The political lives of dead bodies: reburial and postsocialist change . Katherine Verdery

The political lives of dead bodies: reburial and postsocialist change



Download The political lives of dead bodies: reburial and postsocialist change



The political lives of dead bodies: reburial and postsocialist change Katherine Verdery ebook pdf
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Language: English
Page: 204
ISBN: 0231112300, 9780231112307

In The Political Lives of Dead Bodies, Katherine Verdery tries to jazz up political science by adding a dash of anthropology, examining the ways in which political upheavals are often accompanied by incidents involving the corpses of former leaders or other cultural heroes. "Dead bodies," she says, "have properties that make them particularly effective political symbols. They are thus excellent means for accumulating something essential to political transformation: symbolic capital."

ought to be a fascinating subject, deserving of analysis more dynamic than this: "Because corpses suggest the lived lives of complex human beings, they can be evaluated from many angles and assigned perhaps contradictory virtues, vices, and intentions." (Simon Schama's , for example, discusses several cases of the intersection of nationalism, historical memory, and natural landscape in a lively, engaging style perfectly accessible to a broad audience.) And although Verdery presents her work as a counterpoint to "the rationalistic and dry sense of politics that so many political analysts employ," readers--even those with patience for vehemently academic writing--may ask themselves who hasn't figured out by the end of the 1990s that culture shapes politics in chaotic and unpredictable ways. --Ron Hogan In this intriguing book, anthropologist Verderyby her own admission a student of dead-body politicspoints out that some corpses have lived interesting livesabove all in Eastern Europe since the fall of communism. Her central question is, What is it about a corpse that seems to invite its use in politics? In the case of her chosen region, the answer is frequently, Plenty. While citing the examples of Nicholas II, Lenin, Imre Nagy, and others, she concentrates most attention on the post-death adventures of a Transylvanian bishop unknown outside Romania and little known inside. She freights this choice with a heavy significance whose justification is not readily apparent. Verderys profiles of these exhumations of sacred and profane figures and their posthumous travels should appeal to an academic audience in anthropology and sociology.Robert H. Johnston, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, Ontario
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

MORE EBOOKS:







Tags: The political lives of dead bodies: reburial and postsocialist change ebook pdf epub djvu mobi rar
The political lives of dead bodies: reburial and postsocialist change pdf epub djvu free download
Download The political lives of dead bodies: reburial and postsocialist change free ebook pdf epub
The political lives of dead bodies: reburial and postsocialist change read online free book
The political lives of dead bodies: reburial and postsocialist change cheap ebook for kindle and nook
Katherine Verdery ebooks and audio books
The political lives of dead bodies: reburial and postsocialist change download pdf epub rar rapidshare mediafire fileserve 4shared torrent depositfiles scribd