The CEU Africa Research Group cordially invites you to a seminar by
Ferenc David Marko
PhD candidate, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, CEU
In January 2012, six months after the declaration of independence, South Sudan introduced the most state-of-the-art biometric identity management system to handle the citizenship and passport databases. Scholars have shown that despite the remarkable failures of biometric schemes, states upkeep their belief in high-modernist technologies. The paper argues that in South Sudan the state was indifferent and coded the failure of the scheme into the system. South Sudan introduced biometrics to convey an image of a "non-failed" state to the international community, while effectively doubled the citizenship bureaucracy to keep all of the important decision of inclusion and exclusion in the hand of the military elites. The uncovered dual nature of the office tells fundamental issues about the nature of the South Sudanese state. People imagine the state through their relation to bureaucracy, and identity documents act only as a new kind of evidence of a successful negotiation between them and state agents. The situation creates a constant limbo of citizenship.