Chapter 10: ‘Boundary Objects’ and ‘Black Boxes’: Theory Informed Prevention for Femicide

Saide Mobayed Vega (2023) has observed femicide is a meeting place between academics and activists in which passions can run high. In overviewing recent developments in this field, Vega (2023) deploys the concept of ‘boundary objects’; defined by Star and Griesemar (1989, p. 393) as objects that are both plastic and robust enough for different interests using them to maintain their common interest in them. Understanding femicide as a boundary object facilitates understanding how ongoing debates around definition and measurement have flourished without losing sight of the common goal of making women’s lives count. However, this field is not only characterised by this boundary object. Within this field it is possible to discern at least one blackbox. Latour (1987) borrows this term from cybernetics and observes that whenever science gets too complicated the practice is to put a blackbox in place as a way of delineating that complexity. This practice avoids distracting attention from the inputs and the outputs of the blackbox. However, the failure to unpack the blackbox results in failures to understand the knowledge claims on which it is based. This chapter unpacks one such blackbox of femicide: the social ecological model. Many prevention claims, emanating from different definitional and measurement practices, presume the social ecological model of explanation. In unpacking this presumption, this chapter will make the case that unless and until the boundary object of femicide comes to terms with the inherent limitations of this blackbox, any claims to prevention will be severely curtailed.