Dear all,
Continuing our tradition of organizing conversations on biometrics at the
Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) conferences, Ranjit Singh (Data
& Society) and I are convening an open panel entitled "Biometrics and their
Infrastructural Worlds "
for this year's conference on 8-11 November 2023 in Honolulu, Hawai'i. More
information about the conference can be found here
.
We hope you will consider submitting an abstract to our panel, detailed
below. Instructions for submitting abstracts (250 words) can be found in
the conference call for submissions
.
The deadline for submission is 26 May 2023. When making the submission,
please remember to select "Biometrics and their Infrastructural Worlds"
(Panel #135). You'll also be able to indicate whether you plan to
participate in person or virtually.
Please reach out to me and Ranjit (ranjit@datasociety.net) with any
questions. We look forward to your submissions!
Best wishes,
Michelle Spektor
Lecturer
Science, Technology, and Society
Tufts University
Michelle.Spektor@tufts.edu
Biometrics and their Infrastructural Worlds
Panel #135
Biometric data form conditions of possibility for imagining, representing,
and intervening in individual and collective identities. These data,
however, are also a means to create technological infrastructures that
serve a variety of social and political purposes. Body measurements can be
incorporated into passports, and other pre-existing identification and
surveillance infrastructures, that distinguish citizens from non-citizens.
Biometric data and their promise of unique identification are inscribed in
systems that control access to healthcare and voting, as well as
classification systems that reinforce inequalities related to, race,
ethnicity, gender, class, age, disability, and nationality. Sensors in
'smart' devices and buildings measure human activity in order to regulate
energy consumption, while the built environments of border crossings rely
on biometrics to regulate the mobility of populations. These biometric
infrastructures can transfer to new geographic, political, and temporal
contexts, where their original technological designs and political aims may
persist or change. For example, some post-colonial police departments
inherited fingerprint systems from their colonial predecessors, but aimed
to reframe them as infrastructures of nation building.
This panel extends questions about the meanings of biometric data to
include what these data do in the world - especially when they are
imbricated into infrastructures that organize the societies, ecologies, and
built environments in which we live. Taking an expansive view of what
counts as biometrics, this panel welcomes papers that critically examine
the consequences, politics, and human experiences of past and present
infrastructures around the world that rely on measurements of life itself.
Contact: spektor@mit.edu & ranjit@datasociety.net
Keywords: biometrics; infrastructure; identification; identity;
classification
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