Dark Trophies: Hunting and the Enemy Body in Modern War

Dark Trophies: Hunting and the Enemy Body in Modern War

by Simon Harrison
Dark Trophies: Hunting and the Enemy Body in Modern War

Dark Trophies: Hunting and the Enemy Body in Modern War

by Simon Harrison

Hardcover

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Overview

Many anthropological accounts of warfare in indigenous societies have described the taking of heads or other body parts as trophies. But almost nothing is known of the prevalence of trophy-taking of this sort in the armed forces of contemporary nation-states. This book is a history of this type of misconduct among military personnel over the past two centuries, exploring its close connections with colonialism, scientific collecting and concepts of race, and how it is a model for violent power relationships between groups.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780857454980
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Publication date: 06/01/2012
Pages: 244
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Simon Harrison is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Ulster and has carried out ethnographic fieldwork among the people of Avatip in Papua New Guinea. He is the author of, among other works, of The Mask of War (Manchester University Press, 1993) and Fracturing Resemblances: Identity and Mimetic Conflict in Melanesia and the West (Berghahn Books, 2005).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Dark Trophies of Enlightened War

Chapter 1. Schemas and Metaphors
Chapter 2. Hunting and War: the European History of a Metaphor
Chapter 3. Bodies and Class in the Age of Revolution
Chapter 4. The European Enlightenment and the Origins of Scalping
Chapter 5. Skulls and Science
Chapter 6. The Collecting Expedition as a Magical Quest
Chapter 7. Skulls and Scientific Collecting in the Victorian Military
Chapter 8. From Hero to Specimen: Phrenology, Craniology and the Indian Skull
Chapter 9. Ethnology, Race and Trophy-hunting in the American Civil War
Chapter 10. Museums and Lynchings: Bodies and the Exhibition of Order
Chapter 11. Savages on the Frontiers of Europe
Chapter 12. Skull Trophies of the Pacific War
Chapter 13. Transgressive Objects of Remembrance
Chapter 14. The Colonial Manhunt and the Body Parts of Bandits: Hunting Schemas in British Counter-insurgency
Chapter 15. Kinship and the Enemy Body in the Vietnam War
Chapter 16. Returning Memories

Conclusion

References

Figures

Figure 1a:Taboo: wife and sister
Figure 1b: Metaphor: wife and crown
Figure 2: Metaphoric and taboo relationships between social practices

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