Identification and Registration Practices in Transnational Perspective People, Papers and Practices

Utilising sources that range from 16th century parish registers to the 21st century supermarket loyalty card, this collection examines the history and development of identification documents and surveillance techniques over the past 500 years. Combining the knowledge of several experts from a variety of disciplines, this volume successfully demonstrates how identification and registration can enable and empower a population, particularly if the interests of the state and population coincide. It also reveals the weakness of states or corporations when dealing with issues such as popular resistance and fraud, despite great leaps forward in the scientific methods of identifying individuals. This important book offers a vital contribution to the literature on a variety of topical subject areas such as biometric identification, immigration control and personal data use, as such it is of interest to students and scholars of civil and human rights amongst other disciplines.

Ilsen About is Post-doctoral Researcher at the Aix-Marseille University, France and Research Fellow at the Gerda Henkel Stiftung. His most recent publication, co-authored with Vincent Denis, is Histoire de l'identification des personnes (La Découverte, 2010). He is currently writing a book on the Science of Police Identification in Europe between 1900 and 1930.
 
James Brown is Project Coordinator for Cultures of Knowledge, a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project based at the University of Oxford, UK with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Prior to this he was the Network Facilitator for the Identinet project, a Leverhulme funded project on the global history of identification.
 
Gayle Lonergan is a Research Felllow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, UK. She is the author of numerous articles on the Russian Civil War (1918-1921) and is currently working on a history of censuses and civil status in Bulgaria.
 

Editors and Contributors
Introduction; Ilsen About, James R. Brown and Gayle Lonergan
PART I: THE CENTRAL STATE: SYSTEMS, STANDARDS, AND TECHNIQUES
1. Individual Identity and Identification in 18th Century France; Vincent Denis
2. Registration as Privilege: The Moscow Residence Permit as a Mark of Privilege in the Russian Empire, 1881-1905; Gayle Lonergan
3. Dissemination of the Argentine Dactyloscopy System in the Early Twentieth Century: Local, Regional and International Dimensions; Mercedes García Ferrari
4. The Philosopher and the Printer: Practices of Criminal Identification in Fascist Italy; Massimiliano Pagani
5. De-Neutralizing Identification: S. & Marper v. United Kingdom, Biometric Databases, Uniqueness, Privacy, and Human Rights; Simon A. Cole
6. The Biometric Fetish; Emilio Mordini and Andrew P. Rebera
PART II: BEYOND THE CENTRAL STATE: COMMUNITY, COMMERCE, AND ECONOMICS
7. The Parish Registers in Early Modern English History: Registration from Above and Below; Simon Szreter
8. An Unusually Open Identification Number System: The Icelandic Kennitala; Ian Watson
9. From Custom to Civil Status Registration: The Anthropology of Kinship and the Rule of Law; Claudine Dardy
10. Consuming Identity and Consuming the State in Britain since c. 1750; Edward Higgs
PART III: THE IDENTIFIED: PERCEPTION, RESISTANCE, AND NEGOTIATION
11. Cat and Mouse Games: The State, Indians in the Cape and the Permit System, 1900s-1920s; Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie
12. A Paper Trap. Exiles versus the Identification Police in France during the Interwar Period; Ilsen About
13. 'Ausweis Bitte!' Identity and Identification in Nazi Germany; Jane Caplan
14. What Do You Think The Household Register Is? Perceptions of Koseki Relating to Social Order and Individual Rights in 1950s and 2000s Japan; Karl Jakob Krogness
15. Denouncing and Resisting. Identity Assignment Policies in France, 1970-2010; Pierre Piazza
16. 'Establishing Your True Identity:' Immigration Detention and Contemporary Identification Debates; Melanie Griffiths
Afterword
The Future of Identification's Past: Reflections on the Development of Historical Identification Studies; Jane Caplan and Edward Higgs
Index