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Genocide & ethnic cleansing

Destruction and human remains

Disposal and concealment in genocide and mass violence

Series edited by Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Élisabeth Anstett. Edited by Élisabeth Anstett, Jean-Marc Dreyfus

Description

Destruction and human remains investigates a crucial question frequently neglected in academic debate in the fields of mass violence and genocide studies: what is done to the bodies of the victims after they are killed? In the context of mass violence, death does not constitute the end of the executors' work. Their victims' remains are often treated and manipulated in very specific ways, amounting in some cases to true social engineering, often with remarkable ingenuity. To address these seldom-documented phenomena, this volume includes chapters based on extensive primary and archival research to explore why, how and by whom these acts have been committed through recent history. Interdisciplinary in scope, Destruction and human remains will appeal to readers interested in the history and implications of genocide and mass violence, including researchers in anthropology, sociology, history, politics and modern warfare.
Destruction and human remains

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Endorsements

Destruction and human remains investigates a crucial question frequently neglected in academic debate in the fields of mass violence and genocide studies: what is done to the bodies of the victims after they are killed? In the context of mass violence, death does not constitute the end of the executors' work. Their victims' remains are often treated and manipulated in very specific ways, amounting in some cases to true social engineering with often remarkable ingenuity. To address these seldom-documented phenomena, this volume includes chapters based on extensive primary and archival research to explore by why, how and by whom these acts have been committed through recent history. The book opens this line of enquiry by investigating the ideological, technical and practical motivations for the varying practices pursued by the perpetrator, examining a diverse range of historical events from throughout the twentieth century and across the globe. These nine original chapters explore this demolition of the body through the use of often systemic, bureaucratic and industrial processes, whether by disposal, concealment, exhibition or complete bodily annihilation, to display the intentions and socio-political frameworks of governments, perpetrators and bystanders. Never before has a single publication brought together the extensive amount of work devoted to the human body on the one hand and to mass violence on the other, and until now the question of the body in the context of mass violence has remained a largely unexplored area. Interdisciplinary in scope, Destruction and human remains will appeal to readers interested in the history and implications of genocide and mass violence, including researchers in anthropology, sociology, history, politics and modern warfare.

Author Biography

Élisabeth Anstett is a Researcher in Social Anthropology at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France, and a Director of the Corpses of Mass Violence and Genocide programme funded by the European Research Council Jean-Marc Dreyfus is Reader in Holocaust Studies at the University of Manchester, and a Director of the Corpses of Mass Violence and Genocide programme funded by the European Research Council

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Manchester University Press

Manchester University Press

Manchester University Press is a leading UK publisher known for excellent research in the humanities and social sciences.

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Bibliographic Information

  • Publisher Manchester University Press
  • Publication Date May 2017
  • Orginal LanguageEnglish
  • ISBN/Identifier 9781526116734 / 1526116731
  • Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
  • FormatPaperback
  • Primary Price 27.50 GBP
  • Pages264
  • ReadershipGeneral
  • Publish StatusPublished
  • Dimensions216 x 138 mm
  • Biblio NotesPart I 1. 'As if nothing ever happened': massacres, missing corpses, and silence in a Bosnian community - Max Bergholz 2. A specialist: the daily work of Erich Muhsfeldt, Chief of the crematorium at Majdanek Concentration and Extermination Camp (1942-44) - Elissa Mailänder 3. Lands of Unkultur: mass violence, corpses and the Nazi imagination of the East - Michael McConnell Part II 4. Earth, fire, water: or how to make the Armenian corpses disappear - Raymond H Kévorkian 5. Sinnreich erdacht: machines of mass incineration in fact, fiction and forensics - Robert Jan van Pelt 6. When death is not the end: towards a typology of the treatment of corpses of 'disappeared detainees' in Argentina from 1975 to 1983 - Mario Rannalletti (with the collaboration of Esteban Pontoriero) Part III 7. State violence and death politics in post-revolutionary Iran - Chowra Makaremi 8. Death and dismemberment: the body and counter-revolutionary warfare in apartheid South Africa - Nicky Rousseau 9. The tutsi body in the 1994 genocide: ideology, physical destruction and memory - Remi Korman Index
  • SeriesHuman Remains and Violence

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