Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Alessandro Gusman
(University of Turin)
Yanti Hoelzchen (University of Tuebingen)
Sophia Thubauville (Frobenius Institute)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Isabel Bredenbröker
(Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 26 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Funerals and materially expressed commemoration practices are often the most evident activities death entails. In many regions across the world, they are by far the most important life cycle events. This panel explores the social, economic, political, and material scope of death in its varied ways.
Long Abstract:
Death marks an important moment in life - while it ceases the physical existence of an individual, it significantly extends into the lives of those left behind. Anthropologically, death is acknowledged a "fait sociale totale" (Hertz 1907), and how people deal with death socially, spiritually, and economically remains object of anthropological investigations (Goodwin-Hawkins and Dawson 2018); recently, these have focused mainly on two main interests: how life persists, and the dead body in its iconical and indexical forms (Engelke 2019).
Funerals and materially expressed commemoration practices, such as the construction of graves, are often the most evident activities death entails. Across the world, they are by far the most important and most elaborate life cycle events. While revolving around the life of the deceased, these events activate social relationships and networks that extend far beyond the family. They often serve as a platform for descendants and otherwise related persons to stage themselves socially, economically, and politically.
We invite fresh ethnographic papers dealing with the economic, religious, political, and material aspects death entails in varied ways. Contributions may focus both on communities in their home countries as well as diasporic communities. These may include studies on how the COVID pandemic has impacted funerals and their related activities. Questions also may revolve around materially and spatially expressed commemoration practices.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 26 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
One of the most celebrated life rituals in Ethiopia, is the funeral service. For the Ethiopian community in the US it is important to hold this celebration according to cultural norms. The paper discusses the recent increase in informal insurance associations that were established for that purpose.
Paper long abstract:
Southern California has an Ethiopian diaspora population that goes back to the socialist revolution in Ethiopia in the early 1970s. Because of political and economic reasons, this population increased immensely around the turn of the millennium. With around 50,000 members, this is one of the largest diaspora communities in the US, the country that hosts with 500,000 the largest Ethiopian diaspora worldwide.
One of the central and most celebrated life rituals in Ethiopia, is the funeral service. For most members of the community it is important to hold this important celebration in the USA according to cultural norms or to repatriate the deceased to their home country. Both options are very expensive and require the help of others in implementation (be it in the preparation of Ethiopian food or knowledge of American export laws).
From the beginning of their settlement in southern California, Ethiopians organized their own insurance associations. At that early time they were few in numbers and in size, more informal and intimate. Around ten years ago, once many members of the population became more settled, many new insurance associations were established to give a culturally appropriate farewell to deceased members of the community. Apart from being more formalized, these new organizations are much larger and therefore more anonymous. In my presentation, I would like to trace the development of these companies and explain what still distinguishes the large insurance companies from insurance companies and what does not.
Paper short abstract:
Absent bodies produce an ambiguous loss, which can assume a political texture. By analysing a sit-in organised by the missing migrant families in Tunisia, we will show that political practices of presence commemorate the missing and involve the transformation of the relationship with them.
Paper long abstract:
This proposal abstract would like to address the issue of disappearances by migration, from the point of view of the families who must deal with the absent bodies of the disappeared and the consequent lack of funerals. When people are missing, death cannot be established. The lifeless body brings up feelings and practices associated with death (Panizo, 2017), which allows the transformation of the relationship to the deceased (Hertz 1905-06). Instead, the absent body produces a state that Pauline Boss calls “ambiguous loss” (2004). Based on fieldwork conducted in Tunisia in 2018-2019 with relatives of missing harragas (people who left from the Maghreb without having the Schengen C visa), this contribution wants to explore the political texture of ambiguous loss in the Mediterranean migratory context from Tunisia. Here, families consider states responsible for the disappearance of their relatives who tried to reach Europe. By analysing a sit-in organized by the missing migrants’ relatives associations in Tunisia (4th July 2018), we will show how families expose themselves and the missing in the public space. In our sense, these practices of presence address the political demand to know the truth about the circumstances of the disappearances and commemorate and give the disappeared a social and political place, reintegrating them into Tunisian society. Indeed, practices of presence entail a transformation of the families’ relationship with the missing and with themselves and the rest of the world.
Paper short abstract:
By focusing on Mizo categorizations of death, this paper analyzes the cultural, material, and economic significance of funerary and commemoration rituals, and the preservation of ancestral 'bones' that reveal social hierarchy and 'restage' a continued bond with the dead.
Paper long abstract:
This paper focuses on the traditional "deathways" of the Mizos, an indigenous tribe of Northeast India. It critically analyzes the different categorizations of death and the associated burial rituals and commemorative practices as factors that reveal and influence social structures. Emphasis is laid on "kuangur", the Mizo practice of putrefying and decomposing the dead's body for extracting the bones. The cultural and economic significance attributed to the ancestor's bones is revealed by the instrumentality of the bones in reasserting lineage or kinship, claiming a certain status quo, and in the transfer of property. The celebrative "restaging" of the bones during the Mizo festival for the dead further argues for the "continued bonds" between the living and the dead. The afterlife myths and eschatological beliefs that find manifestations in customs associated with this festival reveal the complex relationship between the dead and the living. While death is elaborated as a "liminal" phase of rites of passage (Van Gennepin 1909), death in pre-Christian Mizo society is understood as a "socially and culturally defined process" (Zama 2016). This paper argues for the simultaneous reconstruction of death while analyzing death's embodied and cultural materiality, funerary and burial practices, and overall contributes to arguments on indigenous identity and epistemology in relation to mortuary culture.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will present contemporary museum practices around displaying the dead in archaeological and anthropological collections in the UK. I propose that these displays can be approached and analyzed as deathscapes, secondary burials, and shrines.
Paper long abstract:
I propose that the excavation and displays of the dead in museums can be contextualized as deathscapes, secondary burials, and shrines. These new theoretical angles are informed by my current PhD research in Anthropology - Archaeology. Fieldwork took place in university museums in the UK that publicly display anthropological or archaeological material. Approaching museum displays of human remains as funerary sites will provide a starting point to help construct an argument concerning how approaches to displaying human remains illustrates the living's conceptions of death and the dead, similar to archaeological theory and approaches to funerary rites.
In this paper, I will cite various examples gathered during my fieldwork, especially focusing on the University of Liverpool's Garstang Museum. I will also include references to interviews held with members of staff from across institutions in the UK, to help illustrate these new approaches to studying museums.