Grassroots Memorials ─ The Politics of Memorializing Traumatic Death

Grassroots memorials have become major areas of focus during times of trauma, danger, and social unrest. These improvised memorial assemblages continue to display new and more dynamic ways of representing collective and individual identities and in doing so reveal the steps that shape the national memories of those who struggle to come to terms with traumatic loss. This volume focuses on the hybrid quality of these temporary memorials as both monuments of mourning and as focal points for protest and expression of discontent. The broad range of case studies in this volume include anti-mafia shrines, Theo van Gogh's memorial, September 11th memorials, March 11th shrines in Madrid, and Carlo Giuliani memorials in Genoa.

“This book is the definitive work on the political meanings and performative dynamics of grassroots memorials, a phenomenon that has increased in Western culture and that now expands globally…The topics discussed in the volume are of enduring importance and reflect issues of ultimate concern—death, memory, suffering, trauma, and the politics of memorialization. A great strength of the book is the diversity of relevant subjects analyzed by a range of international scholars and the interdisciplinary perspectives that they present.” ·Daniel Wojcik, University of Oregon

“This is a provocative, timely volume of smart essays with an impressive global reach. The essays are well connected by the introduction that will be a contribution to scholarship by itself.” · Simon J. Bronner, Penn State University

Peter Jan Margry is an ethnologist. He is a senior research fellow at the Meertens Institute, a research center of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. He is guest professor Religious Studies at the University of Leuven. His work focuses on contemporary religious cultures, on rituals and on cultural memory. He has published many books and articles in these fields, among them a four-volume standard work on the pilgrimage culture in the Netherlands.

Cristina Sanchez-Carretero is an anthropologist. She is a staff researcher at the Institute of Heritage Studies (Incipit) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Santiago de Compostela, Spain and holds a PhD by the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the role of heritage formation processes in contemporary societies. Currently, she is the coordinator of the CSIC team that participates in the Cultural Heritage and the Reconstruction of Identities after Conflict project, funded by the EU Seventh Framework Program.