Where are the missing fingers? On being allergic to electronic fingerprinting
Malcolm Ashmore & Olga Restrepo Forero
(Loughborough Unversity & Universidad Nacional de Colombia)
Abstract
This presentation is concerned with citizen-identification practices, particularly in Colombia. The most recent ‘reform’ of these practices mandates electronic ‘live scan’ fingerprinting for a rapidly increasing number of public and private transactions, as is also the case in the wider world. This technology of identification supplements, but does not replace, the ubiquitous use of the compulsory ID card, the cedulá. Here, we link this recent development with the history of the cedulá through its various iterations, always in pursuit of the chimera of the perfect and permanent defeat of Fraud, the chief bogyman of Colombian social life. Drawing upon our study of the institution of the notaría, which we understand as perhaps the only Colombian site in which mutual trust abounds (trust being the Good that is manufactured there) we examine electronic fingerprinting from the perspective of those unfortunates whose fingers are missing-in-action: those who cannot produce the product of legible and matchable prints.
Starting our inquiry in the driving school, recently comprehensively reformed in order to do away with a large number of fraudulent practices said to be rife in the bad old system, we were interested to find that the sole method for fraud-elimination was a regime of extremely regular live scanning of both candidates’ and teachers’ fingers. Following an occasion on which Malcolm’s right index finger failed to produce a satisfactory print 70 times in succession, we rapidly discovered that the ‘missing fingers’ phenomenon appeared to be both widespread and under-analysed. Like Leigh Star’s allergy to onions, effectively excluding her from the delights of US fast-food eating, those with an allergy to electronic fingerprinting find themselves unable to partake of the pleasures of this near-compulsory form of technosocial Progress.
Biography
Malcolm Ashmore is author of The Reflexive Thesis (University of Chicago Press, 1989) and co-author of Health and Efficiency (Open University Press, 1989). Within STS he has researched reflexivity, the debunking of scientific fraud, the false/recovered memory controversy and, with Olga Restrepo Forero, the ironies of state documentary practices, particularly in Colombia. He is Honorary Fellow in the Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, UK, and is now virtually retired.
Olga Restrepo Forero is Professor at Departamento de Sociología, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá. She has published on Darwinism in Colombia and on the historiography of Darwinism in Latin America, on scientific writing and scientific rhetoric. She has also researched, with Malcolm Ashmore, institutional settings that produce and negotiate trust relationships, such as notaries and identification cards, and their uses in Colombian society. From 2010 to 2013, she directed and published an enormous research project called ‘Ensamblado en Colombia: producción de saberes y construcción de ciudadanías’ (‘Assembling Colombia: Producing Knowledges and Constructing Citizenships’). Most of her previously published work is in Spanish.
Location
STS Seminar Room, NIG, St. II. 6th floor, Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna