This workshop aims to discuss practices of identification and registration in a historical and interdisciplinary perspective. “Establishing the identity of individual people – as workers, taxpayers, conscripts, travellers, criminal suspects”, is, as Caplan/Topey put it in their path-breaking volume, “fundamental to the multiple operations of the state.“   In the course of the last centuries, various forms of identification and registration became subject to ever more precise state regulations and were adapted or fully taken over by state authorities. Yet, at the same time, practices of identification, registration and categorization of individuals were never exclusively a matter of statehood and citizenship, an aspect of governmentality, bureaucracy, surveillance and migration control. Identity papers were not only produced and used by or vis á vis state authorities. Historically, various parties could be and remained involved in practices of identification and registration, ranging from religious organizations, trade or occupational associations, employers, unions, political organisations, landlords, welfare organizations, companies, creditors, or clubs for recreation …. Such parties provided information, produced data, checked documents, or even issued their own papers. They fulfilled tasks assigned to them, while following or adopting regulations issued by authorities with (more or less) enthusiasm or accuracy. At the same time, those involved in such tasks often pursued their own agenda, producing and using papers for their own purposes. It not always apparent or established once and for all where in such entanglements state bureaucracy started or ended. Consequently, people often were in possession of several documents which described or categorized them in various ways and which were more or less significant, more or less coherent, and varying in validity.

More information (pdf)

Please send proposals comprised of a title, an abstract of about 300-500 words and a short biographical note by June, 7th 2022 to sigrid.wadauer@univie.ac.at

Dr. Sigrid Wadauer heads the FWF-Project "Co-Producing and Using Identity Documents. Habsburg Monarchy/Austria ca. 1850-1938"
https://www.sigridwadauer.com/