The use of DNA in post-war Bosnia

Sarah Wagner’s ethnography, To Know Where He Lies: DNA Technology and the Search for Srebrenica’s Missing explores the aftermath of the Bosnian war, especially how the post-war institutions and citizens dealt with the 8000+ missing Bosniak men who were brutally killed and dispersed among several unmarked mass graves.

Last week, we talked about the social uses of DNA, and specifically how the use of “Native American DNA” was a dangerous concept that had potential to harm the Native American population, all the while overlooking the Native American’s own idea of tribal membership and replacing that with a Western-based techno-scientific one. In last week’s case, the development of technology that allowed scientists to isolate and sequence DNA was used as a socially detrimental tool, hurting some of the most marginalized populations in the United States.

However, in this week’s case, DNA was used to build a society back up. DNA played a crucial role in helping identify the remains of thousands of Bosniaks, a task that would have been near impossible to accomplish if it had not been for the technology. Through DNA testing of surviving relatives and matching that with the DNA found on the bodies at the mass graves, identities were able to be returned to the lost men. DNA testing also had political undertones as this was a way of scientifically “proving,” through the identified bodies, to the international community, but also to Bosnia itself, that a systematic and violent genocide had indeed occurred. The story of post-war Bosnia is centered around the experiences of the women—wives, daughters, mothers—left behind in the executions of the men. Through their participation in groups such as Women of Srebrenica and presentation of the war from the women’s point of view, the outspoken advocates helped secure aid from the government and international organizations that eventually helped shape the political-technological realm of post-war Bosnia.

I think the two uses of DNA that we explored in class in the past two weeks goes to show that science can have widespread effects on an incredible number of people, but depending on the context that it is used in, it can either tear down or build up a particular society. Advances in sciences and technology are important and in many ways necessary, but it is imperative that society keeps checking itself to evaluate how the developed technology is being used.