Excluded by Blood: Scientific Methods and the Search for Fathers in Danish Paternity Disputes, 1920–1960

Abstract This article introduces the term technopolitics of paternity to illuminate how scientific and technological practices shaped the state's efforts to establish paternity in twentieth-century Denmark. By tracing how paternity disputes were increasingly resolved through blood type testing and anthropological assessments, the article shows how technical knowledge reconfigured legal and administrative understandings of kinship, rights, and responsibility. Denmark emerges as a revealing case of how scientific expertise was not only incorporated into legal processes but also contested and negotiated within broader social policy frameworks. The concept of technopolitical paternity captures these entanglements, offering a new perspective on the intersections of science, law, and welfare governance. The article explores the broader implications for ideas of fatherhood, family structures, and the welfare state, by highlighting how fatherhood was made legible—and governable—through technoscientific means.