Biometric state : the global politics of identification and surveillance in South Africa, 1850 to the present / Keith Breckenridge, University of the Witwatersrand.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Breckenridge, Keith, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Citizenship--South Africa--History.

Citizenship.

Biometric identification--Government policy--South Africa--History.

Biometric identification.

Biometric identification--Political aspects--South Africa--History.

South Africa--Politics and government--19th century.

South Africa.

South Africa--Politics and government--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 252 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Biometric identification and registration systems are being proposed by governments and businesses across the world. Surprisingly they are under most rapid, and systematic, development in countries in Africa and Asia. In this groundbreaking book Keith Breckenridge traces how the origins of the systems being developed in places like India, Mexico, Nigeria and Ghana can be found in a century-long history of biometric government in South Africa, with the South African experience of centralized fingerprint identification unparalleled in its chronological depth and demographic scope. He shows how empire, and particularly the triangular relationship between India, the Witwatersrand and Britain, established the special South African obsession with biometric government, and shaped the international politics that developed around it for the length of the twentieth century. He also examines the political effects of biometric registration systems, revealing their consequences for the basic workings of the institutions of democracy and authoritarianism.

Contents:

Introduction: the global biometric arena

Science of empire: the South African origins and objects of Galtonian eugenics

Asiatic despotism: Edward Henry on the Witwatersrand

Gandhi's biometric entanglement: fingerprints, Satyagraha and the global politics of Hind Swaraj

No will to know: biometric registration and the limited curiosity of the gatekeeper state

Verwoerd's bureau of proof: the apartheid bewysburo and the end of documentary government

Galtonian reversal: apartheid and the making of biometric citizenship

Epilogue: empire and the mimetic fantasy.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-316-12067-8

1-316-12176-3

1-316-13375-3

1-316-13048-7

1-316-13266-8

1-107-43489-0

1-139-93954-8

1-316-12830-X

1-316-12939-X

1-316-13157-2