Missing persons, political landscapes and cultural practices

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’.