The rapid spread of electronic fingerprinting not only creates new regimes of surveillance but compels users to adopt novel ways of performing their bodies to suit the new technology. This ethnography uses two Indian case studies – of a welfare office and a workplace – to unpack the processes by which biometric devices become effective tools for determining identity. While in the popular imaginary biometric technology is often associated with providing disinterested and thus objective evaluation of identity, in practice ‘failures (...) to enrol’ and ‘false rejects’ frequently cause crises of representation. People address these by tinkering with their bodies and changing the rules, and in the process craft biometric bodies. These are assembled bodies that link people and objects in ways considered advantageous for specific identity regimes. By using assemblage theory, the article proposes an alternative interpretation of new surveillance regimes as fluid practices that solidify through the agency of multiple actors who naturalize particular power/knowledge arrangements. (shrink)

This book brings key authors in anthropology together to debate and transgress anthropological expectations.

The article characterizes a paradigmatic change in ritual studies in the last twenty years, by discussing the impact of the 'performative turn' in the social sciences for the analysis of ritual action and ritual efficacy. Two streams of theories are distinguished: studies that re-conceptualize the relation between ritual and its social contexts, viewing it as a dynamic encounter that includes negotiation, adjustment and persuasion, and studies that explore the inner dynamic of ritual and characterize the activities and media that turn (...) ritual action into transformative performances. (shrink)