The Biometric Imaginary: Bureaucratic Technopolitics in Post-Apartheid Welfare

“In typical Weberian fashion, the government claims that the system’s universalism and standardization guarantee equal treatment (Donovan 2015).”

“6National IDs are contested in the non-West, where they are used to deliver welfare in an ‘objective’ manner, but lead to populations falling through the cracks (see research on IDs in Aadhaar [161, 194], post-apartheid South Africa [65] and Sri Lankan Tamils and Côte d’Ivoirians [24]).”

“(11) For a similar audit imperative and biometric response in South Africa, see Donovan (2015).”

“…of critical welfare services, it does raise a broader question about whether there has simply been a redistribution of subjectivity (and corruption, discussed above) to central actors, and an increase in system fragility by creating a central point of failure (as discussed below) (Donovan, 2015).”

“In fact, most of this savings came from the registration process itself, which was inaccessible to some former grantees (Donovan, 2015).17 By marking people as ‘risky’ or ‘criminal’ actors, Net1 was authorized to develop a system of credit that reduced grantee control over their own money.”

“In this sense, this demonstrates how imaginaries can be productive even if they are not particularly grounded in reality (Donovan 2015).”

“…believe in the usefulness of biometrics-based identification systems, even if these schemes often fail and despite the hesitation shown by more developed countries to rely on them (Breckenridge 2005 , 2008 , 2015; Donovan 2015 ; Magnet 2011 ; Maguire 2009 ; Maringanti 2009 ; Hosein & Nyst 2013 ).”

“…latter observation also holds true for the South African context, where the efficiency-driven implementation of welfare projects saves money by discriminating against a host of unbiometrifiable people (Breck-enridge, 2005, 2010; Donovan, 2015; Jacobsen, 2015; Oostveen and van den Besselaar, 2009).”

“We draw on the anthropology of technology to separate universal dynamics or ‘technological tendencies’ (Leroi-Gourhan 2013, 2015) from the particular socio-cultural, political, economic and also environmental context in which they are employed, integrated and (re-)imagined (see Coupaye 2009).”

“…the evolution of nuclear technology in post-war France (Hecht 1998) and later applied to a broad variety of large-scale technology from biometrics (Donovan 2015) to ICTs (Gagliardone 2014a; Rydhagen & Trojer 2003), can be particularly important to understand the relationship between information…”

“In both India and South Africa, there are continuing attempts to connect biometric ID registries to welfare provision (Breckenridge, 2014; Rao, 2013), despite evidence that such immense biometric registration schemes are often stalled or completely fail (Donovan, 2015; Magnet, 2011).”

“Although universally pushed by leaders in the democratic age, biometric technologies are alternately embraced by the public as an appropriate measure to ensure fairness in social program delivery (Donovan, 2015), or stridently resisted.”

“…study also engages with and aims to contribute to the growing body of knowledge on the technological imaginary (Donovan, 2015; Mager and Katzenbach, 2021), defined as individual and collective beliefs and understandings about the role of technology in social life (Donovan, 2015; Ferrari, 2020).”

“While surveillance scholars have previously discussed the discriminatory effect of biometric failures (Nanavati et al., 2002; Magnet, 2011; Rao, 2013; Martin and Donovan, 2015), this study addresses it through the lens of standardization.”

“2008), while attention has also focussed on uses of biometric identification in areas such as migration, border control, citizenship and welfare entitlement (Amoore 2013; Donovan 2015; Markό 2016).”

“Taking this discussion on the making of ‘statizens’ forward, I consider two contemporary cases of digital identification rollouts by the right‐ wing governments in power in Jamaica and Kenya as instances of the deployment of ‘bio-metric imaginaries’ of state belonging (Donovan 2015).”

“This is a shift away from the preoccupation with statist forms of biometric governance (Breckenridge, 2014; Debos, 2021; Donovan, 2015; Marko, 2016) to ask what happens when technologies typically used by states to either ‘ protect ’ or ‘ provide for ’ their citizens, get repurposed for…”