The politics of evidence making

Abstract What is evidence, and how is it constituted across different scientific, legal, political and social domains? Courts, medical clinics, scientific enterprises, public constituencies, as well as academic journals, come to define, adjudicate, and thus constitute evidence through a variety of openly and covertly political processes, as Sameena Mulla and Courtney Addison discuss. Reflecting on fieldwork they have conducted on a range of topics—including sexual assault intervention, forensic evidence collection, court sentencing, genomic medicine, and conservation—they suggest what kinds of questions anthropologists might want to ask in thinking through not only the nature of evidence making but also its impact on social communities. They also highlight what is at stake in the shaping and contestation of evidence, including justice, social cohesion and environmental futures.