Security, Risk and the Biometric State: Governing Borders and Bodies

by Muller; Benjamin J.

• ISBN13: 9780415484404
• ISBN10: 0415484405
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-03-23
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book examines a series of questions associated with the increasing application and implications of biometrics in contemporary everyday life. In the wake of the events of 9/11, the reliance on increasingly sophisticated and invasive technologies across a burgeoning field of applications has accelerated, giving rise to the term 'biometric state'. This book explores how these '¬Üvirtual borders'¬" are created and the effect they have upon the politics of citizenship and immigration, especially how they contribute to the treatment of citizens as suspects. Finally and most importantly, this text argues that the rationale of 'governing through risk' facilitates pre-emptory logics, a negligent attitude towards 'false positives', and an overall proliferation of borders and ubiquitous risk, which becomes integral to contemporary everyday life, far beyond the confined politics of national borders and frontiers. By focusing on specific sites, such as virtual borders in airports, trusted traveller programs like the NEXUS program and those delivered by airlines and supported by governmental authorities (TSA and CATSA respectively), this book raises critical questions about the emerging biometric state and its commitment and constitution vis-à-vis technology of '¬Ügoverning through risk'¬". This book will be of interest to students of biopolitics, critical security, surveillance studies and International Relations in general. Benjamin J. Mulleris assistant professor in International Relations at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada. He completed his PhD in the School of Politics and International Studies at Queen'¬"s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 2005.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. viii
Introduction	p. 1
Predators, Terrorists and Enhanced Drivers	p. 1
Critical Security Studies and International Political Sociology	p. 3
Structure of the Book	p. 4
Security, Risk and the Biometric State: governing borders and bodies	p. 8
Who Are You, and Where Are You Going?	p. 8
Liberty, Security and Biopolitics	p. 10
Risk	p. 13
(In)Security	p. 15
Technology, Identity and Biometrics	p. 16
The Biometric State	p. 23
Are You Who You Say You Are? Biometrics and the management of borders and bodies	p. 25
1989, 9/11 and All That...	p. 25
Discourses of Homeland (In)security	p. 27
Weeding-out Citizenship: theaters of security and homegrown terror	p. 31
Discourse(s) of World Politics, Homegrown Terror and "Identity Management"	p. 37
The Subject(ivity) of the Homegrown Terrorist	p. 38
Suspect(ing) Biometrics: identity, security and national ID cards	p. 40
Securing Identities	p. 40
Suspect(ing) Biometrics	p. 42
The Technology	p. 42
The Politics	p. 45
Suspect(ing) Rationales	p. 47
ID Card Assemblage?	p. 50
Biometric Borders and ID Card Assemblages	p. 52
Catastrophe, Narrative and the Failure of Imagination	p. 54
"Security Is a State of Mind"	p. 54
9/11 and the "Failure of Imagination": vulnerability and catastrophe	p. 56
Pre-assessing Risk: failing to imagine or imaginative failure?	p. 60
Catastrophic Case Studies	p. 63
Star Trek Border Politics	p. 63
"Miracle on the Hudson"	p. 65
Knowing a Black Swan When We See One	p. 67
Securing the Political Imagination: popular culture, the security dispositif and the biometric state	p. 71
Risk, Technology, Imagination	p. 71
Popular Culture, Constitution, Imagination	p. 73
Security, Life, Dispositif	p. 77
Performing the Biometric State: surveillance and what (kil)led the self	p. 79
Biopolitics Redux: contaminated genres and the desert of the real	p. 81
Experimenting with the Real and A Cure for Surveillance	p. 85
A North American Biometric State?	p. 89
Liberty, Security and the Canada/US Border	p. 89
WHTI: (re)designing borders and bodies	p. 91
(In)visibility, (In)security and Biometric Bodies	p. 94
Just Visiting: biometrics and (in)visibility in North American border security	p. 96
Where to from Here?	p. 100
Securitizing the Global Norm of Identity: biometrics and homo sacer in Fallujah	p. 102
Introduction	p. 102
Twenty-first-century Guernica: (dis)ordering places	p. 103
Homo Sacer and the State of Exception	p. 105
Biometrics and the BAT	p. 107
Fallujah: "exceptional" place and the construction of homo sacer	p. 111
Conclusion	p. 116
Conclusion - Borders, Bodies and Biometrics: the train has left the station	p. 118
Docile Bodies to Biometric Bodies	p. 118
Biometrics: what is it good for?	p. 121
The Cultural Landscape: Peace Arch and the "undefended border"	p. 123
Liberty, Security and the Disempowerment of the Borderlands	p. 125
Notes	p. 128
Bibliography	p. 132
Index	p. 145
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