Introduction : agentive properties of the dead over time and in different social contexts

Repič, Jaka (author), Hamer, Petra (author)

This special issue examines how the dead retain agency in social life, challenging Western ontologies that often deny their influence. Drawing on diverse ethnographic and historical cases, from postwar mass grave exhumations and migrant deaths to Udmurt commemorations, museum ethics, and rural rituals, it explores how the dead, in their material or symbolic forms, and in different social and cultural contexts, co-create social worlds. Focusing on concepts of relational or distributed agency, the issue shows that the agency of the dead emerges through interactions with the living, prompting a rethinking of the boundaries between life and death and the role of the dead in society.

• Language: English
• Keywords: death, relational agency, human remains, commemorations, rituals, memories
• Typology: 1.20 - Preface, editorial, afterword
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Publication date: 01.01.2025
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 1-6
• Numbering: Vol. 31, no. 2
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-175782
• UDC: 393:3
• ISSN on article: 2232-3716
• DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17459863
• COBISS.SI-ID: 256034563
• Publication date in RUL: 07.11.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Anthropological notebooks
• Publisher: Društvo antropologov Slovenije, = Slovene Anthropological Society
• ISSN: 2232-3716
• COBISS.SI-ID: 256898816

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian

Abstract

Posebna številka preučuje, kako mrtvi ohranjajo različne vloge v družbenem življenju, ter izpodbija zahodne ontologije, ki pogosto zanikajo njihov vpliv. Na podlagi raznolikih etnografskih in zgodovinskih primerov, od povojnih ekshumacij množičnih grobišč in smrti migrantov do udmurtskih spominskih praks, muzejske etike in podeželskih ritu-alov raziskuje, kako mrtvi v svojih materialnih ali simbolnih oblikah ter v različnih družbenih in kulturnih kontekstih soustvarjajo družbene svetove. Izhajajoč iz teoretskega okvira relacijske oz. porazdeljene tvornosti članki pokažejo, da se tvornost mrtvih udejanja skozi odnose z živimi, kar spodbuja vnovični premislek o mejah med življenjem in smrtjo ter vlogi mrtvih v družbi.

• Keywords: smrt, relacijska tvornost, človeški ostanki, komemoracije, rituali, spomini

Projects

• Funder: EC - European Commission
• Project number: 101095729
• Name: The roles of the agency of the dead in the lives of individuals in contemporary society
• Acronym: DEAGENCY

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: P6-0187-2022
• Name: Etnološke raziskave kulturnih znanj, praks in oblik socialnosti