Dark Trophies Hunting and the Enemy Body in Modern War [Hardcover]

Many anthropological accounts of warfare in indigenous societies have described the taking of heads or other body parts as trophies. But almost nothing is known of the prevalence of trophy-taking of this sort in the armed forces of contemporary nation-states. This book is a history of this type of misconduct among military personnel over the past two centuries, exploring its close connections with colonialism, scientific collecting and concepts of race, and how it is a model for violent power relationships between groups.

Simon Harrisonis Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Ulster and has carried out ethnographic fieldwork among the people of Avatip in Papua New Guinea. He is the author of, among other works,The Mask of War(Manchester University Press, 1993)andFracturing Resemblances: Identity and Mimetic Conflict in Melanesia and the West(Berghahn Books, 2005).

Acknowledgements

Introduction:Dark Trophies of Enlightened War

Chapter 1.Schemas and Metaphors
Chapter 2.Hunting and War: the European History of a Metaphor
Chapter 3.Bodies and Class in the Age of Revolution
Chapter 4.The European Enlightenment and the Origins of Scalping
Chapter 5.Skulls and Science
Chapter 6.The Collecting Expedition as a Magical Quest
Chapter 7.Skulls and Scientific Collecting in the Victorian Military
Chapter 8.From Hero to Specimen: Phrenology, Craniology and the Indian Skull
Chapter 9.Ethnology, Race and Trophy-hunting in the American Civil War