Audit Culture: Neoliberal Governmentality, Socialist Legacy or Technology of Governing?
Andrew Kipnis, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University
This paper compares performance audits in a variety of cases in China with those analysed by anthropologists in other nations. Though the audits share many commonalities, the ideological evaluations of the audit processes by Chinese auditees are often diametrically opposed to those by anthropological analysts. Chinese auditees describe the performance audits as ‘socialist’, while the anthropological analysts tend to see them as a form of ‘neoliberal’ governmentality. This paper uses these contradictory evaluations as a lens for critiquing some of the theoretical assumptions of Nikolas Rose with regards to the analysis of contemporary audit cultures.
