Companion to the Anthropology of Death

Antonius C. G. M. Robben is Professor of Anthropology at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and past President of The Netherlands Society of Anthropology. His most recent edited books include Necropolitics: Mass Graves and Exhumations in the Age of Human Rights (2017) and the second edition of Death, Mourning, and Burial: A Cross-Cultural Reader (Wiley Blackwell, 2017). He is also the author of the monograph Argentina Betrayed: Memory, Mourning, and Accountability (2018).

• Notes on Contributors ixAn Anthropology of Death for the Twenty‐First Century xvAntonius C. G. M. RobbenPart I Mortuary Rituals 11 Governing the Dead in Guatemala: Public Authority and Dead Bodies 3Finn Stepputat2 Evolving Mortuary Rituals in Contemporary Japan 17Yohko Tsuji3 Revealing Brands, Concealing Labor 31George Sanders4 Playing with Corpses: Assembling Bodies for the Dead in Southwest China 45Erik Mueggler5 Death and Separation in Postconflict Timor‐Leste 59Judith Bovensiepen6 Migration, Death, and Conspicuous Redistribution in Southeastern Nigeria 71Daniel Jordan SmithPart II Emotions 857 After Death: Event, Narrative, Feeling 87Michael Lambek8 Reflections on the Work of Recovery, I and II 103Beth A. Conklin9 The Pursuit of Sorrow and the Ethics of Crying 117Olivier Allard10 Mourning as Mutuality 131Jason Danely11 A Comparative Study of Jewish Israeli and Buddhist Khmer Trauma Descendant Discontinued Bonds with the Genocide Dead 145Carol A. Kidron12 Facing Death: On Mourning, Empathy, and Finitude 161Devin Flaherty and C. Jason ThroopPart III Massive Death 17513 What Is a Mass Grave? Toward an Anthropology of Human Remains Treatment in Contemporary Contexts of Mass Violence 177Élisabeth Anstett14 Death on the Move: Pantheons and Reburials in Spanish Civil War Exhumations 189Francisco Ferrándiz15 Accountability for Mass Death, Acts of Rescue, and Silence in Rwanda 205Jennie E. Burnet16 Impassable Visions: The Cambodia to Come, the Detritus in its Wake 223Hudson McFann and Alexander Laban Hinton17 Experience, Empathy, and Flexibility: On Participant Observation in Deadly Fields 237Ivana MaceǩPart IV Regeneration 24918 Learning How to Die 251Robert Desjarlais19 Whirlpools, Glitter, and Ferocious Intruders: The Palpability of Death in Chachi Animism 265Istvan Praet20 Shamanic Rebirth and the Paradox of Disremembering the Dead among Mapuche in Chile 279Ana Mariella Bacigalupo21 After‐Death Communications: Signs from the Other World in Contemporary North America 293Ellen Badone22 Cryonic Suspension as Eschatological Technology in the Secular Age 307Abou FarmanPart V Corporeal Materiality 32123 From Here and to Death: The Archaeology of the Human Body 323Liv Nilsson Stutz24 Death, Corporeality, and Uncertainty in Zimbabwe 337Joost Fontein25 Death, Power, and Silence: Native Nations’ Ancestral Remains at the Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania 357Jacqueline Fear‐Segal26 In the Absence of a Corpse: Rituals for Body Donors in the Netherlands 371Sophie Bolt27 Death as Spectacle: Plastinated Bodies in Germany 383Uli LinkePart VI Biomedical Issues 39928 The Body as Medicine: Blood and Organ Donation in China 401Charlotte Ikels29 Ethical Dilemmas in the Field: Witchcraft and Biomedical Etiology in South Africa 415Isak Niehaus30 The Disappearance of Dying, and Why It Matters 429Helen Stanton Chapple31 Death, Detachment, and Moral Dilemmas of Care in a Kenyan Hospital 445Ruth J. Prince32 The New Normal: Mediated Death and Assisted Dying in the United States 461Frances NorwoodIndex 477