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This collection of short essays presents and examines six vignettes of organisational change in British, New Zealand and European universities. Drawing on the social studies of economisation literature, formal research projects and auto-ethnographic insights, the authors detail profound changes in how knowledge is produced in universities. They examine policy documents, calculative techniques and management practices to illustrate how proliferating market rationalities, technologies and relations are reimagining university missions, reframing their practices and refashioning their subjects. Their vignettes demonstrate that market-making pressures are emerging from micro-scale socio-technical arrangements as well as altered funding models and external policy imperatives. They reveal the extent and detail of market-making pressures on academic practice in research and teaching. Finding ways to contest these pressures is imperative.

When history books about Brexit are written a key question asked will be ‘how did it happen?’ How did a country renowned for stable governments, pragmatism and diplomacy produce a chaotic outcome so harmful to its economic interests and international standing? This article examines the factors that produced Brexit by analysing its political and historical context, the main campaign groups and their communication strategies. Drawing on the work of Verdery (1999), Maskovsky and Bjork-James (2020) and other anthropologists, I suggest we need to look beyond conventional political science concepts and consider Brexit in terms of ‘enchantment’, ‘angry politics’ and ‘technopopulism’. I conclude that while Brexit provides a window for analysing fault lines in contemporary Britain, it also highlights problems in the EU, its austerity politics and democratic deficit.

Patron-clientelism and corruption were traditionally viewed as problems endemic to underdeveloped marginal countries with weak states, powerful self-serving elites, and widespread civic disengagement. However, recent decades have seen a dramatic increase in corruption scandals in the Global North, particularly its more developed banking and financial sectors. Paradoxically, this has occurred despite a massive expansion in auditing by international accountancy firms (KPMG, PwC, Deloitte, EY) who often portray themselves as warriors of integrity, transparency, and ethical conduct. How are these trends connected? Drawing on anthropological studies of Mediterranean patron-clientelism, I illustrate how collusive relations between accountancy firms and their clients create ideal conditions for corruption to flourish. Finally, I ask how can these accountancy scandals help us rethink patron-clientelism in an age of “audit culture”?

This is one of the first anthropological studies of Europe post-1989. Fourteen authors examine the social, cultural and political implications of European integration with particular emphasis on changing European identities, concepts of citizenship and levels of participation. Their aim is to set an agenda for future research based on European identity as a new object of study. The book is divided into two parts. The first deals with major theoretical issues that have characterized the anthropological study of Europe and includes a discussion of the usefulness of the Mediterranean as a cultural area. The second section develops these themes further using different theoretical perspectives to explain complex issues such as nationalism, ethnic identities, and sectarian conflicts. Nine case studies cover a wide range of contemporary topics including Irish nationalism, identity and conflict in the former Yugoslavia, and gender, support and child care provision in Spain. This book aims to fill a gap in the literature on European integration and should be of interest to anthropologists and sociologists as well as students of sociology, social anthropology, political science, communications and European studies.

This chapter examines the hypothesis that a sense of community and 'Europeanness' can be brought about by, and through the activities of, the Commission itself and its growing body of fonctionnaires. The ineluctable process of European economic integration is ultimately bound to lead to the emergence of some form of common political, legal and administrative authority with jurisdiction over the previously independent nation-states – though the extent of that authority and the precise nature of the European Union's federalist goal have yet to be defined. The formation of the nation-state in Europe provides an interesting model for comparison. An essential ingredient in this process was the creation of a new class of leaders and intellectuals; a vanguard inspired by an ideology of nationalism which enabled them to transcend parochial loyalties and rivalries. Provision for Union citizenship is condensed into seven articles of the Maastricht Treaty.

Since the 1980s universities have been subjected to a seemingly continuous process of policy reforms designed to make them more economical, efficient and effective, according to yardsticks defined by governments and university managers. The pursuit of ‘excellence’, ‘international standing’ and ‘world class’ status have become key drivers of what Hazelkorn (High Educ Pol 21(2):193–215, 2008) has termed the ‘rankings arms race’ that now dominates the world of academia. These policies are changing the mission and meaning of the public university and, more profoundly, the culture of academia itself. While some authors have sought to capture and analyse these trends in terms of ‘academic capitalism’ and the ‘enterprise university model’, we suggest they might also be usefully understood theoretically as illustrations of the rise of audit culture in higher education and its effects. Drawing on ethnographic examples from the UK, Denmark and New Zealand, we ask: how are higher education institutions being reconfigured by these new disciplinary regimes of audit? How are ranking and performance indicators changing institutional behaviour and transforming academic subjectivities? What possibilities are there for alternative university futures? And what insights can anthropology offer to address these questions?

The use of 'ethnicity' as a model for exploring identity formation in contexts other than those involving 'ethnic' groups in the strict sense of the term will provide a useful framework for students seeking to interpret similar processes elsewhere. As Wallman has argued, differences between groups become ethnic boundaries 'only when heated into significance by the identity investments of either side'. For this reason, any understanding of ethnicity must necessarily be based on a wider understanding of identity formation. Founded in 1921, the Italian Communist Party has grown from a small, clandestine group of conspirators before 1944 to a mass organisation that permeates Italian society in virtually all its public manifestations. To be called 'Christian Democrat', 'Socialist' or 'Communist' in Italy is not, therefore, an arbitrary label but a fundamental dimension of public identity; it means belonging to a clearly defined social and cultural group with clearly circumscribed rules and boundaries.

The suggestion that ‘Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities’ is generally attributed to the renowned American cultural anthropologist Alfred Kroeber. The integrated BSc Anthropology degree was developed in 2010 by Professors Ann Maclarnon and Garry Marvin, primarily as a response to the existing combined honours degrees in Social Anthropology and Biological Anthropology taught on different campuses. The fear was that without the rigours of a scientific approach, much of anthropology is reduced to journalism and travel writing. The merger builds on the strength of Biological Anthropology’s high RAE2008 results. It also took place in the context of the start of a new ‘A’ level qualification in Anthropology supported by the Royal Anthropological Institute. Ananta Giri uses anthropology and sociology disciplines as examples of contrived disciplinary territories within a modern academic division of labour.

In Britain and New Zealand the neoliberal assault on universities has shifted from new public management and funding models to the special status of the public university. The project aims to complete neoliberal business initiated 25 years ago by more fully marketising and financialising universities, starting with ‘unbundling’ and outsourcing and culminating in new forms of privatisation, rent-extraction and rebundling. This paper analyses two documents commissioned beyond government to create political momentum for this project: Avalanche is Coming and The University of the Future. These both capture the zeitgeist of reform while simultaneously creating the university futures that they portend. We examine the market-making work they perform in reimagining and reinventing universities ahead of policy reform. We argue that claims made to support fundamental restructuring of public universities lack substance or evidence. Rather, each is underpinned by different configurations of ideology and self-interest that together envelope universities in new agendas of marketisation, financialisation and privatisation. We suggest that in this latest restructuring of public universities critics should pay more attention to the work of consultancies and think tanks alongside the micro-details of market making. By doing so, they too might reimagine public universities, but for a different political project.

In this Forum, we ask our contributors to reflect on the entanglements between economy and politics and how they contribute to the ongoing precaritisation in academia, how they shape individual researchers' biographies and how they influence academic research. But more importantly, beyond analysis, this Forum also invites its contributors to reflect on concrete interventions from their respective positions.

The Crown and Constitutional Reform is an innovative, interdisciplinary exchange between experts in law, anthropology and politics about the Crown, constitutional monarchy and the potential for constitutional reform in Commonwealth common law countries. The constitutional foundation of many Commonwealth countries is the Crown, an icon of ultimate authority, at once familiar yet curiously enigmatic. Is it a conceptual placeholder for the state, a symbol of sovereignty or does its ambiguity make it a shapeshifter, a legal fiction that can be deployed as an expedient mask for executive power and convenient instrument for undermining democratic accountability? This volume offers a novel, interdisciplinary exchange: the contributors analyse how the Crown operates in the United Kingdom and the postcolonial settler societies of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In doing so, they examine fundamental theoretical questions about statehood, sovereignty, constitutionalism and postcolonial reconciliation. As Queen Elizabeth II’s long reign approaches its end, questions about the Crown’s future, its changing forms and meanings, the continuing value of constitutional monarchy and its potential for reform, gain fresh urgency. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs.

New calculative techniques of management and accountancy are having a transformative effect on organisations, individuals and society. These processes are often associated with contemporary neoliberal capitalism, but what exactly is driving the proliferation of these measurement systems and how is this change actually occurring? We address these questions by exploring the history of the Big 4 international accountancy firms and their role in spreading audit culture and the rationalities of financial accountancy. Since the 1990s, the expansion of their remit from traditional auditing to a growing emphasis on consultancy services has increasingly blurred the boundary between their public watchdog role and their commercial interests. Combined with the changing values, career trajectories and ‘habitus’ of audit company professionals, and the weaknesses of self-regulation, this has resulted in problems for ethics and corporate social responsibility. Using ethnographic examples, we examine the metamorphosis that occurs as accountants, originally trained in the disciplines of financial probity, become more entrepreneurially oriented when they ascend to senior positions as company managers and partners. If the calculative practices of accountancy are central to modern forms of audit, we argue they are also transforming accountancy firms themselves into evermore calculative and financialised entities. We conclude by showing how the post-1990s shift from auditing to advisory services leads these companies to tread an ever-finer line between entrepreneurship and fraud.

Corruption narratives, like witchcraft accusations, offer a lens for analyzing social relations, economic interests, and hidden structures of power. Developing this theme, I examine discourses of corruption in the context of growing concerns about fraud prevention and anti-corruption in universities. Moving beyond critiques of university administrations as bureaucratic, self-serving entities whose interests are increasingly antithetical to the academic mission of the university, I ask, What is corruption in academia and how does this assumed problem relate to academic capitalism and the rise of audit culture? The empirical context for my study is the extraordinary increase in institutionalized fraud-prevention programs, particularly those offered by the “Big Four” accountancy firms. Taking as my case study the introduction of a whistle-blower hotline at one Australasian university, I examine the politics and interests behind such schemes. The increasing involvement of accountancy firms in nonauditing work, including anti-corruption services, illustrates how corruption narratives operate as market-making strategies. I examine how commercialization, risk management, and auditing proliferate anti-corruption initiatives and how audit firms collude in the risk and corruption that they claim to ameliorate. I conclude by assessing the implications for the anthropology of corruption of the growing penetration of universities by an increasingly commercially focused tax industry that, some argue, cannot even be trusted to regulate itself.

What counts as evidence of good performance, behaviour or character? While quantitative metrics have long been used to measure performance and productivity in schools, factories and workplaces, what is striking today is the extent to which these calculative methods and rationalities are being extended into new areas of life through the global spread of performance indicators (PIs) and performance management systems. What began as part of the neoliberalising projects of the 1980s with a few strategically chosen PIs to give greater state control over the public sector through contract management and mobilising ‘users’ has now proliferated to include almost every aspect of professional work. The use of metrics has also expanded from managing professionals to controlling entire populations. This chapter focuses on the rise of these new forms of audit and their effects in two areas: first, the alliance being formed between state-collected data and that collected by commercial companies on their customers through, for example loyalty cards and credit checks. Second, China’s new social credit system, which allocates individual scores to each citizen and uses rewards of better or privileged service to entice people to volunteer information about themselves, publish their ‘ratings’ and compete with friends for status points. This is a new development in the use of audit simultaneously to discipline whole populations and responsibilise individuals to perform according to new state and commercial norms about the reliable/conforming ‘good’ citizen.