obituaries in iranian context: an analysis based on bourdieu theory

While the primary purpose of an obituary is to announce one’s death, its content can be a source of sociological information. the main objective of this study is to analyze the obituaries in an iranian context drawing on pierre bourdieu‘s key concepts of habitus, capital, field and taste. to this end a corpus of 70 obituaries was collected from different socioeconomic areas of kermanshah, a city in western iran. the content analysis revealed 10 main themes in obituaries. this paper will draw on three of the most frequent themes of religion, title and poetry using bourdieu’s theoretical framework. the analysis of the finding unmasked hidden sociological information and stratifications in the choice of titles, poetry and religious references.