Audit Culture and Dirty Elites: A Talk with Cris Shore (9/10/2024) Artwork

Under The Table: An Anthropology of Corruption Podcast

We are two cultural anthropologists, Drs. Aaron Ansell and Sylvia Tidey, who write about corruption and the fight against corruption in non-Western cultural settings. Our lighthearted podcast consists of interviews with fellow experts on this topic. We try to keep it jargon-free, but we do geek out every now and then, so fair warning.

All Episodes

Under The Table: An Anthropology of Corruption Podcast

Audit Culture and Dirty Elites: A Talk with Cris Shore (9/10/2024)

October 21, 2024 • Aaron Ansell and Sylvia Tidey

Sylvia and Aaron chat with Cris Shore (Professor of Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths) about his work on corruption in the European Union. We talk about the EU's "parallel system of administration," methodologies for studying that which should not be seen, the trouble defining corruption, the weaponization of anti-corruption laws, university/academic corruption, the rise of "audit culture," and "shit swimming" (a surfers' campaign against corruption in sewage management), and legalized corruption in Britain.

Some of Cris Shore's Publications
2024. Compliance, Defiance, and ‘Dirty’ Luxury: New Perspectives on Anti-Corruption in Elite Contexts. Edited by Tereza Østbø Kuldova, Jardar Østbø, and Cris Shore. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

2024. (with Susan Wrights). Audit Culture: How Indicators and Rankings are Reshaping the World. London: Pluto Press.

2021. "Audit Failure and Corporate Corruption: Why Mediterranean Patron-Client Relations are Relevant to Understanding the Word of International Accountability Firms." Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 90: 91-105.

2005. (with Deiter Haller) Corruption: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press.