Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy

323 Pages·2004·1.05 MB·English

by  Marilyn Strathern (edt)

Audit Cultures
If cultures are always in the making, this book catches one kind of
culture on the make. Academics will be familiar with audit in the
form of research and teaching assessments—they may not be aware
how pervasive practices of ‘accountability’ are or of the diversity of
political regimes under which they flourish. Twelve social
anthropologists from across Europe and the Commonwealth chart
an influential and controversial cultural phenomenon.
The challenge is that these new accountabilities are at once
obstructive and enabling of good practice. Through accountability
the financial and the moral meet in the twinned precepts of
economic efficiency and ethical practice. Audit practices have direct
consequences, and, in the view of many, dire ones for intellectual
production. Yet audit is almost impossible to critique in principle—
after all, it advances values that academics generally hold dear, such
as responsibility, openness of enquiry and widening of access. The
volume also therefore examines some of the parameters of
professional ethics.
Audit Cultures provides an excellent opening for future debate on
the ‘culture’ of management and accountability. It will be an
essential resource for students of culture and relevant to academics
everywhere.
Marilyn Strathern is Professor of Social Anthropology at
Cambridge University and Mistress of Girton College.
European Association of Social
Anthropologists
Series facilitator: Jon P.Mitchell
University of Sussex
The European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) was
inaugurated in January 1989, in response to a widely felt need for
a professional association which would represent social
anthropologists in Europe and foster cooperation and interchange
in teaching and research. As Europe transforms itself, the EASA is
dedicated to the renewal of the distinctive European tradition in
social anthropology.
Other titles in the series:
Conceptualizing Society Nature and Society
Adam Kuper Philippe Descola and Gisli Pálsson
Other Histories The Ethnography of Moralities
Kristen Hastrup Signe Howell
Alcohol, Gender and Culture Inside and Outside the Law
Dimitra Gefou-Madianou Olivia Harris
Understanding Rituals Locality and Belonging
Daniel de Coppet Nadia Lovell
Gendered Anthropology Recasting Ritual
Teresa del Valle Felicia Hughes-Freeland and
Social Experience and Mary M.Crain
Anthropological Knowledge Anthropological Perspectives on
Kirsten Hastrup and Peter Hervik Local Development
Fieldwork and Footnotes Simone Abram and Jacqueline Waldren
Han F.Vermeulen and Arturo Alvarez Roldan Dividends of Kinship: Meanings
Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism and Uses of Social Relatedness
Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw Peter Schweitzer
Grasping the Changing World Constructing the Field:
Václav Hubinger Ethnographic Fieldwork in the
Contemporary World
Civil Society Vered Amit
Chris Hann and Elizabeth Dunn
Gender, Agency and Change:
Anthropology of Policy Anthropological Perspectives
Cris Shore and Susan Wright Edited by Victoria Ana Goddard
Audit Cultures
Anthropological studies in
accountability, ethics and
the academy
Edited by Marilyn Strathern
London and NewYork
First published 2000
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, NewYork, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
© 2000 selection and editorial matter, EASA: individual chapters,
the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is availabe from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Audit cultures: anthropological studies in accountability, ethics, and
the academy/edited by Marilyn Strathern.
p. cm.—(European Association of Social Anthropologists)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Education, Higher—Evaluation—Social aspects. 2. Educational
anthropology. 3. Educational accountability—Social aspects.
4. Education, Higher—Moral and ethical aspects. I. Strathern, Marilyn.
II. European Association of Social Anthropologists (Series)
LB2324.A87 2000
306.43–dc2l 00–028073
ISBN 0-203-44972-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-45719-6 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-23326-7 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-23327-5 (pbk)
Contents

List of contributors vii
Preface xi
Introduction: new accountabilities 1
MARILYN STRATHERN
PART I 19
1 The social organization of the IMF’s mission work:
an examination of international auditing 21
RICHARD HARPER

PART II 55
2 Coercive accountability: the rise of audit culture
in higher education 57
CRIS SHORE AND SUSAN WRIGHT
3 Generic genius—how does it all add up? 90
ELEANOR RIMOLDI
4 Accountability, anthropology and the European
Commission 106
MARYON MCDONALD

PART III 133
5 The trickster’s dilemma: ethics and the technologies
of the anthropological self 135
PETER PELS
vi Contents
6 Audited accountability and the imperative of
responsibility: beyond the primacy of the political 173
ANANTA GIRI
7 Self-accountability, ethics and the problem of
meaning 196
VASSOS ARGYROU
PART IV 213

8 The university as panopticon: moral claims and
attacks on academic freedom 215
VERED AMIT
9 Academia: same pressures, same conditions of
work? 236
THOMAS FILLITZ
10 Disciples, discipline and reflection: anthropological
encounters and trajectories 256
DIMITRA GEFOU-MADIANOU
Afterword: accountability…and ethnography 279
MARILYN STRATHERN
Index 305
Contributors
Vered Amit is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology
and Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. She
has conducted fieldwork in London (UK), Quebec, the Cayman
Islands and Vancouver. She is presently conducting a study of
transnational consultants. She is the author of Armenians in
London: The Management of Social Boundaries (1989), coeditor
of three books and editor of a recent volume in the EASA series
entitled Constructing the Field: Ethnographic Fieldwork in the
Contemporary World.
Vassos Argyrou is Associate Professor of Social Science at Inter-
college, Nicosia, Cyprus. Among his publications are Tradition
and Modernity in the Mediterranean (1996), ‘Is “Closer and
Closer” Ever Close Enough? De-reification, Diacritical Power,
and the Specter of Evolutionism’ (Anthropological Quarterly),
and ‘“Keep Cyprus Clean”: Littering, Pollution, and Otherness’
(Cultural Anthropology).
Thomas Fillitz is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Social and
Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna, and Lecturer at the
Institute of Volkskunde (Folklore Studies), University of Graz.
Research and teaching: theoretical anthropology, consumerism
and anthropology of art. Field researches: northern Nigeria
(1991) on political movements; Ivory Coast and Benin (1997) on
contemporary art in Africa. He is preparing a book on The
Construction of Cultural Space: Thirteen Contemporary African
Artists; and directs a research project on ‘Intercultural teaching
and learning: a case study of eighteen schools in Vienna and
Upper Austria’.
viii Contributors
Dimitra Gefou-Madianou is Professor of Social Anthropology at
Panteion University, Athens, Greece. She studied at Athens and
New York (Columbia). Fieldwork has been conducted in various
parts of Greece and she has published in the fields of alcohol,
gender, ‘anthropology at home’, ethnicity and identity formation,
drugs, anthropological theory, culture and ethnography. She is
currently Head of the Section of Social Anthropology and Vice-
Head of the Department of Social Policy and Social Anthropology
at Panteion. Recent publications include Current Trends in
Anthropological Theory and Ethnography (ed.) (1998), ‘Cultural
polyphony and identity formation: negotiating tradition in Attica’
(Amer. Ethnologist, 1999), and Culture and Ethnography: From
Ethnographic Realism to Cultural Critique (1999).
Ananta Kumar Giri is on the faculty of the Madras Institute of
Development Studies, Chennai, India. Dr Giri has an abiding
interest in alternative movements and alternative ideas for social
reconstruction and cultural renewal. He is the author of Global
Transformations: Postmodernity and Beyond (1998), Values,
Ethics and Business: Challenges for Education and Management
(1998), and (in Oriya) Sameekhya o Purodrusti (Criticism and the
Vision of the Future) (1999).
Richard Harper is Director of the Digital World Research Centre, at
the University of Surrey, UK. He has been at the forefront of
research into the use of sociological and interdisciplinary
techniques for understanding the digital technologies in
organizational life, and is a regular public speaker on this theme.
Published and forthcoming work includes The Myth of the Paperless
Office, with A.J. Sellen (forthcoming); Organizational Change and
Retail Finance: an Ethnographic Perspective, with D. Randall and M.
Rouncefield (2000) and Inside the IMF: An Ethnography of
Documents, Technology and Organisational Action (1998).
Maryon McDonald was formerly Reader in Social Anthropology at
Brunel University and is now Fellow and Director of Studies in
Anthropology at Robinson College, Cambridge, UK. Her work
includes ‘We are not French!’ Language, Culture and Identity in
Brittany (1989), History and Ethnicity (with E. Tonkin and M.
Chapman, 1989), Gender, Drink and Drugs (1994) and several
articles, reports and a forthcoming book on European Union
institutions, which she has been researching since 1992.
Contributors ix
Peter Pels (University of Amsterdam/University of Leiden) currently
works on the historical ethnography of elections in 1950s
Tanganyika, and a history of occultism in relation to 19th- and
20th-century anthropology. He edited (with L.Nencel)
Constructing Knowledge (1991) and (with O.Salemink) Colonial
Subjects: Essays in the Practical History of Anthropology (1999).
He wrote A Politics of Presence: Contacts between Missionaries
and Waluguru in Late Colonial Tanganyika (1999), and is an
advisory editor of Current Anthropology. He has been active on
the EASA Ethics Network.
Eleanor Rimoldi is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Massey
University, Albany Campus, Auckland, New Zealand. Research
interests currently focus on civic life in urban New Zealand
(‘Culture: the Private, the Public and the Popular’, Social Analysis,
1997), the history of social anthropology (forthcoming special
issue of Social Analysis on New Zealand social anthropology, eds
E. and M.Rimoldi), and on comparative education (‘Education in
Bougainville-Buka: Site of Struggle’ in Critical Perspectives on
Education Policy, ACCESS, 1992). A Rotary Grant for University
Teachers will enable her to teach in Bougainville in the year 2000
and follow up her interest in the re-establishment of education
systems on the island after nine years of civil war.
Cris Shore is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Anthropology
Department at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK.
His first research was an ethnographic study of the Italian
communist party, and his most recent work has explored the
cultural politics and organizational cultures of the European
Union. Recent books include The Future of Anthropology (with
A. Ahmed, 1995), Anthropology and Cultural Studies (with S.
Nugent, 1997), Anthropology of Policy (with S. Wright, 1997),
and Building Europe: the Cultural Politics of European
Integration (2000).
Marilyn Strathern is Professor of Social Anthropology at the
University of Cambridge and Mistress of Girton College,
Cambridge, UK. Her interests are divided between Melanesian
(Women in Between, 1972) and British (Kinship at the Core,
1981) ethnography. The Gender of the Gift (1988) is a critique
of anthropological theories of society and gender relations as