Rape, law and justice revisited

The image that adorns the cover of this book is a reproduction of ‘Susanna and the Elders’ by the Flemish Renaissance painter Vincent Sellaer, thought to have been composed in the first half of 16th century. Susanna’s story is one to which we were drawn because it is a story of sexual violence and law, in which several of the motifs we discuss in this book surface. The story, which appeared first in the Old Testament Apocrypha and is thought to have been written around the 2nd century BC (Moore, 1977: 92), is set in Babylon during the Exile. Susanna was the wife of a prominent Jewish community member and was observed bathing by two passing elders, who accosted her when she was alone, having been overcome by their lust for her. The elders threatened her with humiliation by publicly accusing her of adultery if she denied their requests for sex. Susanna ‘courageously refused to commit this sin against God’, and when the elders carried through with their threats, she was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death (Bohn, 2001: 260). Susanna was never asked for her version of the events, and she never volunteered it (Glancy, 1993: 115; Bohn, 2001: 260). Before Susanna’s sentence could be carried out, the future prophet Daniel interceded on her behalf, testifying to her virtue and demanding that the elders be cross-examined. The inconsistencies in their testimony, drawn out by Daniel’s questioning, revealed their lies, and Susanna was exonerated. The elders were stoned to death in Susanna’s place. As the biblical scholar Babette Bohn points out, Susanna’s story is usually understood as one that situates the importance of fidelity, both to God and the bonds of marriage, and illustrates the value and efficacy of prayer (Bohn, 2001: 260). However, it is also a story about law, gender and justice.

While there are many artistic representations of Susanna and her story in period artwork, we were drawn to this image in part for its composition and colours, but also because it captures the oppressive essence of this part of Susanna’s story (the attempted rape or ‘seduction’), and of what we perceive it must be like to be a rape complainant giving evidence in the courtroom.

In a world that is rapidly changing, increasingly connected and uncertain, there is a need to develop a shared applied policy analysis of welfare regimes around the globe. Research in Comparative and Global Social Policy is a series of books that addresses broad questions around how nation states and transnational policy actors manage globally shared challenges. In so doing, the book series includes a wide array of contributions, which discuss comparative social policy history, development and reform within a broad international context. The book series invites innovative research by leading experts on all world regions and global social policy actors and aims to fulfil the following objectives: it encourages cross-disciplinary approaches that develop theoretical frameworks reaching across individual world regions and global actors; it seeks to provide evidence-based good practice examples that cross the bridge between academic research and practice; not least, it aims to provide a platform in which a wide range of innovative methodological approaches, be it national case studies, larger-N comparative studies or global social policy studies, can be introduced to aid the evaluation, design and implementation of future social policies.

In this regard, we are delighted to have Sophia Seung-yoon Lee’s contribution on precarious labour in Korea as a part of our book series. This book brings together a unique collection of case studies of different scenarios of labour market preciousness or fissured workplaces in Korea. This includes Ssangyong Motor Industry plant workers, call centre cleaning workers, to Korean platform workers. Together they tell the story of the rise of precarious and ‘melting labour’ in Korea and the failures of their welfare state development in protecting workers.

The highlight of this book is its unique and innovative theoretical contribution of the concept of ‘melting labour’. Melting labour entails the dismantling of various boundaries surrounding traditional forms of work and workplace – namely the rise of non-regular and atypical work, subcontracted and outsourced work and bogus self-employment like dependent or disguised self-employed individuals, freelancers and platform workers. Through the use of the concept, Lee aims to provide a better conceptualisation of the increased new forms of work that deviate away from standard employment, and better understand the common features of changes in work and workplace forms that enable this.

Although popularised by Lacan, it was another French intellectual, Sartre (in Being and nothingness), who formulated the impact of the gaze [2]. Specifically, Sartre put forth subjectivity’s entanglement with the perception of others, since what is perceived, including other people, is turned into objects by our gaze and becomes defined by the gazing subject [3].

Sartre sought to critique Descartes’ individualism in the formation of human subjectivity which he saw as distancing the subject from its relational context [4]. With his interrogation of the gaze, Sartre aimed to highlight the influence of the social on the subjective. Lacan further developed these ideas. Extending on from how infants relate to their reflection in mirrors, he proposed that during infancy we come to master a sense of self-awareness through the mirror [5]. Accordingly, human beings go through a process of acquiring self-representation through the reflected image they see of themselves in actual or symbolic mirrors usually; the gaze of others, and primarily that of their caregivers. This gaze allows the creation of a mental or ‘internal’ representation of an ‘I’ as the infant attempts to identify with the image which is projected onto them. Lacan later extended his theory from infancy to adulthood and set it as a theory of human subjectivity and identity. In summary, for Lacan, our subjectivity, our perceptions of our selfhood, are fundamentally relational since the mirror stage conceives our identity as contingent upon external objects.

In turn, Fanon elaborated on these formulations and applied them to the formation of subjectivity within the colonial situation. He did an unparalleled study of applying the Lacanian gaze to processes of racialisation.

Introduction

The postgenomic era – the period following the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 – ushered in rapid technological advancements and significantly reduced the costs of DNA sequencing. From genetic matchmaking services (Michels-Gualtieri and Appel, 2020) and in vitro fertilization for complex behaviours and traits (Orchid, nd), to direct-toconsumer genetic testing for behaviours and outcomes such as maths ability, depression and intelligence (GenePlaza, nd), genetic thinking is infiltrating countless aspects of public life. The growing accessibility of genomic data raises both possibilities (Harden, 2021a) and concerns (Roberts and Rollins, 2020) about the integration of molecular genetic data into society and public policy. It is transforming how individuals and communities think about themselves and others such that life is increasingly ‘understood, and acted upon, at the molecular level’ (Rose, 2007, p 5).

In the face of the DNA revolution, this chapter utilizes the theoretical framework of discriminate biopower (Fullwiley, 2004) to examine the forms of sociopolitical (in)visibility that may be crafted, upgraded or deleted in public education by contemporary research in social and behavioural genomics. Social and behavioural genomics examines how genetic differences between humans link to differences in behaviours and socioeconomic outcomes (Harden and Koellinger, 2020). While genetics have long captured the popular imagination, social and behavioural genomics is critically reimaging two aspects of our world today. First, how we relate our material, embodied selves, and second, the ways in which power and inequality are reflected and reproduced.

In building upon critical Science, Technology and Society scholarship on the relationship between genetics and society (for example, Duster, 2005; Bliss, 2013; Roberts, 2015; Panofsky, 2018), this chapter offers a critical interrogation of the sociotechnic imaginaries manufactured by social and behavioural genomics. It does so by exploring how potential applications of social and behavioural genomics to education might reaffirm or make new past, present and future (in)visibilities and inequalities, and feed into normative notions of who is ‘healthy’ and ‘able’. These inequalities manifest themselves in the differential investment researchers, policy makers and societies give to support the health and wealth of individuals and collectives within public education. For example, this chapter explores how predictive applications of genomics to education research, policy and systems, including the idea of precision education, might map out sociotechnic futures in which students are tracked and streamed: (1) in the name of bio-molecular transformation; and (2) under the neoliberal guise of individualization, personalization and optimization.

Introduction

We begin our chapter with a now commonplace but crucial idea: medicine is a ‘complex’ process involving uncertain parameters, precarious judgements, unpredictable outcomes and limited replicability from case to case (Glouberman and Zimmerman, 2002; Gawande, 2002; Montgomery, 2006; Groopman, 2007; Gawande, 2009; 2011; 2014; 2015; 2018). When viewed from the outside, medicine seems to rely on a sort of diagnostic wizardry concealed within a ‘black box’ (Latour, 1987, pp 2– 3), one that makes possible a vast armamentarium of treatments in an ever more technologically enhanced and, simultaneously, bewildering ecology.1 However, as a growing chorus of experts and many patients have come to realize, medicine remains an ultimately human endeavour, hence imperfect and invariably flawed. In this vein, the erstwhile Oxford University philosophy and politics student turned surgeon, author and global expert on patient safety, Atul Gawande (2009), famously argued: ‘Medicine has become the art of managing extreme complexity – and a test of whether such complexity can, in fact, be humanly mastered’ (p 19).2 And, we would add, medicine is also constantly being tested in terms of its practitioners’ ability to deliver its wares to patients without losing the capacity to treat the human as an individual being with particular needs that exceed the straightforward effort to eliminate disease from the body. In other words, the complexity of medicine is about not just effectively mastering the ever more harrowing accoutrements of technological clinical care but also the irreducible interconnectivity of body, mind and context that make up the human experience of disease and illness (Sacks, 1983; Kleinman, 1988; Mol, 2002).

This chapter opens with a set of questions inspired by Gawande’s observation, one that has catalysed an ongoing dialogue about the uneasy fit between the pursuit of perfection in the medical profession, the imperfect beings who pursue it and the patients who need both curing and caring to navigate their pain, illness and disease. Our work is inflected throughout by more recent trends in medical science and technology that provide context for understanding the dynamic properties of medical practice and the dramatic need for a refashioned paradigm to make sense of its most urgent problems.

Introduction

According to the scientific, technical and media literature, there is a continuous and significant increase in the narrative about the importance of robots in the economy and society (Belanche et al, 2020; Rommetveit, van Dijk and Gunnarsdottir, 2020). Originally, robots were produced to cover the needs of industry, being regarded as a substitute for human beings and for doing the ‘three Ds’ of labour: dirty, dangerous and demeaning. In industry, robots are supposed to improve the quality of work by taking over tasks that are very hard or not safe for humans to perform (Royakkers and van Est, 2015; Valles-Peris and Domenech, 2020a). Thus, most of the known industrial scenarios do not need to take into consideration how to manage the interaction between humans and robots; once the robot is placed, the human being is thought to disappear.

Nevertheless, the idea that robots can cover other human needs than those related to industry has also gained ground and new concerns and debates are taking place. Roboticists refer to this innovative landscape as ‘New Robotics’ (Schaal, 2007). Together with a set of technical developments, New Robotics contains a narrative aligned with the unstoppable and exponential development of robots, as well as a certain technological determinism that foresees a future of robots as the best solution to our problems (Maibaum et al, 2021; Rommetveit, van Dijk and Gunnarsdottir, 2020). Inevitably, this narrative implies that robots will appear in environments that would have seemed unexpected not long ago, assuming duties traditionally and exclusively assigned to humans. In this vein, we are witnessing an increasing expectation of advances in robotics in different domains, among them in the field of healthcare.

The possibility of involving robots in caring tasks seems closer than ever. There have been pilot experiences with robots and older people, robots working in therapy for children with autism and robots in hospitals enrolled in a variety of tasks. The response to the emergency situation provoked by COVID-19 has increased the use of robots, intensifying the growing tendency of recent years. After public safety, the clinical care domain has the largest set of uses of robots, due to robots’ potentiality to be used to reduce physical contact between people (Kritikos, 2020).

Smelly, leaky parcels. Neighbours repeatedly disposing of their rubbish on my doorstep. This is what first comes to mind when I think of my earliest encounter with whiteness in the UK. It was only weeks after I arrived in England and moved into a northwest London flat. I was in my early 20s and did not really know anyone aside from my husband-to-be. It was me who had to deal with the nausea-inducing, overflowing bags of waste, which often required cleaning the entire entrance to our flat, usually when I was on my way out to university, because I left later in the morning. This went on intermittently for weeks until I decided that I had had enough.

So, one morning, I finally opened these now familiar, smelly, leaky parcels. I kneeled outside in the cold and rummaged through several bin bags, in search of clues as to the identity of their owner. I dug and dug in the rubbish. And, eventually, I found full names and an address. The perpetrators had helpfully not attempted to cover up their tracks. I went to knock on the door of the newly identified neighbours. The address was home to a woman and her adult son. Both were people racialised as white and markedly older than me. The son was at least double my age. I had seen them around. They rarely left their flat and I assumed that they were unemployed. As I faced the woman with the indignant confidence of someone who had just survived the most undignified of ordeals, I explained that bin bags had been appearing outside of my front door for a while. Then, I showed her the proof of address and identity I had managed to gather. Finally, I announced that I would be keeping these documents so that in the event of any further incidents, I would simply go straight to the police. The white woman started begging and crying. It was clear she knew exactly what had been going on. She claimed that her son, who was nowhere to be seen, was ‘doing it’ and pleaded for me not to report him to the police. I never did. The bin bags stopped appearing in front of our door from that day on.

What is new, is how social and behavioural genomics research is converging with systems of education to produce sociotechnic imaginaries that either enhance or further diminish the sociopolitical visibility of marginalized groups. (Daphne Oluwaseun Martschenko, Chapter 1)

[T] his chapter has attended to and explored important sites of disjuncture, inconsistency and potential rupture around what it means to be in ‘good health’. This, I argue, can function as sources of opportunity for rethinking health and challenging the hidden dimensions of inequality that continue to be reproduced. (Tina Sikka, Chapter 2)

[W] hile research on the biomedicalization of HIV has generated a rich understanding of the complexities of living with HIV, the ‘post crisis’ framing (at a time of global austerity), occludes the significant challenges that continue to be faced by HIV-positive people, and by HIV-positive women in particular. (Elizabeth Mills, Chapter 3)

[O] ne of the answers to the question of why the potential threats and fears of artefacts do not disappear seems to be largely due to the fact that the development of such technologies prioritizes profits, neglects the risk assessment from the perspective of the consumers and does not establish disabling technologies against the target technology. (Kazuhiko Shibuya, Chapter 4)

AI could be a deliberative and caregiving partner in future pandemics that might help individual patients avoid the isolation, disconnection and fear that were experienced so significantly over the past year and a half by so many while creating safer clinical spaces. (Kevin Cummings and John Rief, Chapter 5)

Researchers and practitioners in science communication need to prioritize inclusion, equity and intersectionality in order to engage and benefit the entire community with science communication. (Anamika Gulati, Chapter 6)

Far from the idea that associating negative concepts of authority and control with technology can actually warn against the adverse effects of technological changes, which could also lead to positive effects … (Filomena Berardi and Giorgio Vernoni, Chapter 7)

If robots are to be developed, it is essential to involve in the process the different actors who, in one way or another, are involved in their use (patients, relatives, caregivers, health professionals and so on) and to find ways to enable their collaboration with engineers and designers. (Miquel Domenech and Nuria Valles-Peris, Chapter 8)

A cultural note

Early in 2021, Netflix released the Oscar-winning short film Two Distant Strangers. The film sees the main protagonist, Carter James, a black cartoonist, relive the same morning over and over again. He awakes in bed the morning after a first date, in the apartment of his lover. We see him get dressed and prepare to return home preoccupied with the thought of needing to feed his dog. After a few loving exchanges, he says goodbye, hoping to see the woman he met the night before again in the future. However, this is the morning of his death. Carter never gets to feed his dog or to go home. Instead, when he leaves the apartment, in an act of gratuitous and overzealous authority, a police officer racialised as white stops him. The exchange escalates into a scuffle and Carter is suffocated to death.

The gut-wrenching movie replays the police encounter and murder again and again. Each time Carter is killed he awakes from the nightmare, in bed with his lover. However, this only leads to him soon reliving death and dying as he is killed once more in somewhat different yet similar circumstances, by the same police officer as he attempts to go home.

Powerlessly witnessing the repetition of Carter’s gruesome death evoked a strong visceral reaction in me. In part this was no doubt due to the temporal proximity and cognitive salience of the murder of George Floyd, in adjacent circumstances. But perhaps more critically here, the sense of inescapability and Carter’s futile attempts at wrestling again and again against the finality and outcome of his encounter with the police felt disturbingly familiar. As I watched the movie, I felt disorientated by the director’s use of the temporal. Lost in time. Connected to despair in a way that echoed so many of my own encounters with anti-blackness.