Anthropology of Transition: Birth and Death at the Beginning of the 21^st Century

Call for Papers

Death and birth have long been considered liminal periods in the life of individuals. As such, they generate the need for ritual acts aimed at reducing the impact of the “scandal” that the arrival or the departure of a member are likely to cause. The transition of an individual into or out of the social group is orchestrated so that it allows the living to gradually accept the new situation. The medical technologies developed in the last decades have modified the transition between what we can designate as the social existence and nonexistence of the individuals, generating new states of liminality.

Researchers are invited to submit original research and review articles for this special issue. Priority will be given to papers that focus on ethnographic fieldwork, biological anthropology, and archaeology. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Presence and Absence. Dying persons, deceased, foetus, or newborn are individuals in transition. The crucial point here is to know how people establish a direct contact with a human entity that seems to be present and absent at the same time. A foetus and a dead body have something to do with life and human beings. However, given the impossibility of communicating directly with them, individuals have to find specific means in order to realize and to permanently reactualize the links in their relationship to them.
• As If. This specific dynamic supposes for ordinary individuals to behave as if the foetus or the deceased were alive. This opens to a paradoxical relation built on the belief that communication is still possible. To what extent does this belief shape our conceptions of birth and death, even in hierarchical and structured social universes?
• Imaginaries. Such circumstances promote a sort of “interpretative detachment”. The uncertainty that embrace both birth and death allows people to use their imagination for making sense of the unknown dimension of life. Are the imaginaries exclusively a reaction to fear, uncertainty or risk? Or are not they more ambivalent, in that they give an opportunity to the humans to feel that they are able to explore the edge of life?

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/janth/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable:

Lead Guest Editor

• Irene Maffi, ISS-LACS, University of Lausanne, Anthropole, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

Guest Editors

• Yannis Papadaniel, University of Lausanne and EHESS, Paris ISS-LAPSO, UNIL, Anthropole, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
• Claudine Burton-Jeangros, Department of Sociology, UNIGE, 40, bd du Pont d'Arve, 1211 Genève 4, Switzerland
• Daniela Cerqui, Laboratory of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Institute of Social Sciences, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
• Nicoletta Diasio, MISHA, Université de Strasbourg - 5, allée du Général Rouvillois, 67084 Strasbourg Cedex, France
• Giovanni Pizza, Sezione Antropologica, Dipartimento Uomo & Territorio, University of Perugia, Italy