Keep the Bones Alive - by Graham Denyer Willis (Paperback)

About the Book

"Every year at least 20,000 people go missing in Säao Paulo, Brazil. Many will be found, sometimes in mundane mass graves, but thousands will not. Keep the Bones Alive explores this phenomenon and why there is little concern for those who vanish. Ethnographer Graham Denyer Willis works beside family members, state workers, and gravediggers to examine the rationalization behind why bodies are missing in space--from cemeteries, the criminal coroner's office, prisons, and elsewhere. By following the bereaved as they confront an indifferent state and a suspicious society and search for loved ones against all odds, this gripping book reveals where missing bodies go and the reasons why people can disappear without being pursued. Recognizing that disappearance has long been central to Brazil's everyday political order, this humanistic account of the silences surrounding disappearance shows why a demand for a politics of life is needed now more than ever"--

Book Synopsis

Every year at least 20,000 people go missing in São Paulo, Brazil. Many will be found, sometimes in mundane mass graves, but thousands will not. Keep the Bones Alive explores this phenomenon and why there is little concern for those who vanish. Ethnographer Graham Denyer Willis works beside family members, state workers, and gravediggers to examine the rationalization behind why bodies are missing in space--from cemeteries, the criminal coroner's office, prisons, and elsewhere. By accompanying the bereaved as they confront an indifferent state and a suspicious society and search for loved ones against all odds, this gripping book reveals where missing bodies go and the reasons why people can disappear without being pursued. Recognizing that disappearance has long been central to Brazil's everyday political order, this humanistic account of the silences surrounding disappearance shows why a demand for a politics of life is needed now more than ever.

From the Back Cover

"How can enforced disappearance be anything but exceptional? Graham Denyer Willis shows us exactly how--through the logics and ripples of mundanity and indifference. For scholars of violence and its resistance, this book is a profound, essential read."--Sarah Wagner, author of What Remains: Bringing America's Missing Home from the Vietnam War

"With profound empathy and courage, this book listens closely to terrifying silences, digging and sifting to reveal what they can tell us about who is valued, who is not, and why."--Anthony W. Fontes, author of Mortal Doubt: Transnational Gangs and Social Order in Guatemala City

"A moving and powerful account, based on extensive field research in a country where an average of 150,000 people disappear every year. This is not a book about some underworld of the global South. It is a book about the contemporary mechanisms of reproducing deep inequality and the violent political conflicts that result. After the mourning comes the struggle."--Gabriel Feltran, Professor of Sociology, Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil

Review Quotes

". . . Keep the Bones Alive is a conceptually strong and timely contribution to understanding how violence, selective indifference, and dehumanizing racism are knit together in everyday life in Brazil. . . . This book also makes a poignant contribution to comprehending how hopes for a dignified life emerge from that same social fabric."-- "American Ethnologist"

"Denyer Willis's Keep the Bones Alive makes an important contribution to our understanding of contemporary disappearances in Latin America."-- "The Latin Americanist"

About the Author

Graham Denyer Willis is Associate Professor in Development Studies and Latin American Studies in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Queens' College.