gorur-escapingnumbers-2018.pdf (484.62 kB)
Escaping numbers? Intimate accounting, informed publics and the uncertain assemblages of authority and non-authority
Numbers have long been associated with statecraft. In bureaucratic processes of accounting, regulation was effected by forming centres of calculation. This paper suggests that contemporary post-bureaucratic regimes are evolving new forms of accounting, in which the centre inserts itself into individual sites to exercise authority. This ‘intimate accounting’ involves technologies of transparency through which individual sites such as schools are required to declare intimate information publicly. In turn, the public, armed with information, is exhorted to become informed and to exercise influence on institutions to excel and to hold them to account. Using the case of Australia’s ‘Education Revolution’, this paper describes the processes of intimate accounting. It then explores the efforts to resist, subvert and undo such calculations. Finally, it speculates on why these calculations have continued to appear robust in the face of opposition and what would need to be done to escape or resist such calculations.
History
Journal
Science and technology studiesVolume
31Issue
4Season
Special Issue: Numbering, Numbers and After NumbersPagination
89 - 108Publisher
Finnish Society for Science and Technology StudiesLocation
Tampere, FinlandPublisher DOI
Link to full text
ISSN
2243-4690Language
engPublication classification
C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journalCopyright notice
2018, Finnish Society for Science and Technology StudiesUsage metrics
Categories
No categories selectedKeywords
Licence
Exports
RefWorks
BibTeX
Ref. manager
Endnote
DataCite
NLM
DC