Biometric Technologies
- LAST REVIEWED: 30 October 2019
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 October 2019
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199874002-0209
- LAST REVIEWED: 30 October 2019
- LAST MODIFIED: 30 October 2019
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199874002-0209
Introduction
Since the turn of the 21st century, scholars have examined the technological advances and associated social implications related to the measurement and analysis of unique biological characteristics such as hand geometry and fingerprints, otherwise known as biometrics. Leading scientific journals like IET Biometrics have explored the scientific understandings and practical applications of biometric devices, such as the introduction of facial recognition technology into mass-market cell phones. Social science publications such as Surveillance & Society have investigated the social norms that inform the making of biometric technologies and their impacts on society. More specifically, these analyses have assessed the racialized, gendered, ableist, and classed contours of these emerging technologies that use the body as a metric. In fact, the earliest critical examinations of biometrics by scholars like Lyon and Pugliese focused on how normative understandings calibrated these emerging technologies to the white, able-bodied, cisgendered male body. Although additional scholars like Graham and Wood have demonstrated how digitizing surveillance through biometrics and other technologies intentionally has reinforced social inequities, they often fail to engage in analyses of race and gender. Since then, many scholars, especially women and women of color, have undertaken the study of biometrics to better understand how these technologies reinscribe power in global contexts. To do so, these scholars have added important historical, theoretical, and empirical insights that better account for how race, class, gender, ability, and other axes of social difference shape, and are shaped by, biometric technologies and their implementation. By examining the latest developments in biometrics and the aims of these technological innovations in India, Iraq, Mexico, Norway, the United States, and elsewhere, these scholars highlight and respond to critical absences in more conventional investigations of biometrics, which often ignore how power is enacted in and through these technologies. Browne’s extensive research, for example, has connected early practices of biometric branding to facilitate the transatlantic slave trade to contemporary biometric security practices in airports infused with gendered anti-Blackness. Other critical analyses examine the use of biometrics to police the poor, reinforce gender norms, pathologize disabled bodies, and regulate mobility from the diverse perspectives of those who design, implement, and experience these security practices. Through an exploration of the motivations, funding sources, and purposes of developing biometric technologies, this work takes seriously how biometrics are imbricated in the (re)constitution of power, (re)making of social difference, (re)articulation of spatialized power relations, and embodied experiences that often generate violence, anxiety, and dis-ease. In this bibliography, we organize these contributions around the who, what, where, when, why, and how of biometric systems.
Journals on Biometrics
Biometrics research can be found in a range of journals. These can be roughly divided into scientific and industry journals, such as Biometrics (Formerly Biometrics Bulletin), IET Biometrics, Biometric Technology Today, and Police Chief Magazine, and social science journals including Information, Communication & Society, Security Dialogue, and Surveillance & Society. Articles in both categories feature the latest biometric technologies and applications. Additional journals that explore the social, geopolitical, and economic impact of biometrics and algorithmic governance include Sociology Compass, Crime, Law, and Social Change, and Political Geography.
Biometrics.
As the journal of the International Biometric Society, Biometrics primarily publishes articles that examine the application of statistics and mathematics to the biosciences, with an emphasis on new methods, practices, and principles.
Biometric Technology Today.
As an industry newsletter reaching a wide audience from academics to vendors, Biometric Technology Today publishes pieces that communicate recent innovations and developments in the field of biometrics.
IET Biometrics.
With a focus on technology, IET Biometrics publishes articles that increase scientific understandings, practical applications, and ongoing developments of biometric systems. This journal specifically examines the development of biometric modalities and their implementation in society.
Information, Communication & Society.
As a high-impact journal, iCS publishes interdisciplinary scholarship on the cultural, social, and economic effects of emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs) as well as their impact on popular conceptions of identity, individual privacy and civil liberties, policing practices, and daily life.
Police Chief Magazine.
As the official publication of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, this industry magazine publishes pieces that provide insight into emerging state-of-the-art technologies and products for law enforcement.
Security Dialogue.
As both a theoretical and empirically driven academic journal, Security Dialogue publishes cutting-edge research that challenges conventional studies of security. These interdisciplinary investigations explore how prevailing conceptualizations and practices of security reinforce and/or disrupt various forms of social difference and their attendant social hierarchies, such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability.
Surveillance & Society.
S&S is an open-access journal that publishes transdisciplinary research examining the relationship between surveillance and society. The journal editors encourage public and policy debates about surveillance and its impact on various communities.
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Article
- Abortion, Geographies of
- Accessing and Visualizing Archived Weather and Climate Dat...
- Activity Space
- Actor Network Theory (ANT)
- Age, Geographies of
- Agent-based Modeling
- Agricultural Geography
- Agricultural Meteorology/Climatology
- Animal Geographies
- Anthropocene and Geography, The
- Anthropogenic Climate Change
- Applied Geography
- Arctic Climatology
- Arctic, The
- Art and Geography
- Assemblage
- Assessment in Geography Education
- Atmospheric Composition and Structure
- Automobility
- Aviation Meteorology
- Beer, Geography of
- Behavioral and Cognitive Geography
- Belonging
- Belt and Road Initiative
- Biodiversity Conservation
- Biodiversity Gradients
- Biogeography
- Biogeomorphology and Zoogeomorphology
- Biometric Technologies
- Biopedoturbation
- Body, Geographies of the
- Borders and Boundaries
- Brownfields
- Carbon Cycle
- Carceral Geographies
- Cartography
- Cartography, History of
- Cartography, Mapping, and War
- Chicago School
- Children and Childhood, Geographies of
- Citizenship
- Climate Literacy and Education
- Climatology
- College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework in Geograph...
- Colonialism and the Environment
- Communication
- Community Mapping
- Commuting
- Comparative Urbanism
- Complexity
- Conservation Biogeography
- Consumption, Geographies of
- Crime Analysis, GIS and
- Crime, Geography of
- Critical GIS
- Critical Historical Geography
- Critical Military Geographies
- Cultural Ecology and Human Ecology
- Cultural Geography
- Cultural Landscape
- CyberGIS
- Cyberspace, Geography of
- Desertification
- Developing World
- Development, Regional
- Development Theory
- Disability, Geography of
- Disease, Geography of
- Drones, Geography of
- Drought
- Drugs, Geography of
- Economic Geography
- Economic Historical Geography
- Edge Cities and Urban Sprawl
- Education (K-12), Geography
- El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO)
- Elderly, Geography and the
- Electoral Geography
- Empire, Geography and
- Energy, Geographies of
- Energy, Renewable
- Energy Resources and Use
- Environment and Development
- Environmental Electronic Sensing Systems
- Environmental Justice
- Ethics, Geographers and
- Ethics, Geography and
- Ethnicity
- Ethnography
- Ethnonationalism
- Everyday Life, Geography and
- Extreme Heat
- Family, Geographies of the
- Feminist Geography
- Fieldwork
- Film, Geography and
- Finance, Geography of
- Financial Geographies of Debt and Crisis
- Fluvial Geomorphology
- Folk Culture and Geography
- Future, Geographies of the
- Gender and Geography
- Gentrification
- Geocomputation in Geography Education
- Geographic Information Science
- Geographic Methods: Archival Research
- Geographic Methods: Discourse Analysis
- Geographic Methods: Interviews
- Geographic Methods: Life Writing Analysis
- Geographic Methods: Visual Analysis
- Geographic Thought (US)
- Geographic Vulnerability to Climate Change
- Geographies of Affect
- Geographies of Diplomacy
- Geographies of Education
- Geographies of Resilience
- Geography and Class
- Geography Education, GeoCapabilities in
- Geography, Gramsci and
- Geography, Legal
- Geography of Biofuels
- Geography of Food
- Geography of Hunger and Famine
- Geography of Industrialization
- Geography of Public Policy
- Geography of Resources
- Geopolitics
- Geopolitics, Energy and
- Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI)
- GIS and Computational Social Sciences
- GIS and Health
- GIS and Remote Sensing Applications in Geomorphology
- GIS and Virtual Reality
- GIS applications in Human Geography
- GIS, Ethics of
- GIS, Geospatial Technology, and Spatial Thinking in Geogra...
- GIS, Historical
- GIS, History of
- GIS, Space-Time
- Glacial and Periglacial Geomorphology
- Glaciers, Geography of
- Globalization
- Health Care, Geography of
- Hegemony and Geographic Knowledge
- Historical Geography
- Historical Geography of Infrastructure
- Historical Mobilities
- Histories of Protest and Social Movements
- History, Environmental
- Homelessness
- Human Dynamics, GIScience of
- Human Geographies of Outer Space
- Human Trafficking
- Humanistic Geography
- Human-Landscape Interactions
- Humor, Geographies of
- Hurricanes
- Hydroclimatology and Climate Variability
- Hydrology
- Identity and Place
- "Imagining a Better Future through Place": Geographies of ...
- Immigration and Immigrants
- Indigenous Peoples and the Global Indigenous Movement
- Informal Economy
- Innovation, Geography of
- Intelligence, Geographical
- Islands, Human Geography and
- Justice, Geography of
- Knowledge Economy: Spatial Approaches
- Knowledge, Geography of
- Labor, Geography of
- Land Use and Cover Change
- Land-Atmosphere Interactions
- Landscape Interpretation
- Literature, Geography and
- Location Theory
- Marine Biogeography
- Marine Conservation and Fisheries Management
- Media Geography
- Medical Geography
- Migration
- Migration, International Student
- Military Geographies and the Environment
- Military Geographies of Popular Culture
- Military Geographies of Urban Space and War
- Military Geography
- Moonsoons, Geography of
- Mountain Geography
- Mountain Meteorology
- Music, Sound, and Auditory Culture, Geographies of
- National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Geog...
- Nations and Nationalism
- Natural Hazards and Risk
- Nature-Society Theory
- Necropolitics and Geography
- Neogeography
- New Urbanism
- Nightlife
- Non-representational Theory
- Nuclear War, Geographies of
- Nutrition Transition, The
- Oceans
- Orientalism and Geography
- Participatory Action Research
- Peace, Geographies of
- Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Geography Education
- Perspectives in Geography Internships
- Phenology and Climate
- Photographic and Video Methods in Geography
- Physical Geography
- Place
- Polar Geography
- Policy Mobilities
- Political Ecology
- Political Geography
- Political Geology
- Popular Culture, Geography and
- Population Geography
- Ports and Maritime Trade
- Postcolonialism
- Postmodernism and Poststructuralism
- Pragmatism, Geographies of
- Producer Services
- Psychogeography
- Public Participation GIS, Participatory GIS, and Participa...
- Qualitative GIS
- Qualitative Methods
- Quantitative Methods in Human Geography
- Questionnaires
- Race and Racism
- Refugees, Geography of
- Religion, Geographies of
- Retail Trade, Geography of
- Rural Geography
- Science and Technology Studies (STS) in Geography
- Sea-Level Research, Quaternary
- Security and Securitization, Geographies of
- Segregation, Ethnic and Racial
- Service Industries, Geography of
- Settlement Geography
- Sexuality, Geography of
- Slope Processes
- Social Justice
- Social Media Analytics
- Soils, Diversity of
- Sonic Methods in Geography
- Spatial Analysis
- Spatial Autocorrelation
- Sports, Geography of
- Sustainability Education at the School Level, Geography an...
- Sustainability Science
- Sustainable Agriculture
- Synoptic Climatology
- Technological Change, Geography of
- Telecommunications
- Teleconnections, Atmospheric
- Terrestrial Snow, Measurement of
- Territory and Territoriality
- Terrorism, Geography of
- The Climate Security Nexus
- The Voluntary Sector and Geography
- Time, Geographies of
- Time Geography
- Time-Space Compression
- Tourism Geography
- Touristification
- Transnational Corporations
- Unoccupied Aircraft Systems
- Urban Geography
- Urban Heritage
- Urban Historical Geography
- Urban Meteorology and Climatology
- Urban Planning and Geography
- Urban Political Ecology
- Urban Sustainability
- Visualizations
- Vulnerability, Risk, and Hazards
- Vulnerability to Climate Change
- War on Terror, Geographies of the
- Water
- Weather and Climate Damage Studies
- Wetlands
- Whiteness, Geographies of
- Wine, Geography of
- World Cities
- Young People's Geography