Laura Huttunen – författare

This book examines human disappearances anthropologically in various contexts, ranging from enforced disappearances under oppressive governments and during armed conflicts to disappearing undocumented migrants and, finally, to people who go missing under more everyday circumstances. Two focuses run through the book: the relationship between the state and disappearances, and the consequences of disappearances for the families and communities of missing persons. The book analyses both the circumstances that make some people disappear and the variety of responses that disappearances give rise to; the latter include projects focused on searching for the missing and identifying human remains, as well as political projects that call for accountability for disappearances. While providing empirical examples from a variety of places, with Bosnia-Herzegovina as they key empirical site, the book develops an analytic grip on the slippery category of the ‘disappeared’.

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.