Standard Grant: Fingerprinting in Twentieth Century China from Racial, Political and Scientific Perspectives

一般观众摘要 该奖项是为了支持一项从全球视角看待二十世纪中国指纹历史的研究项目。研究重点是在中国、台湾和美国收集的档案和出版物。本课程将研究欧美和日本的指纹识别技术被引入中国，并随后在世纪的一系列地方和国家建设工作和科学研究活动中被采用的过程。这个项目的一个主要目标是探索在这一时期中国指纹和皮纹学的全球历史之间存在的持久联系，皮纹学是一门国际科学学科，涉及人类学，医学和遗传学对指纹和手掌图案的理解。该项目的主要研究成果将是收集历史数据，并在完成有关该主题的学术专著方面取得重大进展。因此，该项目有可能有助于发展潜在指纹检查基础研究的基础设施，并协助法医学从业人员和研究人员加强美国司法系统所依赖的证据的完整性，这是一个具有广泛社会重要性的成果。技术摘要 该项目将扩大现有指纹历史研究的范围，这些研究主要侧重于大英帝国在地球仪现代身份识别做法的发展和转移中的作用，重点是中国的情况，中国同样受到英国和日本指纹做法的影响。该项目的主要成果将是关于皮纹学历史、该学科的核心技术和概念以及在二十世纪期间在该领域建立国际合作的专业协会和网络的第一部学术专著。这项工作将提供一个新的视角，探讨在现代东亚，在帝国主义、殖民主义和后殖民国家建设的民族种族政治中，对种族身份和差异的科学理解是如何进行谈判的。因此，这个项目将加深学术界对技术，政治和学科因素的理解，这些因素使民族种族身份和差异在现代生命科学中受到持久的关注。

General Audience Summary This award is to support a research project on the history of fingerprinting in twentieth-century China as viewed from global perspectives. The research focuses on both archival and published materials that were collected in China, Taiwan, and the United States. It will investigate the process through which Euro-American and Japanese fingerprint identification techniques were introduced to China and subsequently adopted for a range of local and national state-building efforts and scientific research activities over the course of the twentieth century. A major objective of this project is to explore the persistent connections which have existed during this period between Chinese fingerprinting and the global history of dermatoglyphics, an international scientific discipline which is concerned with anthropological, medical, and genetic understandings of fingerprint and palm patterning. The main research outcomes of this project will be the collection of historical data and significant progress toward the completion of an academic monograph on this topic. This project thus has the potential to contribute to the developing infrastructure of basic research underlying latent print examination and to assist forensic science practitioners and researchers as they work to strengthen the integrity of the evidence on which the U.S. justice system relies, an outcome of broad societal importance.Technical Summary The project will broaden the scope of existing scholarship on the history of fingerprinting, which has largely focused on the role of the British Empire in the development and transfer of modern identification practices across the globe, by focusing on the case of China, which was influenced in equal measure by the fingerprinting practices of Britain and Japan. The main outcome of the project will be the first academic monograph on the history of dermatoglyphics, the core techniques and concepts of the discipline, and the professional associations and networks which have structured international collaboration in this field over the course of the twentieth century. The work will provide a new perspective on the ways in which scientific understandings of racial identity and difference have been negotiated in modern East Asia amid the ethno-racial politics of imperialism, colonialism, and post-colonial state-building which have played out in this region. This project will thus deepen scholarly understandings of the technical, political, and disciplinary factors which have made ethno-racial identity and difference such enduring concerns in the modern life sciences.