Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Sociocultural Dimensions of New Biometric Security Infrastructures

科技在我们今天的社会和政治生活中不断扩大的作用有什么影响？某些技术对象的日益普及，特别是以激增的界面形式出现，是显而易见的。然而，识别和安全技术，如生物识别技术，甚至像电子数据库这样的普通形式，对我们来说都是不透明的。这个项目训练一名研究生如何进行严格的、以经验为基础的科学实地考察，将使用基于科学实地考察的方法来研究当今现代生活中最显著的特征之一：大规模、网络化的数据库。考虑到与美国及其全球事务有关的日益严重的安全问题，调查基于数据库的识别技术如何与安全和治理实践交叉是至关重要的。该项目将发展对安全基础设施的经验理解；它询问它们如何渗透到社会领域，如亲属关系、移民、商业和居住习惯，塑造了日常生活的各个方面，这些方面似乎远远超出了安全的范围。它将加强对安全实践对公共政策、社会和地缘政治关系的社会和政治影响的理解。因此，它将促进方案和政策的发展，以创造安全而公平的社会环境。除了为人类学研究生的培训提供资金外，研究结果还将传播给探索和管理安全实践的原因、后果和复杂性的组织和个人。Zehra Hashmi在密歇根大学的Matthew Hull博士的指导下，将探索新的安全基础设施、亲属关系和社会组织之间的关系。本研究的重点是国家生物识别的先驱之一：巴基斯坦国家数据库和注册管理局（NADRA），以及它塑造日常社会生活领域的方式和手段。NADRA的重要性在于其无处不在：该卡可用于银行业务、支付账单、入学、购买手机芯片、房地产交易和投票。NADRA操作中涉及的关键角色是整合和验证数据的算法，特别是创建亲属单位的家庭关系。本研究将分析NADRA如何通过研究其对伊斯兰堡普什图移民的影响来重建亲属关系，对他们来说，身份证是一个中心问题。通过在普什图社区和NADRA的机构站点的多站点人种志田野调查，本研究询问NADRA的识别过程如何以更普遍的方式塑造安全概念。这项研究将收集关于NADRA如何告知城市空间的要求和经验的数据，特别是对于种族边缘化的人。此外，它将调查NADRA本身是如何被公民塑造的，以及这揭示了什么关于治理和安全实践。因此，本研究将阐明数据库、安全实践和少数民族地位之间的联系，因为它们形成了一个单一的、国家组织的信息基础设施。这对生物识别、信息和监控技术在全球其他地方（尤其是美国）治理中日益重要的作用具有广泛的比较意义和可概括的见解。

What is the impact of the expanding role of technology in our social and political lives today? The increasing ubiquity of certain technological objects, specifically in the form of proliferating interfaces, is immediately observable. However, identification and security technologies such as biometrics and even mundane forms like electronic databases are more opaque to us. This project, which trains a graduate student in how to conduct rigorous, empirically grounded scientific fieldwork, will use scientific fieldwork-based methods to examine one of the most salient features of modern life today: large-scale, networked databases. Given heightening security concerns, in relation to the United States and its global affairs, it is crucial to investigate how databased identification technologies intersect with security and governance practices. This project will develop an empirical understanding of security infrastructures; it asks how they percolate into social domains such as kinship, migration, commerce, and dwelling practices, shaping aspects of ordinary life seemingly far outside the purview of security. It will enhance understandings of the social and political implications of security practices as they bear upon public policy, social and geopolitical relations. Thus, it will facilitate the development of programs and policies in order to produce secure yet equitable social environments. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology, findings will be disseminated to organizations and individuals that explore and manage the causes, consequences, and complexities of security practices.Zehra Hashmi, under the supervision of Dr. Matthew Hull of the University of Michigan, will explore the relationship between new security infrastructures, kinship, and social organization. This research focuses on one of the pioneers in national biometric identification: Pakistan's National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), and manner and means in which it shapes domains of everyday social life. NADRA's significance lies in its ubiquity: the card is used for banking, paying bills, school admissions, acquiring a cell phone chip, property transactions and voting. Key actors involved in NADRA operations are algorithms that integrate and verify data, particularly familial relations creating kin units. This research will analyze how NADRA reconstitutes kin ties by studying its effects on Pashtun migrants in Islamabad, for whom the identity card is a central preoccupation. Through multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Pashtun neighborhoods and NADRA's institutional sites, this research asks how NADRA's identification processes shape conceptions of security in a more generalizable manner. This study will collect data on how NADRA informs claims and experiences of urban space, especially for the ethnically marginalized. Further, it will investigate how NADRA itself is shaped by citizens, and what this reveals about governance and security practices. Thus, this study will illuminate connections between databases, security practices, and the status of ethnic minorities as they crystalize into a single, state-organized information infrastructure. This holds broad comparative implications and generalizable insights for the growing role of biometric, information and surveillance technologies for governance elsewhere on the globe, particularly the United States.