Technology and Culture

abstract:

By 1983, Mozambique was seven years into independence from Portugal and at war on two fronts. Inside of Mozambique, populations confronted famine and long lines for government services. In response, the government launched Operação Produção, a program that relocated populations from overcrowded cities to the countryside in the northern province of Niassa. Two weeks into the program, state officials required people to present photo IDs. Not only did people not have the accepted forms of identification, many had never seen a headshot of themselves. Too often the literature on bureaucracy and technology undervalues the importance of photography. Similarly, photographic studies assume that photographs exist in printed form and that state governments all have the same capacities to archive and retrieve IDs. Breaking with these bodies of literature, as well as with Mozambique’s nationalist historiography, I historicize the introduction of IDs in Mozambique after independence and explain how state and non-state actors addressed photography’s absence.