Audit Culture on the Periphery. Anthropology and Ethnology in Post-Socialist Romania

The present paper is revisiting what seems to be a shared cliche of Central/Eastern Europe (CEE) Sonderweg and its Western colonization by placing the academic field under scrutiny (anthropology/ethnology) in the global context of “audit culture” rather than in the common center-periphery frame. From this point of view, it is suggested that the problem is not as much the recycled divide between East and West, but much more so the common positioning of anthropology in the power field of audit culture hegemony. In doing so, we take Romania as a case study.