The accounting of deaths and the social organization of death in Brazil

Abstract

The article aims to understand the development of the way deaths are accounted for in Brazil and its influence on how we perceive death. The rationality of registration systems is analyzed, considering their role in population control. The way successive governments have created and developed these monitoring mechanisms is then investigated, considering the modernizing process through which the country has passed since the end of the nineteenth century. Finally, the arrangement of the categories on the death certificate is described, along with how, through this document, an inquisitive technology that distributes rights and duties between actors and establishes the preliminary elements for a given social organization of death works, focusing on the city of Belo Horizonte.

death; mortality; registration; biopolitics