Necrocriminology : Case Studies in Mass Violence

This book explores the ways in which diverse societies around the world do and do not come to terms with a legacy of mass violence through their relationship with the dead. It develops the field of necrocriminology: the criminology of violent death.

This book explores the ways in which diverse societies do and do not come to terms with a legacy of mass violence through their relationship with the dead. Proceeding from primary fieldwork in five nations – Argentina, Bosnia, Spain, Latvia and Poland – that have experienced violent internal repression, the book charts the journey of the murdered corpse from production to investigation to commemoration. In so doing, it synthesises multidisciplinary and traditional criminological perspectives to describe a ground breaking new sub-discipline of ‘necrocriminology’: the criminology of violent death, its dynamics, material products and consequences. The book’s substantive themes of globalised networks of terror-knowledge, multi-layered perpetrator denial, defiant family-centred activism, interpenetration of forensic science and international criminal justice, and the contested politics of memory illustrate what is to be gained from this engagement. The volume agitates for a new critical and reflexive criminological agenda that contributes ultimately to the process of reascribing value to radically devalued lives