Biometric governance and surveillance capitalism in India: the Aadhaar program, health care, money, and emergent politics
Lawrence Cohen, Professor
Anthropology
Applications for Spring 2025 are closed for this project.
From 2015-2021, I followed the unfolding of India's massive experiment in big-data governance, the national biometric ID known as Aadhaar, organizing the distribution of government and financial services via collecting the biometric scans (fingerprints and eyes) of persons in the world's most populous country. Alternatively praised as a vehicle of efficiency and anti-corruption and challenged as Big Brother surveillance, Aadhaar utilizes basic database tools of de-duplication to reimagine what governments are and do. For this project, I return to Aadhaar and other linked platforms to follow three features of their unfolding utilization: impact (1) on public health programs, (2) on the nature and use of money and the organization of everyday markets, and (3) on the relation of the politics of service distribution to contests over citizenship and rights.
Role: The undergraduate will work in news and policy archives and popular media to build a database of recent reportage and discussion of the Aadhaar program, with a focus on particular subject areas to be determined in consultation with myself. We will meet briefly weekly to discuss the import of the database and to apply anthropological and critical scholarly approaches to it. Skills to be developed or honed include archival work, concept development and the application of social theory, and a gaining strong knowledge of Indian governmental policy and its relation to transnational political economy and information technology. Commitment will be either 3-5 hours or 6-8 hours weekly.
Qualifications: I am looking for a range of different skills but do not expect students to have all of these: but at least one! (1) Background in anthropology or sociology; (2) the ability to read in one or more vernacular (that is, non-English) language spoken in India, e.g., Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Tamil, Telugu, or Urdu; (3) background in STS (science and technology studies) particularly with reference to IT; (4) interest and/or experience in contemporary India and/or knowledge of contemporary South Asia studies.
Hours: to be negotiated
Social Sciences Arts & Humanities