Lisette Jong

This methodographic paper explores the performativity and materiality of methods in STS research practice. Studying the absent presence of race in facial composite drawing in the Netherlands, the confidential nature of criminal investigations put constraints on our possibilities to study this practice. To generate data to work with, we created an ethnographic experiment producing two facial composites in collaboration with two forensic artists. We recorded the drawing process using a variety of (audiovisual) technologies to produce different materializations of the event. Tinkering with and analyzing the generated materials sensitized the ethnographers to three different modes of doing difference in which race surfaces in the process of facial composite drawing: 1) touching as describing; 2) layering and surfacing; and 3) articulating the common. We argue that different modes of doing ethnography, for instance, conducting research with audiovisual and experimental methods, can open up new ground to approach difficult and slippery objects such as race.

The capacity of contemporary forensic genetics has rendered “race” into an interesting tool to produce clues about the identity of an unknown suspect. Whereas the conventional use of DNA profiling was primarily aimed at the individual suspect, more recently a shift of interest in forensic genetics has taken place, in which the population and the family to whom an unknown suspect allegedly belongs, has moved center-stage. Making inferences about the phenotype or the family relations of this unknown suspect produces suspect populations and families. We discuss the criminal investigation following the Marianne Vaatstra murder case in the Netherlands and the use of forensic (genetic) technologies therein. It is in many ways an interesting case, but in this paper we focus on how race surfaced in science and society. We show that race materializes neither in the technologies used nor in the bodies at stake. Rather, race emerges through a material semiotic relation that surfaces in the translation that occurs as humans and things move across sites. We argue that race is enacted, firstly, in the context of legislation as biology reduced to bodily characteristics; secondly, in the forensic analyses as patterns of absent presence; and, thirdly, in society as a process of phenotypic othering.

The capacity of contemporary forensic genetics has rendered “race” into an interesting tool to produce clues about the identity of an unknown suspect. Whereas the conventional use of DNA profiling was primarily aimed at the individual suspect, more recently a shift of interest in forensic genetics has taken place, in which the population and the family to whom an unknown suspect allegedly belongs, has moved center-stage. Making inferences about the phenotype or the family relations of this unknown suspect produces suspect populations and families. We discuss the criminal investigation following the Marianne Vaatstra murder case in the Netherlands and the use of forensic (genetic) technologies therein. It is in many ways an interesting case, but in this paper we focus on how race surfaced in science and society. We show that race materializes neither in the technologies used nor in the bodies at stake. Rather, race emerges through a material semiotic relation that surfaces in the translation that occurs as humans and things move across sites. We argue that race is enacted, firstly, in the context of legislation as biology reduced to bodily characteristics; secondly, in the forensic analyses as patterns of absent presence; and, thirdly, in society as a process of phenotypic othering.

In 1999 a young girl named Marianne Vaatstra was found murdered in a rural area in the Netherlands. In 2012 the perpetrator was arrested. Throughout this period and after, the Marianne Vaatstra case never ceased to receive media attention and was part of public debate. How is it that this murder became a high-profile case? We argue for an understanding of the Vaatstra case as a 'fire object'. Law & Singleton's fire metaphor helps to attend to objects as patterns of absences and presences. In the Vaatstra case it is in particular the unknown suspect that figures as a generative absence that brings different versions of the case to presence and to proliferate. In this paper we present four versions of the Vaatstra case that were made present in the media that also differently shape identities of concerned actors, victim, suspect and communities. The unruly topology of fire objects might well explain the high-profileness of such criminal cases.

Abstract
In March 2012, a study into sentencing disparities shocked the Dutch Judiciary. Three researchers of the University of Leiden have demonstrated that defendants’ ‘foreign’ or Dutch ‘appearance’, as well as their capacity to speak Dutch, influence judges’ sentencing decisions: defendants who both ‘appear foreign’ and who do not speak Dutch are more likely to be sentenced with a prison sentence than those who both ‘appear’ and speak Dutch (Wermink, de Keijser and Schuyt 2012). Several actors in both politics and media quickly made up their minds: the judiciary may promise to treat like cases alike, yet the data clearly suggested that the members of the judiciary are at least somewhat affected by discriminatory stereotypes. Judges themselves, however, were rather piqued. Two judges replied to the study’s findings in the Dutch Jurist’s Magazine, where they wonder whether the researchers have ‘any idea’ as to how judges decide on actual cases.
I want to show that this controversy pivots on two different conceptions of what it means to treat like cases alike. Starting with the recognition that research methods are best conceived of as performative, rather than simple representational devices, this lecture takes up the challenge raised by these judges (and others like them), in that it wants to zoom in on the way the Leiden researchers have conceptualized and enacted similarities and differences between cases in their methodological approach to sentencing. It pays particular attention to the way national and phenotypical measures of differences between individual defendants are uneasily and precariously linked to generate a measure of their ‘foreignness’. However, this lecture will also seek to contrast the researchers' modes of doing difference with judges' own, more narrative understanding of individual cases. In these narrative practice of case-making, ethnic or racial modes of making differences are, for understandable reasons, conspicuously absent. As such, this lecture aims to attend for the specific ways our worlds are made and ordered by different kinds of expert and made amenable to specific questions and interventions.

About the lecturer
Irene van Oorschot is a post-doctoral researcher in the RaceFaceID project (principal investigator: Prof. Amade M’charek) with interests in pragmatist philosophy, ethnography, the study of law, bureaucracy and expert knowledges, and feminist and queer theorizing. Her previous work— her dissertation Ways of Case-Making, to be defended on February 2, 2018 - addressed local epistemic practices in a Dutch criminal court and focused in particular on the role of the case file in mediating these practices. Within the RaceFaceID project, she concentrates on how differences between individuals and populations come to matter at the intersection of legal modes and scientific/forensic modes of knowledge-making.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam.

We would like to invite you to our upcoming ir/relevance of race seminar on Monday September 25. We are very happy to welcome Alana Helberg-Proctor who will give a lecture titled:

Proceed with caution! ‘Ethnicity’ in health research, policy, and care in the Netherlands

Date: Monday, September 25
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi

Abstract
In European health policy and research policy, the ‘inclusion paradigm’ in health research and care is gaining momentum. This inclusion paradigm is based on the notion that health inequalities are amplified when healthcare and research fail to address the needs of populations and individuals who are physically and culturally different from the male white ‘standard’ in medical research and care. In order to combat such inequalities, ‘inclusive’ European policies in the areas of healthcare and research thus call for the greater inclusion of diversity pertaining to ethnicity, race, sex, gender, sexuality, and age in health care and research.  As a consequence, the specific research field of Ethnicity and Health is developing in Europe, and ethnicity is being included in health research and care more frequently. Critical scholarship on the use of ethnicity and race in health research, care, and policy, however, indicates that the manner in which race and ethnicity are included and constructed in these fields might actually be intertwined with and contribute to the very societal dynamics which in fact produce larger societal notions of difference and sameness which underlie some of these societal and health inequalities. During this lecture I will explore the case of the Netherlands, to discuss how scientific knowledge and facts about ethnicity related to health are produced through research practices, and what the consequences might be of the production of this ‘knowledge’ and of these ‘facts’.

About the lecturer
Alana Helberg-Proctor is a researcher at the University of Amsterdam and an Assistant Professor at Maastricht University. Her research interests include analysis of the use of ethnicity and race in scientific research, health policy and care. Alana obtained her PhD degree  from the Department of Health, Ethics, and Society at Maastricht University’s Faculty of Health, Medicine, and Life Sciences in 2017. Her thesis is entitled (Un)Doing Ethnicity: Analyses of the socio-scientific production of ‘ethnicity’ in health research in the Netherlands.

About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Go to webpage seminar series.


Forthcoming events
November 6 - Ir/relevance of race seminar
December 18 - Ir/relevance of race seminar
January 22 - Ir/relevance of race seminar
March 5 - Ir/relevance of race seminar
April 16 - Ir/relevance of race seminar
May 28 - Ir/relevance of race seminar

Contesting classifications: racial moralities in South Africa’s insurance industry
Date: Monday, February 6
Time: 15:30-17:00
Place: Common Room Anthropology B5.12, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, Amsterdam. See maps https://goo.gl/maps/by5mi
Abstract
One of the central features of actuarial knowledge and its application is the establishment of classifications. These classifications are needed to price risks, to manage costs, and they offer a language for the identification of new products for new markets. These classifications are technical and necessary for the establishment of risk at an aggregate level and they are simultaneously moralising.
In South Africa, these classifications are heavily saturated with concerns about racial inequality, especially so since the end of apartheid in 1994. This is evident in a) the establishment of racial quota and other policies that should make South Africa’s financial sector more inclusive; and b) the precariousness of racial classification for market segmentation and risk analysis.
In this talk, Erik Bähre examines how and when these racial categories are established and avoided. He explores how these classifications are contested and what these contestations reveal about the positionality of the insurance sector in South African society, especially so vis-à-vis the state and African clients.
The study is based on interviews with actuaries and other professionals involved in the insurance sector, an online survey among actuaries, fieldwork and a neighbourhood survey in the townships of Cape Town, and the analysis of public debates and policy documents.
About the lecturer
Dr. Erik Bähre is Associate Professor at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of Leiden University. He is an economic anthropologist specialised in South Africa. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork, as well as conducted surveys, in the townships and squatter settlements of Cape Town. His main research interest is how dramatic economic changes affect social relations, and particularly why they cause particular tensions within households, among kin and neighbours. He has done research on financial mutuals among neighbours and migrants, on the provision of commercial insurances, social grants, and entrepreneurship.
Currently, Erik Bähre is doing research on the morality of life insurances in a five year project in five different countries within the research project ‘Moralising Misfortune: A Comparative Anthropology of Commercial Insurance to examine the morality of life insurance’. For this project he has been awarded a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council.
About the seminar series
In this seminar series the relevance and irrelevance of race is being discussed as an object and concept of research in order to explore ways to talk about race without naturalizing differences. The series goes beyond a standard definition of race, one that is allegedly relevant everywhere, and situates race in specific practices of research. In addition the series gives room to the various different versions of race that can be found in the European context and explores when and how populations, religions, and cultures become naturalized and racialized. Scholars from different (inter)disciplinary fields (such as genetics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, history, political sciences, science and technology studies) are invited to address the issue of race through a paper presentation. The seminar is held every six weeks at the University of Amsterdam. Webpage Seminar Series: http://bit.ly/VKg6tt
Forthcoming events
April 3: ir/relevance of race seminar with professor Gloria Wekker