Operationalizing a Structural Vulnerability Profile for forensic anthropology: Skeletal and dental biomarkers of embodied inequity

The Decolonial Turn in Forensic Anthropology

Forensic anthropology has matured into a formidable and fully fledged discipline that includes specialty graduate programs, diversified employment opportunities, an expanding scope, and improved regulation. As part of this maturity, and in step with other branches of science and the humanities, forensic anthropology has also experienced an upswing in discourse on decolonization and decoloniality. From its inception and throughout its history, anthropology has been a colonial venture that observes humans under a Western gaze. As a critique of the universality and superiority of Western systems of knowledge, the decolonial turn constitutes alternative ways of thinking and doing and provides space for these epistemes to circulate and thrive. In this synthesis, decolonization efforts within forensic anthropology are organized into five "C's" of appraisal: categories, casework, curricula, competence, and collections. Namely, these efforts feature the debates around sex, ancestry, and structural vulnerability estimation (categories); the expansion of humanitarian action and community involvement and the challenges to positivism, neutrality, and objectivity (casework); the assessment of how we educate, train, and value expertise (curricula and competence); and the interrogation of how we extract knowledge from the dead (collections). From the undercurrents of these five, a sixth C, care, is unveiled. Given the academic and practical value of forensic anthropology, especially vis-à-vis its consequences for colonized peoples, these discourses become imperative for the continued relevance of a colonialist field in a postcolonial world.

Navigating Liminality in Evolving Forensic Anthropology Professionalism

Emerging aspects of professionalism within forensic anthropology, while enhancing the scientific foundation and practice for the discipline, have created liminalistic spaces and experiences in education and training, employment, ethics, and identities that reflect the broader transitional status in the discipline as a whole. These liminal states and problems are discussed in terms of their creation, development, and potential for resolution. They are interpreted within a liminal framework which requires navigation through significant changes in roles, status, and identity in forensic anthropology practice. Recommendations for mitigating the identified deficiencies, ambiguities, and frustrations they produce include expansion of educational training, certification, employment options, and roles and responsibilities, as well as adherence to standards and recognition and promotion of self-care. Successful navigation of these issues will lead to a stronger future for both the discipline and the practitioner.

The Effect of Cancer and Cancer Treatment on Pubic Symphysis Age Estimation Using Computed Tomography Scans

It is currently unknown whether cancer and cancer treatment affect age-related skeletal changes used in the biological profile for skeletonized remains. This research examines the effects of cancer on skeletal age estimation using computed tomography (CT) scans of the pubic symphyses for 307 individuals from the New Mexico Descendent Image Database. The Suchey-Brooks method was applied to 125 individuals without documented cancer and 182 individuals with documented cancer. Individuals were correctly aged if their chronological age fell within the original study's 95% prediction range. Though not statistically significant, the results show that females with cancer were aged correctly 74.7% of the time, and females without cancer were aged correctly 85.1% of the time; males with cancer were aged correctly 46.0% of the time, and males without cancer were aged correctly 55.7% of the time. Additionally, a total of 30 individuals were reanalyzed to examine intraobserver error, and a Cohen's kappa value of k = 0.600 indicated a moderate level of agreement. While no statistical differences were found between cancer and control groups, CT scans may lack the resolution needed to visualize the nuanced effects of bone mineral density loss, if present, and the overall quality of bone, despite their proven utility in dry-bone skeletal analyses.

Misgendering a transgender woman using FORDISC 3.1: A case study

•FORDISC was unable to classify a transgender woman despite her extensive gender-affirming medical care, including Facial Feminization Surgeries.•This case study demonstrates that there is a need for forensic anthropologists to educate themselves on cases that may involve transgender people.•The use of a biocultural approach will allow forensic anthropologists to better identify marginalized individuals, including transgender women.

Error and bias in race and ethnicity descriptions in medical examiner records in New Mexico: Consequences for understanding mortality among Hispanic/Latinos

Researchers use public records from deceased individuals to identify trends in manners and causes of death. Errors in the description of race and ethnicity can affect the inferences researchers draw, adversely impacting public health policies designed to eliminate health inequity. Using the New Mexico Decedent Image Database, we examine: 1) the accuracy of death investigator descriptions of race and ethnicity by comparing their reports to those from next of kin (NOK), 2) the impact of decedent age and sex on disagreement between death investigators and NOK, and 3) the relationship between investigators' descriptions of decedent race and ethnicity and cause and manner of death from forensic pathologists (n = 1813). Results demonstrate that investigators frequently describe race and ethnicity incorrectly for Hispanic/Latino decedents, especially regarding homicide manner of death and injury and substance abuse causes of death. Inaccuracies may cause biased misperceptions of violence within specific communities and affect investigative processes.

Towards a forensic anthropology of structural vulnerability

Anthropologists have theorized structural vulnerability as a way to understand forms of violence that disenfranchise certain parts of a population, leading to poorer health outcomes and increased risk of death. Recently, forensic anthropologists have used these theories to better understand the ways in which individual decedents in forensic contexts may be linked collectively through structural conditions. A recent example is the proposal of a "structural vulnerability profile." Based on research and casework done in the context of migrant deaths along the US-Mexico border, we caution against the use of a "profile," which suggests a categorical approach that could lead to negative unintended consequences in the future. Instead, we argue for continued development of practices that allow for observation, documentation, and interdisciplinary discussion of evidence of structural violence revealed during a death investigation. Specifically, we argue for an approach that grounds such observations within a particular social and historical context.

Operationalizing the structural vulnerability profile within the medical examiner context

The medicolegal death investigation process in the United States, historically focused on personal identification and determination of cause and manner of death, has evolved in recent decades to include space for advocacy centered around public health. Particularly, in the domain of forensic anthropology, practitioners have begun to incorporate a structural vulnerability perspective on human anatomical variation, with the goals of articulating the social determinants of ill health and early death and ultimately influencing public policy. This perspective has explanatory power far beyond the anthropological sphere. In this piece, we argue that biological and contextual indicators of structural vulnerability can be incorporated into medicolegal reporting with potentially powerful impacts on policy. We apply theoretical frameworks from medical anthropology, public health, and social epidemiology to the context of medical examiner casework, highlighting the recently proposed Structural Vulnerability Profile developed and explored in other articles in this special issue. We argue that: 1. Medicolegal case reporting provides a valuable opportunity to record a faithful accounting of structural inequities in the annals of death investigation, and 2. Existing reporting infrastructure could, with limited modifications, provide a powerful opportunity to inform State and Federal policy with medicolegal data, presented within a structural vulnerability framework.

Caribbeanist casualties: Interrogating the application of structural vulnerability to forensic anthropology

Biocultural approaches are instrumental to the evolution of forensic anthropology, and this practice must first reckon with its own violences before it can ethically address structural violence at large. We take up the issue of coerced migrations of Caribbean populations and forensic practice at the southern border of the United States, to problematize how forensic identification standards contribute to the casualties of ethnic erasures and potentially exacerbate structural vulnerability of Black Caribbean populations. We put forward that forensic anthropology is complicit in maintaining inequality in death and identification for Black Caribbean migrants through the absence of necessary reference data and methods of population-affinity estimation, and the adoption of fundamentally flawed linguistic constructions of Blackness. Pushing forensic anthropology to continue engaging with the colonial logics that have shaped its understanding and motivation for quantifying human biologies is key in efforts toward a progressive disciplinary future.