The Marginalized in Death

A Forensic Anthropology of Intersectional Identity in the Modern Era

Jennifer F. Byrnes, Iván Sandoval-Cervantes

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781978751439
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Forensic Medicine
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume bridges the gap between forensic and cultural anthropology in how both disciplines describe and theorize the dead, highlighting the potential for interdisciplinary scholarship. As applied disciplines dealing with some of the most marginalized people in our society, forensic anthropologists have the potential to shed light on important and persistent social issues that we face today. Forensic anthropologists have successfully pursued research agendas primarily focused on the development of individual biological profiles, time since death, recovery, and identification. Few, however, have taken a step back from their lab bench to consider how and why people become forensic cases or place their work in a larger theoretical context. Thus, this volume challenges forensic anthropologists to reflect how we can use our toolkit and databases to address larger social issues and quandaries that we face in a world where some are spared from becoming forensic anthropology cases and others are not. As witnesses to violence, crimes against humanity, and the embodied consequences of structural violence, we have the opportunity—and arguably, the responsibility—to transcend the traditional medico-legal confines of our small sub-discipline, by synthesizing forensic anthropology casework into theoretically grounded social science with potentially transformative impacts at a global scale.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: At the Border
• Chapter 1: Oral Pathologies as a Reflection of Structural Violence and Stigma among Undocumented Migrants from Mexico and Cent al America
• Chapter 2: Forgotten Spaces: The Structural Disappearance of Migrants in South Texas
• Chapter 3: Qué pena con usted: The Struggle for Victim Identification in Colombia
• Chapter 4: Devaluing the Dead: The Role of Stigma in Medicolegal Death Investigations of Long-Term Missing and Unidentified Pe sons in the United States
• Part II: At the Intersection
• Chapter 5: Theorizing Social Marginalization for Forensic Anthropology: Insights from Medical Anthropology and Social Epidemiology
• Chapter 6: Disability, Disaster, Demography, and the Camp Fire Fatalities
• Chapter 7: Gender Identities and Intersectional Violence within Forensic Anthropology
• Chapter 8: Marginalization, Death, and Decline: The Role of Forensic Anthropology in Documenting the Osteology of Poverty and Evidence of Structural Violence in Detroit, Michigan in the Twenty-First Century
• Chapter 9: A Social Autopsy of Honolulu, Hawaiʻi: Forensic Anthropology Case Files as an Archive of Marginalization
• Chapter 10: Identification of the Korean War Dead: Family Reference Samples at the Intersection of Race, Class, and Structural Vulnerability
• Chapter 11: A Multidisciplinary Perspective on the Role of Marginalization in the Identification of Opioid Users in Medicolegal Investigations
• Index
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors