Abstract: "A groundbreaking study of South Africa's role as a site for global experiments in biometric identification throughout the twentieth century."
Keith Breckenridge, "Breckenridge, Keith. 2014. Biometric State: The Global Politics of Identification and Surveillance in South Africa, 1850 to the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press.", contributed by Angela Okune, STS Infrastructures, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 8 August 2018, accessed 24 August 2024. https://stsinfrastructures.org/content/breckenridge-keith-2014-biometric-state-global-politics-identification-and-surveillance
Critical Commentary
AO: This 2014 book by Keith Breckenridge shows how the South African obsession with Francis Galton’s universal fingerprint identity registration served as a 20th century incubator for the current systems of biometric citizenship being developed throughout the South.