Emil A. Røyrvik: Norwegian style neoliberalism

Emil A. Røyrvik will focus mostly on “Norwegian style neoliberalism”, and link this with research he is currently undertaking related to how the widespread processes of objectification, quantification, measurement and standardization are constructing social life in our time. He argues that these processes constitute formative technologies of control and suppression that shape ethical practice, values and social imaginaries. He will seek to connect these developments to the historical discourse on the concepts of technique and technology, and how these are relevant in a dialogue between anthropology and art.

Emil A. Røyrvisk research focuses on ethnography and anthropological theory in the context of political economy, organizational, managerial and expert cultures, and contemporary economic and cultural globalization. From a core focus in anthropology his academic orientation is very much interdisciplinary. He has written extensively on the concepts of culture, knowledge and value, and been especially concerned with neoliberal globalization and economic crisis. Some of his recent publications include the articles “Incarnation Inc. Managing Corporate Values” in Journal of Business Anthropology, and “Real Virtuality: Power and Simulation in the Age of Neoliberal Crisis” in the journal Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research. His book The Allure of Capitalism: An Ethnography of Management and the Global Economy in Crisis (monograph published with Berghahn Books) won SINTEF’s award for excellence in research 2011.