Documenting Individual Identity

by Caplan, Jane; Torpey, John C.

• ISBN13: 9780691009117
• ISBN10: 0691009112
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-12-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

This book addresses one of the least studied yet most pervasive aspects of modern life--the techniques and mechanisms by which official agencies certify individual identity. From passports and identity cards to labor registration and alien documentation, from fingerprinting to much-debated contemporary issues such as DNA-typing, body surveillance, and the catastrophic results of colonial-era identity documentation in postcolonial Rwanda, Documenting Individual Identity offers the most comprehensive historical overview of this fascinating topic ever published.The nineteen essays in this volume represent the collaborative effort of historians, sociologists, historians of science, political scientists, economists, and specialists in international relations. Together they cover a period from the emergence of systematic practices of written identification in early modern Europe through to the present day, and a geographic range that includes Europe, the Soviet Union, North and South America, and Africa. While the book is attuned to the nefarious possibilities of states' increasing capacity to identify individuals, it recognizes that these same techniques also certify citizens' eligibility for significant positive rights, such as welfare benefits and voting.Unprecedented in subject and scope, Documenting Individual Identity promises to shape a whole new field of research that crosses disciplinary boundaries and is of broad public and academic significance. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Valentin Groebner, Gérard Noiriel, Charles Steinwedel, Marc Garcelon, Jon Agar, Martine Kaluszynski, Peter Becker, Anne Joseph, Kristin Ruggiero, Andrea Geselle, Andreas Fahrmeier, Leo Lucassen, Pamela Sankar, David Lyon, Gary Marx, Dita Vogel, and Timothy Longman.

Author Biography

Jane Caplan is Marjorie Walter Goodhart Professor of European History at Bryn Mawr College

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Creating Apparatuses of Identification	p. 13
Describing the Person, Reading the Signs in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe: Identity Papers, Vested Figures, and the Limits of Identification, 1400-1600	p. 15
The Identification of the Citizen: The Birth of Republican Civil Status in France	p. 28
"This or That Particular Person": Protocols of Identification in Nineteenth-Century Europe	p. 49
Making Social Groups, One Person at a Time: The Identification of Individuals by Estate, Religious Confession, and Ethnicity in Late Imperial Russia	p. 67
Colonizing the Subject: The Genealogy and Legacy of the Soviet Internal Passport	p. 83
Modern Horrors: British Identity and Identity Cards	p. 101
Identification Practices and Policing	p. 121
Republican Identity: Bertillonage as Government Technique	p. 123
The Standardized Gaze: The Standardization of the Search Warrant in Nineteenth-Century Germany	p. 139
Anthropometry, the Police Expert, and the Deptford Murders: The Contested Introduction of Fingerprinting for the Identification of Criminals in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain	p. 164
Fingerprinting and the Argentine Plan for Universal Identification in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries	p. 184
Identification and Control of Movement	p. 197
Domenica Saba Takes to the Road: Origins and Development of a Modern Passport System in Lombardy-Veneto	p. 199
Governments and Forgers: Passports in Nineteenth-Century Europe	p. 218
A Many-Headed Monster: The Evolution of the Passport System in the Netherlands and Germany in the Long Nineteenth Century	p. 235
The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Passport System	p. 256
Contemporary Issues in Identification	p. 271
DNA-Typing: Galton's Eugenic Dream Realized?	p. 273
Under My Skin: From Identification Papers to Body Surveillance	p. 291
Identity and Anonymity: Some Conceptual Distinctions and Issues for Research	p. 311
Identifying Unauthorized Foreign Workers in the German Labor Market	p. 328
Identity Cards, Ethnic Self-Perception, and Genocide in Rwanda	p. 345
Bibliography	p. 359
Notes on Contributors	p. 397
Index	p. 403
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