Huddled Masses: Death and Citizenship in New York City

挤在一起的群众：纽约市的死亡和公民身份

• 批准号: ES/Y008251/1
• 负责人: Natasha Raudon
• 金额: $ 16.07万
• 依托单位: University of Cambridge
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FY008251%2F1
• 关键词: Huddled; Masses; Death; Citizenship; New

Sally Raudon is a social anthropologist who studies what people do with their dead. She researches Hart Island, where more than a million New Yorkers - from stillborn babies to people who died of AIDS, the homeless and Covid dead - are buried in trenches on a one-mile island off the Bronx. Since 1869, Hart Island has been used as a 'potter's field,' where New York's destitute and unclaimed have been buried in large collective trenches without ceremony or memorials to mark them. Mass graves usually signal social collapse, where war, violence or natural disaster has caused a lot of death very quickly. But New York's Hart Island is in some ways just an ordinary, bureaucratic system, despite being so unusual and, for many people, so distressing. For decades this island of trees, wildlife and derelict buildings has been uninhabited except for the visits of gravedigging inmates from nearby Rikers Island jail, along with grieving families granted monthly visits to their relative's grave. Trips there were more like a visit to a prison than to a cemetery. Initially, Sally thought she would be studying Hart Island's transfer from the Department of Correction to NYC Parks. But halfway through her fieldwork, the pandemic hit. New York City swiftly became an early epicentre of the disease, and Hart Island fell under the international media spotlight - surprising the many New Yorkers who had never heard of it. The onset of Covid-19 during Sally's research meant many practical challenges, but also meant the resulting study of deathcare radically transformed during crisis has a profound relevant edge. The fellowship will enable Sally to return to New York to collect material which the pandemic had made inaccessible, and disseminate this research through publications and conference papers. Sally's publications examine death, space, and society in American urban capitalism from this curious and unstudied place: in and around one death-island at the edge of New York City. Sally asks fundamental questions about the place of death in contemporary society: how do inequality and family breakdown shape how the dead can be remembered? In what ways do individuality and citizenship persist after death? How does the treatment of excluded and marginalised others in death trouble modern myths of inclusion, cosmopolitanism and global citizenship? What is the social significance of the Hart Island dead - and what can they tell us that would otherwise be left unsaid? Covid19 prompted a reckoning for many New Yorkers about whether Hart Island was an acceptable way to care for the dead, and led some to ask, what does it mean to treat your fellow New Yorkers with dignity and respect after death? By examining stigma and marginalization in burial and deathcare ethnographically, Sally aims to make an original contribution to the anthropology of death and death work, of space and place, and to the understanding of the relationship between citizenship and memorialisation. She analyses the remarkable contrast between the sociality of the spectacular - 9/11 and both its memorialisation (including a microscopic search to identify remains) and its use (to support an international war-making project) - and the trudging mundanity of unmarked graves sited at the edge of the city. The fellowship will also enable Sally to lay the bases of a new research network which can scale up her research to an international exploration of funerals of last resort. Consisting of an international group of researchers with whom Sally has already established initial contacts, this new research network aims to provide a broad comparative study which can also serve crucial aims for practitioners and policymakers dealing with necessary innovations in deathcare during disaster and crisis.

莎莉·劳顿是一位社会人类学家，她研究人们如何处理死者。她研究了哈特岛，那里有100多万纽约人——从死产婴儿到死于艾滋病的人、无家可归者和死于Covid的人——被埋在布朗克斯区外一个一英里长的岛上的战壕里。自1869年以来，哈特岛一直被用作“陶工场”，纽约的穷人和无人认领的人被埋在那里的大型集体战壕里，没有仪式或纪念碑来纪念他们。乱葬坑通常是社会崩溃的信号，战争、暴力或自然灾害会很快造成大量死亡。但纽约的哈特岛（Hart Island）在某些方面只是一个普通的官僚体系，尽管它如此不同寻常，对许多人来说如此令人苦恼。几十年来，这个长满树木、野生动物和废弃建筑的岛屿一直无人居住，除了附近赖克斯岛（Rikers island）监狱里的掘墓囚犯，以及每月获准去看望亲人墓地的悲痛家属。去那里旅行更像是去监狱，而不是去墓地。起初，莎莉认为她会研究哈特岛从惩教署转移到纽约公园的情况。但在她的实地调查进行到一半时，流行病爆发了。纽约市迅速成为这种疾病的早期中心，哈特岛也受到了国际媒体的关注——令许多从未听说过这种疾病的纽约人感到惊讶。在莎莉的研究期间，Covid-19的爆发意味着许多实际挑战，但也意味着在危机期间彻底改变的死亡护理研究具有深远的相关优势。该研究金将使Sally能够返回纽约收集大流行病无法获得的材料，并通过出版物和会议论文传播这项研究。莎莉的出版物从这个奇怪而未被研究的地方审视了美国城市资本主义中的死亡、空间和社会：在纽约市边缘的一个死亡岛及其周围。莎莉就死亡在当代社会中的地位提出了一些根本性的问题：不平等和家庭破裂如何影响人们对死者的记忆？在死后，个性和公民身份以什么方式持续存在？在死亡中对待被排斥和边缘化的人的方式如何扰乱了现代关于包容、世界主义和全球公民身份的神话？哈特岛死者的社会意义是什么？他们能告诉我们什么原本没有说的东西？covid - 19引发了许多纽约人对哈特岛是否是一种可接受的照顾死者的方式的反思，并导致一些人问，在死后以尊严和尊重对待你的纽约同胞意味着什么？通过检查耻辱和边缘化在埋葬和死亡护理民族志，莎莉的目的是使死亡和死亡工作，空间和地点的人类学的原创性贡献，并对公民和纪念之间的关系的理解。她分析了壮观的社会性——9/11及其纪念活动（包括显微搜索以识别遗骸）及其用途（支持国际战争项目）——与位于城市边缘的无名坟墓的艰难世俗之间的显著对比。该奖学金还将使Sally能够为一个新的研究网络奠定基础，该网络可以将她的研究扩大到对最后葬礼的国际探索。这个新的研究网络由一个国际研究小组组成，Sally已经与他们建立了初步联系，旨在提供一个广泛的比较研究，这也可以为从业者和政策制定者在灾难和危机期间处理必要的死亡护理创新服务。