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Natural deaths in extraordinary times

Research into the governance of dead bodies, primarily focused on post-conflict
 contexts, has often focused on the aspects of the management of dead bodies that
 involve routinisation, bureaucratisation and order. Less attention has been paid
 to the governance of the dead in times of relative peace and, in particular, to
 the aspects of such work that are less bureaucratised and controlled. This
 article explores the governance of dead bodies in pandemic times – times
 which although extraordinary, put stress on ordinary systems in ways that are
 revealing of power and politics. Observations for this article come from over
 fifteen years of ethnographic research at a medical examiner’s office in
 Arizona, along with ten focused interviews in 2020 with medico-legal authorities
 and funeral directors specifically about the COVID-19 pandemic. The author
 argues that the pandemic revealed the ways in which the deathcare industry in
 the United States is an unregulated, decentralised and ambiguous space.