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These Were People Once

The Online Trade in Human Remains and Why It Matters

Shawn Graham author Damien Huffer author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Berghahn Books

Published:15th Sep '23

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

These Were People Once cover

People buy and sell human remains online. Most of this trade these days is over social media. In a study of this ‘bone trade’, how it works, and why it matters, the authors review and use a variety of methods drawn from the digital humanities to analyze the sheer volume of social media posts in search of answers to questions regarding this online bone trade. The answers speak to how the 21st century understands and constructs ‘heritage’ more generally: each person their own expert, yet seeking community and validation, and like the major encyclopedic museums, built on a kind of digital neocolonialist othering of the dead.

“An easy read on a difficult subject, its beautiful encapsulations of the tragic lives behind their commodified remains highlight the urgency of the authors’ project and public and commercial responses to it. The grim thread of mistreatment of the dead guides the reader through the labyrinth of Big Tech, how cynical tech companies and equally-cynical users are complicit in each other’s harms.”• Samuel Andrew Hardy, Cultural Property Criminologist

ISBN: 9781805390862

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

236 pages