PUBLIC AFFAIRS
the Plaza de Mayo mobilized to recover their
PUBLIC AFFAIRS
VIEWS ON POLICY
DNA Identification
Checking Expectations of Truth
and Justice
LINDSAY A SMITH
SARAH WAGNER
HARVARD U
From Tsunami-devastated nations to New
Orleans, from El Salvador to New York, DNA
identification has become an important tool
in the aftermaths of disaster and conflict. Once
at the center of debates about genetic reduc-
tionism and racial essentialism, DNA testing
now serves as a standard part of international
responses to large-scale “missing persons” cases
and as a core component of reconstruction and
repair. The hype of its reparative potential, how-
ever, often exceeds or misreads the technology’s
actual impact.
Excessive confidence in genetic identification
technologies comes as no surprise, at least in
the US. Primetime shows like CSI thrive on the
public’s fascination with the seemingly magi-
cal crime-solving powers of forensic science,
and they help construct the assumption that
DNA testing will deliver unequivocal truths
in a messy world. Far from such sci-fi portray-
als, some American courtrooms provide juries
with special instructions about the processes of
forensic science to counter-exaggerated expec-
tations fostered by the so-called “CSI effect.”
Undoubtedly, DNA has entered the mainstream
American lexicon, regularly cast as the defini-
Founded in October 1977, the Association of Grandmothers of the
Plaza de Mayo seeks the return of children who disappeared during
Argentina’s dirty war. Photo courtesy National Security Archives
tive resolution to profound moral dilemmas of
truth and justice.
Yet the use of genetic testing to resolve missing
persons cases has a history that extends far beyond
the US. In places as distant as Argentina and for-
mer Yugoslavia, forensic experts have incorporated
DNA-based identification systems into larger proj-
ects of post-conflict reparations and social recon-
struction. The results of these costly tests, however,
have not translated into stabilizing narratives of
past violence or uncontested claims of biological
identity expected by advocates. Its failure to act as
a technology of repair in such contexts suggests
that DNA testing, like other mechanisms of resto-
ration and reparation, is socially constituted and
deeply politicized.
Producing the “Facts”
In former Yugoslavia, proponents of the DNA-
based identification efforts have promoted the
technology as an arbiter in debates surrounding
numbers and types of victims of the region’s
armed conflicts during the 1990s. Samples col-
lected from surviving family members become
another means of tabulating missing persons.
Only relatives of the missing, the logic goes,
would venture to dab their pin-pricked fingers
onto bloodstain cards in asserting the disappear-
ance of loved ones.
Bodies recovered and bone samples tested lend
credence to these same claims. In the case of
Srebrenica, the largest massacre of the Bosnian
war in which some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men
and boys were killed, DNA matches have identi-
fied the remains of over 2,500 vic-
tims. Bosnian Muslims hold these
numbers up to their Bosnian Serb
and Serb counterparts, demanding
recognition of their losses. But the
increased focus on counting the
Srebrenica victims has led other
ethno-national groups to compile
their own casualty lists. Rather
than assuaging tensions, facts and
figures generated from the DNA
technology have added grist to the
mill of ethno-nationalist politics
within the region.
Identifying Argentina’s
“Living Disappeared”
At the height of the 1976–83
Argentine dictatorship, when
30,000 young adults were “dis-
appeared,” a group of women
known as the Grandmothers of
May 2007 • Anthropology News
kidnapped grandchildren, born in captivi-
ty to their disappeared daughters and sons.
Working with international scientists, the
Grandmothers were the first group worldwide
to organize around genetic identification tech-
nologies to prove relatedness in the absence of
the parental generation.
In over two decades of transitional justice, and
despite tremendous scientific advancements, only
85 of the 600 missing grandchildren have been
identified. This failure of a seemingly straight-
forward scientific test suggests how questions of
individual identity, notions of family and state
accountability are integral to the technology itself.
Among activists, DNA identification speaks of
true identity; in the courtroom, that same result
proves the democratic state’s commitment to
redress; and for the kidnapped child, now an
adult, this knowledge of biological identity often
results in the only parents she had ever known
being immediately arrested for crimes against
humanity. Thus DNA is not a deus ex machina
able to provide unmitigated closure, but rather a
scientific technology incapable of answering the
central questions in a post-conflict society.
“Truth” in the form of
matching DNA samples
does not equal nor
guarantee justice in the
minds of many surviving
families, their communities
and their political leaders.
Lessons for the Future?
As reports of mass graves periodically surface in
Iraq and commentators draw parallels to past
conflict zones such as former Yugoslavia, expec-
tations about how best to respond to victims of
mass violence also arise.
If Argentina and former Yugoslavia’s DNA iden-
tification efforts can provide any lessons, they
illustrate the need to check assumptions about
the technology’s impact. While the importance
of identification to surviving families should
be recognized, expectations of “closure” or the
potential for reconciliation are often misplaced
if not misguided. “Truth” in the form of match-
ing DNA samples does not equal nor guarantee
justice in the minds of many surviving families,
their communities and their political leaders.
Lindsay A Smith is a doctoral candidate in anthropol-
ogy at Harvard University. Sarah Wagner is a lecturer
in anthropology at Harvard University. Both are involved
in an ongoing project exploring the theme of “technolo-
gies of repair.”
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