Everything Seems So Illogical: Constructing Missingness Between Life and Death in Israel

Area of Science:

• Social Sciences
• Anthropology
• Sociology

Background:

• The concept of "missingness" in Israel lacks established cultural scripts, leading to high uncertainty for those affected.
• Traditional societal frameworks struggle to categorize individuals who are missing, creating a void in understanding their status.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the social construction of "missingness" by families and communities in Israel.
• To examine how the absence of cultural scripts influences the perception and categorization of missing persons.
• To analyze the challenge posed to the life-death dichotomy by the state of "missingness".

Main Methods:

• Narrative ethnography was employed to gather in-depth accounts from individuals affected by the disappearance of loved ones.
• Analysis focused on the linguistic and social strategies used to define and cope with "missingness".

Main Results:

• The study found that "missingness" is actively constructed by the "left-behinds" as a distinct social category.
• This construction involves fluctuating between accepting the life-death dichotomy and blurring it, creating a unique ontological status for the missing.
• New rites of passage are being negotiated and established within this emergent category of "missingness".

Conclusions:

• The absence of cultural scripts allows for the creation of a subversive and stable social category of "missingness".
• "Missingness" challenges binary life-death assumptions, offering a new framework for understanding the status of those who are gone.
• The findings highlight the adaptive and creative social processes that emerge in response to profound uncertainty.