Abstract

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.

Peter Jan Margry is an ethnologist and a senior research fellow at the Meertens Institute, at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. He is guest professor of Religious Studies at the University of Leuven. His work focuses on contemporary religious cultures, rituals, and 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.

“It is evident that the editors have gone to some considerable effort to assemble a rich, diverse ethnographic treasure-trove, and to anticipate any charges of Eurocentrism by also drawing on examples of makeshift memorials from other parts of the world. Meanwhile, the thoughtful reflexivity demonstrated by several of the contributors vis-à-vis their own emotional and epistemological locations within the case studies is refreshing and praiseworthy.” · Folklore

Cristina Sánchez-Carretero is an anthropologist and a staff researcher at The Institute of Heritage Sciences (Incipit) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and holds a PhD from 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.