Truth and Responsibility in Expert Witnessing

Providing expert testimony in asylum proceedings for mentally ill Mexicans, we are regularly asked to reduce individual subjects to diagnostic categories and an entire country to one of its most dysfunctional institutions. How, attorneys and judges ask us, does Mexican “culture”—through its institut...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAnnals of anthropological practice Vol. 46; no. 1; pp. 87 - 90
Main Authors Duncan, Whitney L., Reyes‐Foster, Beatriz
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Hoboken Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.05.2022
Subjects
Expert witness testimony
expert witnessing
immigration court
Judges & magistrates
Mental disorders
mental health
National Qualified Representative Program (NQRP)
Psychiatric hospitals
Truth
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Summary:Providing expert testimony in asylum proceedings for mentally ill Mexicans, we are regularly asked to reduce individual subjects to diagnostic categories and an entire country to one of its most dysfunctional institutions. How, attorneys and judges ask us, does Mexican “culture”—through its institutions and psychiatric hospitals—treat the mentally ill? To adjudicators of asylum claims, there must be a clear and often singular “truth.” As Nikolas Rose has argued, however, “Truth is always enthroned in acts of violence.” This essay grapples with a question inherent to this work: to whom—and to what truths—are anthropological expert witnesses responsible?
ISSN:2153-957X
2153-9588
DOI:10.1111/napa.12184