"The Sociopolitical Lives of the Dead"

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Thursday, November 1, 2018
09:15-09:30 Tam Ngo (Radboud University & MPI-MMG) and Eric Venbrux (Radboud University): Short Introduction
09:30-09:55 Eric Mueggler (University of Michigan): “Writing to cultivate souls, reading to craft bodies: literacy and lineage crisis in Southwest China”
09:55-10:20 Piers Viterbsky (University of Cambridge): “Living without the dead”
10:20-10:45 Michael Erard (New York Times): “The personal and political lessons of the unburied”
10:45-11:10 Scott MacLochlainn (MPI-MMG): “Languages of execution: invoking Christian death-ethics in the Philippines”
Coffee Break 15 minutes
11:25-12:30 Discussion
Chair and Discussant: Peter van der Veer (MPI-MMG)
12:30-14:00 Lunch
14:00-14:25 Tam Ngo (Radboud University & MPI-MMG): “Bones of contention: placing the dead of the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese border war”
14:25-14:50 Sarah Wagner (Georgetown University Washington): “Science as ritual: MIA accounting and the ethos of exceptional care”
14:50-15:15 Nicole Iturriaga (MPI-MMG): “Breaking the silence, breaking fear: performance of grief, dignifying the dead, and reframing narratives of Spain’s violent past”
15:15-15:40 Ton Robben (Utrecht University): “Urban death and destruction in Rotterdam during the Second World War”
Tea Break 20 minutes
16:00-17:10 Discussion
Chair and Discussant: Finn Stepputat (Danish Institute for International Studies)
18:00 Dinner

Friday, November 2, 2018
09:15-09:35 Paul van der Velde (Radboud University): “Buddhism and death”
09:35-10:00 Lailah Vevaina (MPI-MMG): “Dying and diaspora: the role of transnational giving in shifting funerary rituals”
10:00-10:25 Norichika Horie (University of Tokyo): “The status of Rei (spirits) of the dead in Japanese society”
10:25-10:50 Kenneth Dean (NUS): “Changing landscapes of death in Singapore”
10:50-11:15 Osman Balkan (Swarthmore College): “Death on the move”
Coffee Break 15 minutes
11:30-12:45 Discussion
Chair and Discussant: Peter Nissen (Radboud University)
12:45-14:00 Lunch
14:00-14:25 Patrice Ladwig (MPI-MMG): “Between ritual impurity and modern bureaucracy: towards an ethnography of crematoria, morticians and Buddhist ritual in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand”
14:25-14:50 Graham Denyer Willis (Cambridge University): “Just dig”
14:50-15:15 Finn Stepputat (Danish Institute for International Studies): “The state and the dead: travelling templates in the centralization of power”
15:15-16:00 Discussion
Chair and Discussant: Eric Venbrux (Radboud University)
Tea Break 15 minutes
16:15-17:00 Tom Laqueur (University of California, Berkeley): Afterword
17:00-17:45 Discussion, publication plan
Chair: Peter van der Veer (MPI-MMG)