General information
| Course name | Lecture: Guest Lecture: Biometric Futures: The Infrastructure of citizenship in the aftermath of Empire |
| Course number | BA: ETH, MA: APT/STE |
| Semester | SS 2014 |
| Current number of participants | 1 |
| expected number of participants | 35 |
| Home institute | Ethnologie/Kulturvergleichende Soziologie |
| Courses type | Lecture in category Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen |
| First date | Wednesday, 23.04.2014 18:15 - 19:45 |
| Type/Form | BA: ETH, MA: APT/STE |
| Participants | These lectures will examine the current plans for biometric identification and banking on the African continent in the light of the history of colonial and post-colonial practices of civil registration. Driven by local banks and international aid agencies, almost all the countries on the African continent are self-consciously adopting the South African model of identification and credit checking. This model consists of a centralised population register that is authenticated by biometrics with financial services (including credit history systems) that are privately owned, but also secured by biometrics. The turn to biometrics in part reflects the influence and capacity of South African telecommunications and banking firms (which, as a consequence of Apartheid, have long relied on biometrics) in the delivery of social welfare grants, and partly a set of arrangements, which allow European firms to use African countries as testing laboratories for their biometric products. These lectures will examine the politics of this moment, asking, in particular, what form of citizenship is likely to emerge from it. |
| Pre-requisites | Recommended Reading: Breckenridge, Keith 2005. The Biometric State: The Promise and Peril of Digital Government in the New South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies 31 (2): 267-282. |
| Learning organisation |
23.04.2014 Lecture 1: Technological Inertia: The politics of privacy and the failure of biometric government in the West 30.04.2014 Lecture 2: No Will to Know: Biometric Civil Registration and the racial limits of bureaucratic curiosity under colonial rule 18.06.2014 Lecture 3: The elusive digital panopticon: The South African HANIS project and the politics of standards 25.06.2014 Lecture 4: Postcolonial citizenship: Nigeria's National Identity Management Centre and the Mastercard ID |
| Performance record |
Studienleistung: Durch die Teilnahme an diesem Kurs können Studienleistungen (WL 15 Stunden) für folgende Kurse erworben werden: - “Travelling Technologies” (MA: APT/STE), Prof. Dr. Richard Rottenburg - “Individualität und Kollaboration” (MA: APT/STE), Dr. Carsten Wergin - „Technik, Gesellschaft und Staat in Afrika” (BA: ETH), Norman Schräpel, M.A. Modulleistung: In diesem Kurs kann keine Modulleistung erworben werden. |
| Studiengänge (für) | BA: ETH, MA: APT/STE |
| SWS | 2 |
| Miscellanea | Der Kurs wird auf Englisch unterrichtet |
