Audit culture and illiberal governance: universities and the policy of accountability
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5433/2176-6665.2009v14n1p24Keywords:
Accountability, Audit culture, Disciplinary technologies, GovernmentalityAbstract
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 tochallenge, these audit processes?References
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AUDIT Comission. Annual Report and Accounts for Year Ended 31 March 1996. London: HMSO, 1996.
AUT – Association of University Teachers. UpDate, 50. April, 1998.
BAKAN, Joel. The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. London: Constable, 2004.
BALL, Stephen. Management as Moral Technology. In: BALL, Stephen. (ed.) Foucault and Education: Disciplines and Knowledge. London: Routledg, p. 153–66, 1990.
BARTH, Fredrik. An Anthropology of Knowledge. Current Anthropology, v. 43, n. 1: p. 1–18, 2002.
BECK, Ulrich. The Brave New World of Work. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000.
BECK, Ulrich; GIDDENS, Anthony; LASH, Scott. Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994.
BODEN, Rebecca; EPSTEIN, Debbie. It All Adds Up To a Pretty Brum Do. The Times Higher Educational Supplement 1556, p. 14, 20 sep. 2002.
BOURDIEU, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice (trad. Richard Nice). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
BRENNEIS, Don; SHORE, Cris; WRIGHT, Susan. Getting the Measure of Academia: Universities and the Politics of Accountability. Anthropology in Action, v. 12, n. 1, p. 1–10, 2005.
BURCHELL, Graham; GORDON, Colin; MILLER, Peter (ed.). The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991.
CAULKIN, Simon. Too Many Sums Don´t Add Up. The Observer. 12 May 2002. Disponível em: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/excel-sum-formula-does-not-add-up-numbers/58d01996-49e3-4194-a1a6-f88ad0e8470e. Acesso em: 22 nov. 2006.
CLAPHAM, Miles. The Sarcophagus of Practice. In: ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE PHILADELPHIA, 12., 2006. Philadelphia. Paper… Philadelphia: Association: Tavistock Clinic London, 16 sep. 2006.
CLIFFORD, James e MARCUS, George (ed.). Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
COLLINI, Stefan. HiEdBiz. London Review of Books, v. 25, n. 21, p. 3–9, 2003.
COOPER, Andrew. The State of Mind We’re. In: Social Anxiety, Governance and the Audit Society. Psychoanalytic Studies, v. 3 (3–4), p. 349–62, 2001.
COUSINS, Jim; MITCHELL, Austin; SIKKA, Prem. Race to the Bottom: The Case of the Accountancy Firms. Basildon: Association for Accountancy and Business Affairs, 2004.
DEEM, Rosemary. The Knowledge Worker, the Manager-Academic and the Contemporary UK University: New and Old Forms of Public Management? Financial Accountability and Management, v. 20, n. 2, p. 107–28, 2004.
DEEM, Rosemary; BREHONY, Kevin. Management as Ideology: The Case of “New Managerialism” in Higher Education. Oxford Review of Education, v. 31, n. 2, 2005.
DIGIACOMO, Susan. Audit Culture and the Politics of Accountability: A Comparative Perspective. Anthropolog y in Action, v. 12, n. 1, p. 57–63, 2005.
FITZSIMONS, Matthew. Managerialism and the University. New Zealand Journal of Tertiary Education Policy, v. 8, n. 1, p, 16-18, jun. 2004.
FOUCAULT, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.
FOUCAULT, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (edited by Colin Gordon). New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.
FOUCAULT, Michel. Governmentality. In: BURCHELL, Graham Burchell; GORDON, Colin; MILLER, Peter (ed.) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, p. 87–118, 1991.
GILL, Peter. Mathematics. In: WHITE, John. (ed.) Rethinking the School Curriculum: Values, Aims and Purposes. London: Routledge, p. 104-116, 2004.
GRAY, John. False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism. London: Granta, 1998.
HEY, Valery. The Construction of Academic Time: Sub/Contracting Academic Labour in Research. Journal of Education Policy, v. 16, n. 1, p. 67-84, 2001.
HMG – Her Majesty’s Government. Realising Our Potential. A Strategy for Science, Engineering and Technology. London: HMSO, Cm 2250, 1993.
IMF – International Monetary Fund. Data Quality Assessment Framework and Data Quality Program, 2003. (Quinta Revisão das Iniciativas de Padronização de Dados 25 de junho). Disponível em: http: //www.imf.org/external/np/sta/dsbb/(2003)/eng/dqaf.htm#. Acessado em : 13 set. 2006.
JENKINS, Simon. In League with Ignorance. The Times 20 nov. 1996.
JOHNSON, Neville. Dons in Decline. Twentieth Century British History, v. 5, n. 3, p. 370-385, 1994.
LAING, Ronald David. The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967.
LARNER, Wendy. Post-Welfare State Governance: Towards a Code of Social and Family Responsibility. Social Politics, v. 7, n. 2, p. 244-65, 2000.
LARNER, Wendy; LE HERON, Richard. Neoliberalising Universities? Spaces of Policy, Practice and Performance. New Zealand Journal of Sociology, v. 18, n. 2, p. 102-114, 2003.
LIGHTFOOT, Liz. Rise and Rise of the Exam That’s Almost Impossible to Fail. Daily Telegraph, 22. 25 ago. 2006.
MARTIN, Emily. Managing Americans: Policy and Changes in the Meanings of Work and the Self. In: SHORE, Cris; WRIGHT, Susan. (ed.) Anthropology of Policy. London and New York: Routledg, 1997, p. 239–57.
MITCHELL, Austin; SIKKA, Prem. Dirty Business: The Unchecked Power of Major Accountancy Firms. Basildon: Association for Accountancy and Business Affairs, 2002.
NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT. Export Education in New Zealand: A Strategic Approach to Developing the Sector. Wellington: Ministry of Education, 2001, Disponível em: http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/international/export_education_in_new_zealand_a_strategic_approach_to_developing_the_sector_-_an_overview. Acessado em: 10 mar. 2008.
O’NEILL, Onora. A Question of Trust: The BBC Reith Lectures of 2002. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
OZGA, Jenny. The Entrepreneurial Researcher: Re-formations of Identity in the Research Marketplace. International Studies in Sociology of Education, v. 8, n. 2, p. 143–153, 1998.
PECK, Jamie; TICKELL, Adam. The Urbanization of Neoliberalism: Theoretical Debates on Neoliberalizing Space. Antipode, v. 34, n. 3, p. 380–404, 2002.
POWER, Michael. The Audit Explosion. London: Demos, 1994.
POWER, Michael. Making Things Auditable. Accounting, Organizations and Society, v. 21, p. 289–315, 1996.
POWER, Michael. The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
POWER, Michael. The Risk Management of Everything: Rethinking the Politics of Uncertainty. London: Demos, 2004.
PROUDHON, Pierre-Joseph. General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (trans. John Beverley Robinson). London: Freedom Press, 1923 [1851].
READINGS, Bill. The University in Ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.
ROSE, Nikolas. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
ROSE, Nikolas; MILLER, Peter. Political Power beyond the State: Problematics of Government. British Journal of Sociology, v. 43, n 2, p. 173–205, 1992.
SHORE, Cris; SELWYN, Tom. The Marketisation of Higher Education: Management Discourse and the Politics of Performance. In: JARY, David; PARKER, Martin (ed.). The New Higher Education: Issues and Directions for the Post-Dearing University. Stoke on Trent: Staffordshire University Press, p. 88-95, 1998.
SHORE, Cris; WRIGHT, Susan. Audit Culture and Anthropology: Neo-Liberalism in British Higher Education. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, v. 5, n. 4, p. 557–75, 1999.
SHORE, Cris; WRIGHT, Susan. Coercive Accountability: The Rise of Audit Culture in Higher Education. In: STRATHERN, Marilyn (ed.). Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy. (EASA Series). London: Routledge, p. 57–89, 2000.
SPARKES, Andrew. Embodiment, Academics, and the Audit Culture: A Story Seeking Consideration. Qualitative Research, v. 7, n. 4, p. 521–50, 2007.
STRATHERN Marilyn. Improving Ratings: Audit in the British University System. European Review, v. 5, n. 3, p. 305–21, 1997.
STRATHERN Marilyn. Introduction: New Accountabilities. In: STRATHERN, Marilyn (ed.). Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy. (EASA Series). London: Routledge, p. 1–18, 2000.
WAGNER, Roy. The Invention of Culture. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975.
AUDIT Comission. Annual Report and Accounts for Year Ended 31 March 1996. London: HMSO, 1996.
AUT – Association of University Teachers. UpDate, 50. April, 1998.
BAKAN, Joel. The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. London: Constable, 2004.
BALL, Stephen. Management as Moral Technology. In: BALL, Stephen. (ed.) Foucault and Education: Disciplines and Knowledge. London: Routledg, p. 153–66, 1990.
BARTH, Fredrik. An Anthropology of Knowledge. Current Anthropology, v. 43, n. 1: p. 1–18, 2002.
BECK, Ulrich. The Brave New World of Work. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000.
BECK, Ulrich; GIDDENS, Anthony; LASH, Scott. Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994.
BODEN, Rebecca; EPSTEIN, Debbie. It All Adds Up To a Pretty Brum Do. The Times Higher Educational Supplement 1556, p. 14, 20 sep. 2002.
BOURDIEU, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice (trad. Richard Nice). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
BRENNEIS, Don; SHORE, Cris; WRIGHT, Susan. Getting the Measure of Academia: Universities and the Politics of Accountability. Anthropology in Action, v. 12, n. 1, p. 1–10, 2005.
BURCHELL, Graham; GORDON, Colin; MILLER, Peter (ed.). The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991.
CAULKIN, Simon. Too Many Sums Don´t Add Up. The Observer. 12 May 2002. Disponível em: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/excel-sum-formula-does-not-add-up-numbers/58d01996-49e3-4194-a1a6-f88ad0e8470e. Acesso em: 22 nov. 2006.
CLAPHAM, Miles. The Sarcophagus of Practice. In: ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE PHILADELPHIA, 12., 2006. Philadelphia. Paper… Philadelphia: Association: Tavistock Clinic London, 16 sep. 2006.
CLIFFORD, James e MARCUS, George (ed.). Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
COLLINI, Stefan. HiEdBiz. London Review of Books, v. 25, n. 21, p. 3–9, 2003.
COOPER, Andrew. The State of Mind We’re. In: Social Anxiety, Governance and the Audit Society. Psychoanalytic Studies, v. 3 (3–4), p. 349–62, 2001.
COUSINS, Jim; MITCHELL, Austin; SIKKA, Prem. Race to the Bottom: The Case of the Accountancy Firms. Basildon: Association for Accountancy and Business Affairs, 2004.
DEEM, Rosemary. The Knowledge Worker, the Manager-Academic and the Contemporary UK University: New and Old Forms of Public Management? Financial Accountability and Management, v. 20, n. 2, p. 107–28, 2004.
DEEM, Rosemary; BREHONY, Kevin. Management as Ideology: The Case of “New Managerialism” in Higher Education. Oxford Review of Education, v. 31, n. 2, 2005.
DIGIACOMO, Susan. Audit Culture and the Politics of Accountability: A Comparative Perspective. Anthropolog y in Action, v. 12, n. 1, p. 57–63, 2005.
FITZSIMONS, Matthew. Managerialism and the University. New Zealand Journal of Tertiary Education Policy, v. 8, n. 1, p, 16-18, jun. 2004.
FOUCAULT, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.
FOUCAULT, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (edited by Colin Gordon). New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.
FOUCAULT, Michel. Governmentality. In: BURCHELL, Graham Burchell; GORDON, Colin; MILLER, Peter (ed.) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, p. 87–118, 1991.
GILL, Peter. Mathematics. In: WHITE, John. (ed.) Rethinking the School Curriculum: Values, Aims and Purposes. London: Routledge, p. 104-116, 2004.
GRAY, John. False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism. London: Granta, 1998.
HEY, Valery. The Construction of Academic Time: Sub/Contracting Academic Labour in Research. Journal of Education Policy, v. 16, n. 1, p. 67-84, 2001.
HMG – Her Majesty’s Government. Realising Our Potential. A Strategy for Science, Engineering and Technology. London: HMSO, Cm 2250, 1993.
IMF – International Monetary Fund. Data Quality Assessment Framework and Data Quality Program, 2003. (Quinta Revisão das Iniciativas de Padronização de Dados 25 de junho). Disponível em: http: //www.imf.org/external/np/sta/dsbb/(2003)/eng/dqaf.htm#. Acessado em : 13 set. 2006.
JENKINS, Simon. In League with Ignorance. The Times 20 nov. 1996.
JOHNSON, Neville. Dons in Decline. Twentieth Century British History, v. 5, n. 3, p. 370-385, 1994.
LAING, Ronald David. The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967.
LARNER, Wendy. Post-Welfare State Governance: Towards a Code of Social and Family Responsibility. Social Politics, v. 7, n. 2, p. 244-65, 2000.
LARNER, Wendy; LE HERON, Richard. Neoliberalising Universities? Spaces of Policy, Practice and Performance. New Zealand Journal of Sociology, v. 18, n. 2, p. 102-114, 2003.
LIGHTFOOT, Liz. Rise and Rise of the Exam That’s Almost Impossible to Fail. Daily Telegraph, 22. 25 ago. 2006.
MARTIN, Emily. Managing Americans: Policy and Changes in the Meanings of Work and the Self. In: SHORE, Cris; WRIGHT, Susan. (ed.) Anthropology of Policy. London and New York: Routledg, 1997, p. 239–57.
MITCHELL, Austin; SIKKA, Prem. Dirty Business: The Unchecked Power of Major Accountancy Firms. Basildon: Association for Accountancy and Business Affairs, 2002.
NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT. Export Education in New Zealand: A Strategic Approach to Developing the Sector. Wellington: Ministry of Education, 2001, Disponível em: http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/international/export_education_in_new_zealand_a_strategic_approach_to_developing_the_sector_-_an_overview. Acessado em: 10 mar. 2008.
O’NEILL, Onora. A Question of Trust: The BBC Reith Lectures of 2002. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
OZGA, Jenny. The Entrepreneurial Researcher: Re-formations of Identity in the Research Marketplace. International Studies in Sociology of Education, v. 8, n. 2, p. 143–153, 1998.
PECK, Jamie; TICKELL, Adam. The Urbanization of Neoliberalism: Theoretical Debates on Neoliberalizing Space. Antipode, v. 34, n. 3, p. 380–404, 2002.
POWER, Michael. The Audit Explosion. London: Demos, 1994.
POWER, Michael. Making Things Auditable. Accounting, Organizations and Society, v. 21, p. 289–315, 1996.
POWER, Michael. The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
POWER, Michael. The Risk Management of Everything: Rethinking the Politics of Uncertainty. London: Demos, 2004.
PROUDHON, Pierre-Joseph. General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (trans. John Beverley Robinson). London: Freedom Press, 1923 [1851].
READINGS, Bill. The University in Ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.
ROSE, Nikolas. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
ROSE, Nikolas; MILLER, Peter. Political Power beyond the State: Problematics of Government. British Journal of Sociology, v. 43, n 2, p. 173–205, 1992.
SHORE, Cris; SELWYN, Tom. The Marketisation of Higher Education: Management Discourse and the Politics of Performance. In: JARY, David; PARKER, Martin (ed.). The New Higher Education: Issues and Directions for the Post-Dearing University. Stoke on Trent: Staffordshire University Press, p. 88-95, 1998.
SHORE, Cris; WRIGHT, Susan. Audit Culture and Anthropology: Neo-Liberalism in British Higher Education. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, v. 5, n. 4, p. 557–75, 1999.
SHORE, Cris; WRIGHT, Susan. Coercive Accountability: The Rise of Audit Culture in Higher Education. In: STRATHERN, Marilyn (ed.). Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy. (EASA Series). London: Routledge, p. 57–89, 2000.
SPARKES, Andrew. Embodiment, Academics, and the Audit Culture: A Story Seeking Consideration. Qualitative Research, v. 7, n. 4, p. 521–50, 2007.
STRATHERN Marilyn. Improving Ratings: Audit in the British University System. European Review, v. 5, n. 3, p. 305–21, 1997.
STRATHERN Marilyn. Introduction: New Accountabilities. In: STRATHERN, Marilyn (ed.). Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy. (EASA Series). London: Routledge, p. 1–18, 2000.
WAGNER, Roy. The Invention of Culture. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975.
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2009-07-15
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SHORE, Cris. Audit culture and illiberal governance: universities and the policy of accountability. Mediações - Revista de Ciências Sociais, Londrina, v. 14, n. 1, p. 24–53, 2009. DOI: 10.5433/2176-6665.2009v14n1p24. Disponível em: https://ojs.uel.br/revistas/uel/index.php/mediacoes/article/view/3341. Acesso em: 24 aug. 2024.
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