‘Afterlife’ workshop

Considering the afterlife of constellations of places, people and things can reveal much about politics, aspirations, and well-being in this life. Drawing on the ethnographic cases from West Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus, we address the concept of afterlife from a broad comparative anthropological perspective.

One set of questions we ask deals with afterlife as legacy –– political and cultural ––  left behind by (e)migrants from Asian cities, and the multiple ways in which legacy is transformed into ‘heritage sites’ in their homelands. Old cemeteries, sites of worship and neighborhoods of ethno-religious minorities are but some examples. What are the afterlives of the former constellations of ethnic difference and religious diversity in Asian cities? What new relation and political debates as well as forms of cultural imagination related to traditional life-cycle practices of ethno-religious minorities are incited by the physical absences of the emigrated communities?

Another line of inquiry deals with afterlife in the contexts directly shaped by violence and/or military occupation. Here, physical absence is produced not only by (e)migration (and movement abroad is often difficult) but also by violent death. Afterlife is commemorated, celebrated and commodified under conditions where traditional life-cycle practices are impossible to uphold. Hence, the afterlives of dead bodies become very uncertain giving rise to contesting claims of identity, sovereignty and belonging.

Programme

Panel 1

10:00 Welcome by Vera Skvirskaja, UCPH

10:15 – 10:45
  • Magnus Marsden, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex, UK
    Afghan Jews: the afterlives of Muslim Asia’s religious diversity. 
10:45 – 11:00 Coffee Break
11:00 – 12:00

    • Paul Anderson, Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge, UK
      ‘Sold in Yerevan, made in Lattakieh, from Aleppo’: Foodways, space and sovereignty between the Levant and the southern Caucasus

    • Vera Skvirskaja, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, UCPH
      Cosmopolitanism in the ‘afterlife’: Muslim Caretakers and Jewish heritage in Central Asia
    12:00 – 13:00 Lunch

    Panel 2

    13:00 – 14:00

    • Nina Gren, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Lund University
      Afterlife of martyrdom in Palestine: implications on family relations

    • Andreas Bandak, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, UCPH
      Afterlife in/as destruction: Syrian engagements with violent pasts
    14:00 – 14:15 Coffee Break

    14:15 – 14:45
    • Katrine Bendtsen Gotfredsen, Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö University
      Disrupted afterlives: Caring for the dead in occupied South Ossetia

    14:45 – 15:00

    Q&A

    15:00

    Thank you and farewell

    Registration

    Please register to secure your participation.