Sacred waste

Stengs, I.L.

doi:10.2752/175183414x13990269049482

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…The artefact of his former jungle warfare training in Central America and recovery missions in Southeast Asia instead became a ritual offering at the Wall, undergoing a process of what Irene Steng calls 'sacralization', whereby the object of sacred waste becomes 'incorporated in the memorial and shares in its set-apart, ''sacred status'''. 44 The second example requires more background. In 2018, when I visited the memorial collection to view MIA-related artefacts, curator Janet Folkerts brought out two items that had been left together at the base of panel 30W and accessioned in 2016: two small plastic evidence bags, one containing a rubber tube, a 'possible oxygen hose', the other the remains of a zipper, both bearing the inscription of REFNO 1396.…”

Section: Sarah Wagnermentioning

confidence: 99%

Homecomings, belonging and the mediating memory work of US Vietnam War remains

Wagner

2024

Human Remains and Violence

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A half-century since its conclusion, the Vietnam War’s ‘work of remembrance’ in the United States continues to generate, even innovate, forms of homecoming and claims of belonging among the state, its military and veterans, surviving families and the wider public. Such commemoration often centres on objects that materialise, physically or symbolically, absence and longed-for recovery or reunion – from wartime artefacts-turned-mementos to the identified remains of missing war dead. In exploring the war’s proliferating memory work, this article examines the small-scale but persistent practice of leaving or scattering cremains at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington DC, against the backdrop of the US military’s efforts to account for service members missing in action (MIA). Seen together, the illicit and sanctioned efforts to return remains (or artefacts closely associated with them) to places of social recognition and fellowship shed light on the powerful role the dead have in mediating war’s meaning and the debts it incurs.

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Section: Sarah Wagnermentioning

confidence: 99%

Homecomings, belonging and the mediating memory work of US Vietnam War remains

Wagner

2024

Human Remains and Violence

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“…As families search for new options for storing and caring for remains, older (often more burdensome) necro-material traditions are set aside. Given the powerful association between the spirits of the dead and the objects they inhabit, this 'sacred waste' (Stengs 2014) -abandoned headstones, household altars, ancestral tablets and cremated remains -cannot simply be disposed of. It proliferates throughout the country, presenting practical and spiritual challenges.…”

Section: Anne Allison and Hannah Gouldmentioning

confidence: 99%

New life in Japan's ‘endingness’ business

Allison¹,

Gould²

2023

Anthropology Today

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The Japanese deathcare and Buddhist goods industry is a growing field, emerging out of radical shifts in the socio‐economic conditions of everyday life: smaller households, an ageing population and more irregular employment/lifestyle patterns. Based on fieldwork, this article reports tectonic ruptures within Japan’s household‐based mortuary system and Buddhist practice. It takes readers to ENDEX, the premier convention for Japan’s ‘ending industry’, where new ‘life’ emerges from the falling away of older death rites that get remixed and remade into newer experimental practices, businesses and business subjectivities. Examples range from high‐tech gravestones and drones to competitions for the ‘Hottest Priest’ and best encoffiner. This article engages with these new necro‐technologies and asks why the old deathcare system is falling apart. What are the socio‐material effects of its unravelling? And what does the futurity of necro‐praxis look like in Japan (and elsewhere) when the existential fabric of mortality may be torn apart?

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“…By incorporating these objects into the display, the Museum became caretaker not only of the offerings but of their associated devotional practices. The objects and the act were consequently legitimized as 'durable' exhibits and not 'transient' rubbish (Stengs, 2014); although, as the Museum held the key to the case, the community could only access the shrine when the Museum permitted it. Thus, the Museum and the case took on a secondary role of gatekeeper.…”

Section: Cleaning Kiss Marksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Considering the glass case: Material encounters between museums, visitors and religious objects

Berns

2015

Journal of Material Culture

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This article considers the often overlooked, or looked through, museum display case. Glass cases provide physical barriers between museum exhibits and visitors. Their efficacy is what keeps them hidden. But when the case obstructs a visitor-object interaction, their presence becomes strikingly obvious. The usually discerning cases are blamed for disrupting, distancing and inhibiting museum experiences. Yet, cases can facilitate many encounters that aid visitors' abilities to connect devotionally with exhibits. To explore the active role that glass cases play, this article employs an actor-network approach to examine interactions at an exhibition on medieval Christian relics, where the cases acted as channels and barriers within the process of veneration, as well as the means to erase traces of religious practices. Situated in debates about materiality and lived religion, this article considers the role of mundane material objects in visitor-object encounters and the mediated nature of religious experiences in non-devotional spaces.

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Sacred waste

Cited by 15 publications

References 4 publications

Homecomings, belonging and the mediating memory work of US Vietnam War remains

Homecomings, belonging and the mediating memory work of US Vietnam War remains

New life in Japan's ‘endingness’ business

Considering the glass case: Material encounters between museums, visitors and religious objects

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