A transnational funeral: remittances, decisions and practices across national

borders1
2,3 2 3
Valentina Mazzucato , Mirjam Kabki , Lothar Smith

I. Introduction

There are two dominant approaches to funerals in academic literature. One,

predominantly used by anthropologists, is to study funerals as important rites de
passage through which many things about a culture can be understood (Bloch and
Parry 1982, Metcalf and Huntington 1991, Venbrux 1995). In these studies the
funeral is seen as a local event. It takes place in one town, village or city and the
researcher studies the event by being present in that location. Furthermore, the
interpretation of the funeral is placed within the context of the local culture (of the
ethnicity and of the locality where it is practiced), as well as within the events of the
locality (town, village or city). In some studies broader trends are taken into account
such as a changing economy and influences from abroad (de Witte 2001, Arhin
1994), but these broader trends are generically referred to as globalizing forces
impinging on local custom.

The second approach instead focuses on the productive element of a funeral and is
one associated with production oriented literature characteristic of economic and
development studies. This literature considers funerals such as those practiced by the
Akan, where funerals occupy an important part of people’s time and finances, as a
waste of potentially productive resources. The money that is poured into funerals is
seen as consumptive spending that does not lead to growth in the economy. People
spend money on expensive coffins, lavish clothing, donate money ostentatiously and
generally engage in a lot of conspicuous consumption in order to gain respect, and
sometimes envy, from their fellow peers. Such considerations are implicit in studies
looking at the benefits of migration in which only remittances sent for investments in
businesses are considered in calculations of benefits from migration (Russell 1986,
Taylor 1999, Black et al. 2003). In these studies, the researcher is not interested in
how a funeral is practiced but only in the amounts that are spent. The researcher can
therefore limit himself to asking a respondent how remittances were used.

In this paper we take a transnational view on funerals in order to contribute to both

strands of literature. We use the case of one Akan funeral, complemented by other
field observations, to highlight two things. First, we want to describe the different
dynamics at play in a funeral where some of the organizers are migrants living
overseas. With a growing percentage of the Akan population living overseas,
increasingly migrants are playing important roles in the organization and practice of

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1
funerals. This will give a face to what is usually only generally mentioned in research
on funerals as general globalizing trends (Burawoy 2000). We look into the details of
how decisions were made about how to practice a specific Akan funeral ceremony,
where the decisions came from and what were the factors affecting these decisions.
Second, we trace the financial flows of a funeral, focusing on where money comes
from and what it is used for. This analysis determines how much money is involved
in a funeral and importantly, where the money flows to, both geographically (which
places) and economically (which sectors). Only after such an analysis can we
determine the effects of funeral spending on local economic development.

II. Methodology

The analysis of a transnational funeral is part of a larger study in which we employ a

transnational methodology. Migrant networks are main unit of analysis. We started
with a random selection of Amsterdam based migrants because Amsterdam is where
the majority of Ghanaians in The Netherlands reside. We then identified those people
with whom the migrants transact (in the form of exchanging goods, money, services
or information) in Holland, Ghana and elsewhere. This resulted in people representing
various kinds of relations –family, friends, church members, colleagues, neighbors
etc. Together with the migrant, these people form a transnational network. We
selected thirty such networks and followed the migrant in Amsterdam and those
members of his/her network based in three major locations in Ghana: rural Ashanti,
Kumasi (capital of Ashanti Region), and Accra (capital of Ghana). These three
locations figure most prominently in the networks of Netherlands based Ghanaian
migrants hence it was in these locations that we conducted our fieldwork.

During the course of fieldwork, a close family member of one transnational network
died. This happened to be a network that we were covering extensively because there
were network members in all four research locations. This gave us a very close,
multi-sited and simultaneous view of the inner workings of a funeral in its three
phases: the preparation, the carrying out, and the events following it. This is
empirically very difficult to do because of the sheer variety of sources from which
money comes from for a funeral, the variety of actors involved and because
respondents do not easily share detailed financial information regarding funerals. That
is why we chose for a case study approach in which we had the necessary familiarity
with respondents in order to have access to this information. All names of people and
places are changed in order to protect privacy.

Data was collected through participant observations, in-depth interviews and monthly
transaction studies (in which we ask for all transactions that had taken place between
our respondents and others regarding a number of major economic themes). We used
a list of semi-standardized questions for the in-depth interviews and a similar
transaction questionnaire in order to collect the same information in the four different
locations. In this manner we not only gained qualitative as well as quantitative data,
but were also able to triangulate our findings. This has revealed some interesting
findings regarding the way different members of the same network sought to gain
agency by interpreting particular activities and the transactions linked to these in
ways that were sometimes different and conflicting from those of others. Thus our
research approach has allowed us not only to study this particular funeral in the
typical manner of an anthropologist; becoming part of people’s lives and their
activities, but also in the manner of an economist; obtaining the necessary
transactions data to understand financial flows.

2
III. Funerals in Akan culture and background to the case

Funerals are at the heart of Akan cultural and social life. A funeral, more than a
wedding or any other ceremony should be grand and successful. Every Saturday
many Akan put on their black mourning cloths to attend funerals of relatives, friends,
and even of people they barely know. Funerals are true events of giving and taking.
At each funeral people donate money to help share in the costs for the bereaved
family while the family treats them to food, drinks and music. These ceremonies, that
often last three days, contrast sharply with the moderate gatherings of just thirty years
ago when people gathered to mourn and fast at a funeral. Migration plays an
important role in this development. Since the 1980s Ghana has seen a sharp increase
in the amount of migrants going to developed countries to earn a living. These
migrants often send remittances for the purposes of financing, wholly or partially,
funerals of important family members. Virtually all people interviewed about this
subject concur in saying that families with migrants overseas generally organize
larger and more lavish funerals than those families without a migrant.

An entire funeral industry has sprung up as people spend on beautiful obituaries in

newspapers, making funeral announcements on FM stations, preserving bodies for
prolonged periods in mortuaries, using live bands for entertaining guests and making
T-shirts and other souvenirs for people to remember the deceased by. A growing
number of people find employment in this ‘funeral industry’ as coffin makers,
printers, body decorators, caterers undertakers or video men; or they start rental
services for chairs, canopies and sound systems. Even sectors not directly related such
as construction profit from funerals as homes are often renovated to host a funeral.

Funeral discourses
A discourse exists in Ghana in which the lavish and ostentatious spending on funerals
is criticized especially within the context of the daily struggle for basic necessities of
many Ghanaians. It is remarked with great irony that people seem to like the dead
than more than the living (Kabki et al. 2004). Government, the traditional leader, the
Asantehene, and the church have publicly condemned large funerals and encourage
people to use money more productively such as for the education of the children or
grandchildren of the deceased.

Newspaper articles regularly discuss this issue. Articles titled: “Why expensive
funerals?” (The Mirror, 17 January 2004) and “ ‘Modernization’ of funerals: Is it a
plus or minus?” (Daily Graphic, 26 August 2003) question current funeral practices
which have come to stand for a level of lavishness at funerals ‘out of respect for the
deceased’, when the deceased may have never encountered such luxury and attention
in his or her lifetime. These articles criticize funerals for indebting those closely
involved and suggest that money spent on funerals would be better spent on health,
education and other needs.

The Asante traditional ruler has proposed standardizing funerals in an attempt to curb
funeral spending:

“Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the Asantehene, has tasked the Asanteman Council to
work out standardized funeral performance in Ashanti…Otumfuo Osei Tutu
said the performance of very expensive funerals that had become the order of
the day was a source of great concern to him. He said families spent huge sums

3
 of money on funerals to the neglect of the education of their children and said
this state of affairs should not be allowed to continue. The Asantehene
therefore, warned that anybody who would flout the law when it came into
operation would be severely dealt with.” (GRI Newsreel, 2003)

Articles, such as those quoted above, make direct comparisons between investing in
education or health versus spending on funerals. A parallel debate exists in
development related literature with regards to the ‘consumptive’ versus ‘productive’
use of resources. It is argued that funerals are consumptive activities and the
resources (money, time) invested in such social events are better invested in
‘productive’ activities such as businesses and farming (Tiemoko 2003:1, Black et al
2003:4). Some anthropological literature negatively describes the contemporary
process of commercialisation of funerals as driven by opportunists cashing in on
death (Aborampah 1999, Arhin 1994).

Many migrants we have spoken to agree with the criticism on lavish funerals
especially as the financial burden of funerals primarily falls on them. However, when
it comes their turn to organize a funeral for an important family member, it is
difficult, if not impossible for them to renege on their responsibility and they
succumb to the pressure and expectations that are on them. As we will show, the
funeral analyzed in this paper is no exception.

Migrants’ involvement in funerals

“You see, […] when you are young, everybody don’t want to live in the village,
but when you are old, they do come back there.” (Okyeame, interview
Amsterdam, 13 December 2003)

Funerals are important homecoming events for those who reside outside the village,
and those who can afford to come home only once or twice a year do so during
funerals rather than during any other occasion. Indeed for this funeral, most family
members in Accra and abroad did not come home for Christmas 2003 nor Easter
2004, two typical moments when migrants visit their hometown, in order to attend the
funeral in January.

But why should those who leave the village continue to come back for funerals and
especially why do overseas migrants continue to play an important financial role in
funerals? As Okyeame explained, no matter where people migrate, they want to come
back to their hometown and ultimately be buried there. In Ayiase, for example, the
first migrant who left in 1961 came back after 42 years to retire in the home he built
in Ayiase. Kate and Venus, migrants involved in this particular funeral, are both in
the process of building their own or their family home in Ayiase. However, in order
to be well-received in one’s hometown and to ultimately have the funeral of family
members there, one has to have the approval of the village elders. These elders look at
one’s past contribution and attendance at funerals in the village. If it is judged
unsatisfactory, the elders will decide on the fee to be paid before the funeral
ceremony can be held in the village. The contributions and attendance of village
members was possible to oversee in the past, but increasing migration and people
going further away for longer periods, made it difficult for many to be physically
present at funerals, and for those who remained behind to oversee the flows of people
and money.

4
In 1997, the village thus set up a system now typical of villages in the Ashanti
Region, of keeping track of people’s donations to funerals. This is done by recording
fixed funeral donations in special funeral donation cards which every adult and
employed village citizen holds, both those actually living in the village and those
outside. All donations of the village together generate about 25 Euro per funeral. Ten
percent is meant for community projects and 90 percent is given to the bereaved
family if that family has paid all its development dues and funeral donations to
funerals of other families in the past. Any default amount is deducted from the 25
Euros before it is given to the family.

At present every employed person of 18 and above is supposed to have a card and pay
his or her dues. In practice only about 500 of the 1700 people who are supposed to
have a card actually hold one. Although this shows that there is some voluntary
element in this system a strong sanction is in place in the form of the above
mentioned subtraction of default dues that can at times be considerable amounts when
years of default payments must be repaid.

Ayiase citizens in Accra have formed a hometown organization that pools together
resources to help members pay for specific funeral costs of funerals in their respective
families. A similar format doest not exist in Amsterdam, simply because there are not
enough people to make it work effectively. In Ayiase itself it is not heard of that
villagers set up any kind of fund for funeral costs. When the time is there they
normally try to collect enough money to pay all costs by which the villagers normally
rely on those outside to defray the bulk of the debts. This appears to be an unwritten
rule for those who have left the village.

A brief description of the funeral

A funeral typically consists of five important moments or events. The one-week
ceremony is when the family comes together one week after the death to decide when
the funeral will be celebrated, the costs involved and the main organizers. Second is
the ‘40-days’ ceremony in which a successor to the deceased is officially announced.
Third is the funeral itself, which consists of the laying-in-state on Friday, the burial
on Saturday and the church service on Sunday. Fourth is the closing of accounts when
the family gets together to assess how much was spent and how much was received in
donations. If there is a debt, it is decided who will carry the burden, if there is a profit,
it is decided how it is distributed. Fifth is the one-year celebration that draws an
official end to the mourning period. In this article, we cover the first four moments of
a funeral because the last has yet to occur. In this case, the 40-day ceremony was
incorporated into the three-day funeral weekend because of a local ban on the 40 day
celebrations.

The deceased, Akua, was 52 years when she passed away in November 2003. Her
funeral contained all elements of a typical Akan funeral (see Box 1 for a timeline of
events). In the hometown the traditional one-week meeting was held on the 16th of
November, exactly one week after the death of the deceased. This was a big event to
which not only the family but indeed most of the village came. As custom would have
it they not only spent money on drinks to cater for these people who came to pay their
respects to the family, but were also given some donations, including six crates of
minerals and beer and many bottles of Schnapps, which they could then distribute
amongst those attending. This meeting is thus a moment of paying one’s respect to
the deceased, or as Akwasi put it: “This is what we call the first funeral, as it is an
occasion to be able to mourn the dead person.”

5
The funeral itself included a beautiful coffin, many guests in expensive black cloth,
intense wailing at the sight of the body, ornate decorations at the laying-in-state
ceremony, food and drinks and live music and dancing. At the church thanksgiving
service on the following day, some sixty family members could be seen wearing a
particular kind of cloth which had been designed into all kinds of dresses and shirts or
worn by the men in the traditional manner; draped around the body. Donations made
throughout, the largest of which were announced on a loudspeaker. After the funeral,
the family came together for the closing of accounts meeting during which it was
decided that the migrants would take the largest share of the debt. After the funeral
people talked with much approval of how well everything went but hidden amongst
the praise were also some complaints.

In other respects this funeral was not a typical one for the small rural village in which
it was held. The deceased was a prosperous trader, part of the village’s royal clan
(meaning that a male and female member of her clan are the traditional village
leaders), and her extended family has 10 migrants overseas some of whom she helped
to migrate. Her funeral thus represents a relatively grand one by the standards of this
rural village. However, it would be considered average to small for the standards of
the semi-urban towns that are common in the Ashanti Region as well as for the
standards of the regional capital Kumasi. Aside from these size considerations, it is
important to note that the funeral took place in a rural hometown. Were the hometown
an urban context such as Kumasi or a semi-urban context such as Mampong or
Offinso, then the rural effects of funerals that we will note with this particular funeral
would not apply. In general, we can conclude after attending ten funerals in rural,
semi-urban and urban contexts, and based on our local assistants’ observations, that
the dynamics of this funeral represent some general trends occurring within Akan
funerals. We therefore use this case study to analyze these dynamics.

The village where the funeral took place has 3,000 inhabitants (Ghana Statistical
Service 2000) and is small compared to semi-urban communities like Mampong
(32,000 inhabitants) and Offinso (13,000 inhabitants). It does not have electricity and
is 10 km. off of a tarred road. It is thus an average sized rural village quite typical for
the Ashanti Region. A 2004 population count indicates that 73 village members are
residing abroad, which gives this fairly remote village a considerable representation
worldwide. Ayiase is among the leading cocoa producing communities in the district,
but apart from farming and small scale trading there is not much employment for its
youth. Many youth thus leave to cities like Kumasi and Accra or migrate overseas.
The first migrant to a developed country to leave the village went to Germany in
1961. Partly through chain migration subsequent migrants went to UK, The
Netherlands, Canada, USA, and other European countries.

The funeral was a large event for the otherwise quiet village. In the nights it was
impossible to sleep with loud music from hired speakers and people shouting and
drinking. Temporary street lights powered by a borrowed generator put the streets in
abundant lights during the evenings which people immensely enjoyed. A hired
television and video recorder provided rare entertainment for young and old,
especially in the days before the funeral. The chaotic nights tempted some youngsters
to indulge in promiscuous behavior and in daylight most guests made sure they were
seen in their fancy clothes and attracted attention by showing their dancing skills.

6
The funeral was announced through 100 posters fixed on walls in strategic places in
Accra, Kumasi, Ayiase and more than twenty different villages in the vicinity. One-
hundred funeral invitations were distributed to guests, but most of them as a formality
on the day of the funeral itself. The main way of informing people was personal visits
by family members –sometimes accompanied with a bottle of schnapps if it
concerned a prominent person- and phone calls to those who are beyond traveling
distance. Not a single invitation card was sent by post. A radio announcement was
made on a local FM station in Kumasi, a few days prior to the funeral, which was an
effective way of informing those locals who had not yet heard the news, because
almost every household has a small radio. A negligible amount was spent on a tiny
newspaper announcement in the leading national paper. In effect for informing local
people a total of 300 Euros was spent on printed and radio announcements and
personal visits, and another 300 Euros on communication between the family in
Ghana and those overseas.

The funeral attracted more than 1000 guests besides the family members, of which
100 from Accra, 200 from Kumasi, and the rest from Ayiase and its surrounding
villages. Two sisters of the deceased came from overseas purposely for the funeral
while some other migrants, who happened to be in the country, also attended, among
them one from Belgium, one from Italy and a few friends of the two sister migrants
from The Netherlands. Representatives came from the churches the deceased had
attended in Accra. Others came on behalf of a church she had attended in Kumasi.
Furthermore many friends and colleagues of various family members also came.

The actors
Figure 1 shows a genealogy of the deceased’s family and indicates the main
organizers of the funeral as well as those members interviewed by us. Akwasi and
Kofi are the main organizers in Accra, Kate was the main organizer in Amsterdam
and Bill was the main organizer in Ayiase.

Two things are important to note for this paper. First is that at a certain point in the
history of this family a husband and wife of relative prosperity went to live in Kumasi
and reduced their contacts with their Ayiase family. They were perceived by the rest
of the family as having “broken away”. When the husband died, this branch, called
“the Kumasi people”, became poor again. Yet they have remained in Kumasi to this
day. Akua helped these people during her lifetime.

A second important element is that the first family member to migrate overseas was
Venus who subsequently helped Kate and Lucia to migrate who in turn partially or
wholly financed the rest to migrate. Akua is thus seen as the initiator of this whole
migration process, as Venus also made clear in her public speech during the funeral.

IV. The practice of a transnational funeral: finances, decisions and co-ordination

across national borders

In this section we look at the inner workings of the funeral with particular attention to
transnational elements. We ask what dynamics come into play when decisions have to
be made, coordinated and carried out over large distances. We also look in detail into
the money flows of the funeral to determine to which sectors and geographic
locations the money was allocated.

7
The way in which money flows is strongly influenced by the decisions taken by the
family. Who decides and who is responsible for carrying out decisions has a large
influence on how much money gets spent, how and in which local economy it feeds
into. In this funeral should the decision have been taken that the body be preserved in
Kumasi, the printing and the cultural groups be bought in Kumasi and labor for the
house renovation be recruited locally, the money flows would have been different.
Instead, these services were chosen by Accra family members who felt Accra could
provide higher quality and therefore the money flowed into the Accra economy. In
this section we will first look at the way communication flows when some of the
organizers of the funeral are overseas. In a second section we look at the financial
flows of the funeral and in which geographic location the money was spent through a
multiplier analysis. Subsequently, we look at the actors and the decisions that
influenced these flows. Migrants from overseas played an important role in financing
the funeral. In a final section we look at the burden and the benefits of such a funeral
for migrants.

Communication
The communication of Akua ’s death within the extended family shows that distance
does not determine when information is received. Rather economic considerations,
along with tradition, seem to guide who receives information first and who
disseminates the information. Figure 2 shows the flow of the news that Akua died.
The news had made the full round in approximately one week.

Akua’s daughter was with her at the time of her death. The daughter followed
tradition by first informing the eldest maternal uncle, Akwasi. He, in turn, informed
his nephew, Kofi, owner of a communication center, as he was judged best placed to
spread the news. In fact, Kofi’s business was not going well so he ended up using his
mobile phone to make these calls. Again, the first to be called overseas was the eldest
half-sister of the deceased, Comfort, who was asked, given her higher economic
standing, to inform the rest of the migrants. The sister was too distraught by the
information and asked her son, Edward, to make the calls. When Amsterdam-based
migrant, Okyeame, found out about the death of Akua he knew that his brother and
sister in Kumasi would not have yet heard the news because tradition dictates that the
village should be the first to be informed, but he could not resist calling them as they
are his closest siblings. Furthermore, Okyeame called his prospective fiancé to tell her
of the news and ensure that she would go to the funeral.

Those in Kumasi who received the news on the same day as the death, however, were
instructed not to inform the family in Ayiase yet. Because of their physical proximity
to the village they could have passed on the information much faster than those from
Accra, but the family in Accra did not want the news to reach the village in a
roundabout way as only someone from Accra could tell them about the details of the
death and the decisions that had already been taken. It was thus only the next day that
the news reached Ayiase, brought personally by Yankson, a younger brother of the
deceased. Upon arrival in the village he did not tell the family immediately, but
following Akan tradition he waited until they had taken their evening meals before he
disclosed the sad news.

As we can see from this flow of information, economic status played an important
role in the order in which news spread. Okyeame explains why this is so:

8
 “The time I heard, I just started to call people. I say, ‘you heard what has
happened?’ They said ‘no’. Nobody told me they heard it. Because it just
happened in the morning... so they [the family in Accra] just came out and
they called. Because that time they need money, so they have to call. [...] It’s a
money matter.” (interview Amsterdam, 13 December 2003).

Okyeame’s comment points to two important issues. Firstly, for the family in Accra
to be able to keep the body of Akua in the mortuary until they were able to perform
the funeral, they needed to pay an advance of a few hundred Euros. As none of the
Accra family members were in a position to pay this amount they had phoned those in
Amsterdam. The call had been not only to notify them of the death of Akua, but also
to ask them to remit about four hundred Euros to pay for the morgue. Secondly,
because the family in Amsterdam has more money and because telephone fees in The
Netherlands are lower than in Ghana, they were able to notify other family members
in Ghana of the death of their ‘sister’ before those in Accra.

Finances
The funeral was officially declared to have cost 3,000 Euros of which 1,700 Euros
was received back through donations from local family members, villagers and other
guests who attended the funeral4. The debt of 1,300 Euros was defrayed with money
that the two migrants brought from their relatives abroad. In addition to that 1,100
Euros were spent on funeral related items, which were also financed by the family
abroad. The migrants themselves spent another 2,050 Euros on telecommunication,
flight tickets and their own funeral gathering prior to the real funeral. This means that
an estimated 6,150 Euros was spent on funeral related costs.

Table 1 presents a multiplier analysis of funeral spending by tracing how the money
was used. This is not an exhaustive list of expenditures given the wide variety of
people spending on the funeral. Even the organizers themselves, no matter how
meticulous in recording expenditures, were not able to avoid disagreements between
different estimates of expenditures. However, having researchers in the four most
important locations where family members were located gave us unique coverage of
the largest expenditures and some of the smaller ones. From Table 1 we can see that
almost 40% of money spent on the funeral went into the Accra economy, almost 15%
into Kumasi and the village each, and about 30% went to Amsterdam and the rest of
the world through national and multinational companies such as KLM, Guinness,
calling companies and the like. The money that flowed into the Accra and Kumasi
economy supported various businesses such as construction, coffin makers,
undertakers and printing presses. The cultural industry also receives large inputs from
funeral spending. In our study of 30 transnational networks (135 people) we came
across film and television production studios that started as funeral video services as
well as graphic designers who were able to begin a business by designing cards and
souvenirs for funerals. Funeral performances are also a way for local musicians to
begin their careers.

4
On the day of Akua’s funeral two other funerals were celebrated in nearby villages. Because of local
obligations to attend village funerals people from these two towns were forced to be in their villages
during the day, so that they were only able to come during the wake keeping ceremony in the night
before the funeral. If it weren’t for these two funerals the amount of donations would surely have been
higher.

9
The amount spent in the village was less relative to Accra but the effects were
nonetheless great. Food and drinks consumed amounted to an unprecedented turnover
in this small village where business does not normally ‘move’ fast. All chop bars and
all drinking places reported a record turnover during Akua’s funeral. One chop bar
recorded receipts of 100 Euro in a single day, or four times the monthly wage of a full
time laborer in the village. Provision stores on the other hand saw no increase in sales,
but rather a small decline because it is not fitting for villagers and guests to go
shopping during funerals. Some of the owners did not even open their shops during
the funeral.

Private villagers also derive benefits from the funeral as they cook and provide
lodging for invited guests. Other beneficiaries were family members of another
deceased person in the village. On the same day and at the same market square
another funeral was celebrated of a local woman who had died before Akua. Her body
had not been preserved in a mortuary, which made that funeral a lot cheaper for her
family. Her funeral was originally planned for the week after, but because local laws
only allow funerals to be held on one single day per month and Akua’s preservation
in the mortuary was becoming costly, Akua’s family pleaded with the family of the
other funeral to combine the two so that Akua’s funeral could go ahead according to
the wish of the migrants. This led to immense windfall profits for the other family as
they could make use of the rented chairs, music, and canopy for free and because of
the large number of guests to Akua’s funeral they also received many more donations.
Their accounts and donations were not announced publicly, but it is very probable
that they received more money in donations than they spent on the funeral.

At the community level the church also benefited from Akua’s funeral. During the
thanksgiving service held on the last day of the funeral, an amount of 90 Euros was
collected by the Ayiase branch of the Church of Pentecost of which 50 Euros was
meant for the construction of a new church building. The church had donated 20 Euro
to the funeral, thus giving it a 70 Euro profit. This is equivalent to 30% of its yearly
earnings from harvests5.

In summary this analysis shows that this funeral mostly fed into the local economy of
the village where it was held and that of the city of Accra. This indicates a more
general pattern of funerals held in the Ashanti Region, which feed into the local
economy of where they are held and that of Accra or the regional capital Kumasi,
depending on the location of the family members and the decisions taken by them
Funeral spending supports various businesses and acts as feeder money for the
cultural industry. A large portion of expenses for funerals with migrants overseas also
accrue to multinational companies such as airline and calling companies.

Decisions
What were the important decisions taken regarding how the funeral ceremony was
practiced and who made them? Funerals in Akan custom are an extended family affair
in which there is much consultation among members and in which certain people are
expected to take a leading role. The one-week ceremony is the time when the family
officially comes together to make decisions regarding the date of the funeral, the
finances and who will carry out which tasks. However, in our case study, many
decisions had already been made in Accra and Amsterdam prior to that date. There


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10
were urgent matters to solve such as whether to put the body in a morgue and if so,
which one. They would also need to pay for a good doctor to check periodically if the
body was being preserved well, and to be able to rent a bus to take the family to the
hometown for the one-week meeting. These matters were all communicated between
Akwasi and the Amsterdam family. Akwasi arranged a meeting on Wednesday before
the one-week meeting to discuss these details with the family members in Accra. The
Amsterdam-based migrants called during that meeting to voice their opinions to
Akwasi regarding the location, date and kind of funeral. Much communication went
back and forth between Akwasi and Kofi in Accra and Kate in Amsterdam during
which Kate let them know that she and Venus would be coming for the funeral. Kate
had been planning on traveling to Ghana at Easter and hastening her trip created
difficulties for her. She needed to raise the necessary money for the funeral and also
to arrange the last documents to obtain her staying permit in Belgium. Before then she
would not be able to travel. Akwasi also needed time to organize the different
elements of a proper funeral. Having weighed these considerations against the costs
of the mortuary, they decided January would be an appropriate time for the funeral.
Akwasi also made clear to Kate that they needed money right away for the mortuary,
transport to Ayiase and drinks to be offered at the one-week ceremony.

Kate raised 1,000 Euro for these expenses amongst the migrants in The Netherlands,
Italy and Germany, although most of the money was her own. Various family
members in The Netherlands do not have well-paying jobs, others are unemployed.
She, on the other hand, earns between 1,000 and 1,300 Euros per month cleaning
private homes. With this salary she maintains herself and the unemployed migrants
and often contributes to larger expenses that the migrants may incur (such as lawyer
fees, visa fees, costs of a marriage to obtain a staying permit, etc.). Venus, the other
sister who came from Amsterdam to attend the funeral, is unemployed and incurred
large debts with Ghanaian friends in Amsterdam in her efforts to raise money for her
airplane ticket and funeral contributions.

After these exchanges between Akwasi and Comfort, an Accra delegation arrived at
the village for the one-week ceremony during which the traditional leaders were
informed of their decisions. The leaders then checked which date would agree with
tradition and, after being presented with traditional drinks, agreed to the date.

The decision as to who would be the chief organizer in the hometown was taken by
the Queen Mother of the village who was also the aunt to the deceased. At the one-
week meeting it became clear that neither Akwasi (as family elder), nor Kofi (as the
eldest brother to Akua) would be able to be present in the village during the weeks
prior to the funeral to arrange all necessary things. The Queen Mother, having already
realized this prior to the meeting, had decided to appoint Bill, the linguist and part of
the royal clan, as the village-based organizer. However her (and Akwasi’s) younger
brother Basil (who normally lives in Accra) would have also been a good alternative
for this role, as he was also going to be in the village for a number of weeks to
supervise the house repairs. Nonetheless, the Queen Mother’s preference for Bill as
village organizer was clear and this was not contested when she proposed this.

While the migrants sent the money, they could not oversee the tasks. They sent
money to Akwasi who delegated the practical arrangements to Kofi: phone calls,
printing of invitations, color obituaries and paper brooches. Akwasi chose Kofi
because he is an able young man who momentarily had some time on his hands,
unlike himself. The other person eligible to organize such things was Ben, Akwasi’s

11
younger brother. However he had already gone to the village by early January to
supervise the repairs to the house of Akua so that it could be used to welcome and
accommodate many visitors. Therefore Kofi was the most suitable person to conduct
these preparations.

When the sisters arrived from Amsterdam to Accra with more money, again, they
gave it to Akwasi. This was part of a conscious strategy not to be overwhelmed by
requests for money from all sides. If people needed money they had to go to Akwasi
who would allocate it according to plan and register all expenditures. Okyeame
explains this strategy:

“We don’t want to separate the money. The other day, I tell Kate, they say, you
have to give this money to this, you have to give, I say no, that’s impossible,
because the family is big... because now, what is happening, everybody must be
forced. We are here, we are struggling, you understand? So if we do things
easily, they think here it’s easy. You have to give the money to one specific
person, Akwasi, he is the senior in the family now. So is Kofi, they are working
together. So if Kofi needs something he asks Akwasi, then they write. If my
mother [the Queen Mother] needs something, they have to give it to her, then
they write. Because if we separate the money, they will want more money.”
(interview Amsterdam, 14 November 2003)

These decisions did not go without contestation. In the hometown the family saw it as
a ‘financial problem’ that Kate had left the money in Accra instead of bringing it to
the hometown. First, regarding the printing of obituary posters some discussion arose
at the one-week meeting in the hometown as those there felt that funeral expenses
were being made unnecessarily high with colored obituary posters and other things
being printed in Accra. A local person would be able to make a nice obituary poster in
black and white print. This is actually quite normal for a village funeral. However
those from Accra felt it would show little sign of the respect and gratitude that they
wanted and needed to give to Akua for the role she had played in their lives, for the
support she had given them. Hence it was decided that Ben, the brother to Akwasi,
and Kofi, would arrange for the design and printing of colored obituary posters, paper
brooches and invitations in Accra.

Second, in the village, the family felt that money was being ‘misused’, as those in
Accra had spent too much on the renovation of Akua’s house by bringing painters and
laborers from Accra to do the renovation. Furthermore, those in the hometown felt
that Kofi could not completely account for all the expenses he had made. Kofi
defended this position by explaining that he had even spent around 60 Euros of his
own, which were his last savings, towards funeral expenses, especially to provide the
necessary hospitality to people passing by at the house of Akua while he was in the
hometown. Given the losses they had made he had decided not to declare these
expenses at the ‘closing of accounts’ meeting, even though others had done this.

A number of people were displeased with the invitations made in Accra. According to
Bill, Kate and Venus were not happy with the fact that their names were not
mentioned on the invitation. Yet, according to him, they had ‘kept quiet’ not to cause
any trouble. However, when even the widower’s name did not appear on the card Bill
became unhappy with the invitation, especially as he claimed to have instructed Kofi
to print the invitation on both sides to provide enough space for all names. In his
opinion the absence of the names of those abroad was shameful for them: “If

12
someone asks them why their names were not on the invitation card of their own
relative, they cannot defend themselves.”

The key decisions recounted here show that the large distances between extended
family members did not impede those members from fulfilling their traditional roles.
However, which members took on a leading role, how the money was allocated and
where, were largely determined by economic considerations. Kate played an
important role because she was the eldest sister abroad and thus was the largest
“funder” of the funeral. Urban based members of the extended family had a more
prominent role than rural based members because money transfer agencies and
telephone communication are located there and not in the rural villages and because
the city offers many of the services needed for funerals. This in turn led to the fact
that funeral expenses went predominantly to benefit the Accra economy.

Contestations, part of a normal process around funerals, may be accentuated by large

distances. Communication through the telephone is not foolproof and some
misunderstandings can arise such as in the case of the “forgotten” names on the
announcement. Migrant involvement in funerals also means more money and
primarily from one source, the migrants. This gives more room for misuse of money
and, as will be seen in the next section, for feelings of being used.

Closing of accounts
Funerals can end with a financial profit or a loss for the bereaved family. This funeral
ended up with a loss, as the migrants in Amsterdam had anticipated. Okyeame
explained that the funeral would be big because their ‘sister’ was an important person
and the, the migrants, were there to finance it. On the other hand, the funeral was
being conducted in the village where most donations would be small.

During the closing of accounts meeting held on the Tuesday after the funeral the debt
was confirmed. Although most present described it as a harmonious meeting, some of
our respondents recounted some tense moments. The debt amounted to 1,500 Euros
even after some additional donations were collected on Monday6. According to Kofi
not only he but also the ‘Kumasi people’ expressed their anger at Bill for buying so
much food and drinks when not all of this had really been necessary to satisfy all the
guests. They felt that the funeral had hereby become unnecessarily expensive
explaining the loss they had now made. (interview Accra, 9 February 2004)

Venus complained about the way money was “misused” in the hometown: “Some of
them say they have bought this, or that, but they just take our money. Or they buy
much more than necessary...Because we are in Holland, they think we are rich. They
just spend the money and think we will pay.” (interview Accra, 8 February 2004).
From the side of the family in the hometown it was felt that especially the family in
Accra had made unnecessary and at times non-specified expenses. Hence all parties to
this funeral felt that ‘others’ had misused the available money. Luckily Kate is at a
stage in her life-cycle where she could afford the debt. She is around 55 years old and
her children are adult and most can support themselves. She is only paying for the
university fees of her youngest son. She therefore accepted to take on the burden of
the debt in order to pacify the family.


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13
What has Kate gotten from all this? She has a large debt, she inherited a large
responsibility and obtained a lot of respect from her fellow villagers. Comfort’s debt
is larger than the official 1,500 Euro debt because she did not receive any of the
donation money to repay expenses she had made on the funeral. She also inherited a
large responsibility. Being the eldest sister, Kate is the successor to Akua according to
custom7. As such she is in charge of the distribution of the possessions of the
deceased after one year and also takes responsibility over the welfare of the children
of the deceased. In fact Akua had already succeeded her elder sister (part of ‘the
Kumasi people’), who had died six years before, and whose children she had
supported since then. Thus Comfort’s role would be not only to support the direct
children of Akua, of whom one was still in school, but also to provide the necessary
support to the children of the first sister who had died. It is for this reason that, even
before leaving for Ghana from The Netherlands, she had started arranging papers for
one of these children to come to join the family in The Netherlands. This is likely to
be Ringo, a young man currently working as a hawker in Accra. He explained that it
was likely that before the end of the year he would be going to Amsterdam and that
his trip would be sponsored by Comfort. By taking on the debt, Kate has gained the
respect of many of her fellow villagers.

What has Venus gained from her efforts at the funeral? Venus’s case is less clear than
that of Kate because at 38 years of age, she has not yet borne a child, which is
generally regarded as problematic in the village. This tarnishes the respect she has
gained by paying part of the funeral debt. In Amsterdam, Venus is now indebted to
various friends whom she most likely will not be able to call upon for help until she
has made some attempt to clear her debts. This will not happen soon as she is still
unemployed, suffering the consequences of a slow Dutch economy.

Okyeame used the funeral as an occasion to investigate the “marriageability” of the

woman he had been courting (the prospective fiancé in the communication flow
diagram). He instructed his sister in Kumasi to “ask around” in the village as to her
background and eligibility according to custom. The research turned out negative.
Okyeame greatly appreciated the service as it prevented him from committing a
“grave error”. This shows that the element of funerals observed by De Witte (2001) at
the local level of funerals acting as wedding markets, can also take on a transnational
component.

V. Conclusions

In many cultures where funerals are an important rite, such as with the Akan
presented in this paper, funerals are becoming a multi-sited phenomenon.
Increasingly, with more people migrating to developed countries and with
communication technologies making it easy to communicate over large distances,
family members abroad spend large amounts of money to finance funerals and they
play significant roles in determining how the funeral is practiced. In this paper we
have studied a transnational network of actors involved in planning and carrying out a
funeral in order to give a face to what is anonymously referred to in the literature as
globalizing trends. Our transnational focus called for a simultaneous, multi-sited


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14
research methodology in which different nodes of a network were studied
contemporaneously.

While migrants play an active role in funerals back home these funerals are, at the
same time, an event through which people at home can keep migrants actively
engaged in their community. Lack of participation is sanctioned financially, but also
through a loss of respect. The fact that most Ghanaian migrants want to return to
Ghana and ultimately have their own funerals there, make these sanctions an effective
way to keep migrants interested and active in their home community.

In Ghana both government and traditional authorities engage in an active discourse

against lavish funeral spending. Many Ghanaian migrants spoken to in the
Netherlands concur with the discourse and point to the burden that falls on them as
primary financers of funerals. However, when an important family member passes
away, virtually no migrant will seek to escape his or her responsibilities.

This paper analyzed the transnational dynamics of a funeral by first tracing the
communication flows. This analysis showed that economic considerations rather than
geographical proximity determined who received information first. Furthermore, it
was the migrants in Amsterdam who did most of the dissemination of information to
the different parts of the network. Migrants, as well as the urban and rural members of
the network, were involved in making decisions regarding the date of the funeral,
amounts of money to spend and how the money was spent. However, while migrants
played a crucial role in determining when the funeral should be held and how much
money to send back home, they had much less control of how the money was spent.

The analysis of monetary flows shows that money primarily went to an urban
economy. This urban bias is due to the fact that telephone communication, money
transfer agencies and funeral related services such as a mortuary are not available in a
rural context. This meant that an urban network member was made coordinator,
which in turn led to many urban-based services being chosen that could have been
found in the rural context, such as laborers. The multiplier analysis showed that
funeral spending supports the cultural industry as well as other funeral-related
businesses. When migrants are involved in funerals, international and multinational
companies also benefit. At the village level, funerals spending provided personal
profits for individuals and small scale businesses, paid for the renovation of homes
and supported a local church.

These findings have three research and policy implications. First, this study has
shown that funerals can be a highly transnational phenomenon. The inflows, i.e.
decisions, co-ordination and financing of funerals involve diverse locations of the
globe while the outflows, i.e. where the money goes to, also go to diverse localities
and economic sectors. The large multiplier effects of funerals makes them occasions
of redistribution and re-channeling of resources and affiliations around the globe.
Thus both from an anthropological interest in the practice of funerals, as from an
economic interest in the financial flows, there is reason to call for a transnational
approach to the study of funerals. Different localities need to be studied in order to
understand how transnational flows of people, money and ideas affect the practice
and the finances of funerals.

A second implication of this study is that funerals should not be seen as wasteful,
consumptive activities because money flows associated with funerals lead to growth

15
in diverse sectors of the Ghanaian economy in both rural and urban contexts, although
the latter is favored. The cultural industry in the form of video makers, musicians and
graphic artists receives a great impetus from funeral spending and would otherwise
not be as large. Other businesses are also supported such as coffin makers,
undertakers, furniture rentals and the like. This implies that studies looking at the
benefits of migrant remittances for home countries should take this productive
element into consideration rather than discard it as consumptive spending. Large
portions of migrant remittances go to finance funerals. To thus omit funeral spending
from remittance studies may severely under-estimate the positive impact of
remittances on the home country economy. This does not, however, disqualify the
criticism made of funerals (Aborampah 1999, Ahrin 1994) of creating large financial
burdens for certain people within the family. In the case of transnational funerals that
end with a debt, the burden mostly falls on migrants, some of whom are financially
successful enough to finance the debt without problems, others of whom struggle to
make ends meet. For the latter a funeral constitutes a serious income shock.

A practical policy implication that stems from this regards the channeling of funeral
spending. In policy discourse (and also in production-oriented academic literature) the
image of the funeral as wasteful spending dominates. However, given the cultural
importance of Akan funerals and the respect that is to be gained by the organizers of a
grand funeral, it is unlikely that any attempt to curb funeral spending will succeed.
The results of this study instead show that funerals have a productive element and
therefore lead us to conclude that policy should be aimed at channeling the spending
into sectors of the economy it wants to support rather than aiming to curb funeral
spending. For example, often the discourse juxtaposes lavish spending with the need
for education for the children and grandchildren of the deceased. One policy option to
be explored would be to facilitate the establishment of education investment funds
and link these with funeral ceremonies through, for example, a strong public element
in which donors would be recognized publicly during the funeral ceremony, thus
taking care of the respect element. The fund could then offer reduced rates for certain
services used for funerals in proportion to how much was put in the fund.

References

Aborampah, O.M. 1999. Women’s roles in the mourning rituals of the Akan of
Ghana. Ethnology. 38 (3): 257-271.

Adzigodie, I. 2004. Why expensive funerals? The Mirror, 17 January 2004.

Arhin, K. 1994. The economic implications of transformations in Akan funeral rites.

Africa. 64 (3): 307-322.

Black, R., King, R. and R. Tiemoko 2003. Migration, return and the small enterprise
development in Ghana: a route out of poverty? Paper presented at International
Workshop on Migration and Poverty in West Africa, March 13-14, 2003. Brighton:
University of Sussex.

Bloch M. and J. Parry (eds.) 1982. Death and the regeneration of life. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Burawoy, M. 2000. Introduction: reaching for the global. In M. Burawoy, J. Blum, S.

George, Z. Gille, T. Gowan, L. Haney, M. Klawiter, S. Lopez, S. O’Riain, M. Thayer

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Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections and Imaginations in a Postmodern World.
Berkeley: University of California Press.

De Witte, M. 2001. Long live the dead! Changing funeral celebrations in Asante,
Ghana. Amsterdam: Askant Academic Publishers.

Dzandu, S. 2003. ‘Modernization’ of funerals: Is it a plus or minus? Daily Graphic,

26 August 2003.

Ghana Statistical Service 2002. Population & Housing Census 2000.

GRI Newsreel 2003. Asanteman Council to prescribe standard funeral. 22 January

2003 www.mclglobal.com/History/Jan2003/22a2003/22a3n.html.

Kabki, M., V. Mazzucato and E. Appiah 2004. Wo benan• a •y• bebree: The
Economic Impact of Remittances of Netherlands-Based Ghanaian Migrants on Rural
Ashanti. Population, Space and Place 10: 85-97.

Metcalf P. and R. Huntington 1991. Celebrations of death: The anthropology of

mortuary ritual. Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Russell, S. 1986. Remittances from international migration: A review in perspective.

World Development 14 (6): 677-696.

Taylor, E. 1999. The new economics of labour migration and the role of remittances
in the migration process. International Migration 37(1): 63-88.

Tiemoko 2003. Migration, Return and Socio-economic Change in West Africa: The
Role of family. Paper presented at International Workshop on Migration and Poverty
in West Africa, March 13-14, 2003. Brighton: University of Sussex.

Venbrux, E. 1995. A death in the Tiwi Islands. Conflict, ritual and social life in an
Australian Aboriginal community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

17
Box 1. Timeline of events.

Nov 9 2003 death of Adwoa in Accra hospital

the same day the family in The Netherlands hears the news by phone
all the family in The Netherlands come together to mourn. They raise Euro 1000
to send to Accra
Nov 10 2003 the news of Adwoa’s death reaches Ayiase, the village, by evening. It is brought
by a messenger from the Accra family
villagers come to mourn
from now up till the funeral ceremony the house of the deceased is renovated
Nov 15 2003 twenty family members from Accra and Kumasi arrive in Ayiase for the one
preparation

week-celebration
Nov 16 2003 one week celebration in Ayiase; the date of the funeral is fixed
one week celebration in Amsterdam
Nov 17 2003 the Accra and Kumasi family members return home
Nov 18 2003 the husband of the deceased come to Ayiase and leave the following day
Dec 1 2003 the messenger from Accra returns home from Ayiase
mid Dec 2003 meeting in Ayiase with family members from Accra and Kumasi to discuss
details of the funeral
Jan 12 2004 arrival in Accra of one sister of the deceased from The Netherlands
Jan 17 2004 arrival in Accra of second sister of the deceased from The Netherlands
Jan 20 2004 arrival of one of the migrant sisters in Ayiase
Jan 22 2004 arrival of the second migrant sister in Ayiase
Jan 23 2004 the body is brought to Ayiase from Accra mortuary and is laid in state during
the night
Night wake-keeping in Ayiase
Jan 24 2004 burial and funeral in Ayiase
funeral

Amsterdam migrants get together to mourn

Jan 25 2004 thanksgiving service in Pentecost Church in Ayiase
continuation of receiving funeral donations in Ayiase
Jan 26 2004 last day of receiving funeral donations in Ayiase
Jan 27 2004 closing of accounts by the family in Ayiase
Feb 4 2004 return of one migrant to Amsterdam
after

Feb 19 2004 return of the second migrant to Amsterdam

Mar 28 2004 thanksgiving ceremony in a Methodist church in Amsterdam

18
Table 1. A multiplier analysis of spending for the funeral of Akua, 2003-2004.

greater Total per

Ayiase Kumasi Accra Amsterdam sector
transport
flight tickets migrants 1,600
transportation of corpse 200
travelling Accra/Kumasi/Ayiase 100
fuel for local use 40
1,940
food/drinks
food for guests 300 300 600
beer, soft drinks, schnapps 320
drinks for ceremony in Amsterdam 150
1,670
cultural services
music/dance group 280
printing funeral announcements 200
rent of canopy, chairs, mattresses 120
video recording 100
sound system 80
780
direct burial/funeral costs
coffin 270
preservation in mortuary 260
dressing and decorating of corpse 140
670
construction
materials for house renovation 300
labour for house renovation 200
temporary covering of grave 50
550
other
communication Amsterdam-Accra 300
local costs for hospitality 130
temporary electricity in Ayiase 110
540
a b
Approximate totals per location 910 840 2,350 2,050 6,150
Source: thematic interviews and transaction study, 2003-2004.
a
Money spent in one locality often flows to other localities. We have indicated this with arrows as the
exact amounts are impossible to estimate within the context of this research.
b
Other expenses made by family members include the purchase of funeral cloth, worth approximately
990 Euros, partly in Ghana and partly outside Ghana. We are still investigating where these purchases
were made to be able to place the amount in the table.

19
 Figure 1. Genealogy of Akua’s family.

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Source: thematic interviews, 2003-2004.

20
 ACCRA

Ringo
Akua’s AYIASE
daughter Raphael KUMASI
village

Akwasi
Okyeame’s other Accra Kumasi branch
Figure 2. Communication flow diagram of the news of Akua’s death.

prospective family
fiance and Kofi
family Yankson

Timothy

Angelina

21
AMSTERDAM
Okyeame
Cate
Mary
Venus Nana Adwoa

Source: thematic interviews, 2003-2004.

Cyrille
Edward

Lucia Knowles
Titus
GERMANY U.K.
ITALY

9 November 2003 10 November 2003 11-15 November 2003