvement, a person’s death is a case where relational accounting happens acutely, as surviving ties articulate who and what matters most to them while managing a stressful life event.

The potentialities for relational accounting are opened up by questions impicitly posed by crowdfunding practices: “How do you know the person who you are requesting funds on behalf of? Why are you requesting funds? How will you use these funds?” As an earmarking practice that occurs in interaction, crowdfunding stands at the intersection of cultural contexts, digital affordances, individual aspirations, and social networks outside of the typical units of analyses of expenditure surveys. I conduct a mixed-methods content analysis on a national sample of 43,984 memorial crowdfunding campaigns to extract information from campaign narratives, emulating survey methods but with a cultural-sociological center. I focus on relationships among fundseekers and beneficiaries (including the deceased) to peer into mourners’ relational accounting practices, including to maintain relationships with their dead and support those left behind.

My questions include: If death is a crisis that brings close ties to bear, who in this network participates in the handling of the administrative and financial aftermath of such an event? What expenses do they consider as worthy of seeking help with? My preliminary analysis suggests a more complex picture than how national surveys conceptualize the “next of kin”, funeral expenditures, and the cost of dying.

Author

• Cat Dang Ton, Northwestern University