Identifying the English
Subtitle: a History of Personal Identification 1500 to the Present
Publisher: Continuum International Pub.
Published: 2011
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Format: [electronic resource] :
Number of pages: 297
ISBN-13: 9781441135605
Subjects: Historiography; England; Social Science; Social classes; Social status; Social conditions; Middle Ages; History
Description: Personal identification is very much a live political issue in Britain and this book looks at why this is the case, and why, paradoxically, the theft of identity has become ever more common as the means of identification have multiplied. Identifying the English looks not only at how criminals have been identified - branding, fingerprinting, DNA - but also at the identification of the individual with seals and signatures, of the citizen by means of passports and ID cards, and of the corpse. Beginning his history in the medieval period, Edward Higgs reveals how it was not the Industrial Revoluti.
Notes: Description based on print version record.
Table of contents: title: Cover; Half-title; Title; Copyright; Contents; List of Illustrations; 1 Introduction; 2 Three Rogues; 3 Early Modern England; title: a Face-to-Face Society?; 4 Identifying the Great and the Good in Early Modern England; 5 Identifying the Poor 'Citizen' and the Deviant in Early Modern England; 6 Identifi cation in the First Industrial Nation, 1750-1850; 7 Towards the 'Dossier Society': Identifying Deviants in England, 1850 to 1970; 8 Towards the 'Dossier Society': Identifying Citizens and Customers in England, 1850 to 1970.; title: 9 Towards the 'Digital Person': Identifying the Consumer in England, 1970 to the Present10 Towards the 'Digital Person': Identifi cation in the Digital Database State, 1970 to 2010; 11 Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.