States of Dispossession is a book about protracted violence in the city and the rural surroundings of Mardin, a region in the southeast of Turkey, close to the international border with Syria. The book discusses various ways which people navigate death and injury, are haunted by memories of genocide, excavate and value its remains, and trade compassion for benefit. Biner discusses this violence and/as dispossession in daily lives settings, from the deprivation of life to the appropriation of homes, from the treasure hunting of valuable remains to dispossession through heritage making, and a range of debt creating practices, in which a variety of actors are involved, among these military, provincial governors, jinn, diggers, real estate developers, tribal leaders, and village guards. The result is a staggering picture about the ways in which property, memory and bodies are disowned in daily practices of nation-state building and neoliberal multiculturalism.

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