JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.Anthropology as a profession is particularly dependent on universities, institutions that throughout the industrialized world have been undergoing major structural readjustments over the past two decades. Central to these reforms has been the introduction of mechanisms for measuring 'teaching performance', 'research quality' and 'institutional effectiveness'. Taking British higher education as a case study, this article analyses the history and consequences of government attempts to promote an 'audit culture' in universities. It tracks the spread of the idea of audit from its original associations with financial accounting into other cultural domains, particularly education. These new audit technologies are typically framed in terms of 'quality', 'accountability' and 'empowerment', as though they were emancipatory and 'self-actualizing'. We critique these assumptions by illustrating some of the negative effects that auditing processes such as 'Research Assessment Exercises' and 'Teaching Quality Assessments' have had on higher education. We suggest that these processes beckon a new form of coercive and authoritarian governmentality. The article concludes by considering ways that anthropologists might respond to the more damaging aspects of this neo-liberal agenda through 'political reflexivity'.Over the past two decades higher education in Britain and in other industrialized states has undergone a process of radical reform or structural readjustment. A key element of these reforms has been the introduction of mechanisms for measuring 'teaching performance', judging 'research quality' and assessing 'institutional effectiveness'. These mechanisms are intended to ensure 'accountability', a principle justified on the rational and democratic grounds that those who spend taxpayers' money should be accountable to the public. Measuring performance is characteristically framed in terms of 'improving quality' and 'empowerment', as though these mechanisms were emancipatory and enabling. However, in Britain at least, accountability is not always as democratic or empowering as it appears. On the contrary, as we shall argue, a peculiarly coercive and disabling model of accountability has emerged. There are three main reasons for this: first, because accountability is elided with policing (Power 1994; 1997); second, because it reduces professional relations to crude, quantifiable and, above all, 'inspectable' templates (Strathern 1997); and, third, because it is introducing disciplinary mechanisms that mark a new f...

Governing by numbers: audit culture, rankings and the new world order Quantification and statistics have long served as instruments of governance and state power. However, in recent decades new systems of measurement and rankings have emerged that operate both beyond and below the nation-state.Using contemporary examples, we explore how international measurements, rankings, risk management and audit are creating new forms of global governmentality. We ask, whoor whatis driving the spread of audit technologies and why have indicators and rankings become a populist project? How should we theorise the rise of measuring, ranking and auditing and their political effects? What are the impacts of these ever-more pervasive systems on organisational behaviour and professional life?

To date, little research has focused directly on health-related support in school for children with a chronic illness or physical disability, yet these children are known to be at increased risk for psychosocial and academic problems. In addition, few studies have sought the views of pupils directly: those which have report a wide range of problems with school life. The increasing numbers of children surviving and managing their health conditions, together with UK policy for inclusive education, means that a growing proportion of pupils in mainstream schools require understanding of their special health needs and may need service support from education and health professionals. This paper presents findings from semistructured interviews with 33 mainstream secondary school pupils with a variety of illnesses and disabilities on the impact of their health condition on school life. Results show that young people valued school and were actively managing the effects of their condition, but needed support from others. Informal support was most frequently cited, including parents--particularly mothers--teachers and close friends. The main difficulties were implications of school absence, exclusion from school life, teachers' reactions to the illness or disability, and peer relationships. The discussion focuses on ways in which health professionals can play a part in supporting pupils both directly and indirectly, through helping others in school understand the condition and its impact on school life.

No abstract

No abstract