Description
Book SynopsisMapping theoretical and empirical terrains, this volume suggests that the management of dead bodies is related to the constitution and membership of states and non-state entities that claim autonomy and impunity. This volume is a significant contribution to studies of death, power and politics.
Trade Review'This is an important, original, diverse collection of studies that broach the boundaries and intersections between the private and the public, between grieving and governing, and between nature, humanity and the state.'
Ben Kiernan, Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, and author of Blood and Soil
‘This volume suggests both a cutting edge conceptual toolbox as well as an exceptionally wide range of case studies, both practically pioneering and research-field defining. I am sure that the volume, and Stepputat's theoretical discussion in particular will become a classic reference as well as a must-include item in university syllabi.’
Yehonatan Alsheh, University of the Free State
‘a significant contribution in death studies as well as in governance studies.’
Lotte Meinert, Aarhus University, Denmark
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Table of ContentsIntroduction – Finn Stepputat
1. Governing the dead: theoretical approaches – Finn Stepputat
PART I: Containment and negotiation
2. The proper funeral: death, landscape and power among the Dukha Tuvinians in post-Soviet Mongolia – Benedicte Møller Kristensen
3. Dead zone: pollution, contamination, and the neglected dead in post-war Saigon – Christophe Robert
4. Traveling corpses: negotiating sovereign claims in Oaxacan post-mortem repatriation – Lars Ove Trans
5. Claiming the dead, defining the nation – Contested narratives of the independence struggle in post-conflict Timor-Leste – Henri Myrttinen
6. Re-making the dead, uncertainty and the torque of human materials in northern Zimbabwe – Joost Fontein
PART II: Transgression
7. Governing the disappeared-dead in Argentina: violent state formation and territoriality during authoritarian rule – Antonius C.G.M. Robben
8. Dangerous corpses in Mexico’s drug war – Regnar Kristensen
9. Time as weather: corpse-work in the prehistory of political boundaries – Richard Kernaghan
10. Feminicide: governing through the mutilated female body – Ninna Nyberg Sørensen
Outro
11. Abandonment and victory in relations with dead bodies – John Borneman
Index
