Paper short abstract:

This ethnographic paper extends anthropological attention to "audit cultures" as technologies of governance. I consider how local staff members of international development programs in Angola become agents of international power in their work, and consider their potential to resist this power.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I argue that the internal monitoring and evaluation activities of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) should be analyzed as "audit cultures": technologies of governance that, while acting under the guise of institutional self-evaluation, effectively discipline local staff members as governing agents. These staff members go on to further the goals of the international community in their interactions with local populations. I analyze social dynamics within an international good governance project to demonstrate how Angolan staff members are trained to become "governing agents" through their own efforts to professionalize. This work extends recent considerations of audit cultures to examine how they produce not only the governed, but also the governors, highlighting the experience of auditors as agents groomed to reproduce, but potentially positioned to resist, international structures of power. Data for the essay come from field work conducted inside an international good governance intervention in Angola (2008-9), focusing intensively on the experience of local Angolan staff engaged in the monitoring and evaluation of the democratization program.