Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T01:51:01.706Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“We Are Not a Failed State, We Make the Best Passports”: South Sudan and Biometric Modernity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2016

Ferenc David Markó
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

In January 2012, six months after the declaration of independence, South Sudan introduced a state-of-the-art biometric identity management system to handle its citizenship and passport databases. Scholars have shown that despite the remarkable failures of biometric schemes, states maintain their belief in high-modernist technologies. This article argues that South Sudan introduced biometrics to convey an image of a “non-failed” state to the international community, while effectively doubling the bureaucracy to keep all important decisions about inclusion and exclusion in the hands of the military elites. This duplication of the office reveals a great deal about the fundamental nature of the South Sudanese state. Citizens of any state tend to imagine the nation through their relations to bureaucracy, and identity documents act as a new kind of evidence of a successful negotiation between them and state agents. This situation creates a constant state of citizenship limbo for the South Sudanese.

Résumé:

En janvier 2012, six mois après la déclaration de son indépendance, le Soudan du Sud a introduit un système moderne d’identité biométrique pour gérer ses bases de données de citoyenneté et de passeport. Les chercheurs ont montré que, malgré les échecs remarquables des systèmes biométriques, les États maintiennent leur foi dans les technologies modernes de pointe. Cet article soutient que le Soudan du Sud a introduit la biométrie pour offrir à la communauté internationale une représentation d’un état “robuste,” tout en doublant la bureaucratie, pour garder l’ensemble des décisions importantes au sujet de l’inclusion et de l’exclusion dans les mains des élites militaires. Cette duplicité du bureau révèle beaucoup la nature fondamentale de l’État sud soudanais. Les citoyens d’un État ont tendance à imaginer la nation à travers leurs relations avec la bureaucratie et les documents d’identité agissent comme un nouveau genre de preuve d’une négociation réussie entre eux et les agents de l’État. Cette situation crée un état constant d’incertitude de citoyenneté pour les Soudanais du Sud.

Keywords

AnthropologySouth Sudanbiometriccitizenshipsovereigntybureaucracy
Type
ASR FORUM ON SURVEILLANCE IN AFRICA: POLITICS, HISTORIES, TECHNIQUES
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , September 2016 , pp. 113 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arakali, Harichandan. 2015. “One Billion Indians to Have UID Numbers by Year-End as India Seeks to Boost Social Security.” IB Times, February 2.Google Scholar
Assal, Munzoul A. M. 2011. Nationality and Citizenship Questions in Sudan after the Southern Sudan Referendum Vote. Bergen, Norway: CHR Michelsen Institute.Google Scholar
Bierschenk, Thomas, and Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre. 2014. “Studying the Dynamics of African Bureaucracies: An Introduction to States at Work.” In States at Work: Dynamics of African Bureaucracies, edited by Bierschenk, Thomas and Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre, 3–33. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Breckenridge, Keith. 2005. “The Biometric State: The Promise and Peril of Digital Government in the New South Africa.” Journal of Southern African Studies 31 (2): 267–82.Google Scholar
Breckenridge, Keith. 2008. “The Elusive Panopticon: The HANIS Project and the Politics of Standards in South Africa.” In Playing the ID Card: Surveillance, Security and Identity in Global Perspective, edited by Bennett, Colin and Lyon, David, 39–56. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Breckenridge, Keith. 2014. Biometric State: The Global Politics of Identification and Surveillance in South Africa, 1850 to the Present. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, John, and Comaroff, Jean. 2000. “Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming.” Public Culture 12 (2): 291–343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cormack, Zoe. 2016. “Borders Are Galaxies: Interpreting Contestation over Local Administrative Boundaries in South Sudan.” Africa 86 (3): 1–24.Google Scholar
De Tombouk, Joe. 2013. “Is It Fair to Label South Sudan as a Failed State?” Sudan Tribune, July16. http://www.sudantribune.net.Google Scholar
De Waal, Alex. 2014. “Is South Sudan ‘The World’s Most Failed State?’” Reinventing Peace Blog. http://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace.Google Scholar
Donovan, Kevin P. 2015. “The Biometric Imaginary: Bureaucratic Technopolitics in Post-Apartheid Welfare.” Journal of Southern African Studies 41 (4): 815–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fund for Peace. 2013. “Failed States Index 2013: The Troubled Ten.” http://library.fundforpeace.org.Google Scholar
Fund for Peace. 2014. “Renaming the Failed States Index.” http://library.fundforpeace.org.Google Scholar
Hosein, Gus, and Nyst, Carly. 2013. Aiding Surveillance: An Exploration of How Development and Humanitarian Aid Initiatives Are Enabling Surveillance in Developing Countries. London: Privacy International.Google Scholar
Hull, Matthew. 2012. Government of Paper: The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, Sharon. 1996. Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War, and the State. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Douglas H. 2010. When Boundaries Become Borders: The Impact of Boundary-Making in Southern Sudan’s Frontier Zones. London: Rift Valley Institute.Google Scholar
Juma, John Stephen. 2012. “National Identity Cards Launched.” Gurtong Trust, January 4. http://www.gurtong.net.Google Scholar
Leonardi, Cherry. 2013. Dealing with Government in South Sudan: Histories of Chiefship, Community and State. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Longman, Timothy. 2001. “Identity Cards, Ethnic Self-Percetion, and Genocide in Rwanda.” In Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World, edited by Caplan, Jane and Torpey, John, 345–59. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Macklin, Audrey, and Bauböck, Rainer, eds. 2015. The Return of Banishment: Do the New Denationalisation Policies Weaken Citizenship? Florence: European University Institute.Google Scholar
Magnet, Shoshana Amielle. 2011. When Biometrics Fail: Gender, Race, and the Technology of Identity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Maguire, Mark. 2009. “The Birth of Biometric Security.” Anthropology Today 25 (2): 9–14.Google Scholar
Mampilly, Zachariah Cherian. 2011. Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life during War. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Manson, Katrina. 2011. “South Sudan Wakes Up to Nation Building.” Financial Times, July 10.Google Scholar
Maringanti, Anant. 2009. “Sovereign State and Mobile Subjects: Politics of the UIDAI Economic and Political.” Political Weekly 44 (46): 35–40.Google Scholar
Markó, Ferenc Dávid. 2014. “Gondolatok a rokonságról a dél-szudáni állampolgársági hivatalban.” In Mwomboko: Köszöntő kötet Sárkány Mihály 70. Születésnapjára, edited by Katalin, Schiller and Fruzsina, Tóth-Kirzsa, 57–70. Budapest: MAKAT—ELTE BTK Néprajzi Intézet.Google Scholar
Markó, Ferenc Dávid. 2015. “Negotiations and Morality: The Ethnicization of Citizenship in Post-secession South Sudan.” Journal for Eastern African Studies 9 (4): 669–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, Ian. 2011. “The I.D. Man.” New Yorker, October 3.Google Scholar
Ramakumar, R. 2011. “Aadhaar: On a Platform of Myths.” The Hindu, July 18.Google Scholar
Rao, Ursula. 2013. “Biometric Marginality: UID and the Shaping of Homeless Identities in the City.” Economic and Political Weekly 48 (13): 71–77.Google Scholar
Roll, Michael. 2013. “Pockets of Effectiveness: Review and Analytical Framework.” In The Politics of Public Sector Performance: Pockets of Effectiveness in Developing Countries, edited by Roll, Michael, 22–42. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rosen, Rebecca J. 2011. “How to Count One-Sixth of the World’s Population?” The Atlantic, September 26.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Seidel, Katrin. 2013. “Negotiating South Sudanese Nationality: ‘Diversity & Unity’ Strategies in Translation.” Paper presented at the American Law and Society meeting, Boston, May 30–June 2.Google Scholar
South Sudan. 2011. Nationality Act. http://www.refworld.org.Google Scholar
Thomas, Edward. 2015. South Sudan: A Slow Liberation. London: Zed Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wassara, Samson. 2015. “South Sudan: State Sovereignty Challenged at Infancy.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 9 (4): 634–49.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 2006. “Bureaucracy.” In The Anthropology of the State: A Reader, edited by Sharma, Aradhana and Gupta, Akhil, 49–70. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Wolff, Stefan. 2013. “Two Years after Independence, South Sudan Struggles to Build a Viable State.” World Politics Review, June 24.Google Scholar
Wrong, Michela. 2013. “Africa’s Election Aid Fiasco.” The Spectator, April 20.Google Scholar