Danielle House – författare

This book argues for a broadening of the ways memory is conceptualised and practised. Drawing on extensive fieldwork with artists, relatives, activists, and academics who are engaging in memory practices to fight for justice and search for Mexico's disappeared, it takes a rich empirical approach to explore memory work in depth, foregrounding how people are responding to and articulating their experiences of living with disappearance. Disappearance in its ambiguity is always present, never in the past, and so disrupts many assumptions about how and when to memorialise traumatic events, and in Mexico, disappearance is ongoing, further challenging assumptions of the role of memory work to atrocity. Prioritising the understandings and contradictions of those practising memory work and foregrounding a politics of space and time in these builds a sense of the memoryscapes of disappearance in Mexico, going beyond formal or public sites and memorials to spaces and practices not usually recognised as memorialisation.Moving from the experiences of disappearance in contemporary Mexico to broader questions of societal and political structures, this book is inherently interdisciplinary and has relevance for those studying politics, critical international relations, Latin American studies, the history of human rights, transitional justice, and sociology, and anyone with an interest in the issue of disappearance.

This book argues for a broadening of the ways memory is conceptualised and practised. Drawing on extensive fieldwork with artists, relatives, activists, and academics who are engaging in memory practices to fight for justice and search for Mexico's disappeared, it takes a rich empirical approach to explore memory work in depth, foregrounding how people are responding to and articulating their experiences of living with disappearance. Disappearance in its ambiguity is always present, never in the past, and so disrupts many assumptions about how and when to memorialise traumatic events, and in Mexico, disappearance is ongoing, further challenging assumptions of the role of memory work to atrocity. Prioritising the understandings and contradictions of those practising memory work and foregrounding a politics of space and time in these builds a sense of the memoryscapes of disappearance in Mexico, going beyond formal or public sites and memorials to spaces and practices not usually recognised as memorialisation.Moving from the experiences of disappearance in contemporary Mexico to broader questions of societal and political structures, this book is inherently interdisciplinary and has relevance for those studying politics, critical international relations, Latin American studies, the history of human rights, transitional justice, and sociology, and anyone with an interest in the issue of disappearance.

Establishing a new set of international perspectives from around the world on experiences of death, disposition and remembrance in urban environments, this book brings deathscapes – material, embodied and emotional places associated with dying and death – to life. It pushes the boundaries of established empirical and conceptual understandings of death in urban spaces through anthropological, geographical and ethnographic insights.Chapters reveal how urban deathscapes are experienced, used, managed and described in specific locales in varied settings; how their norms and values intersect and at times conflict with the norms of dominant and assumed practices; and how they are influenced by the dynamic practices, politics and demographics typical of urban spaces. Case studies from across Africa, Asia, Europe and North and South America highlight the differences between deathscapes, but also show their clear commonality in being as much a part of the world of the living as they are of the dead.With a people- and space-centred approach, this book will be an interesting read for human geography, death studies and urban studies scholars, as well as social and cultural anthropologists and sociologists. Its international and interdisciplinary nature will also make this a beneficial book for planning and landscape architecture, religious studies and courses on death practices.