The Material of Identity: Americans, Bureaucracy, and the SSN

Description

Social Security numbers (SSNs) are the lynchpin of America's federal infrastructure for retirement, unemployment, and disability benefits, as well as supplemental security income; the program will pay out $1.5 trillion to nearly 70 million recipients in 2024 alone. But the number has become something more in the modern U.S.: a key place where official infrastructures and individual lives meet. In this talk, Sarah Igo, Vanderbilt University's Andrew Jackson Chair in American History, will trace the history of the SSN and what it tells us us about the shifting relationship between Americans and their state—as well as their own data—over the last nine decades.

This talk is part of SNF Agora's 2024-2025 Faculty Seminars series.