Measuring Heads and Races: Continuities and Ruptures in the History of Biometry

We live amidst a “biometric revolution,” a moment of accelerated development of technologies that identify individuals and secure societies by measuring and surveilling bodies. Those technologies centered on the head and the face are advancing especially quickly, exemplified by the growing use of iris scans and facial recognition software in various contexts. While contemporary facial recognition systems seem neutral and novel, this panel demonstrates that they are connected to a longer history of measuring and identifying heads, skulls, and faces. In particular, the papers discuss how race has been a central concern of these technologies, which range from craniometry to photography, DNA sequencing, forensic art, and computer science. In the early twentieth century, scientists from Britain to Iran used head measurements such as the Cephalic Index and the Coefficient of Racial Likeness in order to reconstruct the racial origins of populations. In the present, questions about racial bias and stereotypes challenge the development of Facial Recognition algorithms and Forensic DNA Phenotyping technologies. This panel analyzes the connections between past and present methods of measuring heads and faces, reflecting on the interests of anthropologists, clinicians, computer scientists, and the state in casting these measurements as simultaneously identifying unique individuals and characterizing entire groups of people. Rather than producing a simplistic account of technological development, the papers explore both continuities and ruptures in the history of biometry and ask why certain practices, assumptions, and visions have endured while others faded away.