Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the death narratives of white British workers in halal and "conventional" sheep slaughterhouses in England. I argue that workers construct racialised hierarchies of belonging and abjection to navigate their own stigma by narratively preserving their whiteness and nationhood.

Paper long abstract:

Slaughterhouses are understood as spaces of certain, mechanised, Fordist death for non-human animals, with deleterious physical and psychological effects on human workers (Pachirat, 2011). They too are imagined as a concealed “place that is no place”, which separate the abject violence of killing from the production of edible flesh (Vialles, 1998). As places constructed through modernity's civlising process, they have been conceptualised as a place where narratives die, or a place without stories (Young-Lee, 2008). While there is no denying that animals meet their deaths on the slaughterline, these meta narratives of concealment, placeless and modernity obscure the ways in which interpersonal narratives within the slaughterhouse between white British workers, and their Asian and Polish co-workers, centred on belonging and abjection, enable them to both navigate and construct the fractured social life of the slaughterhouse.

This paper is focussed on ethnographic research with white British slaughter workers employed in both halal and "conventional" sheep slaughterhouses in England, who have been employed as slaughterman for their entire careers. These workers' "death narratives" largely focus on the “death” of their trade, the impacts of post-industrial decline, and their ambiguities about "multicultural" Britain in which they feel whiteness is disappearing. Yet, these workers have found security and continuity through employment in halal slaughterhouses. In the localised context of three slaughterhouses, I argue that workers construct racialised hierarchies of belonging against their co-workers, reproducing their whiteness and nationhood as a means to temper the stigma of death in slaughter work.

Paper short abstract:

We explore tale type ATU 285 (The Snake and the Child) as a mourning narrative in which conflicting human and non-human social orders act as both the catalyst and scapegoat for social and physical death.

Paper long abstract:

ATU 285 (The Snake and the Child) tells of a bond between a human and nonhuman

being, and how, from the anthropocentric disposition of the parent, this relationship

causes fear and uncertainty that results in social and physical death.

Using a corpus of texts from German fairy tale collector Franz Xaver von Schönwerth

(1810–1886), as well as a contemporary oral version from South Africa, we explore how

ATU 285 acts both as a cautionary tale (in its archival form) and a mournful lament (in

its oratory form). From the perspective of the parent, the killing of the snake (as a

dangerous intruder) will safeguard the child and mend the disrupted social order.

Death, in this sense, is a necessary condition for both the protection of the child and the

preservation of a dominant order. However, the child, grieving the loss of its companion,

falls into physical and emotional decline, and ultimately dies, suggesting an intimate co-

dependence, not only between human and nonhuman entities, but also between social

order and physical well-being. This suggests, ‘life’ (or living) as active participation in

social order(s); placing death as variations of non-participation, e.g. the grief of the child

as a progressive non-participation—a social death that leads to physical death.

Using ATU 285, we show how a simple tale, when observed across its archival and

oratory forms, becomes a complex expression of the nuanced relationships between

certainty, uncertainty, death, dying, grief, loss, and preservation of the integrated social

and physical body.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines one phantasmagoria in a century old Chinese cemetery called Bukit Brown Cemetery located in central Singapore by discussing the interactions between the living and the dead here.

Paper long abstract:

Phantasmagorias refer to the exhibition or assemblage of optical effects or illusions that are observed that may not be easily comprehensible at the first instance. Singapore has been described as a city brimming with phantasmagorias: a ‘ghostly city’ that is inhabited by ghosts from the Japanese Occupation during World War II (Gordon, 1997) and a ‘vampiric city’ that contains female vampires, colloquially referred to as the ‘pontianaks’ (Pile, 2005) whose female monstrosity is played out in the local cinema (Tan, 2010). These netherworld beings create ‘ghostly topographies’ in Singapore, or ‘sacred realms that are beyond the administrative authority of the ruling party (Comaroff, 2007). Using data collected for my PhD research, this paper examines one phantasmagoria in a century old Chinese cemetery called Bukit Brown Cemetery located in central Singapore by discussing the interactions between the living and the dead here. I argue that the dead are undead because they are metaphorically revived by (1) their social histories that have been actively shared by individuals from community interest groups, (2) their social roles as ancestors and elders in the family genealogy, (3) their antithetical role as netherworld beings that co-exist with their mortal world counterparts, and (4) their informative role as gatekeepers of heritage, history, culture, morality, and justice.

Paper short abstract:

This paper engages with ideas about language death in the Outer Hebrides and the ways in which narratives about the loss of Gaelic as a community language are tied up in the deaths of real people, as well as ideas about life, dwelling, and liveliness.

Paper long abstract:

The Outer Hebrides are haunted by the spectre of the loss of Gaelic language and culture. Pronouncements about the imminent "death" of Gaelic as a community language are common, and the language is described in literature in terms borrowed from the language of death, for example a description of the language in some districts as "moribund." There are a number of complex and interlinking factors threatening the language, but among them are problems of rural depopulation, driven by high levels of youth migration as well as the ageing of the remaining population. That is, when people die physically, the language also inches closer to death. The discourse of language death in the islands is based on continual decline in speaker levels in what has long been the language's heartland. It comes alongside large increase in speaker levels elsewhere in Scotland due, among other things, to adult uptake in learning the language and Gaelic Medium Education in schools. This provokes anxieties that as Gaelic rises in prominence within the civic imaginary of the Scottish nation, it loses its vitality in its supposed natural habitat in the islands and becomes "fossilised". In this paper I reflect on these discourses, thinking about the way in which a language and its speaker community are thought of as living things, and how this relates to the individuals through which the language flows. How are abstract ideas about life and death (morbidity, vitality) understood differently with reference to entities with and without bodies and across scales?

Paper short abstract:

A narrative analysis of legends in circulation about the death of Sólborg Jónsdóttir in 1893 following her alleged crimes of incest and infanticide. This study explores oral narratives and counter narratives about the case, as well as representations in literature and film.

Paper long abstract:

The case of Sólborg Jónsdóttir, as worded by one journalist, “refuses to die“ (Vísir 2015). Sólborg, who allegedly poisoned herself in 1893 when accused of killing a child she had conceived by her half-brother, has left her native Þistilfjörður for an afterlife in the folklore, literature and film of the Icelandic nation. Legend says she left to haunt the district magistrate who she felt had wronged her, and he paid a ferry fare for two. Undoubtedly, aspects of the case created favourable conditions for a second life as legend. By the late 19th century, organised collection and publication of folktales presented as reflecting a national folk culture was well underway. Neither slighted ghosts resulting from suicide nor unmarried mothers killing their newborns were uncommon themes. Twentieth century literary portrayals of Sólborg are strongly influenced by legends in oral circulation. While absent from major printed corpuses, some legends about Sólborg are preserved in audio archives. Sólborg‘s personification after death may well fit with what has been called the suppression of historical identity (O‘Toole 2010). As the 21st century approached, however, a counter-narrative emerged in the national media, sparked largely by the controversial 1998 film Dómsdagur. The allegations against Sólborg were challenged and culpability transferred onto men accused of abusing positions of power. That it was suicide was disputed. This study aims to tackle this uncertainty through a comparative narrative analysis, exploring the role played by narrators and archivists in establishing, maintaining and challenging perceptions of a real life working woman.

Paper short abstract:

How can ‘saving heritage breeds’ make and unmake human-animal worldings? Looking at the 'revitalization' of the Istrian goat breed in the aftermath of generations of bans on goat bodies and mobilities, ethnographies around the goat in Istria reveal entangled histories and futures.

Paper long abstract:

In Istria, a peninsula on the Adriatic where Croatia, Italy, and Slovenia meet, there is an ongoing project to ‘save the symbol of Istria’; an autochthonous breed of goat whose numbers have slowly dwindled to below 50 heads. With the Istrian goat, as with other endangered domestic animal breeds, discourses of cultural heritage and biodiversity extinction collide and challenge one another. Successive Hapsburg, Italian, and Yugoslavian environmental authorities blamed the goat for deforestation, and policies implemented in the late 19th and 20th centuries to regenerate karst landscapes led to bans on goat bodies and pasture practices. Many goat-related structures, practices, and foodways have since faded from the Istrian everyday, and wildfires are an increasing summer occurrence in untended rural landscapes. Now, Istrian policymakers are looking to excavate the Istrian goat and ‘revitalize’ it as a heritage breed and foodway in the hope that it will contribute to the sustainable development of rural landscapes and livelihoods. My research shows that while institutional actors genetically ‘find’ and plan to (re)produce the Istrian goat through the discourse of heritage and extinction, there are parallel stories, biographies and experiences producing meanings of the Istrian goat. Having set out to discover how ‘the death of the goat’ could have gone unnoticed given its symbolic importance on the Istrian coat of arms, I have encountered the sites and forms where the Istrian goat is alive and well, albeit transformed and resignified. The question becomes, what will be lost in the rush to ‘save the Istrian goat?’

Paper short abstract:

Death in social service facilities is a very present phenomenon that affects all residents and, at the same time, concerns the facilities' staff, who are the "last human contact" for the dying person. This paper is focused on how death is perceived by the clients and employees of these institutions.

Paper long abstract:

In Europe, at present, between 12 and 38% of the oldest people die in a long-term care facility (Honix et al., 2019). Residential facilities for seniors in Slovakia provide social services for more than 20,000 people (CRPSS QIV 2021). However, the majority of clients of the facility for older adults die directly in the institution, another part during the transfer, or after being transferred to the hospital. My currently ongoing field research is focused on individual actors (Latour, 2005), that enter the subjective well-being of residents in these facilities, and how these actors enter the social interactions between them and the care givers. From this perspective, actual death and the presence of a dying person show up as a very important part of the client’s well-being. Gossiping and joking about death, complaining about the agony of waiting for death to come, and reflecting on their own mortality and the irreversible end of their lives, are very present phenomenons among people living in a social care facility. How is death contextualized at the place, where it is part of the work routine among employees, and where is no longer room for fighting for life among clients?

With my paper, I would like to share some of the preliminary findings focused on how the clients of these facilities perceive death and dying as part of their well-being in a social care facility.

Paper short abstract:

My Swedish techno-utopian interlocutors often invoke ‘the ancients’ to legitimise their wish for human transcendence, but with added technoscientific jargon. This paper looks beyond this universalising language to consider how their future narratives are constructed and maintained; by and for whom?

Paper long abstract:

“Have you read the Epic of Gilgamesh?” my informants often ask me. These Sweden-based techno-utopists tend to rhetorically invoke ‘the ancients’ with the hopes to legitimise their wish for human transcendence through technoscience, though they prefer euphemism to such fantastical claims. In their preferred nomenclature “eternal life” becomes “(radical) life extension”, or “resurrection” becomes “cryonic suspension.” They aim to hide fantastical claims behind a veneer of technoscientific objectivity and clarity: to simultaneously legitimate emergent science and paint their quest as a universal human drive. We, humanity, have always wanted this – as evidenced by Gilgamesh – and it is finally within our grasp; or so the narrative goes. Speaking to this panel’s interest in narratives, I wish to engage the narratives my interlocutors’ attempt to construct for a post-death world. Such a focus forces one to look beyond the universalising language, which is especially critical as these are narratives constructed and maintained by comparatively small group of individuals. How are these narratives for a techno-enlightened future constructed and communicated; and by and for whom? When looked at in this light, it becomes clear that my interlocutors lack a clear narrative for what the future will be like. Whether cryonically suspended, or through other means, life will merely go on, and death will be a mere interruption of life. Such unclear narratives recast their future hopes in a fundamentally different light: one in which they have failed to learn the lessons that Gilgamesh had to learn: eternal life can be empty.

Paper short abstract:

In our analysis of Russian migrants’ narrated experiences of the bureaucratic formalization of death in a transnational Finnish-Russian context we aim to better understand transnational death in its relation to societal structures of bordering Finnish and Russian states.

Paper long abstract:

In Finland, Russian-speaking immigrants constitute the largest foreign-born minority. Their everyday lives are characterized by dense transnational ties which are still (despite of recent Covid- and on-going war-related travel restrictions) easy to maintain due to the proximity of their places of origin with their places of dwelling, the existence of transnational families, and mediatized connections (Davydova-Minguet and Pöllänen, 2020 and 2021; Davydova-Minguet et al., 2019). Due to the recent character of immigration to Finland, deaths of Russian-speaking immigrants have been relatively rare, but they are becoming more common as those who immigrated in the first waves of the post-Soviet immigration are now getting old. These deaths need to be formalized transnationally because they occur in a way in continuation of the transnational lives of migrants.

Through the death of a relative in the country of immigration, Russian speakers deal with the Finnish authorities and actors with whom they may not have had any relationship before. At the same time, death sheds light on the many relationships of Russian-speakers that connect them to the authorities of the Russian state across the border, namely, the social benefits they enjoy, the real estate they own, and their relationship with financial institutions. Acting according to the Finnish rules and managing bureaucratic transnational relationships takes a lot of time, creates misunderstandings and mistakes, and the formalization of death becomes a laborious transnational process of a “long farewell”.

The presentation is based on our on-going project on practices and meanings of death in transnational Finnish-Russian context.