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Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lynn Akesson, Professor Emerita of Ethnology in the Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University

The Swedish painter Margareta Magnusson died on March 12 aged 92. She became famous in 2017 for coining the smart and humorous concept of döstädning in a book known in English as The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. The book was rapidly translated into an impressive number of languages, exporting the notion of death cleaning internationally.

Death cleaning is a decluttering practice where you go through what you own and get rid of things so that, when you die, the process of sorting your affairs is easier on your loved ones.

The year the book was published, the concept found its way into the Swedish Language Council’s annual list of new words. These annual lists feature new expressions that, the council hopes, say “something about today’s society and the year that has passed”. This undoubtedly holds true for death cleaning.

While döstädning quickly became part of everyday Swedish language, the habit of cleaning out belongings before dying was not entirely new. It is, however, no coincidence that the concept appeared when it did rather than, say, in the 1950s when ordinary homes were not yet so crowded with things. The increasing need for death cleaning has to do with living in a consumer society amid an accelerating overflow of possessions.

In earlier times, the importance of setting matters right before death was more concerned with relations: with God, relatives, friends, enemies, neighbours and so forth. In a Christian context, this last rite is known as Commendation of the Dying, known also as death bed rites.

In 1734, the establishment of an estate inventory, or bouppteckning, (a comprehensive list of a deceased person’s assets, property and debts at the time of death) became mandatory in Sweden by law. Although the law was not strictly enforced in its first decades, the inventories that do exist from this time are fascinating.

These early inventories belong to a range of people, from wealthy noblemen to widows of limited means with no more possessions than a set of clothing and few kitchen utensils. Many things listed were manufactured at home, and the few items that were purchased were highly valued. In a society like this, there was no need for death cleaning in the sense of clearing out. On the contrary, objects were passed on between generations or sold at well-attended local auctions.

Death cleaning is a form creating order and tidiness, which have often come with moral narratives closely tied with them. In this, the role of death cleaning now and in the past does have something in common.

In both cases, a person’s posthumous reputation is at stake, and leaving behind an untidy home or unsolved personal matter tells an unwanted story to the living of the person who has passed. Different stories can be crafted by getting rid of belongings or leaving them in good condition to pass on. What a person’s death cleaning looks like is a matter shaped by time and culture.

In memories collected by The Folk Life Archives at Lund University of the decades around 1900, people stress the importance of well-filled cabinets and cupboards as part of an impressive estate inventory. Such bounty was also meant to elicit admiration among visitors at the local auction. At that time, it was important to demonstrate good housekeeping by displaying your possessions, the more the better. Reading The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, talking to people engaged in death cleaning and in my general work, I have seen how, nowadays, the same effect is achieved by leaving behind a minimum of things.

This change in cultural preferences naturally reflects changes in material conditions. In societies where goods are relatively easy to acquire – both in terms of cost and availability – we all have a lot more. As such, death cleaning has become a good deed. Not burdening surviving relatives with sorting through unwanted items has become an act of love and care. However, it is worth noting that the idea of death cleaning is an ideal not everybody can live up to. Many people still find it difficult to part with their belongings.

The international fascination with the Swedish art of death cleaning invites reflection on widespread fantasies of the Nordic region. Media representations of Scandinavia frequently emphasise tropes of minimalism and emotional restraint. Such framing may contribute to the global appeal of döstädning, yet risks obscuring the more complex and culturally grounded logic underpinning the practice.

Positioned within Swedish everyday life, death cleaning is less an exotic cultural curiosity and more a meaningful negotiation of material abundance, kinship responsibilities and existential reflection.

Lynn Akesson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The Swedish concept of ‘döstädning’ or death cleaning is about more than just getting rid of things – https://theconversation.com/the-swedish-concept-of-dostadning-or-death-cleaning-is-about-more-than-just-getting-rid-of-things-279030

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anthony Smith, Lecturer in Screen Studies, University of Salford

The Warner Bros. Discovery streaming service HBO Max has launched in the UK. If you’re trying to work out the best way to access its content, you are faced with a choice that surely shouldn’t be this complicated.

You could subscribe to HBO Max Basic with Ads, which provides access to HBO shows like Euphoria and The White Lotus, and some films in Full HD. However, Warner Bros movies that have recently ended their theatrical run, such as the Oscar-winning Sinners and One Battle After Another, will not be available via this tier.

Alternatively, you could sign up to the Sky-owned Now platform’s new Entertainment & HBO Max Membership. This tier automatically includes the same HBO Max Basic content with ads, but displayed at a lower screen resolution. Want your Now service to match the picture quality of HBO Max’s cheapest tier? For that, you’ll need Now’s Boost add-on at an increased cost.

Neither option gives you everything, and both require you to read the small print to fully understand the restrictions they impose. And this is before you have even considered the other six monthly subscription plans HBO Max is offering at launch and the various price points available on Now. By the time you’ve weighed it all up, you might ask, wasn’t streaming supposed to make watching television simpler?

The erosion of simple streaming

When the subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) sector emerged in the late 2000s and early 2010s with Netflix at its forefront, it was marketed as something liberating. It was presented as offering a clean break from the linear broadcast, cable and satellite television services it sought to replace. Viewers could watch what they wanted, when they wanted, free of commercial interruption, and at their own pace. The sector promised a personalised viewing experience free from broadcasters’ schedules.

Yet the range of options facing UK viewers at the launch of HBO Max appears to be at odds with the sector’s founding promise of convenience and autonomy. As my colleague Laura Minor and I argue in our book Television Goes Back to the Future: Rethinking TV’s Streaming Revolution (2025), streaming platforms have already begun eroding that promise.

For instance, many SVOD services now regularly adopt weekly episode releases for series rather than the full-season drops that once distinguished streaming from traditional broadcasters. A further example is the sector’s introduction of ad-supported tiers, reintroducing the commercial interruption that subscription platforms originally promised to leave behind.

HBO Max’s UK launch, however, generates a more specific kind of friction for consumers. That is, its arrival creates uncertainty over what viewers are getting, from whom, and at what cost – a confusion rooted in the shared history between HBO and Sky in the UK.

For 15 years, British viewers have associated HBO’s prestige programming with Sky. The channel Sky Atlantic was launched in 2011 largely as a vehicle for HBO shows after Sky secured exclusive UK rights to them. Series like Game of Thrones, The Sopranos and Succession all had their UK home on Sky Atlantic. For many British viewers, HBO content has become synonymous with Sky programming.

Now, with HBO Max having arrived as a standalone service, that cultivated brand association has been distorted but not cleanly severed – Sky and Warner Bros Discovery struck an updated distribution agreement in 2024 ensuring an ongoing relationship between the two companies. This branding muddle was evident in the weeks leading up to HBO Max’s launch, when the hit Game of Thrones prequel series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was identified on the Now platform as Sky Atlantic programming, while HBO Max’s own UK page branded it as an HBO Original.

Both descriptions were technically accurate, but for a viewer trying to make sense of the streaming landscape, the effect was disorientating. Now has since relabelled the show as HBO Max content to coincide with the HBO Max launch, but the example illustrates the deeper confusion about where HBO content now sits in the UK market, caught between a long-standing association with Sky and a new platform asserting its own identity.

Uncertainty about HBO Max’s future adds to the complexity of the platform’s launch. Paramount Global agreed to acquire Warner Bros Discovery in late February 2026, and Paramount’s CEO David Ellison has confirmed plans to ultimately merge HBO Max and Paramount+ into a single streaming service.

How the combined service will operate and how the shift will affect existing UK subscriptions remains entirely unclear. HBO Max, then, has arrived in the UK as a platform that may not exist in its current form for long. Viewers are being asked to familiarise themselves with a new platform and navigate its relationship with Sky and Now, while its parent company simultaneously plans to fold it into something else.

The brand muddle stemming from HBO’s entanglement with Sky, and the corporate uncertainty over what Paramount Global intends to do with the HBO Max service are specific to this case.

However, the broader confusion surrounding HBO Max’s UK launch is symptomatic of a streaming sector that has come to resemble the television landscape it aimed to revolutionise. Viewers are now confronted by a sprawl of overlapping brands, tiers and add-ons that demands the kind of careful navigation more commonly associated with conventional cable and satellite TV packages.

This is a trend that looks set to continue, with analysts noting that streamers are becoming increasingly focused on bundling strategies and diversifying the range of subscription tiers they offer. This means the experience of subscribing to streaming services in 2026 feels more like a return to complexities it was supposed to move beyond – rather than a liberation from them.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org; if you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Anthony Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The television will not be revolutionised: HBO Max’s UK launch shows how streaming now resembles the TV it replaced – https://theconversation.com/the-television-will-not-be-revolutionised-hbo-maxs-uk-launch-shows-how-streaming-now-resembles-the-tv-it-replaced-277932

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Simon Potter, Professor of Modern History, University of Bristol

Matt Brittin has been named the new director general of the BBC. He joins the broadcaster after almost two decades working at Google: he was its president in Europe, the Middle East and Africa before leaving in 2024. He is already on the board of the Guardian Media Group.

The director general is the most senior executive at the BBC. The first director general was John Reith (later Lord Reith), a near legendary figure who dominated the organisation during its foundational period in the 1920s and 1930s.

Reith played a key role in establishing broadcasting in Britain and creating the BBC. He had an obsession with controlling all elements of the BBC’s work and was determined to increase his own power at the expense of subordinates and of the BBC’s board of governors.

Reith made the director general the most powerful office in the BBC. That power has since been diluted over the decades, but in theory the director general still has oversight of all the varied aspects of the BBC’s work. They must also defend the corporation from public criticism and take responsibility when things go wrong. Given the amount of criticism that the BBC has faced in recent years, this may be the hardest job in the UK media.

Crucially, the director general is regarded as editor-in-chief of BBC news content, and ultimately carries the can when problems arise in its current affairs coverage. This has brought down several directors general in the past.

In 2011, George Entwistle resigned over revelations concerning the BBC and the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal, and his mishandling of unfounded allegations broadcast by the BBC concerning Lord McAlpine. Entwistle only served 54 days in post.

Tim Davie resigned from the top job last year amid accusations that BBC current affairs coverage had breached its own editorial code on impartiality. Most notably, footage of a speech by Donald Trump had been misleadingly edited when shown on Panorama. The BBC still faces an unprecedented $10bn (£7.5bn) lawsuit from the US president.

Brittin will need to deal with these editorial issues. One of his first tasks will be to hire a new CEO of News, as Deborah Turness resigned along with Davie.

He will also have to lead the BBC into a brave new world. The TV licence system, which provides the BBC with most of its funding, is likely to be drastically reformed or abolished entirely. This may be accompanied with major changes in how the BBC is run and functions, as its royal charter is renewed over the coming year.

More and more of us are replacing analogue radio and live television with streaming. With his tech background, Brittin may be well placed to lead the BBC through this transition. He also faces the unenviable task of defending the BBC against inevitably escalating criticism during the charter review period. Candidates for the job do not seem to have been lining up at the doors of Broadcasting House.

Changing the BBC

How have previous directors general fared in times of profound change? The BBC struggled to find an effective leader during the second world war until William Haley, an experienced newspaper editor and director, was appointed. Haley expertly steered the BBC through the final stages of the war and into peacetime, navigating difficult questions about government intervention, possible commercial competition and, with the rise of TV, technological change.

Haley significantly altered the BBC’s radio offering to provide listeners with more choice, and set out to reestablish its television service, fending off the threat of commercial competition for almost a decade.

In the 1960s, Hugh Carleton Greene (brother of the novelist Graham Greene), shook up British broadcasting yet again, helping the BBC adapt to the possibly existential challenge posed by a young and feisty ITV. Greene focused on providing crowd-pleasing entertainment, but also pushed the boundaries of taste and opinion by establishing the political satire show That Was The Week That Was, and supporting hard-hitting dramas like Cathy Come Home and Up The Junction.

Haley and Greene both demonstrated what a confident director general, intent on securing the changes that would allow the BBC to survive, could achieve.

A more divisive figure was John Birt, later Baron Birt, who held the post from 1992 to 2000. Birt had made his name working for the BBC’s competitors in commercial TV. He was a devotee of new ideologies of corporate leadership and change. At the BBC he was determined to break up the dominance of its powerful departmental leaders and to impose central control.

In the wake of scandals over public affairs coverage that toppled one of his predecessors, Alasdair Milne, Birt demanded adherence to a new editorial code. And in order to prevent Margaret Thatcher’s government privatising the BBC, he set up a complex system of internal markets and external programme commissioning. Business consultants and highly-paid senior managers were recruited from the private sector to spearhead reform. Over 10,000 staff were laid off. Some people thought that Birt saved the BBC, but the playwright Dennis Potter likened him to a Dalek.

Brittin, like Birt, is an outsider to the BBC. Will he be a Dalek, or The Doctor that the BBC needs to vanquish its political and commercial adversaries? Appointing a leader from the world of big tech might give the BBC a valuable weapon in a media landscape dominated by the US-based streaming giants.

Brittin may also have the corporate leadership skills needed to bring a large, fiendishly complex organisation full of independently minded people through the massive changes that seem necessary if the BBC is to survive and flourish. Whether he has the equally crucial skills needed to be the public face of the BBC, defending it on-air and in the press against its many assailants, remains to be seen.

Simon Potter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. BBC gets a new director general: how others have fared in the hardest job in UK media – https://theconversation.com/bbc-gets-a-new-director-general-how-others-have-fared-in-the-hardest-job-in-uk-media-279263

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Toby Matthiesen, Senior Lecturer in Global Religious Studies, University of Bristol

America’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, sports an array of tattoos with Christian messaging, including one which reads “Deus Vult”, God wills it, and is associated with the medieval crusades. So perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, while leading a Christian service at the Pentagon on March 25, Hegseth reached for biblical language to describe the war against Iran.

He called on God to “break the teeth” and kill the “wicked” enemies “who deserve no mercy” and should be “delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them”. In other words, for Hegseth this is a holy war in which he calls on god to “grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence”.

This war is not primarily about religion. But leaders on all sides have used religion to justify their actions. Not for decades have political leaders of all three major Abrahamic faith traditions invoked parts of their respective traditions to legitimise war in this way. The way faith and religious scripture and doctrine have been used by the US and Israel to justify launching their war in Iran is a worrying development, and one that highlights the growing relationship between religion and authoritarian nationalism.

It has also deepened the animosity with Iran, where politicians and religious leaders have themselves invoked religious and messianic narratives. But Iran is an Islamic Republic in which religion has a significant constitutional role.

The Israeli prime minister used religious imagery on February 28 while announcing the start of the war. He invoked the Jewish holiday of Purim, which fell on March 2-3 this year, and which celebrates the Jewish escape from a plot by Haman, an evil Persian official, to annihilate the Jews in the ancient Persian Empire. He said:

My brothers and sisters, in two days we will celebrate the holiday of Purim. 2,500 years ago, in ancient Persia, an enemy rose against us with the exact same goal of completely destroying our people. But Mordechai the Jew and Queen Esther, with their courage and resourcefulness, saved our people. In those days of Purim, the lot was cast, and the wicked Haman fell along with it. Even today on the holiday of Purim, the lot was cast, and the end of the evil regime will also come.

Netanyahu has also compared Iran to the biblical Amalekites (a theme he has used to refer to Hamas in Gaza, drawing criticism from the United Nations). The Amalekites were arch enemies of the Jewish people, who the Old Testament God ordered to be completely destroyed, “men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys”. Netanyahu’s government rests on an alliance with religious Zionists, who frequently invoke religious references to justify Israel’s policies.

Read more:
Attack on Gaza: Israeli rhetoric fuels fears of ethnic cleansing as IDF assault continues to push south

American evangelism

The first amendment of the US constitution, meanwhile, guarantees freedom of religion and effectively prevents one faith being favoured over any others. That said, about 70% of Americans identify with a religious faith (the vast majority are Christians) and there is evidence of the growing influence of evangelical Christianity on the Maga movement and the Trump administration.

On March 5, the US president was joined for prayers in the Oval Office by a group of evangelical pastors. Placing their hands on him, prayed “for your grace and protection over him…and over our troops”. The video of the American president engaging in a group prayer while engaged in a major war went viral.

At the start of the war, hundreds of US troops reported being told by their commanders that the war was “part of God’s divine plan” and that: “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”

Evangelical movements have vastly increased their political influence in the US and across the world. They often support right-wing politicians domestically and Israel internationally, believing in Christian Zionism or that the strengthening of the state of Israel will ultimately lead to the erection of the Temple in Jerusalem and hasten the arrival of the day of judgement.

Challenged by evangelical movements, the Catholic church, in contrast, has condemned the war as “immoral” and “unjust”, and denounced Israel’s attacks on Christians in Lebanon. Pope Leo, himself an American, has called the war a “scandal to the whole human family”.

Iranian martyrdom

The Israeli killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei broke a norm in international relations in more ways than one. It is the first assassination of a head of state by a foreign country in many decades. And it is the first time in centuries – perhaps ever – that one of Shi’ism’s most senior Grand Ayatollahs has been killed by a foreign power.

Many other senior Shia clerics – some of whom had had a difficult and sometimes even antagonistic relationship with Khamenei and the system he represented – declared him a martyr. Assuming his father’s role as supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei delivered remarks that heavily emphasised martyrdom and messianism – including an opening reference to the “Hidden 12th Imam”, who is meant to return on the day of judgement, according to Shia doctrine.

In Iran, Twelver Shia messianism and Iranian nationalism have long been interwoven, especially since the revolution of 1979. Now, Iran’s Shia clerics have declared the defence of the homeland as a sacred duty.

What the other branches of Islam think of the war is more complicated. Some senior non-Shia clerics, including the mufti of Oman – a prominent scholar of the Ibadi branch of Islam – declared Khamenei a martyr. The Sunni mufti of Iraq even argued that all Muslims should support Iran. There have been protests denouncing the war in Pakistan, India, Yemen, Indonesia and beyond.
But other major Sunni clerical institutions or movements have not been so vociferous in their condemnation for the death of Khamenei or the need to support Iran. This – quite apart from the at times bitter antagonism between Sunnism and Shi’ism – also has to do with the fact that Iran swiftly started attacking major Sunni-majority countries that host American military bases.

Messianic and apocalyptic elements of all three major Abrahamic faith traditions have been instrumentalised by increasingly authoritarian leaders in a global confrontation. While there are voices in all three traditions criticising this use of religion, it is setting a dangerous precedent. And while the war has been criticised as being in breach of international law, the reckless use of religion to support this war has not. This should change.

Toby Matthiesen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. God on their side: how the US, Israel and Iran are all using religion to garner support – https://theconversation.com/god-on-their-side-how-the-us-israel-and-iran-are-all-using-religion-to-garner-support-279337

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Declan Murray, Research Associate, Anthropology, University of Manchester

I was standing with a waste management supervisor – let’s call him David – at the back of a major fruit and vegetable market in Dar es Salaam, the biggest city in Tanzania. David and I watched as his team raked the market’s waste from a holding bay into the back of a big, yellow tipper truck.

“We’re not taking this to Pugu,” David said. “We’re taking this to an illegal site”.

Pugu is Dar es Salaam’s only official landfill site. All of the rotten produce, peel, leaves, water bottles, soft plastic and cardboard being loaded into the truck should have been sent there. But Pugu is a two-hour drive away. Fuel costs are expensive and there will probably be a queue of trucks waiting to dump through the site’s single entrance. People also have to pay to dump waste at Pugu.

By going to an illegal site, David can save time and money.

“No photos,” David said as we neared the illegal site. I put my phone away. We drove down a steep, compressed sand track riven with dried-up channels. Ahead of us, the ground levelled out into a field of many colours; a field of waste.

Read more:
The world’s waste mountain is rising at an alarming rate

I could make out the outlines of popular white plastic milk packets and blue plastic pouches used to package snacks around the city. These were tangled up with old clothes and used nappies. On the far side, the land rose steeply again, populated with houses overlooking the site.

While the team dumped the waste from the market, I introduced myself to some locals sat watching nearby. They were at pains to tell me that this was not a valley. It was a gully, they said. There is no river here. Instead, they told me that heavy rain had caused the land to give way and several houses to collapse. In order to stem the erosion they had asked local leaders to bring waste to fill in the gully, to literally fill in the land, and so protect the remaining houses from collapse.

In my 2025 study, I defined this practice as “literal landfilling”. It’s apparently widespread and longstanding in the city, yet it has been curiously missing from official and academic discussions of the waste management system in the city. Until now.

A waste win?

Between 2022 and 2024, I spent nine months studying the waste management system in Dar es Salaam as part of a wider research programme on plastic waste in developing countries. That residents welcomed the waste of contractors like David made the literal landfill seem like a win-win-win for contractors; local authorities and residents. Markets, streets and neighbourhoods are cleared of waste, contractor profits are maintained and no more residents lose their homes. But at what cost?

Colleagues of mine found that pathogens like cholera and E. coli can thrive on plastic surfaces for three to four weeks. Plastic waste might even be driving the emergence of new diseases.

I asked some of the local residents whether they were worried about the health consequences of living right next to this open landfill site. Most conceded they get ill but this was a minor inconvenience relative to the possibility of losing the concrete home they have built.

Rather than being a happy alignment of interests, my research shows that literal landfilling is a trade-off between short-term, visible economic gain and longer-term, unknowable losses to human and environmental health.

In 2023, the World Bank launched the Dar es Salaam Metropolitan Development Project (DMDP), a US$438 million (£330 million) initiative to improve urban services in the city.

Joining a long history of initiatives and plans to solve the city’s waste management problems, the DMDP hopes to modernise Pugu to improve access and reduce waiting times. It also promises the introduction of transfer stations around the city where contractors can deposit waste for sorting and then return quicker to collection than having to drive out to Pugu.

If realised, these plans could resolve the supply side of the literal landfill equation – contractors will no longer be incentivised to dispose of waste in gullies. However, the DMDP makes no mention of gully erosion in the city nor are there any other schemes to address it.

Until the literal landfill is recognised in official and academic discussions of waste management in Dar es Salaam, residents will still look to protect their assets unfortunately at a cost to their health. The demand for waste will remain.

Declan Murray does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Waste being used to tackle erosion poses a health risk – an anthropologist explains the dilemma – https://theconversation.com/waste-being-used-to-tackle-erosion-poses-a-health-risk-an-anthropologist-explains-the-dilemma-277101