The mountains are high and the Emperor is far away: credit scoring and the infrastructure of surveillance capitalism in China

TY - JOUR

T1 - The mountains are high and the Emperor is far away

T2 - credit scoring and the infrastructure of surveillance capitalism in China

AU - Spence, Crawford

AU - Millo, Yuval

AU - Xu, Ruowen

PY - 2023/12/19

Y1 - 2023/12/19

N2 - Previous research on calculative intermediaries shows how these effectively challenge, distort and disrupt accounting practices in ways that policy makers might not anticipate. The promises of surveillance capitalism - with its attendant data architectures, datafication processes and technological sophistication - are different, supposing more accurate ways of reading individuals and greater calculative certainty overall. Yet there is little empirical research to explore how surveillance capitalism manifests itself at the organizational level, either conceptually or operationally. As a result, it remains uncertain whether such specters of omniscience are as haunting in reality as they appear in theory. We explore these themes by way of an ethnographic study into credit scoring in China, showing how intermediary organizations developed a multiplicity of credit scoring models based on machine learning and big data that differed both from original expectations and from each other. These different ‘renditions’ of credit scoring suggest that the data architectures of surveillance capitalism are just as much subject to challenge and adaptation by intermediary organizations as calculative practices such as accounting are in more analogue environments.

AB - Previous research on calculative intermediaries shows how these effectively challenge, distort and disrupt accounting practices in ways that policy makers might not anticipate. The promises of surveillance capitalism - with its attendant data architectures, datafication processes and technological sophistication - are different, supposing more accurate ways of reading individuals and greater calculative certainty overall. Yet there is little empirical research to explore how surveillance capitalism manifests itself at the organizational level, either conceptually or operationally. As a result, it remains uncertain whether such specters of omniscience are as haunting in reality as they appear in theory. We explore these themes by way of an ethnographic study into credit scoring in China, showing how intermediary organizations developed a multiplicity of credit scoring models based on machine learning and big data that differed both from original expectations and from each other. These different ‘renditions’ of credit scoring suggest that the data architectures of surveillance capitalism are just as much subject to challenge and adaptation by intermediary organizations as calculative practices such as accounting are in more analogue environments.

U2 - 10.1111/1911-3846.12925

DO - 10.1111/1911-3846.12925

M3 - Article

SN - 0823-9150

JO - Contemporary Accounting Research

JF - Contemporary Accounting Research

ER -