Tamara Kohn
Biographic Data
| ID | 125930 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tamara Kohn |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tamara |
| FAMILY NAME | Kohn |
| SIGNATURE | KOHN T |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Melbourne |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1071-4168 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 46 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Representing alkaline hydrolysis: A material-semiotic analysis of an alternative to burial and cremation
Alkaline hydrolysis can lay claim to being a resource-efficient, effective, economical and environmentally sound method of final body disposition, relative to burial and cremation. On technical grounds it may have much to recommend it, however, like many other technical innovations, its take-up is hindered by the fact that it lacks a clear position in the public imagination. For this position to take shape, an understanding of just what it is and…
Reimagining memorial spaces through digital technologies: A typology of CemTech
Digital technologies are creating new ways for visitors to engage with cemeteries.This article presents research into the development of digital cemetery technologies, or cemtech, to understand how they are reimagining memorial spaces.Through a systematic review of examples of cemtech in online records, academic literature, patents, and trade publications, we developed a typology of cemtech according to four characteristics: application type, tec…
On Disrupted Death Rites and Covid-19
Stood to rest’: Reorientating necrogeographies for the 21 st century
Human bodies are typically buried underground, horizontally ‘in repose’. To the extent that this orientation has become the standard; it is a non-choice that is under-interrogated by scholars. In this paper, we discuss innovations which allow for the vertical orientation of the body within the earth and for the vertical stacking of remains above the earth in high-rise structures. Both of these boundary-pushing forms of disposition address imminen…
Sounding Out Japan: A Sensory Ethnographic Tour
This book takes the reader on a sensory ethnographic tour in Japan and describes the many ways sounds seep into everyday experiences.This book takes the reader on a sensory ethnographic tour in Japan and describes the many ways sounds seep into everyday experiences. So many ethnographies describe local worlds with a deep attention to what is seen and what people say, but with a limited understanding of the broader sonic environments that enrich a…
Robot death care: A study of funerary practice
Across the globe, human experiences of death, dying, and grief are now shaped by digital technologies and, increasingly, by robotic technologies. This article explores how practices of care for the dead are transformed by the participation of non-human, mechanised agents. We ask what makes a particular robot engagement with death a breach or an affirmation of care for the dead by examining recent entanglements between humans, death, and robotics.…
Appropriating an Authentic Bodily Practice from Japan
This chapter aims to contribute to an established yet growing literature that burgeoned from the mid 1990s (including works by Clifford 1997 ; Gupta and Ferguson 1997 ; Moore 1996 etc.) on how identities are continually forged through mobility and ‘inter-culturality’. Multiple influences from near and far fashion individual identities, particularly in what Bauman has called our ‘heterophilic age’ (1997:55). So my aim here, to explore ideas about …
Residues of Death
This book provides a critical overview of the changing ways people mourn, commemorate and interact with the remains of the dead, including bodies, materials and digital artefacts. It focuses on how residues of death persist and circulate through different spaces, materials, data and mediated memories, refiguring how the disposal of the dead is understood, enacted and contested across the globe. The volume contains contributions by scholars from a…
Residues of Death: Disposal Refigured
Managing the consumption of death and digital media: The funeral director as market intermediary
A growing number of companies are offering digital products and services for use in funerals. Drawing on interdisciplinary research in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, we explore how funeral directors operate as intermediaries for these digital products and services. We critically examine the popular framing of the funeral industry as a “conservative” business and examine how funeral directors actively mediate between their cl…
An Interrogation of Sensory Anthropology of and in Japan
Sensory anthropology has quickly become a dynamic and expansive field of contemporary scholarship, with ethnographers increasingly interested in diverse sensory cosmologies as indicative of a "sensory turn" in anthropology. However, there has also been a tendency for these scholars to work in a linguistic silo, and overlook the potential contributions of local knowledge and scholarship. In this article, we begin to address this gap by bringing Ja…
Uploading the ancestors: Experiments with digital Buddhist altars in contemporary Japan
Domestic Buddhist altars have long provided symbolically and materially rich media for venerating the dead in Japan. However, as Japanese household structures and funerary rites are unsettled in the contemporary era, Buddhist altars ( butsudan ) are rapidly being reinvented and digitalized. In this article, we describe the new technologies harnessed in butsudan production, the sensory experiences they offer, and their abilities to both reform and…
Raanan Rein, Los muchachos peronistas judíos. Los argentinos judíos y el apoyo al Justicialismo
El punto de partida del libro Los muchachos peronistas judíos es la visión de que el régimen que estableció Perón desde su primer presidencia en 1946 era supuestamente fascista y antisemita, y por lo tanto necesariamente, los argentinos de origen judío debían ser hostiles al justicialismo.Esta idea, explica Raanan Rein, esta fuertemente arraigada en la conciencia colectiva de amplios sectores de la sociedad argentina.En este sentido el libro "pre…
Social Media in the Funeral Industry: On the Digitization of Grief
This article explores how innovations in the funeral industry borrow from the technological affordances, commercial logics, cultural norms, and affective registers of social media platforms. Based on ethnographic research of funeral industry conventions, we analyze examples of funeral planning tools, funeral service mediation, and digital memorialization products. We consider how these products aim to capture forms of data, affect, and value as p…
Gravesites and websites: A comparison of memorialisation
For centuries, gravesites have been utilised for memorialisation, and in recent time, websites are also used as memorials, and in this article, we compare these two different groups of artefacts. Through a careful consideration of the form, composition and content of physical and online memorial sites for the dead, we suggest contrasting modes of relations across these two groups in terms of collectives, time and space and the relationships with …
Posthumous personhood and the affordances of digital media
This article identifies and outlines some of the more prominent ways that digital media can extend one’s personhood following death. We consider three examples: when the digital persona of the deceased continues to interact with the living through a human surrogate; the emergence of autonomous and semi-autonomous software enabling the dead to use social media to intervene in current events; and finally the operation of algorithmic presence servic…
Consumer Issues for Planning and Managing Digital Legacies [Leading Edge]
Growing use of software applications in the home, the workplace, and in public places has resulted in increased production and use of personal digital files. These digital files may take the form of emails sent to colleagues, photos of family and friends taken on a camera or smartphone, music downloaded from a number of different services, or videos taken at weddings or birthday parties. In this environment of increased data production and usage,…
Ethics review and the limited gaze: A plea for an intervention
Migración, memoria y tikun olam en la obra de la artista judeo-argentina Mirta Kupferminc
The purpose of this paper is to examine the concepts of migration, memory and tikkun olam (fixing of the world) in the work of the argentine artist Mirta Kupferminc, in the context of the Argentine-Jewish culture.These concepts are identified as the pillars that support the artist’s work and draw on multiple and complimentary identities. Through the study of the ideas of migration, memory and tikkun olam asexpressed in M. Kupferminc’s works it is…
Stuffed Turkey and Pumpkin Pie: In, Through and Out of American Contexts
This article explores the meanings embedded in the production, consumption, and symbolic positioning of turkey and pumpkin pie, foods closely associated with the American ritual feast of Thanksgiving. An analysis of turkey and pumpkin pie recipes used and adapted by first- and second-generation immigrants in north America, and by north Americans living abroad, throws into relief complex relations between food production, food consumption and the …
Incomers and fieldworkers: A comparative study of social experience
She came out of the field and into my home: Reflections, dreams and a search for consciousness in anthropological method
Don’t talk – blend: Ideas about body and communication in aikido practice
Incomers and fieldworkers
In this chapter, the author shares a few of her early fieldwork experiences amongst the Yakha and examines to what extent these experiences are comparable to those of women from other ethnic/linguistic groups who marry into Yakha households. Anthropologists fairly new to the field, as well as non-Yakha incoming brides, spend most of their time in households where the language of everyday family interaction—the language of the society they are try…
Becoming an Islander through Action in The Scottish Hebrides
This article explores the way in which community belonging may be imagined and enacted. It begins with an introduction to a small Inner Hebridean island community and a discussion of the invisibility of incomers in representations of Scotland's past and present. It describes how the island came to be populated as it is today with people of diverse backgrounds. Drawing on three years of fieldwork, it shows how progression along an 'incomer/islande…
Becoming an Islander through Action in The Scottish Hebrides
This article explores the way in which community belonging may be imagined and enacted. It begins with an introduction to a small Inner Hebridean island community and a discussion of the invisibility of incomers in representations of Scotland's past and present. It describes how the island came to be populated as it is today with people of diverse backgrounds. Drawing on three years of fieldwork, it shows how progression along an 'incomer/islande…
Social Media in the Funeral Industry: On the Digitization of Grief
This article explores how innovations in the funeral industry borrow from the technological affordances, commercial logics, cultural norms, and affective registers of social media platforms. Based on ethnographic research of funeral industry conventions, we analyze examples of funeral planning tools, funeral service mediation, and digital memorialization products. We consider how these products aim to capture forms of data, affect, and value as p…
Uploading the ancestors: Experiments with digital Buddhist altars in contemporary Japan
Domestic Buddhist altars have long provided symbolically and materially rich media for venerating the dead in Japan. However, as Japanese household structures and funerary rites are unsettled in the contemporary era, Buddhist altars ( butsudan ) are rapidly being reinvented and digitalized. In this article, we describe the new technologies harnessed in butsudan production, the sensory experiences they offer, and their abilities to both reform and…
Ethics review and the limited gaze: A plea for an intervention
Managing the consumption of death and digital media: The funeral director as market intermediary
A growing number of companies are offering digital products and services for use in funerals. Drawing on interdisciplinary research in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, we explore how funeral directors operate as intermediaries for these digital products and services. We critically examine the popular framing of the funeral industry as a “conservative” business and examine how funeral directors actively mediate between their cl…
Robot death care: A study of funerary practice
Across the globe, human experiences of death, dying, and grief are now shaped by digital technologies and, increasingly, by robotic technologies. This article explores how practices of care for the dead are transformed by the participation of non-human, mechanised agents. We ask what makes a particular robot engagement with death a breach or an affirmation of care for the dead by examining recent entanglements between humans, death, and robotics.…
An Interrogation of Sensory Anthropology of and in Japan
Sensory anthropology has quickly become a dynamic and expansive field of contemporary scholarship, with ethnographers increasingly interested in diverse sensory cosmologies as indicative of a "sensory turn" in anthropology. However, there has also been a tendency for these scholars to work in a linguistic silo, and overlook the potential contributions of local knowledge and scholarship. In this article, we begin to address this gap by bringing Ja…
Becoming an Islander through Action in The Scottish Hebrides
This article explores the way in which community belonging may be imagined and enacted. It begins with an introduction to a small Inner Hebridean island community and a discussion of the invisibility of incomers in representations of Scotland's past and present. It describes how the island came to be populated as it is today with people of diverse backgrounds. Drawing on three years of fieldwork, it shows how progression along an 'incomer/islande…
Mom's Pecan Rolls
Incomers and fieldworkers
In this chapter, the author shares a few of her early fieldwork experiences amongst the Yakha and examines to what extent these experiences are comparable to those of women from other ethnic/linguistic groups who marry into Yakha households. Anthropologists fairly new to the field, as well as non-Yakha incoming brides, spend most of their time in households where the language of everyday family interaction—the language of the society they are try…
Incomers and fieldworkers: A comparative study of social experience
She came out of the field and into my home: Reflections, dreams and a search for consciousness in anthropological method
Don’t talk – blend: Ideas about body and communication in aikido practice
Migración, memoria y tikun olam en la obra de la artista judeo-argentina Mirta Kupferminc
The purpose of this paper is to examine the concepts of migration, memory and tikkun olam (fixing of the world) in the work of the argentine artist Mirta Kupferminc, in the context of the Argentine-Jewish culture.These concepts are identified as the pillars that support the artist’s work and draw on multiple and complimentary identities. Through the study of the ideas of migration, memory and tikkun olam asexpressed in M. Kupferminc’s works it is…
Stuffed Turkey and Pumpkin Pie: In, Through and Out of American Contexts
This article explores the meanings embedded in the production, consumption, and symbolic positioning of turkey and pumpkin pie, foods closely associated with the American ritual feast of Thanksgiving. An analysis of turkey and pumpkin pie recipes used and adapted by first- and second-generation immigrants in north America, and by north Americans living abroad, throws into relief complex relations between food production, food consumption and the …
Consumer Issues for Planning and Managing Digital Legacies [Leading Edge]
Growing use of software applications in the home, the workplace, and in public places has resulted in increased production and use of personal digital files. These digital files may take the form of emails sent to colleagues, photos of family and friends taken on a camera or smartphone, music downloaded from a number of different services, or videos taken at weddings or birthday parties. In this environment of increased data production and usage,…
Ethics review and the limited gaze: A plea for an intervention
Gravesites and websites: A comparison of memorialisation
For centuries, gravesites have been utilised for memorialisation, and in recent time, websites are also used as memorials, and in this article, we compare these two different groups of artefacts. Through a careful consideration of the form, composition and content of physical and online memorial sites for the dead, we suggest contrasting modes of relations across these two groups in terms of collectives, time and space and the relationships with …
Posthumous personhood and the affordances of digital media
This article identifies and outlines some of the more prominent ways that digital media can extend one’s personhood following death. We consider three examples: when the digital persona of the deceased continues to interact with the living through a human surrogate; the emergence of autonomous and semi-autonomous software enabling the dead to use social media to intervene in current events; and finally the operation of algorithmic presence servic…
Raanan Rein, Los muchachos peronistas judíos. Los argentinos judíos y el apoyo al Justicialismo
El punto de partida del libro Los muchachos peronistas judíos es la visión de que el régimen que estableció Perón desde su primer presidencia en 1946 era supuestamente fascista y antisemita, y por lo tanto necesariamente, los argentinos de origen judío debían ser hostiles al justicialismo.Esta idea, explica Raanan Rein, esta fuertemente arraigada en la conciencia colectiva de amplios sectores de la sociedad argentina.En este sentido el libro "pre…
Social Media in the Funeral Industry: On the Digitization of Grief
This article explores how innovations in the funeral industry borrow from the technological affordances, commercial logics, cultural norms, and affective registers of social media platforms. Based on ethnographic research of funeral industry conventions, we analyze examples of funeral planning tools, funeral service mediation, and digital memorialization products. We consider how these products aim to capture forms of data, affect, and value as p…
Uploading the ancestors: Experiments with digital Buddhist altars in contemporary Japan
Domestic Buddhist altars have long provided symbolically and materially rich media for venerating the dead in Japan. However, as Japanese household structures and funerary rites are unsettled in the contemporary era, Buddhist altars ( butsudan ) are rapidly being reinvented and digitalized. In this article, we describe the new technologies harnessed in butsudan production, the sensory experiences they offer, and their abilities to both reform and…
Residues of Death
This book provides a critical overview of the changing ways people mourn, commemorate and interact with the remains of the dead, including bodies, materials and digital artefacts. It focuses on how residues of death persist and circulate through different spaces, materials, data and mediated memories, refiguring how the disposal of the dead is understood, enacted and contested across the globe. The volume contains contributions by scholars from a…
Residues of Death: Disposal Refigured
Managing the consumption of death and digital media: The funeral director as market intermediary
A growing number of companies are offering digital products and services for use in funerals. Drawing on interdisciplinary research in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, we explore how funeral directors operate as intermediaries for these digital products and services. We critically examine the popular framing of the funeral industry as a “conservative” business and examine how funeral directors actively mediate between their cl…
An Interrogation of Sensory Anthropology of and in Japan
Sensory anthropology has quickly become a dynamic and expansive field of contemporary scholarship, with ethnographers increasingly interested in diverse sensory cosmologies as indicative of a "sensory turn" in anthropology. However, there has also been a tendency for these scholars to work in a linguistic silo, and overlook the potential contributions of local knowledge and scholarship. In this article, we begin to address this gap by bringing Ja…
Appropriating an Authentic Bodily Practice from Japan
This chapter aims to contribute to an established yet growing literature that burgeoned from the mid 1990s (including works by Clifford 1997 ; Gupta and Ferguson 1997 ; Moore 1996 etc.) on how identities are continually forged through mobility and ‘inter-culturality’. Multiple influences from near and far fashion individual identities, particularly in what Bauman has called our ‘heterophilic age’ (1997:55). So my aim here, to explore ideas about …
Sounding Out Japan: A Sensory Ethnographic Tour
This book takes the reader on a sensory ethnographic tour in Japan and describes the many ways sounds seep into everyday experiences.This book takes the reader on a sensory ethnographic tour in Japan and describes the many ways sounds seep into everyday experiences. So many ethnographies describe local worlds with a deep attention to what is seen and what people say, but with a limited understanding of the broader sonic environments that enrich a…
Robot death care: A study of funerary practice
Across the globe, human experiences of death, dying, and grief are now shaped by digital technologies and, increasingly, by robotic technologies. This article explores how practices of care for the dead are transformed by the participation of non-human, mechanised agents. We ask what makes a particular robot engagement with death a breach or an affirmation of care for the dead by examining recent entanglements between humans, death, and robotics.…
Stood to rest’: Reorientating necrogeographies for the 21 st century
Human bodies are typically buried underground, horizontally ‘in repose’. To the extent that this orientation has become the standard; it is a non-choice that is under-interrogated by scholars. In this paper, we discuss innovations which allow for the vertical orientation of the body within the earth and for the vertical stacking of remains above the earth in high-rise structures. Both of these boundary-pushing forms of disposition address imminen…
Representing alkaline hydrolysis: A material-semiotic analysis of an alternative to burial and cremation
Alkaline hydrolysis can lay claim to being a resource-efficient, effective, economical and environmentally sound method of final body disposition, relative to burial and cremation. On technical grounds it may have much to recommend it, however, like many other technical innovations, its take-up is hindered by the fact that it lacks a clear position in the public imagination. For this position to take shape, an understanding of just what it is and…
Reimagining memorial spaces through digital technologies: A typology of CemTech
Digital technologies are creating new ways for visitors to engage with cemeteries.This article presents research into the development of digital cemetery technologies, or cemtech, to understand how they are reimagining memorial spaces.Through a systematic review of examples of cemtech in online records, academic literature, patents, and trade publications, we developed a typology of cemtech according to four characteristics: application type, tec…
History (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Art (9 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · History (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works)