Description
Book SynopsisFrom biometrics to predictive policing, contemporary security relies on sophisticated scientific evidence-gathering and knowledge-making focused on the human body. Bringing together new anthropological perspectives on the complexities of security in the present moment, the contributors to Bodies as Evidence reveal how bodies have become critical sources of evidence that is organized and deployed to classify, recognize, and manage human life. Through global case studies that explore biometric identification, border control, forensics, predictive policing, and counterterrorism, the contributors show how security discourses and practices that target the body contribute to new configurations of knowledge and power. At the same time, margins of error, unreliable technologies, and a growing suspicion of scientific evidence in a “post-truth” era contribute to growing insecurity, especially among marginalized populations.
Contributors. Carolina Alonso-Bejara
Trade Review
"The volume certainly highlights what a conceptual anthropological engagement with 'security,' as well as with 'evidence' means. The volume will be worth reading for scholars in- and out-side anthropology interested in the production of knowledge, technologies, security and governmentality."
-- Monika Weissensteiner * Surveillance Studies *
“Bodies as Evidence poses a bold premise. It argues that not only is evidence beholden to social and political influences but that the glorification of evidence has demonstrable, and often dangerous, side effects on already marginalized communities. Its exemplary use of ethnographic and reflexive methodologies illustrates the vast complexity of seemingly objective data, and the practical limitations of collecting and employing it.”
-- Sarah Maya Rosen * Journal of International & Global Studies *
“This timely book will be of interest to political, legal, and social geographers concerned with the embodied and spatial implications of shifting laws and borders, and demands for evidence by and against the state.”
-- Emily C. Kaufman * Social & Cultural Geography *
Table of Contents
Introduction: Bodies as Evidence / Mark Maguire and Ursula Rao 1
1. The Truth of the Error: Making Identity and Security through Biometric Discrimination / Elida Jacobsen and Ursula Rao 24
2. Injured by the Border: Security Buildup, Migrant Bodies, and Emergency Response in Southern Arizona / Ieva Jusionyte 43
3. E-Terrify: Securitized Immigration and Biometric Surveillance in the Workplace / Daniel M. Goldstein and Carolina Alonso-Bejarano 62
4. "Dead-Bodies-at-the-Border": Distributed Evidence and Emerging Forensic Infrastructure for Identificiation / Amade M'charek 89
5. The Transitional Lives of Crimes against Humanity: Forensic Evidence under Changing Political Circumstances / Antonius C. G. M. Robben and Francisco J. Ferrándiz 110
6. Policing Future Crimes / Mark Maguire 137
7. "Intelligence" and "Evidence": Sovereign Authority and the Differences that Words Make / Gregory Feldman 159
8. The Secrecy/Threat Matrix / Joseph P. Masco 175
9. What Do Your Want? Evidence and Fantasy in the War on Terror / Joseba Zulaika 201
Conclusion: Discontinuities and Diversity / Mark Maguire and Ursula Rao 228
Contributors 237
Index 241
