ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is ideally suited to open up the field, as they come from various corners of the social sciences and humanities: ritual studies, sociolinguistics, anthropology, literary studies, victimology, and museum studies. It presents ritual practices as a lens to study the construction of victimhood. In the tradition of the Tilburg 'Ritual in Society' research group, we use an open and broad approach to ritual. The book describes the several 'loci' related to artistic practices come to the fore: the museum, theatre and literature. David Clarke details in his chapter the complicated development of the Berlin Wall Memorial Museum at Bernauer Straße in Berlin.It suggests that what Furedi (1998) proclaimed two decades ago is still very much true: the attention for victimhood is at its zenith. It has been so for a long time and rightfully so.
