The Troublesome Dead

Governing Marginalized Human Remains and Unappeased Souls
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-041-03275-5
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 298 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: Accommodating the Dead

The Troublesome Dead explores the phenomenon of socially ‘problematic’ dead bodies and their treatment as objects of controversy. While most societies have designed standard procedures to deal with dead bodies and natural or suspicious death, this volume addresses the material, spiritual and political treatment of dead bodies that are considered less socially or politically relevant.

This book broadens the traditional approach to bodies and forensics by discussing the victims of both mass crimes or natural disasters, and the perceivably less exceptional deaths such as of migrants, criminal suspects or inmates, or those suffering from extreme poverty. Owing to these bodies being considered as socially or politically unimportant, or because state institutions themselves share responsibility in their death, they are not afforded the usual care reserved for human remains. Yet, in many instances, these remains become powerful sites of contestation. They may become criminal evidence, or testify to past violence and injustice, moving a series of governmental and non-governmental actors into action including international or local Human Rights advocates, religious activists and clergymen, international courts, UN agencies. As such, the volume provides the reader with an innovative analysis of major political conflicts and controversial issues throughout the world.

It represents an outstanding contribution to the field of death studies, but also to the analysis of peace building operations, human rights, and issues of contemporary violence and its challenges. It will therefore appeal to both scholars and students of death studies, forensic and political anthropology, sociology of death, thanatology, social work, theology, criminology, and peace studies.

Zielgruppe

Academic and Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fischer, Nicolas

Galmiche, Florence

Jakšic, Milena

Kobelinsky, Carolina

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Tod, Sterbehilfe: Soziale und Ethische Themen
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Thanatologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Meeting the Troublesome Dead  Part I: Languages of Remains  1. Rembering Robert Hertz: From the Korean War Forensic Field.  2. Cuelgamuros: Troublesome Dead in a Dissonant Monument. 3. Memories and Heritage Designation of Human Remains from Massacres: Case Studies (Belchite, Oradour-sur-Glane, Distomo). 4. Dead Man Talking: Medical Expertise in a US Trial Over Executions by Lethal Injection.  Part II: Sensing the Dead  5. Ghostly Influences: Interpreting the Troublesome Dead in Northern Uganda. 6. Memories of the Flesh, Kinships of the Soul: Reincarnation, Druze Identity and the Memory of the Lebanese Civil War (1975- 1991). 7. Repatriation and Reconciliation: Korean Victims of Forced Labor in Japan and the Coming Home After Seventy Years. 8. Sensing the Wandering Dead: Resonances Between Korean Forced-Workers and African Border-Crossers.  Part III: Political Struggles over the Dead  9. Spirits in the Court: Spiritual Constraints and Military Strategy in the Dominic Ongwen Trial. 10. Covid and Critical Movement in French Caribbean Families: Dealing with the Pandemic Dead, Transforming Republican Citizenship.  11. Otherness in local cemeteries: Muslim burial grounds in France and Britain during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic. 12. From Pit to Grave: Handling of the Dead and Social Conflict After the Courrières Mine Disaster (1906). 13. The Troublesome (In)visibility of Famine Death.  Afterword: Two Boys and the Thought of the Earth.

Über Autor(innen)

Nicolas Fischer is a CNRS Research Fellow in Political Science at the Centre for Legal and Penal Institutions Sociology (CESDIP). His main research interest is the tension between violent repression and legal protection of stigmatized populations in democracies His recent research has dealt with immigration detention in France, issues of Human Rights within penal detention facilities, and the current litigation against judicial executions In the United States.

Florence Galmiche is an associate professor at the Université Paris Cité, a member of the Centre for Studies on China, Korea and Japan (EHESS-CNRS-UPCité), and a junior member of the Academic Institute of France (IUF). Her research in Anthropology focuses on Korea and is based on the contemporary practices of Buddhism and the relations between the living and the dead.

Milena Jakšic is a CNRS Research Fellow in Sociology at the Centre d’études des mouvements sociaux (EHESS, Paris). Several of her publications focus on human trafficking, migration, sex work, and child soldiers. Her most recent work develops an ethnography of the International Criminal Court and its practices of witnessing, justice, and international intervention. Her latest publication is Juger malgré tout. Ethnographie de la Cour pénale internationale (Judging Despite Everything: An Ethnography of the International Criminal Court, CNRS Éditions, 2026).

Carolina Kobelinsky is CNRS researcher fellow in Anthropology at the Laboratory of Ethnology and Comparative Sociology, University of Paris Nanterre. Her current research deals with the material and symbolic treatment of dead and disappeared border-crosser en route to Europe.