The Exchange project has just published the eBook “Crime and technology: cultural and political challenges for Europe”, organized by Helena Machado.
This book addresses the relations between science, culture and politics from a sociological perspective on the societal and ethical implications of using forensic genetics to prevent crime and terrorism in the European Union. This collective book portrays the contingencies, controversies and expectations towards forensic genetics in a hybrid context, where the security agendas of nation-states intersect with the practices of scientists, police officers and media messages, as a diagnosis of the turbulences science faces when driven out of its traditional habitat.
The focal point of this work is the analysis of the public dimension of forensic genetics when this field of scientific knowledge, under the aegis of neutrality, is called upon to produce practical and valuable knowledge for criminal identification. Against the background of a society surrendered to the symbolic aura of genetics and the positive contribution of science to societal safety and security, this work aims to deconstruct the dystopian dimension of science linked to state and police surveillance processes, which threaten civil liberties and expose vulnerable populations to insidious processes of racism, discrimination and stigmatization.
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