them by telling fractal stories i.e. stories that identify fractal qualities, thus undermining dualisms such as micro/macro, self/other and one/many. Fractal infrastructures In Partial Connections Marilyn Strathern uses the fractal image to demonstrate some of her thoughts on the field of anthropology. She points out that anthropologists are caught in a sterile discussion about whether the micro or the macro perspective is better: ”[A]nthropologists alternate between accusing one another now of myopia, now of panoptics” (2004: xv). This distinction is according to Strathern rooted in a misguided Western understanding of phenomena as consisting of parts and wholes that determine one another. She argues that neither the micro perspective (e.g. description of rituals), nor the macro perspective (e.g. description of cultures) are privileged positions. No matter what we focus on, we are faced with equally complex phenomena and an equal loss of information (cf. the magnification of the Mandelbrot set above). ”Despite an increase in the magnitude of detail, the quantity of information an anthropologist derives from what s/he is observing may remain the same. Observation thus remains a kind of constant background to the proliferation of forms” (2004: xxi). We thus never have access to either the axiomatic parts or the totality of a phenomenon. We are only ever partially connected to the object of our study through the specific scale or scales on which we study it. In Partial Connections, Strathern illustrates this point by examining anthropologists’ descriptions of cultures, cultural artifacts and rituals from societies in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Among other things she describes how ‘face designs’ (eyes, mouths and noses) seem to turn up everywhere across PNG societies on effigies, dance shields, drums etc. and thus seem to hold the cultures together. However upon further
Pre-registration has to do with sorting between profiles that can be adopted into the database and which cannot. The secretary adheres to a strict legal framework when it comes to the identified peoples profiles, but switches to practical reasoning when sorting the crime scene profiles. These are often too damaged or mixed to be useful for the police. Depending on the severity of crime, the profiles are adopted or dismissed. In the second work area of DNA2005, a second secretary double-checks the accepted profiles from the first secretary. The third area HIT pre-registration is where the police officers evaluate the hits that DNA2005 finds. This work is likewise checked by another police officer (fourth work area) before the hit is communicated to the forensic institute for a scientific evaluation. While the evaluation is underway, the hits are stored in the fifth work area and only after they are approved are they communicated out to the local police where the crime was committed. Every night around 2AM, DNA2005 automatically starts comparing the latest DNA-profiles with the entire DNA database. Within seconds it has completed its task and identified up to a hundred hits. Its search is numerically “democratic”. It knows nothing about skin color or cases or even the difference between peoples’ profiles and the ones from crime scenes. It simply compares everything new to everything old and reports the resulting hits. But the computer program does not only present the “perfect hits”. According to the head of the DNA section, the program is “loosely set up”. It is programmed to present profiles that fall within a margin of error. The reason this margin of error exists is that DNA analysis at the forensic institute sometimes is disturbed by chemicals or substances from textiles or that there is DNA from more than one person’s DNA in the sample. “We need human eyes on the profiles … if we program DNA2005 too tightly, we end up missing some hits” (Head of DNA section). What is apparent in this story is that there is a concern about human bias built into the infrastructure, which is obvious in the double checks. These checks are likewise found at the forensic institute where all tests are done by two separate teams with separate laboratories in order to eliminate the possibility of