Escaping Numbers?

Intimate Accounting and the challenge to numbers in Australia’s ‘Education Revolution’

Authors

  • Radhika Gorur

Abstract

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.   

Keywords: Sociology of Numbers; Education Policy and Numbers; Accountability  

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
Section
Special Issue: Numbering, Numbers and After Numbers

Published

2018-12-15

How to Cite

Gorur, R. (2018) “Escaping Numbers? Intimate Accounting and the challenge to numbers in Australia’s ‘Education Revolution’”, Science & Technology Studies, 31(4), pp. 89–108. doi: 10.23987/sts.56745.