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Leisurely enjoying death 

Review by Mariske Westendorp 



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Leisure and Death: An Anthropological Tour of Risk, Death, and Dying 

Edited by Adam Kaul and Jonathan Skinner 

Louisville: University Press of Colorado, 2018 

 

Key words: (Anthropology of) death, leisure, (dark) tourism, after-life, risk 

 

Death has been a subject of study for anthropologists from the very start of the discipline. 

Being both universal (we all die one day, and almost all of us are confronted with the death of 

loved ones during our lives) and particular (the meanings we ascribe to death are cultural and 

therefore different across the world), death is one of those subjects that lends itself well for 

cross-cultural comparison. The book ‘Leisure and death: An anthropological tour of risk, 

death, and dying’ therefore stands in a long tradition of anthropological enquiry into the topic 

of death, dying and bereavement. At the same time, however, it takes a different approach 

than many of the ‘anthropology of death’ publications, as the book does not put death center 

stage, but takes death as a lens to delve into another topic, namely leisure. 

The chapters in the book are all ethnographically strong, and full of beautiful details 

and sometimes lively pictures. The editors have done well to create consistency amongst the 

chapters, and – aided by a prologue, introduction and epilogue – the book forms a coherent 

whole. The chapters are divided into four parts, enhancing the book’s structure and clarity. 

The first part concerns leisure and death on the move. Chapters are about what happens when 

a tourist dies while on holidays in Indonesia, pilgrims facing their own mortality en route to 

Santiago de Compostela, and looking death in the eye by free climbing or ‘tombstoning.’ In 

the second part, chapters on tourist encounters with the dead are gathered. Authors describe 

tourists travelling to Indonesia to make selfies with the (un)dead, to the Cliffs of Moher, 

known as suicide destination, and to the Island of Palau, where victims of World War II are 

remembered. In the third section, on sensual and authentic experiences of death, chapters deal 

with narratives of authentic ways of dealing with the dead, heritage and violence. Here, the 

concept of ‘leisure’ shows its full potential in contrast to merely being about tourism and 

travel. Contributors focus on present-day European ossuraries (sites where skeletal remains 

are put to final rest), traditional Irish music, and the enjoyments of eating endangered species. 

The final chapters are united in a section on the after-life and after-leisure, primarily dealing 

with social relations that extend beyond death. Chapters are on memorial sites on Facebook, 

gossiping about the dead in traditional Greek settings, and hanging out amongst the dead in 

English woodland cemeteries.  



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 As most of the chapters to the book attest, death and leisure at first seem contradictory, 

if not exclusive terms. Leisure is often positively associated: it is a care-free activity, 

voluntary, often planned ahead, associated with fun, happiness, relaxation and recreation.i It 

holds in itself the promise of play and activity. Death, on the other hand, is ‘serious business’ 

and characterized mostly with laying to rest. It is often negatively portrayed: it overcomes all 

of us, whether we want it or not, it often comes unexpected, and it is associated with sadness, 

grief, mourning and fear. The book therefore seems to bring together two concepts that are 

paradoxical to each other.  

However, as each chapter in the book shows, death and leisure are not as far apart as 

initially thought – especially not in the postmodern societies in which we live, characterized 

by a vast industry of death characterized by institutionalization and sanitation. Both leisure 

and death are a ‘time-out’ from our everyday lives. They are both universal features of human 

living, and, as the authors argue “what we are certain of in this volume is that leisure and 

death are the times when self and sociality are remade, reproduced, remarked upon” (2018, 

30).  

Naturally, statements such as these stand or fall with the definition of ‘leisure’ being 

applied. The types of leisure described in the chapters roughly fall into two categories. First, 

there is leisure associated with remembrance or an active engagement with the dead, such as 

people travelling to European ossuaries or to sites where war victims are commemorated. 

Second, there are leisure activities which remind us of the immanence of our own death and 

the value of embracing and celebrating life, as for example expressed by visitors to suicide 

cliffs in Ireland. But, leisure is more than merely travel. Death and its immanence are not only 

experienced in moments of ‘dark tourism,’ but also in other activities, for example involving 

food, sport, bird-watching, engaging in social media, and enjoying heritage sites.   

By discussing these different activities, the book tries to find an answer to the question 

of what we mean by ‘leisure’? By analysing death-related activities, the editors aim to rethink 

the concept. When is something ‘leisure,’ and when it is not? At the same time, reading 

through the book makes one wonder about the question and nature of death and dying. What 

exactly is ‘death’? Is it different than ‘dying’? When is somebody dead? And how do we deal 

with and give meaning to death, both collectively and individually?  

Throughout the chapters of the book, the entanglements between death and leisure 

become increasingly clear – or, rather, the concepts become more and more entangled, 

making it difficult to understand where one ends and the other begins. Moreover, what binds 

the chapters together is the strong focus on embodiment and emplacement. Leisure is seen as 



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an activity that always takes places somewhere and is done by somebody, even if it is in the 

digital realm, such as on Facebook. As the editors seem to argue, central in leisurely 

encounters with death are the deeply embodied experiences of life and death.  

The validity of this emphasis on the embodiment and emplacement of death can 

perhaps be questioned, as it could very well ‘just’ be a result of the traditional anthropological 

focus on affect, lived experience, and meaning-making. Whether other disciplines place 

similar emphasis on embodiment and emplacement might be an interesting query for future 

exploration.   

 Two other minor points of critique can be given. First, the book deals with a wide 

variety of topics, making it at times hard to understand the underlying argument or train of 

thoughts. As Jane Desmond remarks in the prologue to the book: “What this range of 

practices has in common is that somewhere in each experience is an encounter with the dead 

or with the notion of dying” (2018, x) – obviously a rather broad categorization. Second, 

while the book attempts to give a universal or global overview, it mostly deals with death-

related leisure activities in European contexts. Of the twelve ethnographic chapters, at least 

seven are from European contexts. Another three chapters deal with the Pacific. The 

introductory chapter also primarily deals with the subject matter from a Western perspective. 

Narratives from contexts in which death is not seen as endpoint (such as Chinese contexts) or 

in which the dead are very much celebrated as part of life (such as in the Mexican Día de los 

Muertos) are left behind, but could offer an interesting additional perspective on the subject 

matter.  

 Attempting to understand the concept of leisure better by researching death is an 

interesting and very valuable approach. What we learn from the book is that ‘leisure’ is a fluid 

category. As it stands, the book primarily reads as an initial exploration in the crossing fields 

of death and leisure – and perhaps as invitation for other scholars to engage with the crossing 

of these topics. For example, researching, reading and writing about death are in these 

Corona-times different than usual for death scholars like myself. Reading ‘Leisure and death’ 

in these weeks made me wonder about my own ‘leisure’ activities related to death. Could 

catching up on the news every day and keeping track on the death-ratings, thereby being daily 

confronted with the immanence of death, be regarded a leisure activity, and if so, what does 

this tell us about the position of death in our societies which seems to be more ‘in our faces’ 

than it has been for a long time? Could strolling around cemeteries (something that I normally 

do out of personal interest and as leisure activity) nowadays still be regarded as ‘leisure 

activity,’ especially when it is to witness the impact of Covid-19 on the materiality and 



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emplacement of death? Or does the increased immanence and visibility of death impact so 

much on these activities that they can no longer be considered ‘leisure’? Thinking along these 

lines made me realize the potential of ‘Leisure and death’ for more and more extensive 

discussions on the topics.  

 

Mariske Westendorp is an anthropologist and religious studies scholar. At present, she is a 

postdoc researcher in an international HERA-funded project on cemeteries and crematoria as 

public spaces of belonging in Northwest Europe, researching the inclusion and exclusion of 

minorities at European cemeteries and crematoria gardens. 

 

                                                
i Notice here the possible double word play of ‘recreation’. Related to leisure, it means to perform an activity when one is not working. 

Associated with death, it can also be read as ‘re-creation’: the re-creation of life after death, such as in religious ideas on reincarnation, or the 

re-creation (as in: re-scripting) of life after an encounter with death. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

© 2020 Mariske Westendorp  


