Dead Bodies and Forensic Science: Cultures of Expertise in China, 1800-1949
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Dead Bodies and Forensic Science: Cultures of Expertise in China, 1800-1949 Daniel Asen Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2012 © 2012 Daniel Asen All rights reserved ABSTRACT Dead Bodies and Forensic Science: Cultures of Expertise in China, 1800-1949 Daniel Asen In late imperial China the forensic examination of dead bodies in homicide cases was a sophisticated field of technical practice which developed through the collaboration of coroners, legal specialists, and literati-officials. After the fall of the Qing empire (1644-1911), successive governments of the Republican period (1912-1949) adopted the late imperial state’s technologies of forensic examination in their attempts to institute a modern court system. This dissertation investigates the process through which modern police, coroners, legal officials, laboratory scientists, and urban publics debated, reimagined, and ultimately accepted this long-standing field of technical practice as a foundation for the modern Chinese state and its legal order. The first half of this dissertation examines the forensic practices of the Qing empire and the ways in which they were integrated into Republican statecraft after 1912. Chapters One and Two argue that the late imperial bureaucracy successfully implemented a centralized system of forensic examination that shaped the ways in which coroners and local officials throughout the empire inspected dead bodies, analyzed causes of death, and documented their findings. Relying on the wide distribution of minimal amounts of forensic knowledge and skill, this arrangement made possible high degrees of consistency in examination practices while facilitating central authorities’ bureaucratic supervision over local forensic cases. While the “expertise” of individual coroners could become important under certain circumstances, it was not necessary for the legitimation of forensic evidence or knowledge in routine homicide cases. Rather, the bureaucracy expected that officials and coroners would simply follow official procedure, a way of legitimating inquest findings that could be used effectively across local jurisdictions despite uneven levels of forensic knowledge and skill among local officials and coroners. Chapters Three and Four turn to the important role that these forensic practices played in Republican Beijing for the dual projects of administering the city and constructing a modern court system. Through a case study of the forensic work of police, coroners, and judicial officials in the city and around north China, these chapters argue that by adopting the bureaucratized examination practices of the late imperial state, the Republican court system facilitated modern procurators’ professional jurisdiction over a crucial area of the administration of justice while facilitating the integration of forensic evidence and judicial investigation. It is in this sense that coroners and their forensic practices came to play a crucial role in the emergence of a modern legal order. The second half of the dissertation explores the ways in which new conceptions and practices of scientific expertise were reconciled with the older, yet still authoritative, practices of late imperial forensics. Chapter Five explores the ways in which a new discourse of professional knowledge and expertise based on conceptual distinctions between “experience” and “theory” led to a complex reconceptualization of the epistemological status of late imperial forensic knowledge. While this new discourse served to legitimate new forms of forensic expertise based on scientific medicine, it also provided coroners and others invested in late imperial forensic practices with possibilities for reimagining older conceptions of knowledge in new, epistemologically authoritative ways. Chapters Six and Seven turn to the ways in which anatomic-pathological dissection and laboratory science were integrated into the forensic investigation of deaths in Republican judicial practice. Chapter Six argues that the implementation of forensic autopsies in Republican Shanghai and, to a lesser extent, Beijing did not in fact challenge judicial officials’ and coroners’ professional authority over the forensic inspection of dead bodies. Chapter Seven examines the ways in which a new community of medico-legal scientists in 1930s Shanghai and Beijing attempted to extend their forensic expertise from the laboratory into local courtrooms. By tracing the itineraries of the physical evidence examined in the first medico-legal laboratories, this chapter shows that the local officials and coroners who collected the evidence for testing played a crucial, albeit contested, role in the establishment of legal medicine in China. Chapter Eight turns to the ways in which coroners themselves made use of modern science to legitimate their own, older forensic practices. By exploring the ways in which legal officials, coroners, and medico-legal scientists made use of popularized science in their attempts to update late imperial forensic practices, this chapter demonstrates that “science” had diverse meanings, could legitimate disparate forms of knowledge and expertise, and could support different professional causes – not simply that of professional legal medicine. Far from passive objects of forensic examination, the dead bodies that populate this dissertation are active agents: they challenged examiners with mysterious wounds, ambiguous anatomy, or the tendency to decay away along with the evidence. As sensational objects of media coverage or simply reminders of the unjustly dead, the cultural and social meanings of corpses influenced the actions of those who examined them, demonstrating in the process the dialogue that science always maintains with culture and society. By foregrounding the ways in which “experts” of all kinds engaged with the material challenges and legal and cultural meanings of the dead body, this study demonstrates the dynamic interrelatedness, or co- production, of experts and objects of expertise, of social power and natural knowledge, and of statecraft and science. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………….……iii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………….……iv Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………..…1 Part 1: Bureaucratic Control of Forensics in Late Imperial and Republican China 1. Vital Spots and Mortal Wounds: Technologies of Forensic Statecraft in Late Imperial China………………………………………………………………………………......................36 2. Skilled Coroners and Skeletal Remains: The Problem of “Expertise” in Late Imperial Forensics…………………………………………………………………………........................72 3. Old Forensics in Practice: Procurators and Coroners in Republican Beijing………………..105 4. When (Not) to Call the Coroner: Managing Death in a City without a Morgue….....................................................................................................................................143 Part 2: A New Culture of Expertise: Legal Medicine and Modern Science 5. The Only Options?: “Experience” and “Theory” in Debates over Forensic Knowledge and Expertise in Early Twentieth-Century China.……………………………………………..……188 6. A New Jurisdiction over the Dead: Medical Dissection and Municipal Oversight in Republican China……………………………………………………………………………………………214 7. Forensic Modernity and its Sticking Points: Silver Needles, Chemical Tests, and the Beiping University Institute of Legal Medicine…………………………………………..……243 8. Legal Medicine Beyond the Laboratory: The Hybrid Lives of Scientific Disciplines in Republican China…………………………………………………………...……………..……290 i Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………314 ii LIST OF FIGURES 1. Official image of the corpse, frontal view…………………………………………………….51 2. Official image of the corpse, back view………………………………………………………52 3. Report of the coroner Duan Chengfa……………………………………………….…………53 4. “Imperially dispatched to examine bones,” Dianshizhai Pictorial……………………………93 5. Institute of Legal Medicine, Autopsy room…………………………………….……………141 6. Photograph of a forensic examination, Weekly Pictorial Supplement of Capital News…..…142 7. “A suspicious case about to be investigated,” Dianshizhai Pictorial……………………..…160 8. Research Institute of Legal Medicine, Shanghai………………………………………….…260 9. Floor plan of Research Institute of Legal Medicine, Shanghai………………...……………261 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is a great pleasure to acknowledge and sincerely express thanks to everyone who made this dissertation possible. From the beginning, Madeleine Zelin has provided a level of advice, encouragement, and unwavering support that truly made all the difference. Eugenia Lean played an instrumental role at every step of the planning and writing, making my dissertation undoubtedly richer than it could have possibly been otherwise. I am truly indebted to Nancy Leys Stepan’s encouragement and interest in my work and have learned so much from our ongoing conversations. I am also grateful for continuing intellectual exchanges with Dorothy Ko who, from the beginning of her class on “Visual and Material Cultures in China,” challenged my thinking about bodies, sources, and evidence. Lydia Liu, Zoë Crossland, and Rebecca Karl made this research undoubtedly richer through their interest, feedback, and encouragement. Bill McAllister, co-director of the Mellon Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellows Program, went above and beyond in his advice and support, for which I am grateful. Early discussions