ABSTRACT
In the context of a global biometric turn, this book investigates processes of legal identification in Africa ‘from below,’ asking what this means for the relationship between citizens and the state.
Almost half of the population of the African continent is thought to lack a legal identity, and many states see biometric technology as a reliable and efficient solution to the problem. However, this book shows that biometrics, far from securing identities and avoiding fraud or political distrust, can even participate in reinforcing exclusion and polarizing debates on citizenship and national belonging. It highlights the social and political embedding of legal identities and the resilience of the documentary state. Drawing on empirical research conducted across 14 countries, the book documents the processes, practices, and meanings of legal identification in Africa from the 1950s right up to the biometric boom. Beyond the classic opposition between surveillance and recognition, it demonstrates how analysing the social uses of IDs and tools of identification can give a fresh account of the state at work, the practices of citizenship, and the role of bureaucracy in the writing of the self in African societies.
This book will be of an important reference for students and scholars of African studies, politics, human security, and anthropology and the sociology of the state.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |26 pages
The social and political life of identity papers in contemporary Africa
part I|100 pages
Biometric state versus documentary state: Identification technologies and citizenship
chapter 2|16 pages
Documentary government and mathematical identification
chapter 3|11 pages
Legible bodies and lives
chapter 4|5 pages
Testimonies and social markers in the age of biometrics
chapter 5|20 pages
Digitized paper barriers
chapter 6|5 pages
A proof of innocence
chapter 8|5 pages
General amnesty for all ‘René Cailliés’!
part II|110 pages
Identity, citizenship, and the politics of inclusion and exclusion
chapter 1289|8 pages
The French West African identity card in Senegal
chapter 11|16 pages
Papers to ward off the threat
chapter 13|19 pages
Kenya's ethnic Somalis and access to identity papers
chapter 14|18 pages
Bureaucracy and the politics of identification in Nigeria
chapter 16|16 pages
What state is there for those ‘without paper or pencil’? 1
part III|132 pages
Bureaucratic writing of the self: Political subjectivities and the social production of papers