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- Convenors:
-
Jane Cowan
(Sussex University)
Julie Billaud (Geneva Graduate Institute)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- SO-F220
- Sessions:
- Thursday 16 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Stockholm
Short Abstract:
Individuals and institutions are increasingly called upon to 'give an account' of themselves. Building on the vibrant discussion on audit culture, we invite papers that investigate—ethnographically, theoretically, ethically—existing and emergent practices and performances of accountability.
Long Abstract:
This panel offers the opportunity to continue the conversation about practices and performances of accountability, a conversation particularly developed within anthropology in work on audit culture. Whereas studies of audit and accountability have richly demonstrated the productive effects of these ostensibly virtuous processes, some critics have deemed our collective story as one-sidedly repressive and lacking nuance. Indeed, other work has drawn attention to guerrilla interventions as well as resistant appropriations or reformulations of accountability for alternative purposes. How are the forms and modalities of accountability mechanisms enabling and constraining? What can and cannot be expressed within them, and what are the politics of visibility and invisibility? How do actors engage in them? What can be said about the subjectivities that these processes elicit or encourage? What do public performances of accountability entail and what are their effects? In exploring such questions, anthropologists might take inspiration from work on critical dialogic accounting that, drawing on agonistic political theory by Mouffe (2005), Tully (2008) and others, aims to develop alternative accounting practices that encourage contestation and foster social justice. Equally relevant are Judith Butler's reflections on the relationship between moral responsibility and practices of self-revelation (2005).
We invite papers that investigate—ethnographically, theoretically, ethically—existing and emerging practices and performances of accountability (including but not restricted to audit, self-assessment, peer review, monitoring and evaluation). Exploring together this diversity, we will seek to reflect on the significance of the continuing proliferation of audit culture and on its multifarious, contradictory and sometimes surprising effects.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 16 August, 2018, -Paper short abstract:
In Britain, Europe and North America, 'openness' is key to accountability. When it comes to science, this means opening one's data, procedures and practices to public scrutiny. This paper considers some of the problems these new practices of accountability create for anthropology.
Paper long abstract:
In Britain, Europe and North America today, 'openness' is key to accountability. Consider Britain's Open Government National Action Plan; or former President Obama's Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government. Consider, too, the efforts by scientists, scholars, academic journals and funders to institutionalise 'open science'. The goal is not just open access, but more radically, open source code and/or open data. In many settings, 'openness' is becoming the new normal and serves as a measure of accountability to diverse publics.
Though openness has long been bound up with accountability, today's openness is notable for its attention to processes. It means making available to scrutiny the data, procedures and practices that were formerly inaccessible to many. In science, such openness in principle enables anybody - scientists, policymakers, journalists, ordinary citizens - to access raw data, follow scientific reasoning, reproduce analyses, double-check conclusions, and thus trust and use scientific findings to varied ends. In the name of accountability, science is increasingly being invited - sometimes compelled - to open itself up in these ways.
This paper considers how these twenty-first century practices of accountability intersect with anthropological knowledge practices, and the conundrums they create. Thorny questions arise over the status of anthropological 'data' and what 'opening' them to public inspection might mean; others concern the complications of opening the process by which anthropologists move from 'data' to conclusions. We argue that, in our age of openness, anthropologists must find new ways to perform accountability and to articulate the merits of working opaquely.
Paper short abstract:
In the paper we contribute to the discussion on academic 'acceleration' by interrogating project and process time dichotomy (Ylijoki 2016). Drawing on ethnographic data, we introduce timework technologies that both ease the relationship between project and process and strengthen the formal assessment regime.
Paper long abstract:
Contemporary debates on academic 'acceleration' emphasize the devastating effects of speed culture. In this connection, many commentators call for 'slowdown' in science (e.g. Berg & Seeber 2016; Stengers 2018). These views however tend to victimize academics and, by implication, neglect their agentic capacities to craft, manage and organize temporal agendas. Following the emerging body of STS studies investigating scientific temporality (Felt 2016; Bruyninckx 2017) and our empirical data we aim to problematize this one-dimensional and oversimplified interpretation. In this paper, we contribute to the discussion by building upon audit scholarship (e.g. Strathern 1996) and by critically interrogating the project time and process time dichotomy proposed by Ylijoki (2016). Ylijoki suggests that the project format has gradually become a standard way of research organization and is often in conflictual relationship with the unpredictable process regime that represents inner logic of research arrangements. Drawing on our ethnographic work in an experimental physics department in the Czech Republic, we focus on agentic strategies that converge project and process time. In particular, we introduce four different technologies of timework: multiplication of projects, project flexibilization, diachronization of project and process & division of labour. Such technologies account for time-consuming activities, nevertheless they ease the pressure caused by project’s formal organization and audit framework. In our paper we therefore present different ways of temporal coping, adaptation and flexibilization that, in effect, ease the relationship between project and process in science on one hand and on the other strengthen the formal assessment regime.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores judgement in international classical music competitions. My analysis compares two types of judging processes applied in a specific competition that implements a special evaluation system.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores judgement in international classical music competitions. In these competitions, a jury is responsible for evaluating the performances, often using a commensurate system, in other words attributing metric measures to different qualities. This distinguishes these music competitions from other types of musical evaluation. Musical criticism, for example, requires argumentation and justification, which is not the case for judging in international music competitions, where any discussion among the jury is, in principle, prohibited.
My analysis compares two types of judging processes applied in a specific competition that implements a special evaluation system. Since 2011, the competition has awarded a "Coup de Coeur" prize. This prize is attributed by seven students in musicology ("La Jeune Critique"), who are specially trained in musical criticism. While all discussion is forbidden during deliberations of the official jury, this is not the case for "La Jeune Critique". In my fieldwork, I have observed multiple tensions in their discussions resulting in a particular way of communicating, including the use of metaphoric language. In contrast, the official jury remains silent about the individual choices of adjudicators and selects winners by means of a numeric ranking system. I will therefore discuss the paradoxes of quantifying performances tied to emotions and how severe this ranking system can be on the musicians.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on the monitoring practices of 'International Humanitarian Law' carried out by the delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross. It analyses how ICRC humanitarian principles ('neutrality', 'impartiality') are translated in everday practices.
Paper long abstract:
The mandate of the ICRC as granted by the Geneva Conventions is to act as a "guardian of International Humanitarian Law" on the frontlines of conflicts. While its humanitarian relief operations have contributed to its international reputation, this monitoring function is rather unknown to the public. In this presentation, I pay specific attention to activities carried out by ICRC delegates to protect various categories of 'victims' (prisoners, wounded, civilians) in times of war. These protection activities, designed to remain a minimal response to human suffering, are conducted in circumstances considered temporary and exceptional. Their aim is not to provide a basis for a new governance regime but rather to maintain humanity in the midst of a dystopian present: to "master disorder" and contain its overflows. By focusing on the ways in which delegates interpret the principles ('neutrality', 'impartiality') that guide their monitoring practices, this presentation seeks to decipher the organization's ethos and worldview. It highlights the hopes as well as the frustrations and disappointments generated by myriad administrative techniques devised to engage parties to a conflict in a "confidential dialogue" on the conduct of hostilities. Deliberately formal, repetitive and predictable in order to build and maintain the trust of interlocutors, these techniques include making lists of prisoners or of 'disappeared persons', recording 'cases of violations', writing letters and submitting reports to concerned authorities. I place this bureaucratic mode of intervention in the longer history of the organization and the broader audit regime triggered by the emergence of international law.
Paper short abstract:
Building on ethnomethodology's theory of accountability (Garfinkel 1967), this paper focuses on asylum cases of stateless Rohingya in the UK. In screening interviews, Rohingya are asked to 'give an account' of themselves. In complying, they help to reproduce the validity of the state's own account
Paper long abstract:
In ethnomethodology (e.g. Garfinkel 1967), 'accounting practices' are understood as ongoing accomplishments of sense-making in everyday situations that usually do not receive our focused attention, like 'waiting in line'. The orderliness of such practices is often only revealed once a breach occurs, here 'cutting the line'. Ex post facto, a rule on how 'waiting' is 'usually' being done will be applied. Thus understood, accountability is a reflexive technique by means of which actors realize and lay claim to their actions. In order to be recognizable, accountability "depends on the mastery of ethno-methods" (Giddens 1979: 57; 83). If, as Garfinkel put it, "[a]ny setting organizes its activities to make its properties as an organized environment of practical activities detectable, countable, recordable, repeatable, tell-a-story-aboutable, analysable - in short, accountable" (1967, 33; italics in original), then so-called 'screening interviews' in asylum cases of stateless Rohingya are a challenge to this principle as they are defined by non-knowledge about the other. When UK border agents and Rohingya meet, their 'membership', which forms the basis of all co-production of action and sense-making in ethnomethodology, needs to be established ad hoc in the interview situation. Those 'first contact' encounters and the subsequent journey of a Rohingya asylum seeker's file through the court system reveal how accountability is constantly being produced through interaction and how, as an important by-product of this production process, not only 'cases' are decided but the validity of the state's own account is rendered plausible as well.
Paper short abstract:
The Kosovo Property Agency, as a mass claims mechanism, had to strike a difficult balance between producing quantifiable outputs and abiding to the requirements of due process. This paper unpacks the tensions and limitations such an understanding of rendering justice produced in the everyday.
Paper long abstract:
How to measure the efficiency of a (quasi)-judicial process in rendering justice? This paper looks at the work of the Kosovo Property Agency (KPA), the UN-mandated administrative, mass claims mechanism put in place to adjudicate war-related property claims in post-war Kosovo. As an independent mass claims mechanism, the KPA depended on international donors for its operating budget. To secure donations, comply with donor monitoring and evaluation criteria, and wrap up its mandate in time, the KPA adopted a number of managerial techniques to streamline the legal process. This produced tensions between development-minded benchmarks, i.e., producing measurable outputs such as the number of decisions processed, and the demands of due process. It also had wide repercussions on the kind of 'justice' the agency could deliver.
Paper short abstract:
Argentinian state agencies which fear for their continuation after a change of government do not rely on the usual forms of accountability but employ additional survival strategies in order to underline their relevance. These strategies are inspired by methods of the human rights movement and NGOs.
Paper long abstract:
When in 2015 the right wing government of Mauricio Marci took office in Argentina state agencies and programs that had been initiated under the previous left wing government of Cristina Kirchner feared for the continuation of their activities. Among these state agencies is ATAJO, the territorial agency for access to the Justice, a program that was initiated by the Attorney General in 2014 and which aims to facilitate the access to the juridical system to the most underserved sectors of society.
In order to protect the program from possible reforms, staff reduction, or cessation the employees and creators of ATAJO meticulously fulfilled the requests for accountability and collected all required statistical information. But they did not solely rely on the standard modalities of accountability but employed additional strategies to underline the programs' performance, impact and relevance. In this paper I will illustrate the alternative forms of accountability, the strategic coalitions and the attempts to increase the visibility of the program. I will show that the 'survival strategies' can be interpreted as an expression of a skeptical perspective on standardized forms of accountability. Furthermore, I will highlight that the state agency is inspired by methods and strategies that have proven to be effective in the efforts of human rights movements and NGOs. Thus, I use the ethnographic example to discuss the overlapping field of accountability and political activism.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I examine the politics associated with the introduction of the "Transparency Law" in Israel. I follow Wagner and ask if human rights NGOs resisting and challenging the authoritative power of government may lead to the symbolic performance of the state as democratic.
Paper long abstract:
In the summer of 2016, Israel's "Transparency Law" passed the Knesset by a vote of 57-48. According to the Times of Israel: "the roughly two-dozen existing Israeli organizations that are expected to be affected by the new rules belong to the left, including B'Tselem, Yesh Din, and Zochrot, which advocates for the return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants" ("Left Wing Groups Slam 'anti-democratic' NGO law," July 16, 2016). In this paper, I argue that the very fact this move can be framed as both "anti-democratic" and perfectly legitimate because it falls in line with the practice of other democratic states, such as the United States (e.g., Kontorovich, 2016), deserves our attention. Applying ethnographic research in Israel, discourse analysis of the newsmedia's reporting about the law, as well as official responses by some of the targeted NGOs, I will engage with the literature on contemporary democratic practice and the role of civil society. I am less interested in the Law's legitimacy than in how it has constructed an 'other' within and what that means for activists and practitioners. I will also explore the critical and the cynical (but symbolic) performances of democracy.