Audit Culture

A new and compelling argument for why so many institutions continue to be spellbound by rankings and metrics despite the cultural carnage they cause. How can we halt this death by audit? The authors develop a radical agenda that will strike fear into number-loving technocrats around the worldPeter Fleming, author ofDark Academia: How Universities DieA powerful and definitive critical diagnosis of the effects of audit culture on individuals, organisations and society. Essential readingMichael Power, Professor, LSEA visionary bookMarilyn Strathern, Emeritus Professor, University of CambridgeAll aspects of our work and private lives are increasingly measured and managed. But how has this audit culture arisen and what kind of a world is it producing? Cris Shore and Susan Wright provide a timely account of the rise of the new industries of accounting, enumeration and ranking from an anthropological perspective. Audit Culture is the first book to systematically document and analyse these phenomena and their implications for democracy.The book explores how audit culture operates across a wide range of fields, including health, higher education, NGOs, finance, the automobile industry and the military. The authors build a powerful critique of contemporary public sector management in an age of neoliberal market-making, privatisation and outsourcing. They conclude by offering ideas about how to reverse its damaging effects on communities, and restore the democratic accountability that audit culture is systematically undermining.Cris Shoreis Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Central European University. One of his recent publications isThe Shapeshifting Crown.Susan Wrightis Professor of Educational Anthropology at Aarhus University, Denmark. One of her recent books isEnacting the University. Together they are co-editors of the Stanford Anthropology of Policy book series.