Biometric State
The Global Politics of Identification and Surveillance in South Africa, 1850 to the Present

A groundbreaking study of South Africa's role as a site for global experiments in biometric identification throughout the twentieth century.

Keith Breckenridge (Author)

9781107077843, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 October 2014

266 pages, 3 b/w illus. 1 map
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.8 cm, 0.51 kg

'Brilliantly, Breckenridge sees South Africa as a 'global laboratory for biometric government'. This highly engaging and consequential analysis traces the vital links between colonialism and contemporary surveillance, provocatively placing biometrics and the state in some unfamiliar but compelling relations with each other. The lights keep coming on, to the very end of the book.' David Lyon, Queen's University, Ontario

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.

Introduction: the global biometric arena
1. Science of empire: the South African origins and objects of Galtonian eugenics
2. Asiatic despotism: Edward Henry on the Witwatersrand
3. Gandhi's biometric entanglement: fingerprints, Satyagraha and the global politics of Hind Swaraj
4. No will to know: biometric registration and the limited curiosity of the gatekeeper state
5. Verwoerd's bureau of proof: the Apartheid Bewysburo and the end of documentary government
6. Galtonian reversal: apartheid and the making of biometric citizenship
Epilogue: empire and the mimetic fantasy
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of engineering & technology [TBX], History of science [PDX], African history [HBJH], General & world history [HBG]