Security, Risk and the Biometric State

Benjamin J. Muller is Assistant Professor in International Relations and Political Theory at King's University College at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. He completed his PhD in the School of Politics and International Studies at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 2005.

• Introduction 1. Security, Risk, and the Biometric State: Governing Borders and Bodies 2. Are You Who You Say You Are? Biometrics and the Management of Borders and Bodies 3. Suspect(ing) Biometrics: Identity, Security and National ID Cards 4. Catastrophe, Narrative, and the Failure of Imagination 5. Securing the Political Imagination: Popualr Culture, The Security Dispositif and the Biometric State 6. A North American Biometric State? 7. Securitizing the Global Norm of Identity: Biometrics and Homo Sacer in Fallujah. Conclusion

'A valuable contribution to the work being done, from different perspectives, on the theory of the state and the protection of fundamental rights.' - The International Spectator, Volume 46, Issue 1, 2011, 154‘This book makes an important contribution by raising new questions in the often inadequately nuanced debate about contemporary states’ deployment of biometric technology... The book is undoubtedly a timely and most relevant contribution to a field of study that to some extent has been characterised by a lack of critical engagement with underlying issues such as discursive conditions, a lack of engagement with broader implications for bodies being targeted by this technology and the ‘risk regime’ within which biometric technologies are being constituted as rational, operative and superior solutions.’ - By Katja Lindskov Jacobsen, Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), in e-Internatioanl Relations, September 2012