Doctoral Dissertation Research: An Anthropological Investigation of Biometric Identification

博士论文研究：生物特征识别的人类学调查

• 批准号: 1324082
• 负责人: Emily Martin
• 金额: $ 2.51万
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-08-15 至 2015-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1324082&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Anthropological; Investigation

New York University doctoral candidate, Vijayanka Nair, supervised by Dr. Emily Martin, proposes to undertake research that explores the cultural implications of biometric identification systems. Nair will conduct 12 months of field research in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka to examine the sociocultural salience of the construction of the world's largest biometric database. In 2009, the Government of India set out to issue each of its billion residents a Unique Identification Number (UID), where identification would be facilitated through a database linking the demographic and biometric (iris scans, fingerprints, photograph) information of residents to a twelve-digit number.Informed by social and legal anthropology, as well as and science and technology studies, this doctoral research has two central concerns. Firstly, working with enrollees as well as government officials charged with planning, enrollment and biometric archiving, it asks: are there distinct, emergent ideas of individual identity being articulated through this program? Secondly, this study asks how the UID might reconfigure ideals associated with the state and governance in India. Is the UID's large-scale technologization occasioning a reimagining of the post-liberalization Indian state by bureaucrats, technocrats and the public alike? This research pays attention to the novel procedures through which states amass knowledge about individuals, thus advancing an understanding of the layered connections between information, ethics, and contemporary governance. The study will use a combination of social science methods, including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, textual and discourse analysis. This research is important because it takes an innovative ethnographic approach to studying a key issue of our times - the relationship between the technologizing state and the individual. Funding this project supports the education of a social scientist.

纽约大学博士生Vijayanka Nair在艾米莉·马丁博士的指导下，提议进行一项研究，探索生物识别系统的文化含义。Nair将在德里、中央邦和卡纳塔克邦进行为期12个月的实地研究，以检查世界上最大的生物特征数据库建设的社会文化重要性。2009年，印度政府着手向其10亿居民每人发放一个唯一的身份识别号码(UID)，通过一个数据库将居民的人口和生物特征(虹膜扫描、指纹、照片)信息与一个12位数字联系起来，从而促进身份识别。这项博士研究受到社会和法律人类学以及科学和技术研究的启发，有两个核心问题。首先，与注册者以及负责规划、注册和生物特征归档的政府官员合作，它提出了一个问题：通过这个项目，有没有关于个人身份的独特的、新出现的想法？其次，这项研究询问了UID可能如何重新配置与印度国家和治理相关的理想。UID的大规模技术化是否引起了官僚、技术官僚和公众对自由化后印度政府的重新想象？这项研究关注国家通过新的程序积累关于个人的知识，从而促进对信息、伦理和当代治理之间的分层联系的理解。本研究将结合社会科学方法，包括参与者观察、半结构访谈、文本和语篇分析。这项研究之所以重要，是因为它采用了一种创新的人种学方法来研究我们这个时代的一个关键问题--技术化国家与个人之间的关系。为这个项目提供资金支持一名社会科学家的教育。