There are few areas of society today that remain outside the ambit of policy processes, and likewise policy making has progressively reached into the structure and fabric of everyday life. An ...instrument of modern government, policy and its processes provide an analytical window into systems of governance themselves, opening up ways to study power and the construction of regimes of truth. This volume argues that policies are not simply coercive, constraining or confined to static texts; rather, they are productive, continually contested and able to create new social and semantic spaces and new sets of relations. Anthropologists do not stand outside or above systems of governance but are themselves subject to the rhetoric and rationalities of policy. The analyses of policy worlds presented by the contributors to this volume open up new possibilities for understanding systems of knowledge and power and the positioning of academics within them.
Audit Culture Revisited Shore, Cris; Wright, Susan
Current anthropology,
06/2015, Letnik:
56, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The spread of the principles and techniques of financial accounting into new systems for measuring, ranking, and auditing performance represents one of the most important and defining features of ...contemporary governance. Audit procedures are redefining accountability, transparency, and good governance and reshaping the way organizations and individuals have to operate. They also undermine professional autonomy and have unanticipated and dysfunctional consequences. Taking up the concept of audit culture as an analytical framework, we examine the origins, spread, and rationality driving these new financialized techniques of governance, not least through the work of the Big Four accountancy firms, and trace their impact across a number of fields, from administration and the military to business corporations and universities. We ask, what new kinds of ethics of accountability does audit produce? Building on Mitchell (1999), Strathern (2000a), Trouillot (2001), and Merry (2011), we identify how the techniques and logics of financial accountancy have five audit effects. These are “domaining,” “classificatory,” “individualizing and totalizing,” “governance,” and “perverse” effects. We conclude by reflecting on the problems of audit culture and suggest ways to reclaim the professional values and democratic spaces that are being eroded by these new systems of governing by numbers.
The word 'governance' has become an increasingly central policy motif in the European Union and elsewhere yet its meanings are ambiguous and often poorly understood. This article examines the ...genealogy of that concept focusing in particular on the European Commission's claim to have developed a new, more open and progressive model of 'European governance'. The paper is set out in four steps. The first analyses the European Commission's claims for 'governance' as a concept integral to its new vision for Europe. The second interrogates some of the conflicting definitions and meanings inherent in the term and examines the highly selective paradigm of governance that has been developed in official Commission discourse. The third addresses two specific areas where the Commission's governance model has been applied: the Green paper on The Future of Parliamentary Democracy and the Open Method of Coordination. The fourth turns to analyse these findings using critical social theory. I conclude that far from laying the grounds for a more inclusive, participatory and democratic political order, the Commission's model to governance represents a form of neoliberal governmentality that is actually undermining democratic government and promoting a politics of exclusion.
Up close and personal Shore, Cris; Trnka, Susanna
2013., 20130615, 2013, 2013-07-22, Letnik:
25
eBook
Combining rich personal accounts from twelve veteran anthropologists with reflexive analyses of the state of anthropology today, this book is a treatise on theory and method offering fresh insights ...into the production of anthropological knowledge, from the creation of key concepts to major paradigm shifts. Particular focus is given to how 'peripheral perspectives' can help re-shape the discipline and the ways that anthropologists think about contemporary culture and society. From urban Maori communities in Aotearoa/New Zealand to the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, from Arnhem Land in Australia to the villages of Yorkshire, these accounts take us to the heart of the anthropological endeavour, decentring mainstream perspectives, and revealing the intimate relationships and processes that create anthropological knowledge.
The economic imperatives of neoliberalism combined with the technologies of New Public Management have wrought profound changes in the organization of the workplace in many contemporary capitalist ...societies. Calculative practices including `performance indicators' and `benchmarking' are increasingly being used to measure and reform public sector organizations and improve the productivity and conduct of individuals across a range of professions. These processes have resulted in the development of an increasingly pervasive `audit culture', one that derives its legitimacy from its claims to enhance transparency and accountability. Drawing on examples from the UK, particularly the post-1990s' reform of universities, this article sets out to analyse the origins and spread of that audit culture and to theorize its implications for the construction of academic subjectivities. The questions I ask are: How are these technologies of audit refashioning the working environment and what effects do they have on behaviour (and subjectivity) of academics? What does the analysis of the rise of managerialism tell us about wider historical processes of power and change in our society? And why are academics seemingly so complicit in, and unable to challenge, these audit processes?
Corruption narratives, like witchcraft accusations, offer a lens for analyzing social relations, economic interests, and hidden structures of power. Developing this theme, I examine discourses of ...corruption in the context of growing concerns about fraud prevention and anti-corruption in universities. Moving beyond critiques of university administrations as bureaucratic, self-serving entities whose interests are increasingly antithetical to the academic mission of the university, I ask, What is corruption in academia and how does this assumed problem relate to academic capitalism and the rise of audit culture? The empirical context for my study is the extraordinary increase in institutionalized fraud-prevention programs, particularly those offered by the “Big Four” accountancy firms. Taking as my case study the introduction of a whistle-blower hotline at one Australasian university, I examine the politics and interests behind such schemes. The increasing involvement of accountancy firms in nonauditing work, including anti-corruption services, illustrates how corruption narratives operate as market-making strategies. I examine how commercialization, risk management, and auditing proliferate anti-corruption initiatives and how audit firms collude in the risk and corruption that they claim to ameliorate. I conclude by assessing the implications for the anthropology of corruption of the growing penetration of universities by an increasingly commercially focused tax industry that, some argue, cannot even be trusted to regulate itself.
Toward an Anthropology of Public Policy Wedel, Janine R.; Shore, Cris; Feldman, Gregory ...
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,
07/2005, Letnik:
600, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
As the rational choice model of "policy" proliferates in "policy studies," the social sciences, modern governments, organizations, and everyday life, a number of anthropologists are beginning to ...develop a body of work in the anthropology of public policy that critiques the assumptions of "policy" as a legal-rational way of getting things done. While de-masking the framing of public policy questions, an anthropological approach attempts to uncover the constellations of actors, activities, and influences that shape policy decisions, their implementation, and their results. In a rapidly changing world, anthropologists' empirical and ethnographic methods can show how policies actively create new categories of individuals to be governed. They also suggest that the long-established frameworks of "state" and "private," "local" or "national" and "global," "macro" and "macro," "top down" and "bottom up," and "centralized" and "decentralized" not only fail to capture current dynamics in the world but actually obfuscate the understanding of many policy processes.
This article critiques the expanding influence of research ethics committees (RECs) on social research, emphasizing their adverse effects on ethnographic methodologies. It argues that the ...bureaucratization of ethics, emphasizing compliance over contextual understanding, fundamentally misunderstands and impedes the nuanced nature of ethnographic work. Drawing on personal experiences and broader critiques, the article proposes the need for an alternative system that better accommodates the ethical complexities of social research, advocating for a more tailored approach that respects disciplinary methodologies and fosters genuine ethical engagement.
Quantification and statistics have long served as instruments of governance and state power. However, in recent decades new systems of measurement and rankings have emerged that operate both beyond ...and below the nation‐state. Using contemporary examples, we explore how international measurements, rankings, risk management and audit are creating new forms of global governmentality. We ask, who – or what – is driving the spread of audit technologies and why have indicators and rankings become a populist project? How should we theorise the rise of measuring, ranking and auditing and their political effects? What are the impacts of these ever‐more pervasive systems on organisational behaviour and professional life?
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