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In 2019 media articles about clearance of human remains at a museum in Gothenburg caught my attention. The remains would either be destroyed, reburied or repatriated. The politically driven management, Västarvet, had made a decision on clearance of human remains at two museums in Gothenburg, which created reactions both in the research world and in the media. That´s why I chose to study deaccession of human remains in museums.  The purpose of this master's thesis is to study how the principles for human remains, and attitudes towards deaccession of human remains have changed since the 19th century, and why? This is studied through a power and ethical perspective. The thesis research question is, what are the attitudes to clearance of human remains and how have the principles changed? This question is broken down into three smaller questions, which are; What function have human remains had and what function do they have today? How has the view of human remains changed since the 19th century? What are the alternatives for clearance of human remains? The method in this thesis is mail interview and literature study. The theoretical standpoints in this thesis are power and ethic, where power is based upon Michel Foucault’s approach to power and subject. I have also included two cases of deaccession, one is Västarvet and the other one is a case of repatriation from the British Museum. Some of the results are that the function human remains have had, has partly changed over the past 200 years. Early on, human remains became study objects, which has continued into our time. But today the focus is mainly on research that is more or less ethically justifiable. Attitudes toward clearance of human remains in museums are generally something that comes with objections, specially from media. From museum professionals clearance is not something that they are opposed to, but at the same time it is a process that few in the industry use. This is a two years master´s thesis in Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies.

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När Försvarsmakten brukar sitt materiel under krigslika förhållanden kan både personer och materiel ta skada. Hur mänskliga kvarlevor skall omhändertas ur ett reperationsobjekt är idag okänt. Problemet med hanteringen av mänskliga kvarlevor återfinns inte i teknisk tjänst reglemente eller någon annan styrning. Problemet med mänskliga kvarlevor i ett objekt kan både vara en fråga för logistik, sjukvård, polis, juridik, teknisk tjänst eller en kombination av dessa. Chefen på plats behöver ha i åtanke tre stycken olika huvudskeenden, såsom att ta hand om den avlidne, sanera utrustningen och slutligen reparera utrustningen. Uppsatsens syfte är att undersöka hur hanteringen av mänskliga kvarlevor på en skadeplats bör regleras. Arbetet är avgränsat till att studera hur mänskliga kvarlevor lämpligen borde hanteras av den svenska försvarsmakten, från att en person blir skadad eller dödad i ett fordon, tills att vagnen kan bli lagad.  De metoder som används för datainsamling är intervju, frågeformulär och litteraturstudie. Resultat har visat att mänskliga kvarlevor indirekt påverkas nästan alla åtgärderna på en skadeplats och teknisk åtgärdstid. Det uppstår ett behov av att ta hand om den avlidna kroppen och att sanera utrustningen, vilket det finns bristande eller inga rutiner för. De rutiner som finns i reglementena är för generella för att ge stöd till beslutsfattaren. Vem som ska sanera och hur det ska genomföras inom försvarsmakten är fortfarande okänt. Författaren har tagit fram sju olika rekommendationer för fortsatta studier. / When the Armed Forces use their material under warlike conditions, both persons and material can come to harm. How human remains are to be disposed of from a damage vehicle is unknown today. The problem of managing human remains is not found in technical service regulations or any other control. The issue of human remains in an object can be an issue both for the logistical, medical, police, legal, technical service or a combination of those. The man in charge needs to keep in mind three different steps, such as taking care of the deceased, cleaning the equipment and finally repairing the equipment. The purpose of the essay is to investigate how the management of human remains in scene of an accident should be regulated. The work is limited to studying how human remains should suitably be handled by the Swedish Armed Forces, from when a person has been injured or killed in a vehicle, until the vehicle can be repaired. The methods used for data collecting are interview, questionnaire and literature study. The results of the study show that indirectly, almost all measures on a scene of an accident and technical response time are affected due to human remains. There is a need to take care of the deceased body and to clean the equipment, which is lacking or no routines for. The procedures available are too general to provide support to the decision maker. Who to clean and how to implement it within the Armed Forces is still unknown. The author has developed seven different recommendations for further studies

This study focuses on the attitudes of museumgoers toward the exhibition of human remains in modern Swedish museums. More specifically, it deals with how their attitudes toward remains are shaped and informed by museums’ materiality and institutionalized authority, whether they think of remains as humans or objects, as well as how these dead bodies ultimately become culturally meaningful to us who are still alive. Through the use of ethnographic field methods including go-along interviews and participant observation, the behaviors and opinions of museumgoers are recorded. With the help of Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical phenomenology and Annemarie Mol’s theory of multiple ontology, the cultural background against which these attitudes have taken shape is examined. The study shows that museumgoers are generally positive toward the exhibition of human remains in museums—an attitude which is influenced by the history, scientific authority, and carefully designed materiality of the museum. Among the perceived benefits of exhibiting human remains, visitors cite the ability of the remains to arouse their curiosity and serve as links to the past, as well as provide material proof that validates the museum’s claims to knowledge. However, this positive attitude is dependent on whether the remains are treated and displayed with respect. This call to treat the dead respectfully can be seen as a universal reaction to the ”face-to-face encounter” as described by Emmanuel Levinas, but at the same time, museumgoers’ interpretation of respect is culturally contingent and heavily influenced by contemporary values such as individuality, scientific objectivity, and equality. Furthermore, the perceived need to treat remains respectfully is directly tied to the perceived humanity of the remains. This is in turn dependent on how close the remains are to us in terms of appearance and temporal distance. By focusing on museumgoers instead of professionals, and through using ethnographic fieldwork to note opinions and their cultural backgrounds, this study attempts to add a fresh perspective and new knowledge to what is currently one of the hottest debates in museology: whether remains even belong in museums. Further, by recognizing that no opinion is formed in a vacuum, the narrow question of displaying death can tell us something bigger about the norms and values of Sweden today.

This study examines uncontested human remains from a staff- and institutional perspective in Scandinavia. Focusing on Sweden and Denmark, this study aims to understand more of the practice and approach concerning the Egyptian mummy, Bog bodies and Relics. Today, human remains are debated and treated in different ways depending on different ethical issues concerning the category. Here, we can talk about contested and uncontested human remains. Contested human remains is, for example, ancestral remains belonging to indigenous groups or remains of a more modern date that are deemed for have been inappropriately handled historically. The uncontested human remains however, are remains that do not fit in given examples above and that have not been seen as problematic as the contested human remains. With that said, the uncontested human remains are more prone to be covered, moved around or discussed, but in the end of the day they are still there in the exhibition or in the collection and not removed. This study is based on Tiffany Jenkins (2011) definition about the contested and uncontested and Berit Sellevold’s (2013) figure of ethical aspects in which groups of people and researchers view certain remains. Arisen from these theories and the earlier research of human remains this study attempts to examine the practice and the approach about uncontested human remains. The result of the nine case studies in this thesis shows that the Egyptian mummy, Bog bodies and Relics are used and being used for bringing human beings closer the human remains as the individuals they are and for telling stories of the past. In a concrete way of understanding this, it is the staff of the institution that makes this use and approach possible neither if it’s connecting humans to the individual, the history or the religious sphere. Two main results from this study are that the appearance and context are highly affecting whether the institution, mainly the museum, chooses to exhibit uncontested human remains or not. This is a two years master’s thesis in Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies.

Avhandlingen undersöker minnespraktiker kring andra världskriget i S:t Petersburg med omnejd, en stad som under namnet Leningrad 1941–44 var belägrad av tyskarna i över två år. På fronterna runt den omringade staden rasade under drygt två år hårda strider. Skogarna och myrarna där är fortfarande fulla av spår av kriget och marken gömmer kvarlevor av de soldater som fick sätta livet till under striderna. Avhandlingens empiriska fokus är den rörelse som arbetar för att dessa soldater till slut ska få en begravning och kunna identifieras. I avhandlingen speglas olika aspekter av verksamheten: vikten av ett namn, begravningarna, gemensamhetsskapandet, platsen och krigets spår i landskapet. Sökandet sätts också in i en större samhällelig kontext. Minnet av kriget är en viktig källa till stolthet i Ryssland, och segerdagen 9 maj har hög officiell status och stor folklig uppslutning. Det stora lidandet och uppoffringen bidrar till att göra kriget heligt, både då och nu. Det finns en föreställning om att de nu levande har skyldigheter mot det förflutna – en plikt att minnas. Sökarbetet är en komplex kamp mellan identifikation med och kritik av bärande nationella myter. Avhandlingen utforskar spänningsfältet minne och glömska och undersöker hur minnet av andra världskriget får bestående och ritualiserad mening, samt hur meningsskapandet förändras över tid och i olika sammanhang. / In this dissertation commemorative practices in St Petersburg and Leningrad oblast relating to the Second World War are investigated. The city of Leningrad was besieged by the Germans for more than two years 1941–44 and on the fronts around the city raged fierce battles. The woods and bogs here are still full of traces from the war, and the ground hides the remains of fallen soldiers. The empirical focus of the dissertation is the Russian voluntary movement working to find, bury, and if possible identify these soldiers. Different aspects of the activity are investigated: the importance of a name, the funerals, community building, the place, and the traces of war in the landscape. The search for fallen soldiers is related to a wider societal context. The war is an important source of national pride in Russia, and Victory Day May 9th is a holiday with high official status as well as popular enthusiasm. The suffering and sacrifice from the war contributes to making it sacred, both then and now. There is a widespread idea that the now living have obligations to the past – a duty to remember. The search activity is a complex struggle between identification with and critique of national myths. The dissertation explores the tension between memory and forgetting, and investigates how the memory of the Second World War is imbued with lasting and ritualised meaning, and how meaning is changed over time and in different contexts.