Call for more papers to complete our panel

IUAES 2014 Conference, 15 - 18 May 2014, Chiba, Japan

P118 Mourning, memorialization and recovery in post-disaster contexts

Maja Veselič (Sophia U.) and I are convening a panel and would like to invite abstracts from those engaged in relevant work. Japan-based papers are welcome and we are esp. encourage non-Japan papers, allowing us a chance to examine this unfortunately widely shared phenomenon from different ethnographic perspectives.
The IUAES is a large and diverse group of anthropologists and as such a great chance to present work and discuss.

The deadline is January 9th, and you submit it directly to the site-not to us. Of course, we would welcome any inquiries.

http://www.nomadit.co.uk/iuaes/iuaes2014/panels.php5?Pa
nelID=2928

Happy New Year
David Slater, Sophia U.

Short abstract

This panel examines the diverse ways in which individuals and communities grieve for and remember the dead in the wake of a disaster as well as the importance of memorialization for the conceptions of both, the disaster itself and the subsequent process of recovery.

Long abstract

Trauma caused by sudden and violent mass death is almost immediately followed by public expressions of mourning for lives lost and compassion for shattered communities. Rituals, objects and sites of memorialization are imbued with complex symbolic meanings and have a variety of psychological, social and political functions: communal acts of remembrance may act as vehicles of personal catharsis, religious rituals of pacifying the dead may be inscribed with political strife, and disagreements over memorial monuments may serve to negotiate communal future.

This panel examines the diverse ways in which individuals and communities grieve for and memorialize the dead as well as their importance for the experience by survivors of both, the disaster itself and the subsequent process of recovery. We invite papers that address these issues from ethnographic or theoretical perspectives.

Currently committed papers (tentative titles):
Tim Graf: From Buddhism to Spiritual Care? Religion, memorialization, and the recreation of everyday life in
post-3/11 Japan

Ryo Morimoto: Cartography of Trauma and Semiotic Re-territorialization of Memory: A Case of Two Miracle Pine Trees in Post-Disasters Japan

Maja Veselič: The Poetics and Politics of Kataribe Story Telling

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David H. Slater, Ph.D.
Director of the Institute of Comparative Culture Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology Faculty of Liberal Arts, Graduate Program in Japanese Studies Sophia University, Tokyo