The Cultural Logic of the Kail (Second Burial) Practice

The kail “second burial” is an Ibaloy death-related practice of unearthing, cleaning, and reburying the remains of the dead depending on requests, demands, and complaints conveyed by the dead to the surviving kin. For non-practitioners, there are some aspects of which may be difficult to comprehend, such as the need for exhumation and the offerings. This paper examines the kail practice through the lens of cultural logic theory as proposed by Nick J. Enfield (2000), who discusses the importance of representations and mediating structures. I propose that the Ibaloy language, the objects, the baliy (house), and the animals used in a kail are the mediating structures that equip both the mambonong and the practitioners for the formation and continuation of kail’s cultural meaning.