Abstract:
For most of our lives we are the unchallenged custodians of the DNA contained in the trillion of cells that constitute our body. However, once we die, or once our DNA gets enrolled by scientists and biomedical experts, it becomes a strange and alien substance to us and our families: you just need to ask indigenous communities trying to recover the bodies of their ancestors or their DNA. Thus, expertise not only constitutes a form of knowledge that sets itself in opposition to ‘lay knowledge’, but it is also a demarcation strategy to keep outsiders at bay and appropriate the substances (e.g., DNA) needed to assert scientific authority: the very matter that makes up truth claims. Our first participatory STS project: ‘Citizen-Led Forensics’ turned this division of labour and property on its head. Our subsequent projects dealing with Kidnapping and Data Justice in Mexico, took the lessons learned while working with the mothers of the disappeared in Mexico to build this atypical DNA database into new directions. Our digital installation will narrate our theoretical and methodological journey in the last decade— and some of the bitter-sweet lessons we have learnt along the way. Through co-produced videos, comic books, videogames and apps we will explore the intersections between ethnography, participatory action research, and STS. Our presentation should interest those who want to explore the ethico-political dimensions that emerge when engaged STS deals with explosive matters such as the ‘War on Drugs’ in Mexico, and the hundreds of thousands of victims it has produced.
Areas of STS Scholarship: Decolonial and Postcolonial STS, Feminist STS, (In)Security and STS
Authors/Participants: Ernesto Schwartz Marin, Exeter University
Arely Cruz Santiago, Exeter University
