The Collective Work in Forensic Context

Criticism of Heterogeneity and Standardization

Abstract

　In the history of academic concern about how scientific work is performed by multiple actors, STS researchers have revealed that multidisciplinary collaborators use the intermediates (e.g. boundary objects) to loosely bind the participants and conduct the collective work despite various differences. Based on the ethnographical research within the forensic laboratories in New Zealand, this article discusses the features of collective work in forensic context.

　Forensic science is characterized by heterogeneous subdisciplines that examine various evidence types, and the subdisciplines collaborate with each other to facilitate a decision making in a court. However, the way of collaboration by the subdisciplines faced with criticism and was changed. By exploring the process of change, this article reveals that the collective work by the forensic subdisciplines is affected by the court, where the level of collaboration and the heterogeneous practices that the ordinary intermediates are expected to create are criticized. Forensic science receives a demand to unify its internal diversity and the practice of DNA analysis is considered as a goal for such standardization.