Chapter two, ‘The biometric community’: friends, foes and the political economy of biometrics portrays the researchers’ engagement in a different form of cartographic and exploratory endeavour. This chapter demonstrates the researchers’ need to extend laboratory practices and make sense of the social, political and economic biometric landscape beyond the labs, mostly in order to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to navigate and discover the shortest paths to collaborations and the next sources of funding while striving to maintain their scientific integrity. The chapter also highlights how the dynamics of this biometric landscape co-configures laboratory work, and ultimately the ways in which biometric technologies are configured.