Recognition and Registration: The Infrastructure of Personhood in World History

Szreter, Simon; Breckenridge, Keith

doi:10.5871/bacad/9780197265314.003.0001

Cited by 32 publications

(36 citation statements)

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“…Although innovative approaches seem to enhance tenure security, the extent to which land documentation certificates generated through such processes can be used as a legal document is still unclear. The intended beneficiaries of innovation in land documentation need to see and experience benefits of documenting their lands in the long run, also because registration systems work when there are apparent benefits for the intended beneficiaries [37]. Our study does not provide much insight on the specifics of digital data storage and sharing in new initiatives, such as Meridia's, to register land tenure.…”

Section: Conclusion and Future Research Directionsmentioning

confidence: 87%

Innovating Along the Continuum of Land Rights Recognition: Meridia’s “Documentation Packages” for Ghana

Salifu

Abubakari

Richter

2019

Land

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Documentation of land rights can ensure tenure security and facilitate smooth land transactions, but in most countries of the global south this has been difficult to achieve. These difficulties are related to the high transaction cost, long transaction times, and procedural rigidity of land registration processes. In response to these problems, innovative approaches of tenure documentation have been conceived at a global level and are being promoted in many countries of the global south. Little is known yet about how such innovative land tenure documentation approaches unfold in various contexts and to what effect. The implementation of innovative approaches is challenging, due to the legal pluralistic nature of land governance and administrative hybridity in many countries of the global south, including the West African region. This qualitative study explores how Meridia, a small for-profit company, develops innovative approaches to register land rights in the form of “documentation packages” within the existing institutional setting of Ghana. In the paper, we describe both the processes of preparing the documentation packages and respective actors involved, as well as the nature of encounters between innovative interventions and existing institutions. Meridia develops specific products in response to both the regional diversity of land tenure, uses, and market demands, as well as in response to the challenges that the institutional context poses to the process of land tenure registration. As such, the case illustrates how innovation evolves in step-by-step fashion through negotiations with existing land institutions. The various documentation packages developed in this manner differ in terms of cost and complexity of preparation, in terms of recognition by customary and statutory institutions, as well as in the usability of the issued certificates and the extent of exchangeability of associated land parcels. Therefore, Meridia’s product innovation reflects the continuum of land rights, but it also poses questions for future research regarding the political economy of land tenure certification and regarding the actual uses and benefits of issued certificates.

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Section: Conclusion and Future Research Directionsmentioning

confidence: 87%

Innovating Along the Continuum of Land Rights Recognition: Meridia’s “Documentation Packages” for Ghana

Salifu

Abubakari

Richter

2019

Land

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“…Consider, for instance, the use of Touch ID on the most recent Apple devices or facial recognition on social media. Such uses of fingerprints and facial features go beyond policing and state security interests as they are increasingly used by corporate entities for commercial purposes (Lyon 2001(Lyon , 2018Szreter and Breckenridge 2012). When discussing surveillance and technology, David Lyon (2014: 33) believes that "today's technologies grow out of yesterdays" and "a sense of history is badly needed to grasp the context of the contemporary."…”

Section: Final Reflectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…During the nineteenth century, with the emergence of the nation state and industrialization, transformations at the level of monitoring and surveillance occurred and new forms of collecting information about citizens in order to maintain order and control emerged (Giddens 2002;Szreter and Breckenridge 2012;Weller 2012). Scientific knowledge had an impact on these actions of surveillance and control of "dangerous" and "risky" populations by the state (Sekula 1986).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying Suspicious Bodies? Historically Tracing Criminal Identification Technologies in Portugal

Miranda

2020

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This article explores how criminal identification technologies evolved in Portugal since the end of the nineteenth century from anthropometric measurements to descriptive, photographic, dactyloscopic, and genetic methods. The historical trajectory of these identification technologies allows us to reflect on the continuities and discontinuities of past and current practices that aim to inscribe the individual identity as a bureaucratic category. The chronological and geographical contexts are fundamental to understanding the archival uses of different techniques that seek to document (on paper and electronically) the suspicious body. Through the collection of documentary evidence (such as case files, reports, personal records, and legislation), this historical analysis situates the use and implementation of these techniques in the Portuguese context. This article demonstrates that the need to identify the criminal and to follow technological developments has been constantly used as a political argument to legitimise the implementation of these technologies. But it also concludes that these identification procedures tend to be extended to the entire population, widening the political will to identify and monitor not only "suspicious" bodies but also those who are regarded as "respectable" citizens.

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“…However, governments in both colonial and post-colonial Africa have historically invested little in such identification schemes (Szreter and Breckenridge 2012), and in Kenya many lack reliable identification documents. Because births often go undocumented, the 'documentary chain' is never started, thus making it more difficult to acquire documents later (Setel et al 2007).…”

Section: "[Beneficiaries Are] Illiterate and We Felt That It Would Bementioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the road to such a future would be long, the aspirations were already shaping infrastructural design in the present: through the aforementioned plan to biometrically enroll everyone in the arid and semi-arid lands, but also to combine these into a "single registry" with other cash transfers in Kenya, perhaps creating the administrative infrastructure of a welfare state (cf. Szreter and Breckenridge 2012).…”

Section: The Biopolitics Of Infrastructuring Aidmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infrastructuring aid: materializing humanitarianism in northern Kenya

Donovan

2015

Environ Plan D

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In numerous African countries, humanitarian and development organizations-as well as governments-are expanding expenditures on social protection schemes as a means of poverty alleviation. These initiatives, which typically provide small cash grants to poor households, are often considered particularly agreeable for the simplicity of their administration and the feasibility of their implementation. This paper examines the background work required to deploy social protection in one especially remote area: the margins of postcolonial Kenya. Specifically, it documents the often-overlooked social and technical construction of the infrastructure necessary so that cash transfers may function with the ease and simplicity for which they are commended. Attention to the practice of 'infrastructuring' offers insights into the tensions and politics of what is rapidly become a key form of transnational govermentality in the global South, showing that humanitarian rationalities and subjects cannot be understood independent of the material networks on which they rely. Infrastructures & InfrastructuringEvery two months, many thousands of poor Kenyans living in drought-prone areas receive around US $50 from British taxpayers. How this money reaches the remote margins of Kenya involves bureaucratic negotiations, political commitment, and ethical ideals. But it also involves rugged trucks, Post-It notes, and carefully washed fingerprints. As these so-called 'cash transfers' become a key form of poverty alleviation in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa, this paper turns away from the high-profile battles over the politics and future of aid and humanitarianism to examine the humdrum and obscure practices that enable actually-existing poverty alleviation. In doing so, I follow Maurer (2012b) to focus on payments infrastructures-"the portals, rails and

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Recognition and Registration: The Infrastructure of Personhood in World History

Cited by 32 publications

References 0 publications

Innovating Along the Continuum of Land Rights Recognition: Meridia’s “Documentation Packages” for Ghana

Innovating Along the Continuum of Land Rights Recognition: Meridia’s “Documentation Packages” for Ghana

Identifying Suspicious Bodies? Historically Tracing Criminal Identification Technologies in Portugal

Infrastructuring aid: materializing humanitarianism in northern Kenya

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