Department of Anthropology, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA.
Soc Stud Sci. 2017 Jun;47(3):398-416. doi: 10.1177/0306312716678489. Epub 2016 Dec 29.
In 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 11 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.
1984 年，一群接受美国学者培训的阿根廷学生成立了阿根廷法医人类学小组，将最新的科学技术应用于挖掘乱葬坑和识别死者，并为过渡时期司法工作。这开创了全球法医学的新纪元，因为南方国家的科学家团体在境外开展工作，而且常常与当地政府作对，以记录冲突后环境中的战争罪行。然而，2001 年，9·11 事件袭击纽约世界贸易中心后，恐怖战争爆发，美国和欧洲进行了投资，以提高应对潜在恐怖袭击的准备，全球法医学再次发生转变。本文通过关注冲突后识别科学史上的三个时刻，追溯了从人权到人道主义法医学的转变。通过对冲突后环境中法医学的物质符号网络的密切关注，我考察了非政府人权法医学和以全球执法为基础的新兴安全和灾害为重点的识别之间不断变化的基础。我认为，这些转变与朝着机械化、常规化和公司化的 DNA 识别以及通过对亲属关系和身体的狭隘阐述来限定知情权的法律转变是一致的。
