ABSTRACT

Do audit cultures deliver greater responsibility, or do they stifle creative thought?
We are all increasingly subjected to auditing, and alongside that, subject to accountability for our behaviour and actions. Audit cultures pervade in the workplace, our governmental and public institutions as well as academia. However, audit practices themselves have consequences, beneficial and detrimental, that often go unexamined.
This book examines how pervasive practices of accountability are, the political and cultural conditions under which accountability flourishes and the consequences of their application. Twelve social anthropologists look at this influential and controversial phenomenon, and map out the effects around Europe and the Commonwealth, as well as in contexts such as the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and Academic institutions. The result provides an excellent insight into auditing and its dependence on precepts of economic efficiency and ethical practice. This point of convergence between these moral and financial priorities provides an excellent opening for debate on the culture of management and accountability.

chapter |18 pages

Introduction: new accountabilities

Anthropological studies in audit, ethics and the academy

part |2 pages

Part I

chapter 1|34 pages

The social organization of the IMF’s mission work

An examination of international auditing

part |2 pages

Part II

chapter 2|33 pages

Coercive accountability

The rise of audit culture in higher education

part |2 pages

Part III

chapter 5|38 pages

The trickster’s dilemma

Ethics and the technologies of the anthropological self

chapter 6|23 pages

Audited accountability and the imperative of responsibility

Beyond the primacy of the political

part |2 pages

Part IV

chapter 8|21 pages

The university as panopticon

Moral claims and attacks on academic freedom

chapter 9|20 pages

Academia: same pressures, same conditions of work? THOMAS FILLITZ

Same pressures, same conditions of work?

chapter 10|23 pages

Disciples, discipline and reflection

Anthropological encounters and trajectories