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People buy and sell human remains online. Most of this trade these days is over social media. In a study of this ‘bone trade’, how it works, and why it matters, the authors review and use a variety of methods drawn from the digital humanities to analyze the sheer volume of social media posts in search of answers to questions regarding this online bone trade. The answers speak to how the 21st century understands and constructs ‘heritage’ more generally: each person their own expert, yet seeking community and validation, and like the major encyclopedic museums, built on a kind of digital neocolonialist othering of the dead.
“An easy read on a difficult subject, its beautiful encapsulations of the tragic lives behind their commodified remains highlight the urgency of the authors’ project and public and commercial responses to it. The grim thread of mistreatment of the dead guides the reader through the labyrinth of Big Tech, how cynical tech companies and equally-cynical users are complicit in each other’s harms.” • Samuel Andrew Hardy, Cultural Property Criminologist
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface: They Sell What Online?
Chapter 1. The Lives Behind The Photos
Chapter 2. The Dead For Sale
Chapter 3. Looking At Bodies
Chapter 4. The Lies Behind the Bodies?
Chapter 5. Why Does It Matter?
Glossary of Terms
Appendix A: A Walk Through of the InstagramCLI Python Package
Appendix B: A Walk Through of the PixPlot Python Package
Appendix C: Text Analysis with Python and Jupyter
References