Research Questions for Birth Certs Project

Research questions we generated:


1. What are we trying to explain?
  A: The 'stabilization' of the birth certificate.

2a. What counts as stabilization or emergence for us?  What counts as novelty?

2b. What is our endpoint?  What is the historical moment at which something stabilized in a form that still resonates for us and/or is used or continues to function?
  Tentative Answer: 1936???

2c. What are the paradigmatic features of the birth certificate for us today?  Functional paradigms.  Design paradigms.

3. What categories of analysis do we want to bring to the project?  Pearson is focused on 'shift in epistemological authority'.  What is our focus?

4. What dimensions or aspects of birth certs. are we interested in?

• Pragmatic functions in culture, society, law (Pearson)
• Pragmatic functions in medicine
• Materiality
• Design and format
• Moral authority
• Administrative practice

5. What are vectors/factors for the stabilization of the birth certificate?

• See Sarah's timeline (prezi collab) & descriptive doc of timeline (in g drive)

6. Other figures to track beyond 'reformers' and 'child laborers' ('the unregistered baby')?

7. What different justifications are being used by actors to argue for the birth certificate?  Do the arguments actually even matter?  Is that what makes a difference?  Who did they convince?

8. What accounts for the uptake or "conditions of acceptance of birth certs."?

9. What birth cert. form categories are "excessive" or beyond biopolitics?  What questions cannot be statisticalized?  (Name.)
  - There is a space between using birth certificates for public health or census purposes and the legal uses of birth certs..
  - What technologies preceded each of these uses?  What technologies preceded public health stats?  And what technologies preceded legal uses?

10. When do birth certs. become so stable (so 'sealed up') that people can begin to worry about their privacy/confidentiality?  What form does that worry/concern/problem take?  How specifically do birth certificates 'problematize' privacy historically?

  - See Model Law 1977 rev. (why did they wait almost 30 years from initial recognition of issues?)
  - See Children's Bureau 1949 pamphlet on the confidentiality of birth records
  - Howard and Hemenway 1931 article mentions privacy & confidentiality (but w/o the words)
  - Can we find anything prior to 1949 on confidentiality of birth records?

11. Issues of federal- versus state-level administration of birth certificates.  How did a state-run technology (or series of 48 state-level technologies) become a de facto national standard?

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12. How do we distinguish between mediators or switch points and actors that just so happen to be participant in multiple networks or vectors?  Why is the model law a mediator, but the children's bureau is working in two networks?