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Created: February 24, 2002
Latest Update: February 24, 2002
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The Disappeared: Our Need to Mourn

Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individaul Authors, February 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

Earthly Remains By Somini Sengupta. New York Times. At p. WK 5. backup February 24, 2002.

" 'The need to complete the mourning process drives people to be caught in a limbo of grief, without a body to ritually manage,'' Donald K. Pollock, a medical anthropologist at the State University at Buffalo, said of the deaths at the trade center."

An example of the kind of work Dr. Pollock does: a dissertation abstract of one of his students: backup.

"The study uses analytical conventions of organizational ethnography to examine how power in all its manifestations inheres in routine features of organizational ethnography to examine how power in all its manifestations inheres in routine features of organization life . . . A series of schematics comprise the 'deformation of care' model, which maps a field of forces and multiple interpretative domains that compromise the empowerment ideal. The model implicates the professional service business, social work theory and practice, the residential service delivery design, social and legal ambiguities that surround teen motherhood but only as these factors are symptomatic of a deeply embedded Foucauldian economy of power."

The dissertation is on a completely different topic from a need for closure in cases of death and/or disappearance, but the excerpt will give you a feel for the level of scholarship involved. If the issue were of major import to your objectives, you can tell from such an internet search whether the scholastic reference is one you want to go in search of. And if the issue is of minimal import to your objectives, at least you've got an idea of what kind of scholar Dr. Pollock is.