Widlok, Thomas (2015). Making persons accountable: The impact of identification technology and of legal incorporation on notions of the person. Z. Ethnol., 140 (2). S. 191 - 206. BERLIN: DIETRICH REIMER VERLAG. ISSN 0044-2666
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Fingerprints, iris-scans, DNA-tests and other biometric technologies are used for making individuals accountable through fixing personal identity to the body. Virtual identities and corporate organizations are used for regulating personal accountability through allowing identities to be independent of the body of individuals. Both sets of technologies are being spread globally across a diversity of settings. The result is that the accountability of persons has become a critical problem in the everyday life of human beings across the globe and for the social theory of agency and of personal responsibility. This contribution assesses the impact that these technologies have on the way in which we see ourselves as moral beings. The practices of biometrically identifying persons and of organizing them into corporate bodies, I argue, are not just expressions of dominant tropes of personhood but they play a major role in generating and in sustaining the ways in which persons are recognized, especially by state agencies. Both forms of state practice foster a third-person perspective on personal responsibility as individual accountability and they de-emphasize that humans in their social interaction usually assess responsibility in terms of a first-person perspective (being able to put themselves into the place of others) and in terms of a second-person perspective (defining their own place in their relation to others). Since the practices and technologies in question are universalized and implemented in societies across the globe the perspective taken here is comparative, seeking to document and investigate the ways in which the implementation of technologies that fuel biometric and virtual identities redefine personal responsibility as accountability and form the basis for generating new moral agents.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
| Creators: |
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| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-415116 | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Z. Ethnol. | ||||||||
| Volume: | 140 | ||||||||
| Number: | 2 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | S. 191 - 206 | ||||||||
| Date: | 2015 | ||||||||
| Publisher: | DIETRICH REIMER VERLAG | ||||||||
| Place of Publication: | BERLIN | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0044-2666 | ||||||||
| Language: | English | ||||||||
| Faculty: | Unspecified | ||||||||
| Divisions: | Unspecified | ||||||||
| Subjects: | no entry | ||||||||
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| URI: | http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/41511 |
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