Paper short abstract:

A reflection on scholarly and public debate, administrative commitment and court advocacy that Serbian anthropologists engaged in to counterbalance biased academic audit, with special reference to extra-academic consequences of intra-academic derogation of authority of social sciences and humanities

Paper long abstract:

Academic audit culture - the logic of policymaking and implementation based on criteria of academic achievement and research ethics standards devised from natural sciences - have been thoroughly investigated in anthropology of policy and explained away as being highly biased, inherently disqualifying, and threatening to the very future of social sciences and humanities (SSH). In Serbia, many anthropologists refused to conform to it in a complicit manner, not by completely throwing away the idea of audit, but by reflecting upon solutions that would be based on fair and ethical academic evaluation and quality assessment. This especially as academic audit proved itself to be systematically derogative of authority of SSH by simultaneous devaluation of our academic worth and social purpose, preventing us from legitimately challenging the most pressing social issues. It is not just a professional call to search for empowerment strategies in order to renew the authority of SSH but a moral duty, too. For coupling of academic derogation and social diminishment of SSH consequently result not only in lessening of the public impact and in number of university departments and research institutes worldwide - it nontrivially coincides with pauperization, crisis of democracy, lessening of human rights standards, rise of xenophobia, and related aspects of global social dismay. The paper traces alternatives to unison academic audit devised so far aimed not at alienating SSH scholars from the audit system but directed at its sustainable reform that may serve as an example of how a small "world anthropological" community engaged in changing the world.