Digitizing Identities : Doing Identity in a Networked World

With digitization and automation processes pervading virtually all aspects and domains of society, the routine registration of personal identifiable data is increasing at an exponential rate. This book, combining recent insights gained from several disciplines—including science and technology studies, surveillance studies, philosophy (social philosophy and philosophy of technology, and computer ethics)—with a range of empirical case studies of topics including law enforcement and policing, marketing, migration, youth care, and security, examines the ways digital technologies of identification are implicated in contemporary transformations of identity in all spheres of life.

This book explores contemporary transformations of identities in a digitizing society across a range of domains of modern life. As digital technology and ICTs have come to pervade virtually all aspects of modern societies, the routine registration of personal data has increased exponentially, thus allowing a proliferation of new ways of establishing who we are. Rather than representing straightforward progress, however, these new practices generate important moral and socio-political concerns. While access to and control over personal data is at the heart of many contemporary strategic innovations domains as diverse as migration management, law enforcement, crime and health prevention, "e-governance," internal and external security, to new business models and marketing tools, we also see new forms of exclusion, exploitation, and disadvantage emerging.