Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World

Editors Jane Caplan and John Torpey

Princeton University Press
ISBN 0691009120
Cost. $ 26.95

Reviewed by:
Christopher Pollman
Maître de Conférences, Université de Metz, France
pollmann@phoenix.droit.univ-metz.fr

The author would like to thank his friends at the Ferme du Hayon, Belgium, for having allowed him to work on this review while staying with them.

This is a Book Review published on 15 December 2003.

Citation : Pollman, ' Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World ', Book Review, The Journal of Information, Law and Technology (JILT) 2003 (2)
<http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/03-2/pollman.html>. New citation as at 1/1/04: <http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/jilt/2003_2/pollman/>.

1 . Introduction

This book is a most stimulating source of information, reflection and research. Its origins go back to a panel at the American Historical Associations' Annual Meeting in January 1998. The authors are scholars from the US, Canada, the UK, France, German-speaking Europe and The Netherlands, working in a broad variety of disciplines, namely history and sociology, but also criminology, history of science, political science and bioethics; not in law, however. The bibliography contains almost 800 references in all major European languages as well as in Russian and Dutch. The substantial index includes many authors' names, but not all of them. The book's contributions oscillate between two complementary approaches:

• descriptive essays, namely Charles Steinwedel's on the various identification techniques in late imperial Russia, Marc Garcelon's on the Soviet internal passport, and also John Torpey's on 'The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Passport System';

• theoretical and explanatory contributions (which have my personal preference), especially a powerful introduction by the editors particularly rich in insights.

The book's objective is to 'discuss in detail the practices through which individual identity has been inscribed, codified, verified and documented by official institutions in the modern world, especially the state' (p. 3). To this end, it advances in four major steps: The first part shows the creation of apparatuses of identification, the second makes clear the links between identification practices and policing, a theme which is developed in a third part concerning the control of movement. The last part discusses contemporary issues in identification, namely DNA-typing, body surveillance, the control of foreign workers in Germany and the role of identity cards in the Rwandan genocide. Before concluding with trends and questions for future research, one of the last, broader essays systematises the different types of identity knowledge and the numerous rationales in support of either anonymity or of identifiability. It thus summarises these rationales: 'The majority of interactions of any significance or duration tilt toward identification of at least some form. As David Hume argued, human sentiments and social needs favour it: it is more difficult to do ill to others when we know who they are and must face the possibility of confronting them'. [ 1 ] The latter claim may nevertheless deserve some closer examination with respect to the fact that some of the most atrocious crimes are committed among people who are closest to each other [ 2 ].

A constant preoccupation of the authors is the 'relationship between the emancipatory and the repressive aspects of identity documentation'. Indeed, 'individual identification [...] has been enabling as well as subordinating, and has created rights as well as police powers' (p. 5). The repressive quality comes to light in the psychoanalytical claim that 'every identification involves a degree of symbolic violence, a measure of temporary mastery and possession' [ 3 ]. The emancipatory attribute is probably due to the dependency of human agency on individual identity: 'identification and recognition are ineluctably conjoined in the modern world, and are the prerequisite for many individual and collective claims against the state and other authorities' (p. 6). For women, African-Americans and homosexuals for instance, rights culminating in the autonomous self may promise the end of oppression. [ 4 ]

Identity papers 'also furnish people with the means, together with private papers such as letters or diaries, to 'write' themselves into life and history. In this they [...] create themselves as 'legible' subjects of their own lives' (p. 7).

We may prolong this observation by asking the question whether there is any identity without some sort of identity papers [ 5 ]. The answer of course depends on how identity is defined. If we conceive of identity as the reified status of the legal subject, identity papers and other identification techniques have more than just declaratory effect. They participate in the relational constitution of the self [ 6 ]. Identity papers and their contents - name, photo, signature, etc. - contribute to unify and to homogenise human existence, help to make it stable if not identical in time and space in spite of organic and social change and thus create the ambition of being the autonomous director of one's life, able to motivate and to control body and soul in order to be productive, efficient and competitive. [ 7 ]

The emancipatory side of identification is supposed to be assured by democratic rule: 'The variable determining the degree of oppressiveness of bureaucratic processes that rely on documentation of individual identity is democracy' (p. 5). However, this angle of analysis does not take into account the possibility that the individual herself may become - and indeed has become - her supreme control instance. [ 8 ]

In the paragraphs that follow, I shall try to sum up and to develop those of the book's insights which seem most precious to me.

2. The Ambivalence of Identification: Between Distinction and Assimilation

The editors explore 'the history of identification rather than of identities', well conscious though that 'the question 'who is this person?' leaches constantly into the question 'what kind of a person is this?'' (p. 3). That is due to an epistemological difficulty to know what is unique, since the tools of knowledge, mainly language, proceed by commonalities. That is why 'conceiving of all people as different remains difficult if not impossible'. [ 9 ] Therefore, the editors admit that the 'identification as an individual is scarcely thinkable without categories of collective identity, and [that] isolating one half of these pairs might therefore seem artificial'. But they indeed succeed in their ambition to 'disclose the extent to which the documentary apparatus of identification itself has driven the history of categories and collectivities' (p. 3). By their emphasis on the techniques rather than on the results, they discover 'a central tension in the project of identification, as opposed to mere classification. The identity document purports to be a record of uniqueness, but also has to be an element in a classifying series that reduces individuality to a unit in a series, and that is thus simultaneously deindividualizing' (p. 8). More precisely, 'the validity of any pass is a combination of two contradictory dynamics. The individual, uninterchangeable person, genuine because he is 'unique', is established as such by means of seals and signs that are authorized reproductions, which are thus genuine to the extent that they are plural elements in an endless series'. [ 10 ] This contradiction 'discloses the fundamental instability of the concept of the 'individual' as such, and helps to explain the uneasy sense that we never fully own or control our identity, that the identity document carries a threat of expropriation at the same time as it claims to represent who we "are" '. [ 11 ]

The contradiction between the unique and the series in identification papers points to a more profound ambivalence. 'The term identity [... itself] incorporates the tension between 'identity' as the self-same, in an individualizing, subjective sense, and 'identity' as sameness with another, in a classifying, objective sense'. [ 12 ] Thus, personal 'identity is at the same time that which distinguishes an individual from others and that which assimilates him to others.' [ 13 ] This doublesidedness is simultaneously organised and resolved by the contemporary representations of individuality, such as the name, the signature, the passport and the fingerprint. They organise the tension between distinction and assimilation by helping to constitute the human being as an isolated but nevertheless classified existence, and, as a token, they resolve it provisionally. Indeed, 'the proof of [recognition] is not identity per se (that would be tautologous) but a sign which stands for the authentic object', in this case the single human being; 'the token proclaims as unique an individual which cannot on its own sufficiently make good its uniqueness'. [ 14 ] 'The experience of self-sameness is thus never unmediated [...]; it operates through a system of signs and recognitions that intrudes alterity into the heart of identity' (p. 51), just as the passport proves uniqueness by reference to a series. In other words, 'identification is the detour through the other that defines a self' [ 15 ].

The signature well illustrates the issues at stake here: like personal identity, it presupposes standardisation (of language and particularly of writing) while being unique. This ambivalence of the signature is demonstrated by the question of its legibility. In the early 19th century, some French officials wanted to forbid Jews to sign in Hebrew. 'Fear of counterfeiting may justify up to a certain point the use of highly peculiar signatures, but the signature must always fulfill its object', the legal actors present 'must be able to know with certainty that the more or less legible characters of which it consists do in fact represent the name of the signatory' [ 16 ]. Still in France, a similar controversy could nowadays be launched with respect to the widely spread trend to sign with illegible marks! Whereas the signature still manifests the tension between distinction and assimilation, the fingerprint may have resolved it and thus 'become the unofficial emblem of modern identity culture: for all practical purposes qualitatively unique, yet capable of being enrolled in a numerical series for the purposes of classification, retrieval and communication' (p. 53).

Is it because of the ambivalence between distinction and assimilation that individual identity can probably never be fully achieved and therefore not be documented, either? The authors give two kinds of evidence, sociological and literary, for an idea which would still have to be developed: that identity is a sort of 'black box' and identification a tautologous enterprise. The sociological evidence: In the contemporary US, 'reference to one's own name was the single most frequent type of response' to the question 'Who are you?' [ 17 ]. This somewhat circular reference, probably common in most of the Western world, suggests the impossibility of a substantial answer. It indicates the role of individual identity - as summarised by one's name - in condensing and unifying the contradictory elements of one's existence. [ 18 ] A literary quotation highlights the imaginary work taking place in identification: 'By continually reading and re-reading your name, you will be able to keep your hold on a past that no longer exists, and thus bring an illusion of self into the present' [ 19 ]. (However, the term illusion is problematic in two ways: it implies that the continuity from the past into the present would be unreal, whereas it is an important - and real - factor in identity; it also conveys the idea that there might be a self different from this mental process, whereas the self is probably always an imaginary construction. [ 20 ])

3. The Move Toward Abstraction

The history of identification seems to go along with growing abstraction and, to a more uncertain extent, with the expropriation of individuals of the parameters and conditions of their identity. The evidence for this hypothesis comes from the evolution in the use of identity signs, from the change of identification techniques and from the coming together of identification and identity.

Identity Signs

The elementary signs of modern identity (portrait, name and fingerprint) correspond to C. S. Peirce's second trichotomy of signs: icon, symbol and index (or, more generally, trace) [ 21 ]. One may argue that put in this order, the three types of signs correspond to steps of increasing abstraction. The portrait is an icon in the sense that it is not arbitrary and represents its object by some resemblance. It is therefore fairly concrete. The name is a symbol in that it is an arbitrary sign that has neither resemblance nor a material relationship to its referent. As signifier and signified are initially not related, the name is at a greater distance from the individual than the portrait. But it nevertheless becomes somewhat concrete: As it is universally used without hardly ever being changed, a stable relationship between signifier and signified is established, making the name a part of the individual. Finally, the fingerprint constitutes an index, because without resembling its object, it has a material connection with it. The index is the most abstract of the three kinds of signs, and that is probably why it has become 'the privileged sign of modern identity' (p. 53). Indeed, the impression of the fingertip in itself does not seem to contain any meaning [ 22 ], unlike the photo of a face, for instance, which may be more or less sympathetic, or a name which can have different resonances. In fingerprinting, human identity is no longer seen nor heard but represented by an abstract image, a purely indexical sign. Its only signification is indeed that it refers to an administrative, if not criminal record. [ 23 ] The move toward abstraction seems to continue: 'Perhaps global information networks will ultimately turn identity cards into nothing more than a means of calling up information [...] stored in a database elsewhere'. [ 24 ]

A similar evolution may be detected in the use of the signature. If the signature is icon, symbol and index, in its contemporary form it often conserves only its character as index [ 25 ], because its resemblance with the signatory's name, at least in France, tends to disappear. It therefore becomes simultaneously more arbitrary and more individualised, thus establishing or reinforcing a material connection between the signatory and her signature.

The traditional identity signs are currently completed, if not replaced by the even more abstract pseudonum: 'As more and more actions are remotely tracked in cyberspace [...] the pseudonym equivalent will become an increasingly common and accepted form of presenting the self for particular purposes [...]. The crucial issue then becomes authentication of the pseudonymity' (p. 325).

Identification Techniques

Human beings are able to distinguish among thousands of faces, and also to recognise them later, but they cannot provide conclusive evidence for this competence which thus cannot be transferred and institutionalised. [ 26 ] We may say that such a 'living' identification lacks mediation and abstraction. Transferable identity 'knowledge is inevitably abstracted from the flesh-and-blood person who relates to others'. [ 27 ] Abstraction in identification techniques therefore means and allows transferability and institutionalisation of identity knowledge. Late XIXth century's anthropometry already used the apparently most insignificant parts of the body, such as the lobe of the ear, as territory for identification. It was thus depriving its subjects almost completely of their social context (pp. 142, 148). This move toward abstraction continued, as shown above, with fingerprinting and is nowadays taken even further with DNA-typing. [ 28 ] Apart from increasing the effectivity and reliability of identification, it also withdraws the whole process and its significance out of individual control: Fingerprints or DNA do not give a clue as to what say the criminal records and they can hardly be manipulated.

If growing abstraction means lesser individual control, we have to point, however, to an opposite trend: More and more features of individual and collective identities become available for change: nationality, religious affiliation, profession, in some cases even name and sex. [ 29 ] This ties back to 'the emergence of the self as a commodity and an object to be worked on' (p. 324). Therefore, 'identities are becoming relatively less unitary, homogeneous, fixed and enduring' (p. 326).

Abstraction can also be observed in the current trend 'from identification papers to body surveillance' [ 30 ]. Whereas the use of identity papers requires access to the speech or the memory of the concerned individual, various new technologies - such as 'direct checking' of personal identity by reference to databases and computerised comparison of individual biological features with digital files - are much less dependent on the individual's cooperation and thus abstracted from the person (pp.295-297, 306).

Last but not least, the move toward abstraction is attested by utilitarian purification: 'governments' attempts to win the technological race against forgers led to the sacrifice of almost all aesthetic considerations' in the appearance of identity documents(p.234).

The Coming Together of Identification and Identity

In analysing the act of declaring the civil status of newborns, to be presented by their parents to the municipal official according to a French decree of September 20, 1792, Gérard Noiriel claims that 'it was only possible to identify people effectively by reducing the distance between the act as event and the act as document' (p. 30). The act as event is the declaration by speaking - or, in a wider sense, the identification process -, whereas the act as document is the piece of paper fixing individual identity as the result of the declaration (or of the identification process). We may therefore sum up these two poles - event and document - by saying identification and identity. Reducing the distance between the two cannot be achieved by modifying the identity document: We have indeed already seen that 'living' identification cannot be formalised. The only way of reducing the distance is to change the identification process, i.e. its techniques, thus getting it closer to the identity document. The requirement of 'reducing the distance' therefore manifests the need for replicable, abstract means of identification. The convergence of identification and identity may also be revealed in the claim that 'every identity is actually an identification come to light' [ 31 ].

4. 'Liberté, Egalité, Identité' [ 32 ]: Identification, the State and Individualism

Modern society's mobility means that we tend to interact more and more with strangers (p. 305), evolution becoming all the more problematic with 'the growing significance of movable over immovable property' (p. 55). This 'society of strangers requires tokens of trust', namely identity papers (p. 305). [ 33 ] Put the other way round, 'the constant reinforcement of identificatory demands becomes explicable by the extension of the chains of interdependence that link humans together' (p. 48). The origin of these identification needs in contexts of uncertainty is historically shown by the facts that 'the pass and the obligation to carry it emerged on the frontier, from which it then migrated inland' (p. 20), and that insignia, passes etc. were required of pilgrims, diplomats, the needy, rapidly also journeymen, servants, travellers (pp. 18, 20-21). Similarly, fingerprinting developed in the colonies, namely in India. [ 34 ] Nowadays, the move from self-identification to direct checking responds to that 'during the twentieth century technical and bureaucratic types of control became less effective' (p. 302) because, as we ought to add, the individualisation of society and more sophisticated communication technologies facilitate fraudulent practices.

If increasing individualism is responsible for identificatory demands as well as for the development of the state [ 35 ], the latter two factors also reciprocally condition each other. 'Establishing the identity of individual people - as workers, taxpayers, conscripts, travellers, criminal suspects - is [...] fundamental to the multiple operations of the state' (pp. 1, 16). Conversely, 'the creation of a 'legible people' [ 36 ] [...] - a people open to the scrutiny of officialdom - has become a hallmark of modern statehood' (p. 1). States may indeed be characterised as 'differentiating machines that separate[...] the 'inner' from the 'outer' (p. 26).

That there is no identification without the state can be shown by analysing Jeremy Bentham's wishful proposal of tattooing the whole population which would solve the moral and political question 'who are you?' [ 37 ] This may indeed be an error, because the form - the tattoo - leaves open the question of its contents: What type of information should be written onto the body? Identity is a complex set of information all of which can hardly be tattooed. The only way of realising Bentham's wish would consist of tattooing an index, i.e. a number [ 38 ], referring to a centralised database constantly kept up to date, such as the 'national book of personality' proposed in 1934 by Reyna Almandos for Argentina [ 39 ]. It is evident that such a project could only be achieved with the help of a powerful administration disposing not only of an army of trained officials, but also of mathematical and organisational methods allowing the classification, retrieval and communication of personal data.

Thus, the project of identifying everyone in a given society could not be accomplished, in the 18th or 19th centuries, by tattooing or branding. In France, branding by hot iron had by the way been abolished by law in 1832 [ 40 ]; new modes of identification had to be non-stigmatising (p. 190), revealing the growing impact of individualism, equality and human rights. The identification project required the participation of the subject, through an interplay of icon, symbol and - later on - index. 'Writing on the body gave way to reading off it' (p. 8) or more precisely: gave way to reading off the subject (including her name and other personal data which were in fact not shown by the body).

The identification of human beings on a large scale is not an innocent mission. On the contrary, history has shown that it can be a powerful tool of domination for the state and a ruling group in society. Among many instances, the most prominent one is probably the Nazi genocide of Jews. [ 41 ] Rwanda is a more recent exemple: 'In part because of the issuance of identity cards, most Rwandans today, unlike in precolonial times, believe that ethnicity is a fixed trait of individuals'. [ 42 ] 'It is this ethnicisation of Rwandan society that ultimately made genocide possible' (p. 356). We may add that the essay just quoted well illustrates how 'individuals attempt to negotiate the difficulties of reconciling the flexible nature of group identities with the rigidity of official documentation in their efforts to construct their personal identities' (p. 357).

5. The Impact of Identification Technologies

The necessary participation of the subject mentioned above is confirmed by the observation that 'universal systems of individual identification are unthinkable without mass literacy and an official culture of written records' (pp. 1-2). 'Writing itself [...] originated not as a means of recording speech but in order to facilitate taxation, book-keeping and property ownership' (p. 2). More generally, identification techniques can never completely abandon language; 'even photographs as a method for the apparently mechanical representation of physiognomic characteristics had to rely on linguistic classifications of the data to provide efficient access to a suspect's identity' (pp. 141, 160). Similarly, 'any measurement system requires explanation' [ 43 ] and 'a person's nationality [...] cannot be determined without recourse to documents. As an ascribed status, it cannot be read off a person's appearance' [ 44 ].

In this context, one of Anne M. Joseph's main claims may need further discussion. Referring to Carlo Ginzburg, she asserts that 'the transition from photographs, anthropometric measurements and other methods to fingerprints [...] was a movement from numbers to images', 'an epistemological shift from the Galilean model of quantification [...] to a qualitative model of the conjectural sciences' [ 45 ]. Without being an expert in fingerprinting technology, I doubt whether it is any less numerical and quantitative than anthropometry. The different characteristics of fingerprints were (and are) standardised and numerised, in order to allow their classification, retrieval and communication. [ 46 ] Thanks to computers, nowadays' emphasis seems to be on their image, but digitilising an image means to transform it into a series of numbers.

The 'new biometric technologies [...] fix identity in or onto the body itself, a development that appears to herald the reversal of the earlier trend from 'writing on' to 'reading off' the body' (p. 11). I would prefer to say that they perfect the use of information the individual body already contains; the fixing of individual identity does not take place in or on the body, but rather in the administrative files and databases. Even if the display of some corporeal feature 'turns the body into a password' (p. 297), the identification information is stored somewhere else.

In order to foster further research, I would suggest the following grid for the understanding of the evolution in identification technologies: Till the early 19th century, 'writing on' the body was in correspondence with the inferior, subjected status of those concerned by branding. During the last two centuries, 'reading off' the subject correlated with people's somewhat equalized status; growing literacy made their participation in identificatory processes possible and the individualisation of society had not yet sufficiently advanced to push them toward fraudulent practices. Beginning with fingerprinting, the biometric surveillance methods are the technological condition for further individualisation, increasing communication and generalised economic exchange; 'reading off' the body, they are a response to the increasing facilities and temptations for fraud. Domination and surveillance thus moves from personalised power in relations of unequality via internalised control among equals toward - for the time being - the most objectified and abstract administration of bodies in an atomised society.

All identification efforts are in some way related to risk management. Along with other technologies, they tend to individualise risks: 'Eugenics, fingerprinting, new genetics and DNA-typing all advance strategies which embody the belief that social threats are located within free-standing individuals. [...] These individually focused technologies are embraced despite their narrow practical efficacy in part because they offer solutions, sometimes dramatic ones, to serious social problems without subjecting those problems to serious debate'. [ 47 ]

Notes and References

1 . Gary T. MARX, 'Identity and Anonymity: Some Conceptual Distinctions and Issues for Research', pp. 311-327 (319). Contributions without further indication of publication are drawn from the reviewed book.

2 . See Bertrand PIRET, 'Introduction: De l'étranger à la pulsion de mort', in: PAROLE SANS FRONTIERE / CONSEIL DE L'EUROPE (eds.), Psychiatrie, psychothérapie et culture(s), vol. VII: La haine du père (1996-97), Strasbourg 1997.

3 . Diana FUSS, Identification Papers, Routledge: London & New York 1995, p. 9 (emphasis omitted); see also p. 145.

4 . See respectively, e.g., Catherine A. MACKINNON, Feminism Unmodified. Discourses on Life and Law, Harvard University Press: Cambridge/Mass. 1987; Patricia WILLIAMS, The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Diary of a Law Professor, Harvard University Press: Cambridge 1991, pp. 146-165; Kendall THOMAS, 'Beyond the Privacy Principle', in: Dan Danielsen & Karen Engle (eds.), After Identity. A Reader in Law and Culture, Routledge: New York/London 1995, pp. 277-293 (278-280, 284-290 with notes 25 and 30).

5 . Richard SOBEL assumes on the contrary that 'individuals' identities [... consist of] the inherent qualities of persons', 'The Degradation of Political Identity Under a National Identification System', 8 Boston University Journal of Science & Technology Law 2002, pp. 37-74 (38, 69).

6 . See Iris M. YOUNG, Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton University Press 1990, pp. 45-46.

7 . On these two related issues of individual self-control and the performance ambition see C. POLLMANN, 'Personal Identity - Fortress of the Individual in a World of Performance? The Self, Law and Social Power', Asia University Law Review (Tokyo), vol. 38, no. 1, July 2003, pp. 178-139; <http://www.cbrss.harvard.edu/events/ppbw/papers/pollman.pdf>. For a 'postmodernist critique of the logic of identity' and of the abstract construction of modern subjectivity, see I. YOUNG, pp. 97-103, 125-126.

8 . Judith BUTLER, 'Subjection, Resistance, Resignification: Between Freud and Foucault', in: John Rajchman (dir.), The Identity in Question, Routledge: New York & London 1995, pp. 229-249. See also note 7.

9 . Martha MINOW, Making All the Difference. Inclusion, Exclusion and American Law, Cornell University Press: Ithaca & London 1990, pp. 94-95. See also Alain BERNARD, 'Fleurs de papier, fleurs de tombeaux', in: Jacqueline Pousson-Petit (ed.), L'identité de la personne humaine. Etude de droit français et de droit comparé, Bruylant: Bruxelles 2002, pp. 13 à 61 (14).

10 . Valentin GROEBNER, 'Describing the Person, Reading the Signs in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe: Identity Papers, Vested Figures and the Limits of Identification, 1400-1600', pp. 15-27 (21).

11 . J. CAPLAN & J. TORPEY, 'Introduction', pp. 1-12 (8). In the same sense but a different context (see below note 31), D. FUSS (note 3), p. 2.

12 . J. CAPLAN, '« This or That Particular Person »: Protocols of Identification in Nineteenth-Century Europe', pp. 49-66 (51).

13 . Beatrice FRAENKEL, La signature: Genèse d'un signe, Gallimard: Paris 1992, p. 197, quoted by J. CAPLAN (note 12), p. 51 (Caplan's emphasis and translation).

14 . J. CAPLAN (note 12), p. 51, quoting Terence CAVE, Recognitions: A Study in Poetics, Clarendon: Oxford 1988, p. 245.

15 . D. FUSS (note 3), p. 2.

16 . See the statement of a French prosecutor translated and quoted by Gérard NOIRIEL, 'The Identification of the Citizen: The Birth of Republican Civil Status in France', pp. 28-48 (46).

17 . J. CAPLAN (note 12), p. 50, quoting Kenneth L. DION, 'Names, Identity and Self', Names 31, no. 4, Dec. 1983, pp. 245-257 (246).

18 . See C. POLLMANN (note 7).

19 . J. CAPLAN (note 12), p. 66, quoting Nigel DENNIS, Cards of Identity, Weidenfeld and Nicolson: London 1955, pp. 94-95.

20 . See Louis DUMONT, Homo hierarchicus, le système des castes et ses implications, Gallimard: Paris 1979, p. 21 (Homo hierarchicus: The caste system and its implications, University of Chicago Press 1980).

21 . J. BUCHLER (ed.), Philosophical Writings of Peirce, Dover: New York 1955, pp. 102-109, quoted by J. CAPLAN (note 12), p. 52.

22 . Simon A. COLE, Suspect Identities. A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification, Harvard University Press: Cambridge/Mass. & London 2001, pp. 117-118.

23 . S. COLE (note 22), pp. 118, 162, 167.

24 . Andreas FAHRMEIR, 'Governments and Forgers: Passports in Nineteenth-Century Europe', pp. 218-234 (234).

25 . For this paragraph, J. CAPLAN (note 12), pp. 52-53, on the basis of B. FRAENKEL (note 13), p. 200.

26 . Peter BECKER, 'The Standardised Gaze: The Standardisation of the Search Warrant in Nineteenth-Century Germany', pp. 139-163 (145, 148).

27 . David LYON, 'Under My Skin: From Identification Papers to Body Surveillance', pp. 291-310 (296).

28 . S. COLE (note 22), p. 162.

29 . See Thomas M. FRANCK, The Empowered Self. Law and Society in the Age of Individualism, Oxford University Press 2001, and my review, forthcoming in Revue du droit public et de la science politique; Jacqueline POUSSON-PETIT (ed.), L'identité de la personne humaine. Etude de droit français et de droit comparé (1001 pages), Bruylant: Bruxelles 2002, and my review, forthcoming in Droit et société. Revue internationale de théorie du droit et de sociologie juridique.

30 . See note 27.

31 . D. FUSS (note 3), p. 2. However, the issue needs further exploration, since her concept of identification may not concord with the processes and techniques of recognition and surveillance dealt with in the reviewed book: 'Identification is the psychical mechanism that produces self-recognition. Identification inhabits, organizes, instantiates identity' (p. 2).

32 . J. CAPLAN (note 12), p. 59, quoting Nicole LAPIERRE, Changer du nom, Stock: Paris 1995, pp. 39-53, 93-105.

33 . D. LYON (note 27), p. 305, referring to Anthony GIDDENS, Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Stanford University Press 1990 (no page indicated). But the expression society of strangers has apparently first been used by Michael IGNATIEFF, 'State, Civil Society and Total Institutions: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of Punishment', in: Stanley Cohen & Andrew Scull (eds.), Social Control of the State: Historical and Comparative Essays, Martin Robertson: Oxford 1983, p. 87, quoted by S. COLE (note 22), p. 9.

34 . S. COLE (note 22), pp. 63-70, 75-77.

35 . Richard van DÜLMEN, Die Entdeckung des Individuums: 1500 - 1800, Fischer: Frankfurt/Main 1997, pp. 148-149; A. GIDDENS (note 33), pp. 150-152.

36 . James SCOTT, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Yale University Press: New Haven 1998, p. 65, quoted by J. CAPLAN & J. TORPEY (note 11), p. 1.

37 . Jon AGAR, 'Modern Horrors: British Identity and Identity Cards', pp. 101-120 (118, quoting from BENTHAM's Principles of Penal Law).

38 . In 1981, this idea, pronounced in an ironical sense by president Reagan's adviser Martin Anderson, helped to abandon the plan for a national identity card. See Richard Sobel, pp. 72-73 with further reference.

39 . Luis REYNA ALMANDOS, 'The Personal Number and the National Book of Personality', Biblioteca de la Revista de Identificación y Ciencias Penales, no. 22, Impresiones Oficiales: La Plata 1936, cited by Kristin RUGGIERO, 'Fingerprinting and the Argentine Plan for Universal Identification in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries', pp. 184-196 (195).

40 . Martine KALUSZYNSKI, 'Republican Identity: Bertillonage as Government Technique', pp. 123-138 (124).

41 . See R. SOBEL, pp. 48-55.

42 . Timothy LONGMAN, 'Identity Cards, Ethnic Self-Perception and Genocide in Rwanda', pp. 345-357 (347).

43 . Anne M. JOSEPH, 'Anthropometry, the Police Expert and the Deptford Murders: The Contested Introduction of Fingerprinting for the Identification of Criminals in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain', pp. 165-183 (170 citing Simon SCHAFFER, 'Astronomers Mark Time: Discipline and the Personal Equation', Science in Context 2, pp. 115-145 [115]).

44 . J. TORPEY, 'The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Passport System', pp. 256-270 (269).

45 . A. JOSEPH (note 43), pp. 166, 182, citing Carlo GINZBURG, 'Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm', in: Myths, Emblems, Clues 1990, pp. 96-105 (120 [sic]).

46 . See J. CAPLAN (note 12), p. 53; also A. JOSEPH (note 43), pp. 172-173; in detail S. COLE (note 22), pp. 81-85.

47 . Pamela SANKAR, 'DNA-Typing: Galton's Eugenic