Identities: New Practices in a Connected Age

This study draws on interviews with 150 diverse individuals and dozens of professional stakeholders throughout India to explore the complexity of identity practices in everyday life. It is a critical moment for conversations like these, since new digital systems, such as India’s Aadhaar, expand formal identity credentials to previously underserved communities, and into everyday identity practices in new ways. That said, it is important to note that the goal of this study is not to offer an evaluation of Aadhaar itself, but rather to use the Aadhaar case to explore identity practices more broadly. The report suggests the need for an increased and sharper focus on the experiences of everyday people with their identity credentials, viewing those credentials not as things to be adopted once, but rather used every day, in ways and with outcomes more heterogeneous and nuanced than narratives to date might suggest.

Specifically, the study explores how identity practices (not just systems or numbers) might make a person’s life better. But it also asks what vulnerabilities they might face? Identity is complex because it is multidisciplinary—it is legal of course, but it’s also personal, political, cultural, and psychological—and now, analog and digital. An identity credential is not a simple piece of paper or card—it is intersected with power and politics and further complicated by the complexity of networked technologies and biometrics. What are the new identity practices of a connected age? And what might designers, technologists, and policymakers do with an increased awareness of these identity practices?