The Birth of a Multicultural Funeral Home

Abstract

In 2014, the Dutch Funeral Organization Yarden started with the participatory preparations for a multicultural funeral home. The project aims at a 24/7 service for the super-diverse population of Amsterdam and beyond. This article gives an ethnographic account of Yarden’s efforts to capture cultural diversity. It explores how a multicultural gaze creates a power/knowledge dynamic producing new discourses and shaping new layers of significance. The study then turns into arguing that the birth of the multicultural home is, above all, a cultural, collaborative search leaving (counter-discursive) space for creativity, change, and cultural renewal of all actors involved.