Season 04 - Episode 02: The Myth of Closure
In this episode, guest producer Laura Cirilo examines how the idea of closure configures into international applications of forensic anthropological practice in conversation with Dr. Sarah Wagner, Professor of Anthropology at the George Washington University, and Dr. Mercedes Salado, a member of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. The episode was created in conjunction with a Vital Topics Forum in American Anthropologist that explores contemporary and essential conversations around forensic anthropology’s framing as a sub-field that spans academic, to medico-legal, to humanitarian work contexts.
TRANSCRIPT:
SPEAKERS
Laura Cirilo, Anar Parikh, Mercedes Salado, Sarah Wagner
Anar Parikh 00:00
Anthropological Airwaves is the official podcast of the journal American Anthropologist, whose main offices are located on the traditional and ancestral territories of the Nacotchank, Anacostia, and Piscataway peoples. The Anacostia and Potomac rivers have long been places of trade and gathering for Indigenous peoples, and Washington DC is now home to diverse Indigenous people from across Turtle Island. American Anthropologist has published material throughout its history that have taken knowledge from Indigenous peoples for a scholarly audience and has not required its authors or editors to be good relations to Indigenous peoples and communities. Acknowledging territory is only one step in repairing these relationships. The Editorial Collective of the journal is committed to deep listening and engagement with Indigenous scholars, peoples, and communities to explore ways to be a better relation.
Anar Parikh 00:51
This episode was written, recorded, edited, and produced on the past, present, and future homelands of Indigenous peoples in what we now call the United States as well as what is presently known as Buenos Aires, Argentina. The discussion that follows explores the role forensic anthropologists play in identifying human remains in post-conflict societies. As we consider the consequences of political violence, Euro-American paradigms of grief and closure, and the ethical considerations involved in identifying human remains, Anthropological Airwaves would like to take this moment to recognize the legacies of violence, genocide, and dispossession of Indigenous people’s globally.
[intro music]
Anar Parikh 01:44
Hi everyone! Thanks for joining us for another episode of Anthropological Airwaves – the official podcast of the journal, American Anthropologist. This is Season Four, Episode Two.
Anar Parikh 02:06
If you listened to the season teaser earlier this year, you might have heard me promise that on this season of Anthropological Airwaves, we would be challenging cultural anthropology’s hegemony within the discipline. I was partly joking, but partly not., and I’m here to start making good on that promise. Today’s episode, titled The Myth of Closure,” is an exploration of how the idea of “closure” fits into contemporary forensic anthropological practice. It was created in conjunction with an upcoming Vital Topics Forum that explores contemporary and essential conversations in forensic anthropology’s framing as a sub-field that spans academic, to medico-legal, to humanitarian work contexts.
Anar Parikh 02:47
A publication category American Anthropologist that was first introduced in 2010 under the editorship of Tom Bollerstorff, the Vital Topics Forum is an occasional guest-edited feature that presents several scholarly perspectives on an issue of contemporary relevance to anthropology. While the exact shape and format of Vital Topics Forums vary to best suit the discussion at hand, the overall goal of this section is to bring together a diverse group of scholars to reflect and comment on an issue of vital significance to the discipline. In the most recent Vital Topics Forum, scholars and practitioners extend ongoing conversations in forensic anthropology in the form of one podcast episode and three essays— which are currently digitally available for Early View at American Anthropologist and will appear in print in the September issue of the journal.
Anar Parikh 03:35
In a (sub)discipline that explicitly works on issues related to the identification of human remains, the contributors to this Vital Topics Forum attend to questions about what categories of identity matter, how they are treated, the consequences of this treatment, and the role forensic anthropologists can and should play in shaping the practices of the field along these lines. The contributors to this episode are a team of anthropologists who were originally tasked with answering the question “where is forensic anthropology is practiced?” Their initial discussions on this topic eventually evolved into conversations about how Western assumptions are carried over into international applications of forensic anthropology and rather than present yet another review article about where and when forensic anthropology is practiced, the group chose to present this topic in podcast form—so that listeners could hear from everyday practitioners who contend with these questions in various aspects their work. Accordingly, this episode takes up the topic of “closure.” Forensic anthropologists are tasked with identification, documentation, and even stewardship of human remains. And in doing so, they are popularly understood to be purveyors of “closure” to the friends and families who have lost loved ones as a product of various interpersonal and sociopolitical circumstances. But, the idea of closure, of course, is much more complicated. Is “closure” really an attainable or even productive goal? Guest producer Laura Cirilo – a forensic anthropologist supporting the Defense Prisoner of War and Missing in Action Accounting Agency at SNA International – considers this question and more.
[transition audio]
Audio Clip 1 05:14
New 11 providing hope and closure for families dealing with unsolved murders,
Audio Clip 2 05:19
Science won't bring back lost loved ones, but it might give some closure to their families
Audio Clip 3 05:24
Helping bring closure and justice to the families of the victims
Audio Clip 4 05:28
I can provide closure to my loved ones to
Audio Clip 5 05:30
Bring closure to families,
Audio Clip 6 05:31
Help bring closure, closure, closure, closure, closure, closure, closure.
Laura Cirilo 05:35
It's a word we hear a lot around forensic anthropology--from both the media and the practitioners themselves. But how realistic is the idea of closure? I'm Laura Cirilo, a forensic anthropologist and guest producer of this episode of Anthropological Airwaves. Today, we reexamine the trope that forensic anthropologists bring closure to the families and friends of victims. By considering the many global contexts where forensic anthropology is practiced. I sat down with two anthropologists with distinct but complementary perspectives. One is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research has explored the destructive and creative forces of war through work in former Yugoslavia and the United States. The other is an international forensic anthropologist and identification coordinator that has participated in investigations and training in more than 20 countries. Together, we dive deep into the myth of closure and discuss what anthropology does, or maybe doesn't provide, to family seeking answers. Sara Wagner has critically examined the role of science in the identification of victims of genocide and warfare, she explores the complex effects of the identification process on the human experience. Sara shared with me some interesting ideas about how the concept of closure, as part of a psychological process of grieving, has become so attached to forensic work.
Sara Wagner 07:01
So, my research looks at war and memory, broadly construed. And specifically, I've spent time looking at the uses of forensic science as an intervention into post-conflict societies, especially accounting for the missing-in-action or missing persons--just the conundrum of an ambiguous uncertain death, and the ways that families, communities, societies, have sought to grapple with that accident.
Laura Cirilo 07:29
Grieving is frequently thought of as a linear path that parallels tidy, linear scientific processes. But most anthropologists understand that grief isn't linear. And really, neither is science. Science is iterative and shaped by politics, culture, and other social forces. It produces a type of forensic knowledge, yet it in forensic contexts with myriad processes in the judicial, scientific, and emotional arenas, this idea of closure still gets batted around. Whose idea is it? Where does the idea of closure fit in with a forensic context?
Sara Wagner 08:04
So I remember early on in my research in Bosnia and Herzegovina, encountering this word, and being a bit baffled by it, and they think it goes almost hand-in-glove with the language of moving on, right, so that the person or the community, the family, grieving and mourning, should necessarily be on a kind of linear path that allows them to leave behind and almost close that chapter of responding to loss or responding to the absence of their loved one. And even when those remains are identified in return, that somehow that that return of remains of identification should, you know, yield, the kind of like material remains and knowledge about what happened to a loved one to a close. And that, therefore, that that return of information, a return of remains, then would necessarily bring about a new stage so that that one passes out of that that period of intense grief or intense suffering. So yeah, I remember encountering it, and it seemed so jarring in the context of postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina, and specifically with the Srebrenica families and the Srebrenica cases, where the identification process was, had been so slow to, you know, to yield results, and that families have waited so long, just for basic information about where their loved ones remains were recovered, let alone an identification. So I think that might be it might be one way to help forensic scientists rethink the notion of closure is to get them to consider the complexities and contingencies of the very science that they are practicing.
Laura Cirilo 09:54
Identification work is a complex process producing specific kinds of knowledge, which may or may not result in positive identifications. The workup the forensic process doesn't align well with media's representation of a clear endpoint called closure. Researchers, not just in forensic sciences contribute to unpacking the nuances of the forensic investigative process. Sara discussed with us one way of framing friends acknowledged production using science and technology studies scholar Bruno Latour's, notion of the immutable mobile. In its most basic definition, the immutable mobile captures the idea that documentation allows for diffusion of information that is framed as truth or facts that cannot be altered. But is that real? Is an act of producing documented knowledge part of this ephemeral idea of closure? Sara shared with us how this idea that immutable mobile shaped her research to analyze and forensic investigation.
Sara Wagner 10:52
There was this notion that there are certain, certain ideas or certain techno-scientific facts or, or technologies, that are they circulate, right, they circulate, and they have a kind of valence right, a value is placed on them, as you know, serving a particular purpose, or translating a particular set of questions into accessible forms of knowledge. And that immutable mobile, is that it's doing similar work in vastly different contexts. And that's something that I think there's a little bit of the immutable mobile around forensic scientific investigations that insist on individuated results. So individually, the identifications of often with DNA at the center of the sort of evidentiary proof of identity. Closure is almost like this immutable mobile result of the technology applied, or the forms of knowledge production applied in vastly different cultural, political contexts. And so I find it intriguing. As I was trying to compare postwar Bosnia Herzegovina with say, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina, this is the very end of my first book, and I was just thinking about, why is it that, you know, the technology was sort of raising expectations in particular ways among some communities and not others. And so immutable mobiles is, is one about the technologies, right, and one about sort of these, these concepts that, you know, are doing work, but also I think they're very revealing about the disjunctures and when the the concept of don't do work, or when they're not allowed to do particular work, which I think begs the larger question of which missing persons or which, which populations do we deem as necessary to account for, and that gets at, you know, the whole a whole slate of, you know, the politics of the dead, that I think forensic scientists are very aware of, but often don't, you know, wade into the fray in these debates.
Laura Cirilo 13:05
Forensic anthropology and sciences are producing certain types of knowledge that may be used to shape a narrative surrounding mass death. Some narratives are uplifted and others are erased. I spoke to Mercedes Salado, a forensic anthropologist working with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. She explained the history of modern forensic anthropological investigation, where forensic knowledge production is intertwined with the political and social lives of the survivors. How can forensic investigators be conscientious of the narratives being constructed? How are forensic anthropologists part of the political? Mercedes walks us through the history and methods of the Argentine forensic anthropology team.
Mercedes Salado 13:48
My position into the team is identification coordinator. I work with this organization since 2003. My work,specifically, is based in the search and identification of missing persons, because of human rights violations and disappear because of political reasons. In Argentina, and also in other parts of the world. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team was created in 1984. And it was created in a moment after the dictatorship in Argentina. December 1983, the dictatorship ends and then it was a need in the country, for the search of the missing, of the disappeared, they were considered that the need disappear as a political status also in the country. And it was a need in the country for the recovery of the remains. For the search of what happened with with disappeared in the country. At that moment, it was not possible to find inside the official institutions because of the intervention during the dictatorship, the lack of credibility, the lack of expertise. I mean, we are talking about era where forensic anthropology was not at all as today. Forensic genetics didn't exist in the identification, human identification as we understand today. So it was, there was a need in the country of something external to the official system credible by the relatives. So, in 1984, after grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, mothers of Plaza de Mayo requested from the United States a commission to come to Argentina and to assess what it was happening. So this commission, formed by different specialities: forensic anthropologists, among them glides, no recognized forensic anthropologist, the geneticists, different specialities, archaeologists, anthropologists, one medical doctor, and he asked them to help with the first exhumantion of a case of a disappeared person. This was the first time that he testify on this case, in front of a trial against the responsibles in Argentina--the military juntas. This group, after, became what is today, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Group. It is an NGO, out of the forensic system, but authorized legally, by the tribunals, and now the prosecutor office in the country. So it's a very strange combination--it is out of the official system, in terms that is not part of the Forensic Institute in Argentina, but is officially named by the tribunals in charge of the investigation of the cases. I'm a Spanish, I'm not Argentinian. I am a Spanish person coming from European background, but living in Latin America for more than 25 years. So, I have like, both worlds. I can see now how many times the expertise coming from Western countries is considered the truth. And it's possible to apply to other contexts without any doubt. And we know that this is not like that. So the first thing we try to adapt is to understand the context. This the first thing: to understand the problem. To see the possibility. To make relatives also participate in this planning, in this understanding of the cultural aspects, the religious aspect, the political aspect, the security aspects. And after, try to adapt methodological questions that it doesn't mean, we have to improvise. It means that we have to adapt the approach to the context. There are problems transversal problems to most populations, even with cultural and religious, big differences. But, at the end of the day, there are similar problems: the lack of a relative, the search for a missing person at the base has the same pain, has the same uncertainty. So, you know that there are questions that will be very similar to answer. It doesn't matter where you are. But also, we know that we have to adapt how we do this, the how we have to adapt: until when we will intervene or not; if it's possible, to create local capacity or is just intervention a cultural intervention in one moment. Sometimes it's not the moment because it will risk the living. And also, we know that forensics, especially when you are talking about human rights violations, serious crimes, or a political level, you are in the middle of the political storm.
Mercedes Salado 19:43
And you risk also to play the political game. We have to be very aware of this. If it's the moment, and also why we are requested, and we evaluate very well by whom, "who is requesting us and why they're requesting us at that moment?" Because it's easy to play a political game in one moment and we try to avoid this. We know who, at the end of the day, is the focus of our work and always are the relatives.
Laura Cirilo 20:18
Local context and perspective is critical because we as forensic anthropologists are in the thick of it. This knowledge production could cause harm depending on how our work is carried out framed, restricted or reliant on outsider intervention. So perhaps closure isn't provided. But how is harm avoided? As interlocutors there is a responsibility to avoid pressures of a one-size-fits-all approach to avoid imposing investigator priorities on survivors. What knowledge production serves the survivors? Both Sarah and Mercedes emphasize a more holistic approach that helps reveal local needs and perspectives.
Sarah Wagner 20:58
Some anthropological training, and when I say anthropological, you know, forensic anthropological not, but specifically social or cultural anthropology is a necessary part of, you know, thinking through responses to violence, right. So if you're forensic scientists who are trained in Western institutions, universities, and in professional settings, I think it behooves all of us to consider that how Western culture response to death is very different than other parts of the world. And not to assume that, you know, the the kind of principles or tenants that guide a, you know, a scientific response is one that is, that fits other contexts. And in doing that, and sort of pondering that question like, will this fit? It's also, you know, being, having a heightened awareness that in asking the question, being ready for an answer that, don't know, that seems illogical or irrational or different, and not judge that right not use your own or ethnocentric ideals about what should happen in response to mass death as the yardstick to judge another community or another set of families or a society altogether.
Mercedes Salado 22:22
We try to understand first, what is needed. This is also incorporate, local needs, if you want. But also, instead of arriving and doing just an intervention from my organization, we try to look around because when you work with missing when you work, in the search of the disappeared, we know that this is not a disaster that you have to investigate. And that's it. It's something permanent, it needs a permanent work. So we always try to include the forensic capacity, to include the local capacity, and also to improve or see how to create permanent mechanisms that can continue with this world beyond us. We are not important, we are always an instrument to help with something.
Laura Cirilo 23:23
Forensic Identification requires not only an understanding of local context, but a commitment to serving survivors and designing sustainable interventions. Closure as a singular endpoint doesn't exist. Victim identification, survivor need, or even forensic capacity, building activities are all ongoing. They're all tied into larger history building, memory, and political processes. What does this close environment with survivors with diverse needs and expectations actually look like?
Mercedes Salado 23:55
When we work in other contexts. We tried always to make contact with the relatives at the beginning, before the intervention, for them to understand, to explain, for us to understand the context. What we will do? Why we will do this? And how? To talk about the different steps in this investigation. We try to include them throughout the investigation. So we try to get them involved if they want to be present at the exhumation. This is a negotiation also with the legal aspect, because it was an understanding also for the legal authorities, the right of the families to be present at the moment of exhumantion, of course, with all the care of security, also of the preservation of the evidence, but there are ways to preserve evidence and there, there are ways to preserve security being present.
Sarah Wagner 25:04
If nothing else, I learned that with ICMP in 72 cases and then again with the US military and its sort of model of disseminating information through its service caching officers to primary next of kin, that without a robust and trusted mode of communication, however scientifically sound and rigorous the process of recovering identification may be if there isn't trust, then that acceptance of that knowledge, right, the family's willingness to say, "Yes, I believe you." Communication, both regular and with an understanding that it's got to be a two way channel as opposed to merely, you know, the experts, the scientific authorities are, you know, watering it down and giving a kind of summary without spending time to explain, you know, as as detailed as is required by the the surviving relatives, that without that, it's, that's the potential for the process to utterly break down. And a breakdown in one can mean a breakdown for families in who received identifications in the future as well. Yeah.
Mercedes Salado 26:22
And of course, after, when we have to notify the results, we need to understand the scale that the relatives want to be notified. There are contexts where families want to be notified only individually. There are contexts where also there is a need for a social notification, because one part of of the damage of relatives is isolation in the community after the disappearance. So, there is also a need sometimes to make this public; to explain to the community that really, this was the story of the case, that the person was disappeared, how it was the context. So the same explanation sometimes is requested to give to the community, because this will be also relief for them.
Laura Cirilo 27:22
In the case of mass violence and mass disasters, human remains may be fragmented and scattered, which can lead to long identification process that is piece by piece. Families may design a notification when analysis is complete, or for every piece that is identified during the process. By unpacking this notion of closure, more questions arise. Does the imagined pursuit of closure? Assume all families want the same thing and our passive in the process? How does our idea of closure incorporate or exclude families?
Sarah Wagner 27:55
I think both. it does two things. One, it slots family in primary next of kin, surviving relatives, as beneficiaries in a process. So, they're not standing with and from the beginning, and of stakeholders through that process, but rather, they're the ones who received it in the end. But in that, so 1) removes them from actually taking part in the knowledge production; and 2) it sort of construes them as monolithic, in so far as all families want and need the same things. Right? So that closure, you know, closure is uniform, and families responses are uniform, as if there aren't families who utterly reject the scientific evidence; as is if there aren't families who receive that information and only want more; families who get that information and are so scarred by the sort of knowledge that that's revealed to them, including the ways in which their loved one may have suffered. The disposition of the remains may be so incredibly harrowing to contemplate that there's anything but closure that then happens, right? That they're now left with all kinds of not memories, but rather imaginings of suffering that they hadn't had before.
Laura Cirilo 29:15
Survivors and stakeholder families are not monolithic or homogenous. We know that sometimes the burials themselves, the mass graves act as visible scars on the landscape of visible memory of what happened. These markers can serve as political or economic leverage in reconciliation and justice at the community level. But how community knowledge is framed, and how death is memorialized can be imagined very differently. Is memory incorporated into the pursuit of closure?
Sarah Wagner 29:46
Well, memory is part of it all. Memory is often necessary in the fundamental details of the crime or the incident or, you know. Without someone remembering where this happened, you're not going to locate remains in return right? Memory was and continues to be important in that the record of the deceased that can be critical to that antemortem. post-mortem comparative examination. I think, you know, on a memory on a social level, or sort of a national commemoration level is exactly what often underwrites or pushes my identification process, because there's an insistence that we need to remember and that the proper way of remembering and accounting for the past is by recovering remains and fixing these bodies in time and space. So I think memories all, its, its, it interlaces forensic scientific process of accounting for missing or responding to human rights abuses, or whatever the case may be. I think it's useful also to consider how memory can complicate how families encounter the news of identification. Maybe one of the best examples I can describe is from Srebrenica, where caseworkers were really keen when families would say "no, no, you know, I really want I really want to see my loved ones remains, I really want to see," and then the the caseworkers would try and explain well, "what you're going to see is a set of bones”, right? “And they're going to be on an examination table. You're not going to recognize anything about them there. You're not going to recognize your loved one." And the families are here, "No, I want to touch them. I want to see them." There this kind of disjuncture between what the families need, and want and are imagining, and what the forensic scientist assumes about, you know, that encounter. And I don't think they're wrong, I don't think the forensic scientist is wrong to say, "No, are you sure? Are you sure you want this to be your last memory? Or you know, "What you will see you you can't unremember that. You will have that image for the rest of your life." And, and sometimes you know, families say, "Okay, all right, that's, that's right. Maybe I won't do this." But other times, it is really about the possibility of, of, you know, holding those remains or those teeth in their hands. And that's, that is a way of sort of honoring the memory. There's useful to think about both individual memory and individual encounters and individual imaginings, but also sort of the politics of memory and social collective memory, and particularly in these commemorative spaces, whether it's at a you know, war memorial, or it's at, you know, a collective burial sites, such as as the Srebrenica Potocari Memorial Center. I mean, there national memory is being forged in the present and for the future. It's not separate from it is, you know, it is feeding off of a forensic identification program that has returned remains to that site, and they're inextricably bound up.
Laura Cirilo 33:13
Forensic knowledge may provide a level of certainty or finality to a report. But outside of the scientific community, we can see this narrative of closure disrupted in the practice of notifying families. If not falling back on the trope of closure, what do forensic anthropologists bring to families?
Sarah Wagner 33:31
I think early on in the Srebenica case, I was so impressed by the fact that the DNA matching reports “we have 99.96% certainty this is your son”, that families would like nod at that and then say, "Well, show me that, you know, I want to see the remains." Or, "I want to see the clothing, the material artifacts that were recovered with him, because I'm going to recognize those." You know, a pair of socks that the mother herself had knitted, right? That those were for, you know that with the labor of her and the care of her own hands. That's what made that identification. And when that doesn't exist, if I don't trust the authority, that's telling me that this preeminent, you know, a scientific line of evidence is, is telling everyone else that this is definitively your son. But if I don't trust that or that doesn't that intelligible to me on some level, then the whole process is ground to a kind of halt. So, I know this sort of Western psychological notion of closure, is, it seems to be really attuned to knowledge equals resolution equals end to grief, and I think it's backwards. Or at least it doesn't understand that grief can actually open up upon the news of loved one's death, right? Of definitive attestation that someone has died, and also the circumstances--to see how your loved one died. The traces of violence on the skeletal elements, or to have that reported to you. That rarely closes down one's grief. Even within the context of the Vietnam War, there's a real range of of family responses that show closure, it's again ill-suited because it doesn't, it doesn't fit for all cases--that there are families that are, you know, that to this day, insist their loved one is still alive, or someone who simply does not want to hear from the US government and does not want to get the news that there has been a recovering because they're so enraged that their son was sent off to die in the first place. And so that was one way where closure is doesn't fit because of you know, the relationship that say, a family or a surviving kin has to either the authority that's, you know, undertaking the identification recovery process, or to the whole notion of the war, right? Was it a good war? Was it a, you know, a problematic one? Was it one that they were their loved one was coerced into fighting? Was there shame around it?
Mercedes Salado 36:05
I don't believe in closure. I don't believe that there is just a starting point and an ending point in this . It's so complex, the process, especially when there is a long time, waiting for answers, waiting for some news, waiting for respect, for credibility, for dignity. To say that, "because the remains are found, there is closure," I don't believe in this. And when you talk to relatives, the absence of the physical body is as important as the absence of information. For me, the search never end with the finding of the body. This is too, too limited. It's much more complicated than this. So I don't think there is closure,. There is relief. Of course. There is dignification, especially for the living, to be respected enough to feel all these black hole that is the lack of news. We bring relief. I think sometimes we bring bad news out, because not always is positive, what we find. Sometimes we bring the lack of possibilities to reach information, to reach the finding of the body. But I think basically, we bring the relief that means for relatives to be respected enough to face them. And to be honest, In Spain it is like general speech to say, "Do not open all injuries. Do not open the graves. Do not open this." The lack of respect the lack of information, the lack of investigation, the lack of justice, jump generations, and Spain is a very good example. Now that the grandchildren, the great grandchildren, who are looking for this information. Are the remains important for them? Probably not, not that much. Its the the need for dignity. its the need for respect. And these injuries are always open and will be open forever if there is not trust in there; if there is not truth in the middle; if there is not a possibility of the reconstruction of the history, as it was told. If the name can be not name; if its a shame, still, to say the name of this person to denounce who killed them and why they will kill. So all these factors also make open the process probably forever. So, it's very important that recovery of the body, yes. It's a big relief. Yes, of course. But it has to bring answers. It has to bring information. It has to bring respect and dignity. So, I don't think we bring closure to relatives. I think we bring news. I think we bring explanations. And I think we bring something and space for them to ask questions, and to have answers until the point that we know and if we cannot know, at least, to think together if this for that information is possible to be obtained or not, but at least to have this space that they should have years ago. So, I think this is what we can bring to thinking more than this is to be a bit Hollywood. I don't think we that important to bring closure or reparation to relatives. We bring the opportunity to be respected.
Laura Cirilo 40:25
Once a niche discipline, the work of the forensic anthropologist is increasingly difficult to generalize. We apply our trade to a range of institutions with some disparate mandates, and in a variety of contexts. Western biases such as the myth of closure are most salient when forensic anthropology is practiced internationally and forensic outcomes differ from the community expectations. Can we adapt and in turn shine light on these biases in forensic anthropology, when also practiced in the US? Stating that we provide closure is easy, and it's clean, producing an immutable mobile. But is it accurate? What does it assume? That families are monolithic, and the process of grief is linear? Ultimately, the trope of providing closure may negatively affect the way our work is received.
Sarah Wagner 41:16
When we use closure, we are we're sort of exhorting families to quiet down and to accept and to move on and to stop mourning or to stop imagining all of the things that they can't control. And they shouldn't have to. No one after losing a loved one, particularly in you know, circumstances of violence, and you know, and years of not knowing should ever be told there's a timeline to how they should grieve.
Laura Cirilo 41:47
Forensic anthropologists have a responsibility to understand the larger political, social and cultural context in which they work, including power imbalances involving those with specialized forensic knowledge and the societies communities and families they serve. They have an obligation to influence the framing of their work by the media and other forensic disciplines and an obligation to recognize socio cultural forces exerted on and by their work. The work itself is shaped by and shaped sociocultural factors. And they have responsibility to stop assuming they are scientifically neutral saviors who simply provide salvation to beneficiaries, and instead, start actively listening to families with empathy, truly understanding their needs, and empower them with more agency as equal stakeholders in a very complicated process.
[outro music]
Anar Parikh 42:59
Thank you for listening to another episode of Anthropological Airwaves. Many thanks, as well, to the many, many individuals who made this episode possible. The episode was edited and produced by Laura Cirilo. It was written by Jaymelee Kim – Forensic Anthropologist at the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office, Cate Bird – Forensic Specialist at the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Davette Gadison - Forensic Specialist at the International Committee of the Red Cross. Jaymelee Kim also provided the thumbnail image for this episode. Additional contributions were made by Elaine Chu and Matt Go. The episode features interviews with Sarah Wagner, Professor of Anthropology at The George Washington University and Mercedes Salado, Identification Coordinator of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. An Early View link to the written conversations to the Vital Topics Forum on Forensic Anthropology is available in the show notes. The essays will also be published in the print in the September issue of American Anthropologist. These pieces cover issues such as barriers to entry and success in forensic anthropology; ethical considerations within the field; and the need for an explicitly antiracist framework in forensic anthropology. You won’t want to miss them.
Anar Parikh 44:13
I, Anar Parikh, am the Executive Producer of Anthropological Airwaves and the Associate Editor of the Podcast at American Anthropologist. The intro and outro music you hear is titled “Waiting” by Crowander. As always, a closed caption version of all of Anthropological Airwaves episodes, including this one, will be available on our YouTube channel and a full transcription on the episode page on the American Anthropologist website. Links to both are included in the show notes. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to subscribe to Anthropological Airwaves wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, don’t forget to rate and review us while you’re there. A five-star review in particular will help other listeners find the show! We would also love to hear from you in general. If you have feedback, recommendations, or thoughts on recent episodes, send an email to amanthpodcast@gmail.com. You can also reach out to us on our Facebook page or on Twitter where use the handle @AnthroAirwaves. Find links to all of our contact information in the show notes and on the Anthropological Airwaves section of the American Anthropologist website. Take it easy, y’all, and we’ll be back soon with more great anthro audio!
[outro music]