ELLIOTT PRASSE-FREEMAN National University of Singapore Nothing to lose but their (block)chains: Biometrics, techno-imaginaries, and transformations in Rohingya lives ABSTRACT Can stateless persons become legal-economic subjects without state ratification? Can they appropriate technologies not designed for them to create both new subjectivities and new forms of community? A Malaysia-based nonprofit social enterprise, composed of stateless Rohingya, has been attempting to circumvent state rejection by inscribing aspects of Rohingya (in)dividuals—biometric data, genealogy information, and records of community participation—on a digital blockchain ledger. The enterprise seeks to mobilize blockchain’s affordances to iteratively construct Rohingya subjects, re-presenting them to new institutions (banks rather than humanitarians) as quasi-legal persons, producing entities ultimately certified for “financial inclusion”—bank accounts and loans—thereby hoping to generate post-Westphalian spaces and subjectivities. Yet, amid a revanchist nationalist resurgence in Malaysia—as with bourgeoning right-wing populism globally—the spaces in which blockchained subjects might maneuver have narrowed, compelling our attention to the “nonsovereignty” in this project’s version of “self-sovereignty.” [blockchain, biometrics, science and technology studies, (non)sovereignty, statelessness, Malaysia, Rohingya] W hile the world is focused on the plight of the Ro- hingya refugees escaping from persecution over the past several months, statelessness is the con- dition in which the Rohingya have been for over thirty years.’’ This statement (on January 12, 2018), referring to the Myanmar military’s genocidal Septem- ber 2017 campaign that drove 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh, was made by Muhammad Noor, who identified himself as the founder of the Rohingya Project (RP), a Kuala Lumpur–based nonprofit social enterprise. These words, part of a longer ri- poste, appeared in the comment section of an article en- titled “A Really Bad Blockchain Idea: Digital Identity Cards for Rohingya Refugees” (Vota 2018), which condemned Noor’s organization. RP had recently proposed to use blockchain, the distributed ledger technology that undergirds cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, to enable the creation of a virtual identity for stateless Rohingya. The article’s author, Wayan Vota, was unimpressed: Why was RP proposing a digital identification project that would increase the visibility of Rohingya and thus heighten their vulnerability? Why was RP rendering that digital identification onto an unproven techno- logical platform—blockchain—that could introduce new risks? And, finally, why was RP launching this dangerous “experiment on the powerless”—given that the stateless are ill equipped to refuse the promises of data extraction? The image accompanying Vota’s article (see Figure 1) delivered this last point with an anvil: grasping refugee hands reach up desperately to men throwing items from a truck; RP’s blockchain icons are superimposed over these items, making the hands clutch at perhaps nothing, or, arguably, at something hazardous. On this point, Vota (2018) was relentless: “I am not going to stand idly by when someone decides to experiment on vulnerable populations.” AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 49, No. 4, pp. 1–17, ISSN 0094-0496, online ISSN 1548-1425. © 2022 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/amet.13100