Browsing by Author "Donovan, Kevin P."

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    The biometric imaginary : standardization & objectivity in post-apartheid welfare
    (2013-12-22) Donovan, Kevin P.
    Starting in March 2012, the South African government engaged in a massive effort of citizen registration that continued for more than a year. Nearly 19 million social welfare beneficiaries enrolled in a novel biometric identification scheme that uses fingerprints and voice recognition to authenticate social grant recipients. This paper seeks to understand the meaning of biometric technology in post-apartheid South African welfare through a study of the bureaucratic and policy elite’s motivation for this undertaking. It suggests that biometric technology was conceived of and implemented as the most recent in a series of institutional, infrastructural, and policy reforms that seek to deliver welfare in a standardized and objective manner. This technopolitical imaginary has contributed to both the strengths and weaknesses of today’s centralized welfare state.
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    Open Access
    The biometric imaginary: standardization and objectivity in the post-apartheid welfare state
    (2013) Donovan, Kevin P.
    Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.
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    Open Access
    Infrastructuring aid : materializing social protection in Northern Kenya
    (2013-12) Donovan, Kevin P.
    In numerous African countries, humanitarian and development organizations—as well as governments—are expanding expenditures on social protection schemes as a means of poverty alleviation. These initiatives, which typically provide small cash grants to poor households, are often considered particularly agreeable for the simplicity of their administration and the feasibility of their implementation. This paper examines the background work required to deploy social protection in one especially remote area: the margins of postcolonial Kenya. Specifically, it documents the often-overlooked social and technical construction of the infrastructure necessary so that cash transfers may function with the ease and simplicity for which they are commended. Attention to the practice of ‘infrastructuring’ offers insights into the tensions and politics of what is rapidly becoming a key form of transnational governance in the global south, especially the way in which market-based means and humanitarian ethics overlap.