This paper discusses the provision of financial relief to members'
households by women-centred local institutions known as burial
societies fdiswaeti) in the event of death. In burial societies, mortality
occupies the centre stage, not as a final defeat of human effort
but as an inspiration for individual and collective responsibility.
The omnipresence of death and dying in Botswana (due to the AIDS
pandemic, social victimization, road-related carnage and so on),
does not necessarily precipitate despondency; instead it underwrites
commitments by members of burial societies to new
sensibilities and to imaginative interventions that regenerate,
rather than wear out, kin relations. By providing emergency
financial and non-financial support, burial societies find practical
ways to minimize social tensions and reduce animosity between
individuals, family and kin relations. In the burial society community
therefore, the social process of providing emergency financial
and non-financial relief is more than an instrumental task: it is a
nuanced cultural process that redefines kin and family social
relations.