Article ID: CBB394353274

The missing, the martyred and the disappeared: Global networks, technical intensification and the end of human rights genetics (June 2017)

unapi

Smith, Lindsay Adams (Author)


Social Studies of Science
Volume: 47
Issue: 3
Pages: 398-416


Publication Date: June 2017
Edition Details: Special Issue: Breaking Scientific Networks, edited by Dániel Margócsy, William Rankin, and Sergio Sismondo
Language: English

n 1984, a group of Argentine students, trained by US academics, formed the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team to apply the latest scientific techniques to the excavation of mass graves and identification of the dead, and to work toward transitional justice. This inaugurated a new era in global forensic science, as groups of scientists in the Global South worked outside of and often against local governments to document war crimes in post-conflict settings. After 2001, however, with the inauguration of the war on terror following the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, global forensic science was again remade through US and European investment to increase preparedness in the face of potential terrorist attacks. In this paper, I trace this shift from human rights to humanitarian forensics through a focus on three moments in the history of post-conflict identification science. Through a close attention to the material semiotic networks of forensic science in post-conflict settings, I examine the shifting ground between non-governmental human rights forensics and an emerging security- and disaster-focused identification grounded in global law enforcement. I argue that these transformations are aligned with a scientific shift towards mechanized, routinized, and corporate-owned DNA identification and a legal privileging of the right to truth circumscribed by narrow articulations of kinship and the body.

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Article Dániel Margócsy (June 2017) A Long History of Breakdowns: A Historiographical Review. Social Studies of Science (pp. 307-325). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB394353274/

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Authors & Contributors
Ernesto Schwartz-Marín
Wade, Peter
Smith, Lindsay Adams
Armus, Diego C.
Anna Rahel Fischer
Clint Townson
Journals
Social Studies of Science
Science, Technology and Human Values
Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society
Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society
Technology and Culture
Science as Culture
Publishers
University of California, San Diego
Palgrave Macmillan
Lugar Editorial
Johns Hopkins University Press
Editora Fiocruz
Harvard University
Concepts
Forensic sciences
DNA; RNA
Identity
Science and society
Justice
Science and culture
People
Nuñez Butrón, Manuel
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
20th century, late
19th century
Modern
Places
Argentina
Latin America
Mexico
Brazil
United States
Chile
Institutions
Rockefeller Foundation
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