ABSTRACT
Body cartographers: mapping bodies and borders in the laboratory, concentrates mainly on the everyday sociotechnical practices, tinkering and experimentation that makes laboratory work engaging to the biometric researchers and that enables the use of body fragments for purposes of biometric identification and recognition. By using the analogy of cartography and coining the term body cartographers, the chapter argues that researchers, rather like explorers and cartographers, explore new body landscapes, experimenting not least with alternative (automatized) approaches to map them. The resulting ‘body maps’ are conceived as being unique to particular individuals and are generated by, and used in, biometric border systems.
