Beyond the Living: Death Care and the Boundaries of Social Reproduction

What does it mean to care for the dead? This article argues that the handling of dead bodies – washing, dressing, transporting, burying – is a form of reproductive labor that deserves recognition within both care ethics and social reproduction theory. Despite its social necessity, death care remains largely invisible in frameworks that link care to life, productivity, and reciprocity. Yet, like other forms of care work, death care is unequally distributed. This article identifies a ‘biocentric’ bias that renders posthumous care morally suspect and politically illegitimate. Exploring how death labor is caught between commodification and moralization, it argues that recognizing this labor as care challenges existing boundaries around who counts as a care providers, and whose needs are worth organizing around. Such recognition is necessary to question how death care is currently being distributed and organized.