Anthropology of Disappearance - Politics, Intimacies and Alternative Ways of Knowing

All over the world, people disappear from their families, communities and the state's bureaucratic gaze, as victims of oppressive regimes or while migrating along clandestine routes. This volume brings together scholars who engage ethnographically with such disappearances in various cultural, social and political contexts. It takes an anthropological perspective on questions about human life and death, absence and presence, rituals and mourning, liminality and structures, citizenship and personhood as well as agency and power. The chapters explore the political dimension of disappearances and address methodological, epistemological and ethical challenges of researching disappearances and the disappeared. The combination of disappearance through political violence, crime, voluntary disappearance and migration make this book a unique combination.

About the author

Laura Huttunen is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Tampere University, Finland. In 2013-14 she ran a project that focused on the question of missing and disappeared persons in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 2018-2022 she led a research project with a focus on disappearances in migratory contexts.

Gerhild Perl is Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Trier, Germany. Her work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Journal of Intercultural Studies. Her doctoral dissertation on death during migration across the Spanish-Moroccan Sea was awarded the Maria Ioannis Baganha Award and the Dissertation Prize of the German Anthropological Association.

Product details

• Authors: Laura Perl Huttunen
• Assisted by: Laura Huttunen (Editor), Gerhild Perl (Editor)
• Publisher: BERGHAHN BOOKS, INC
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.09.2023
• EAN: 9781805390725
• ISBN: 978-1-80539-072-5
• No. of pages: 298
• Series: EASA Series; Easa
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Freedom, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Emigration & Immigration, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Human Rights, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Migration, immigration & emigration, Migration, immigration and emigration, Social and cultural anthropology, Political oppression & persecution