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In Peki, an Ewe town in the Ghanaian Volta Region, death is a matter of public concern. By means of funeral banners printed with synthetic ink on PVC, public lyings in state, cemented graves and wreaths made from plastic, death occupies a prominent place in the world of the living. Rest in Plastic gives an insight into local entanglements of death, synthetic materials and power in Ewe community. It shows how different materials and things that come to shape power relations, exist in a delicate balance between state and local governance, kin and outsiders, death and life, the invisible and the visible, movement and containment.
“Rest in Plastic provides a multidimensional analysis of death and funeral rituals in Ghana. It is a solid book that advances scholarship on issues of life and death.” • Samuel Ntewusu, University of Ghana
“Bredenbröker reveals perfectly the perception of death and analyses the transcultural aspects of funerals. The deceased become mediators between the living and ancestors, blending the Christian colonial heritage with the traditional values of the Ewe of Peki.” • Kokou Azamede, University of Lomé
“It uses well-suited theory and methodology to produce novel and important insights.” • Ing-Marie Back Danielsson, Lund University
“The book is well documented, with a wide range of earlier work discussed … the insights drawn from this work are well integrated with the ethnographic chapters.” • Robert Parkin, University of Oxford
Isabel Bredenbröker is a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Walter Benjamin Postdoctoral Researcher, who works for the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage and the Herman von Helmholtz- Zentrum für Kulturtechnik at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Death, Time and Synthetic Materials
Part I: Place: Afterlives of Colonialism
Chapter 1. Death and Power: The Nation, Indigenous Concepts and Colonial Remnants
Chapter 2. Death in Peki: Sequences
Part II: Containment: Good Death (Ku)
Chapter 3. To the Cemetery! Navigating between Worlds in Cement and Plastic
Chapter 4. From Morgue to Family Compound: Overcoming Socio-Material Constraints
Part III: Transformations: Bad Death (Ametsiava) and Beyond
Chapter 5. Bad Death: Normalizing the Accident
Chapter 6. Playing Tricks on Death: Alternative Strategies
Conclusion: The Agency of the Dead, the Agency of Synthetic Materials
References
Index