The Documentation of Individual Identity: Historical and Comparative Perspectives since 1500

Identifying the Person:
Past, Present, and Future

Public Conference

St Antony’s College, University of Oxford
Saturday 26-Sunday 27 September 2009

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This public event represented the culmination of the Network’s Leverhulme-sponsored activities. Via a rich programme of research papers, commentaries, and discussions, our multidisciplinary international team and other invited participants explored:

• the conceptual and theoretical foundations of identification practices
• exemplary national and system case studies
• the comparative and transnational dimensions of identification
• the implications of historical research for contemporary policy and practice

The official conference report was published in the Spring 2010 issue of the History Workshop Journal. A pdf can be accessed online via this free-access link.

Download a Poster (pdf)

Programme

Saturday 26 September

8.30-9.15 Registration (Foyer, Hilda Besse Building)

9.15-9.30 Welcome and Introduction (Dahrendorf Room)

9.30-11.00 Panel One: Biometrics (Dahrendorf Room)
Chair: Julia Laite (Memorial University Newfoundland/McGill University [Canada])

Simon A. Cole (Criminology, University of California, Irvine)
Sex Crime in the Genetic Age: The Role of Sex Offenders in Generating a New Identification Regime [Abstract (pdf)]

Mercedes García Ferrari (History, University of San Andrés [Argentina])
The Contested History of Identification in Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Argentina: Anthropometry and Dactyloscopy in Buenos Aires Police Departments [Abstract (pdf)]

Pierre Piazza (Political Science, Cergy-Pontoise University [France])
Assessing Resistance to Biometrics in France [Abstract (pdf)]

Commentary: Pamela Sankar (Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania)

11.00-11.30 Tea and Coffee (Foyer, Hilda Besse Building)

11.30-1.00 Panel Two: Intensive Documentary Surveillance (Dahrendorf Room)
Chair: Edward Higgs (History, University of Essex)

Ross Anderson (Security Engineering, University of Cambridge)
The Database State [see the Full Report (pdf)]

Irus Braverman (University at Buffalo Law School, SUNY)
Civilized Borders: A Study of Israel’s New Crossing Administration [Abstract (pdf)]

Jane Caplan (History, University of Oxford)
Behind the Ausweis: Keeping Track in Nazi Germany [Abstract (pdf)]

Commentary: Ilsen About (Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin)

1.00-2.00 Lunch (Dining Hall, Hilda Besse Building)

2.00-3.30 Panel Three: Mobilities 1 (Dahrendorf Room)
Chair: James Brown (Network Facilitator, University of Oxford)

Edward Higgs (History, University of Essex)
State, Mobility and Identification in England, 1500-2009 [Abstract (pdf)]

Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie (History, University of the Western Cape [SA])
Cat and Mouse Games: The State, Indians in the Cape and the Permit System, 1906-1920s [Abstract (pdf)]

David Lyon (Sociology, Queens’ University [Canada])
Identifying the ‘North American’ Person: The Security and Prosperity Partnership and New ID Cards in Canada, Mexico and the USA [Abstract (pdf)]

Commentary: Steve Hindle (History, University of Warwick)

3.30-4.00 Tea and Coffee (Foyer, Hilda Besse Building)

4.00-5.30 Panel Four: Mobilities 2 (Dahrendorf Room)
Chair: Jane Caplan (History, University of Oxford)

Keith Breckenridge (History, University of KwaZulu-Natal [SA])
Fingers and Thumbs: Ghandi, Smuts and the Origins of Satyagraha [Abstract (pdf)]

Adam McKeown (History, Columbia University [New York])
Why So Melancholy? Reflections on the Rise of Migrant and Identity Control since the 1880s [Abstract (pdf)]

Takeshi Onimaru (Policy Studies, GRIPS [Japan])
Identifying ‘Agents’ in Asia: The Political Intelligence Services, the Passport Control System, and the Communist International in Asia in the 1920s and 30s [Abstract (pdf)]

Commentary: John Torpey (Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center)

8.00 Conference Dinner (Dining Hall, Hilda Besse Building)

Sunday 27 September

9.30-11.00 Panel Five: Civil Status Registration (Dahrendorf Room)

Chair: Béatrice Fraenkel (Anthropology, EHESS [France])

Claudine Dardy (Sociology, University of Paris 12)
The Identification of Individuals: Arrangements between Custom and Modern Civil Status Registration [Abstract in French (pdf) ¦ Abstract in English (pdf)]

Khaled Fahmy (History, New York University)
Population, Governmentality and Individual Identity: Some Questions from Nineteenth-Century Egypt [Abstract (pdf)]

Simon Szreter (History, University of Cambridge)
Identity Registration in English Comparative History: Why Were the Parish Registers Created and How Did They Persist? [Abstract (pdf)]

Commentary: Margo J. Anderson (History, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee)

11.00-11.30 Tea and Coffee (Foyer, Hilda Besse Building)

11.30-1.00 Panel Six: Numbering Buildings and Bodies (Dahrendorf Room)
Chair: Ian Watson (Sociology, Bifröst University [Iceland])

Vincent Denis (History, University of Paris 1)
Numbering Buildings and People in Eighteenth-Century France: The Police and the ‘Numerization’ of Identities [Abstract (pdf)]

Karl Jakob Krogness (History, Ritsumeikan University [Japan])
Household Registration in Japan: A Site for Legal and Social Recognition [Abstract (pdf)]

Anton Tantner (History, University of Vienna)
The House Number: A History of Order and Disorder [Abstract (pdf)]

Commentary: Peter Becker (History, Johannes Kepler University Linz [Austria])

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