{"title":"The wages of acclimation","authors":"M. D. Thompson","doi":"10.7227/hrv.7.2.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7227/hrv.7.2.3","url":null,"abstract":"Epidemic disease regularly tore through nineteenth-century American cities, triggering public health crises and economic upheaval. These epidemic panics also provoked new racialised labour regimes, affecting the lives of innumerable working people. During yellow fever outbreaks, white authorities and employers preferred workers of colour over ‘unacclimated’ white immigrants, reflecting a common but mistaken belief in black invulnerability. This article chronicles enslaved burial labourers in antebellum Virginia, who leveraged this notion to seize various privileges – and nearly freedom. These episodes demonstrate that black labour, though not always black suffering or lives, mattered immensely to white officials managing these urban crises. Black workers were not mere tools for protecting white wealth and health, however, as they often risked torment and death to capitalise on employers’ desperation for their essential labour. This history exposes racial and socioeconomic divergence between those able to shelter or flee from infection, and those compelled to remain exposed and exploitable.","PeriodicalId":305864,"journal":{"name":"Human Remains and Violence","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131388437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Biorecuperation, the epidemic of violence and COVID-19 in Mexico","authors":"Arely Cruz-Santiago, Ernesto Schwartz-Marin","doi":"10.7227/hrv.7.2.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7227/hrv.7.2.5","url":null,"abstract":"COVID-19 has reinstated the sovereign enclosures of corpse management that mothers of the disappeared had so successfully challenged in the past decade. To explore how moral duties toward the dead are being renegotiated due to COVID-19, this article puts forward the notion of biorecuperation, understood as an individualised form of forensic care for the dead made possible by the recovery of biological material. Public health imperatives that forbid direct contact with corpses due to the pandemic, interrupt the logics of biorecuperation. Our analysis is based on ten years of experience working with families of the disappeared in Mexico, ethnographic research within Mexico’s forensic science system and online interviews conducted with medics and forensic scientists working at the forefront of Mexico City’s pandemic. In the face of increasing risks of viral contagion and death, this article analyses old and new techniques designed to bypass the prohibitions imposed by the state and its monopoly over corpse management and identification.","PeriodicalId":305864,"journal":{"name":"Human Remains and Violence","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127300019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Necessity and Islamic juristic creativity","authors":"Ahmed Al-Dawoody","doi":"10.7227/HRV.7.1.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7227/HRV.7.1.6","url":null,"abstract":"This article studies one of the humanitarian challenges caused by the COVID-19 crisis: the dignified handling of the mortal remains of individuals that have died from COVID-19 in Muslim contexts. It illustrates the discussion with examples from Sunni Muslim-majority states when relevant, such as Egypt, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco and Pakistan, and examples from English-speaking non-Muslim majority states such as the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada and Australia as well as Sri Lanka. The article finds that the case of the management of dead bodies of people who have died from COVID-19 has shown that the creativity and flexibility enshrined in the Islamic law-making logic and methodology, on the one hand, and the cooperation between Muslim jurists and specialised medical and forensic experts, on the other, have contributed to saving people’s lives and mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Muslim contexts.","PeriodicalId":305864,"journal":{"name":"Human Remains and Violence","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131251053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The history of archaeological research at the site of the former Kulmhof extermination camp","authors":"A. Grzegorczyk","doi":"10.7227/hrv.6.1.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7227/hrv.6.1.2","url":null,"abstract":"The Kulmhof extermination camp in Chełmno nad Nerem was the first camp set up by the Nazis to exterminate Jews during the Second World War. The history of Kulmhof has long been an area of interest for academics, but despite thorough research it remains one of the least-known places of its kind among the public. Studies of the role of archaeology in acquiring knowledge about the functioning of the camp have been particularly compelling. The excavations carried out intermittently over a thirty-year period (1986–2016), which constitute the subject of this article, have played a key role in the rise in public interest in the history of the camp.","PeriodicalId":305864,"journal":{"name":"Human Remains and Violence","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125951422","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The subject of ashes","authors":"Kitty Millet","doi":"10.7227/hrv.6.1.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7227/hrv.6.1.6","url":null,"abstract":"This article has two aims: to examine the effects of victim proximity to crematoria ashes and ash pits both consciously and unconsciously in a subset of Holocaust survivors, those who were incarcerated at the dedicated death camps of Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, as well as Auschwitz-Birkenau; and to contrast these effects, the subject positions they produce, with their suppression as the basis both for a strategy of survival during incarceration and for a reimagined identity after the war. Within a cohort of four survivors from Rudolf Reder (Belzec), Esther Raab (Sobibor), Jacob Wiernik (Treblinka) and Shlomo Venezia (Auschwitz), I trace the ways in which discrete memories and senses became constitutive in the formation of the subject prior to and after escape – the experience of liberation – so that essentially two kinds of subjects became visible, the subject in liberation and the subject of ashes. In conjunction with these two kinds of subjects, I introduce the compensatory notion of a third path suggested both by H. G. Adler and Anna Orenstein, also Holocaust survivors, that holds both positions together in one space, the space of literature, preventing the two positions from being stranded in dialectical opposition to each other.","PeriodicalId":305864,"journal":{"name":"Human Remains and Violence","volume":"99 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124695093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The handling of bodies at the Drancy camp (1941–44)","authors":"J. Lehr","doi":"10.7227/hrv.6.1.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7227/hrv.6.1.4","url":null,"abstract":"This article seeks to show that the bodies of Jewish people who died in the Drancy internment camp between 1941 and 1944 were handled on French soil in a doubly normalised manner: first by the police and judicial system, and then in relation to funeral arrangements. My findings thus contradict two preconceived ideas that have become firmly established in collective memory: first, the belief that the number who died in the Drancy camp is difficult to establish; and second, the belief that the remains of internees who died in the camp were subjected to rapid and anonymous burial in a large mass grave in Drancy municipal cemetery.","PeriodicalId":305864,"journal":{"name":"Human Remains and Violence","volume":"152 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116448332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The co-constitution of violent death: bombs, civilian victims and material destruction in Rotterdam during the Second World War","authors":"A. Robben","doi":"10.7227/hrv.5.2.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7227/hrv.5.2.6","url":null,"abstract":"Thousands of people died in Rotterdam during the Second World War in more than\u0000 300 German and Allied bombardments. Civil defence measures had been taken before\u0000 the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940 and these efforts were\u0000 intensified during the country’s occupation as Allied bombers attacked\u0000 Rotterdam’s port, factories, dry docks and oil terminals. Residential\u0000 neighbourhoods were also hit through imprecise targeting and by misfired flak\u0000 grenades. Inadequate air raid shelters and people’s reluctance to enter\u0000 them caused many casualties. The condition of the corpses and their post-mortem\u0000 treatment was thus co-constituted by the relationship between the victims and\u0000 their material circumstances. This article concludes that an understanding of\u0000 the treatment of the dead after war, genocide and mass violence must pay\u0000 systematic attention to the materiality of death because the condition,\u0000 collection and handling of human remains is affected by the material means that\u0000 impacted on the victims.","PeriodicalId":305864,"journal":{"name":"Human Remains and Violence","volume":"17 4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122802937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The work of transnational forensic medicine experts in colonised zones: the Palestinian case","authors":"Suhad Daher-Nashif","doi":"10.7227/hrv.5.2.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7227/hrv.5.2.3","url":null,"abstract":"This article aims to shed light on the post-mortem practices for\u0000 Palestinian dead bodies when there is suspicion of human rights violations by\u0000 Israeli military forces. By focusing on the case of Omran Abu Hamdieh from\u0000 Al-Khalil (Hebron), the article explores the interactions between Palestinian\u0000 social-institutional agents, Israeli military forces and international\u0000 medico-legal agents. Drawing on ethnographic and archival data, the article\u0000 explores how the intersectionality between the various controlling powers is\u0000 inscribed over the Palestinian dead bodies and structures their death rites. The\u0000 article claims that inviting foreign medico-legal experts in the Palestinian\u0000 context could reveal the true death story and the human rights violations, but\u0000 also reaffirms the sovereignty of the Israeli military forces over the\u0000 Palestinian dead and lived bodies.","PeriodicalId":305864,"journal":{"name":"Human Remains and Violence","volume":"451 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115958095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Death in port: the explosion of the battleship Liberté in Toulon harbour (25 September 1911)","authors":"Thomas Vaisset","doi":"10.7227/hrv.5.2.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7227/hrv.5.2.7","url":null,"abstract":"On 25 September 1911 the battleship Liberté exploded in\u0000 Toulon harbour. This tragedy is just one of the many disasters that the French\u0000 fleet suffered at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth\u0000 centuries and also represents the peak of these calamities, since it is\u0000 undoubtedly the most deadly suffered by a French Navy ship in peacetime. The aim\u0000 of this article is to study how the navy managed this disaster and the resulting\u0000 deaths of service personnel, which were all the more traumatic because the\u0000 incident happened in France’s main military port and in circumstances\u0000 that do not match the traditional forms of death at sea.","PeriodicalId":305864,"journal":{"name":"Human Remains and Violence","volume":"69 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126994699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fallen comrades? Anthropological analysis of human remains from the siege of Turin, 1706","authors":"M. Mercinelli, Martin J. Smith","doi":"10.7227/hrv.5.2.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7227/hrv.5.2.4","url":null,"abstract":"The construction of an underground car park beneath the main square of Turin,\u0000 Italy in 2004 led to the unearthing of the skeletonised remains of twenty-two\u0000 individuals attributable to the early eighteenth century. At this time the city\u0000 was besieged during the War of the Spanish Succession in a hard-fought battle\u0000 that resulted in unexpected triumph for the Piedmontese, a victory that marked a\u0000 fundamental turning point in Italian history. The current study assesses the\u0000 strength of evidence linking the excavated individuals to the siege and assesses\u0000 their possible role in the battle through consideration of their biological\u0000 profiles, patterns of pathology and the presence of traumatic injuries. This\u0000 article presents the first analysis of evidence for the siege of Turin from an\u0000 anthropological point of view, providing new and unbiased information from the\u0000 most direct source of evidence available: the remains of those who actually took\u0000 part.","PeriodicalId":305864,"journal":{"name":"Human Remains and Violence","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114686545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}