IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB637142000

Race and statistics in facial recognition: Producing types, physical attributes, and genealogies (2023)

Delgado, Abigail Nieves (Author)

Social Studies of Science
Volume: 53
Issue: 6
Pages: 916-937

DOI: 10.1177/03063127221127666

URI: https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127221127666

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Principal component analysis (PCA) is a common statistical procedure. In forensics, it is used in facial recognition technologies and composite sketching systems. PCA is especially helpful in contexts with high facial diversity, which is often translated as racial diversity. In these settings, researchers use PCA to define a ‘normal face’ and organize the rest of the available facial diversity based on their resemblance to or difference from that norm. In this way, the use of PCA introduces an ‘ontology of the normal’ in which expectations about how a normal face should look are corroborated by statistical calculations of normality. I argue that the use of PCA can lead to a statistical reification of racial stereotypes that informs recognition practices. I discuss current and historical cases in which PCA is used: one of face perception theorization (‘face space theory’) and two of technology development (the ‘eigenfaces’ facial recognition algorithm and the ‘EvoFIT’ composite sketching system). In each, PCA aligns facial normality with racial expectations, and instrumentalizes race in specific ways: as a type, physical attribute, or genealogy. This analysis of PCA does two things. First, it opens the black box of facial recognition to uncover how stereotypes and intuitions about normality become part of theories and technologies of facial recognition. Second, it explains why racial categorizations remain central in contemporary identification technologies and other forensic practices.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB637142000/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Anna Kvicalova; (2023)
Sound on the Quiet: Speaker Identification and Auditory Objectivity in Czechoslovak Fonoscopy, 1975–90 (/isis/citation/CBB406403974/)

Book Emily K. Wilson; (2022)
Mildred Trotter and the Invisible Histories of Physical and Forensic Anthropology (/isis/citation/CBB718227563/)

Article Ildikó Zonga Plájás; (2023)
InterFaces: On the relationality of vision, face and race in practices of identification. A multimodal intervention (/isis/citation/CBB817367931/)

Article David Skinner; (2020)
Race, Racism and Identification in the Era of Technosecurity (/isis/citation/CBB130537802/)

Article Michael Kent; Vivette García-Deister; Carlos López-Beltrán; Ricardo Ventura Santos; Ernesto Schwartz-Marín; Peter Wade; (2015)
Building the Genomic Nation: ‘Homo Brasilis’ and the ‘Genoma Mexicano’ in Comparative Cultural Perspective (/isis/citation/CBB543686037/)

Article Ernesto Schwartz-Marín; Peter Wade; Arely Cruz-Santiago; Roosbelinda Cárdenas; (2015)
Colombian Forensic Genetics as a Form of Public Science: The Role of Race, Nation and Common Sense in the Stabilization of DNA Populations (/isis/citation/CBB672411022/)

Article Abigail Nieves Delgado; (2020)
The Problematic Use of Race in Facial Reconstruction (/isis/citation/CBB755928253/)

Article Amade M’charek; (2023)
Curious about race: Generous methods and modes of knowing in practice (/isis/citation/CBB454247153/)

Article Lisette Jong; (2023)
On the persistence of race: Unique skulls and average tissue depths in the practice of forensic craniofacial depiction (/isis/citation/CBB843149325/)

Article Anna Jabloner; (2019)
A Tale of Two Molecular Californias (/isis/citation/CBB907999916/)

Chapter Sébastien Plutniak; (2015)
Refrain from standards? French, Cavemen and Computers: A (short) story of Multidimensional Analysis in French Prehistoric Archaeology (/isis/citation/CBB181470735/)

Article Etienne S. Benson; (2016)
Trackable life: Data, sequence, and organism in movement ecology (/isis/citation/CBB905219115/)

Book Zalc, Claire; Claire Lemercier; (2019)
Quantitative methods in the humanities: an introduction (/isis/citation/CBB438948586/)

Article Nicola Bertoldi; (2022)
“Batesonian Mendelism” and “Pearsonian biometry”: Shedding new light on the controversy between William Bateson and Karl Pearson (/isis/citation/CBB173602193/)

Article Anne M. Brubaker; (2022)
Who Counts? Urgent Lessons from Ida B. Wells’s Radical Statistics (/isis/citation/CBB300535767/)

Article Warwick Anderson; (April 2021)
The model crisis, or how to have critical promiscuity in the time of Covid-19 (/isis/citation/CBB248429145/)

Article María González-Moreno; Cristian Saborido; David Teira; (2015)
Disease-mongering through clinical trials (/isis/citation/CBB362630000/)

Article Xiaochang Li; (2023)
“There’s No Data Like More Data”: Automatic Speech Recognition and the Making of Algorithmic Culture (/isis/citation/CBB996020233/)

Article Fredy Mora-Gámez; (2023)
The official record of victims as a bordering technology: Knowledge and (in)visibilities in post-conflict Colombia (/isis/citation/CBB371997708/)

Article Josh Ellenbogen; Alison Langmead; (January 2020)
Forms of Equivalence: Bertillonnage and the History of Information Management (/isis/citation/CBB934667166/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}