Robert Wesley Habenstein

Robert Wesley Habenstein (1914 – July 19, 2011) was an American sociologist and scholar of funeral practices. He taught sociology at the University of Missouri from 1950 until his retirement in 1981. Together with William Mathias Lamers, he co-authored the books The History of American Funeral Directing and Funeral Customs the World Over.

Early life and education Habenstein was born in 1914. He studied at the University of Chicago, where he received an AM degree in 1949 and a PhD in 1954.

During the Second World War, Habenstein served as a United States Army veteran.

Research on funeral directing Habenstein's principal research interest was the history and sociology of funeral directing in the United States. His 1954 doctoral dissertation was followed by the 1962 chapter Sociology of Occupations: The Case of the American Funeral Director, published in Human Behavior and Social Processes. The chapter applied an interactionist perspective to the occupation of funeral director and used Max Weber's concept of the ideal type in discussing the professionalization of the occupation. A revised edition was published in 1962. The Smithsonian Libraries and Archives record the 1962 edition as comprising 638 pages and covering the development of American funeral practices, funeral undertaking and the organization of modern funeral service. The work became a major historical reference on the development of the American funeral profession and continued to be cited in later scholarship on death, funerals and funeral directing.

Habenstein and Lamers also published Funeral Customs the World Over, a large comparative study of funeral customs in different societies. The work examined funeral practices from a broad historical and cross-cultural perspective. The book became a reference work on funeral customs and is cited in modern overviews of funeral practices.

Later life and death Habenstein retired from the University of Missouri in 1981 after more than three decades of teaching sociology. Habenstein, Robert W. Conflicting Organization Patterns in Funeral Directing. Human Organization, 1963.