Registration and Recognition: Documenting the Person in World History (Proceedings of the British Academy: Themed volumes of essays in the humanities and social sciences, 182) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0197265316 ISBN 13: 9780197265314

Publisher: The British Academy, 2012

Synopsis

This is a comparative investigation of different regional histories of registration - a feature of societies common across Asia, Europe and the Americas, but poorly understood in contemporary social science. Registration has typically been viewed as coercive, and as a product of the rise of the modern European state. This volume shows that the registration of individuals has taken remarkably similar, and interestingly comparable, forms in very different societies across the world. The volume also suggests that registration has many hitherto neglected benefits for individuals, and that modern states have frequently sought to curtail, or avoid responsibility for, it. The book shows that the close study of practices of registration provides a tool - like class, gender or state - that supports analytical comparisons across time and region, raising a common, limited set of comparative questions that highlight the differences between the forms of state power and the responsibilities and entitlements of individuals and families.

About this title

About the Author

Keith Breckenridge is Associate Professor, Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research, Johannesburg
Simon Szreter is Professor of History and Public Policy, University of Cambridge and Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge

Edition details

• Publisher: The British Academy
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0197265316
• ISBN 13: 9780197265314
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 500
• Editor: Breckenridge Keith, Szreter Simon