The paper outlines developments in the accounting history literature during the 1990s. The introduction chronicles the immense broadening of publication opportunities in accounting history that characterized the decade. To a certain extent, this enhancement of outlets resulted from a richer dialogue among accounting historians who became increasingly willing to debate paradigmatic and methodological issues. In this context, the paper identifies and discusses “traditional” and “critical” forms of accounting history and reviews work within the paradigms of economic-rationalist, Foucauldian, and Marxist/labor-process studies. The major elements of debate between “old” and “new” perspectives on accounting history are discussed and linked to later collaborative efforts and refinements in the work of each genre. Major research projects published during the 1990s are identified, tabulated, and discussed. The paper concludes with a discussion of accounting history as the decade closed, with a particular focus on the opportunities and threats that may lie ahead for the field.
Historical research in accounting is flourishing as prestigious journals worldwide encourage authors to incorporate history into their submissions. Although a number of accounting academics are aware of these opportunities, others may be reluctant to participate because they lack an understanding of the rudiments of historical scholarship. This paper is geared to those scholars who seek to write about accounting's past but are unacquainted with historical methods, unsure how to begin, and generally unfamiliar with the debates that are now taking place in the field. In this paper we discuss the formal theoretical structures of history as a discipline; differentiate history as event, story, and way of knowing; consider the problem of historical facticity and the subjectivity of the historian; examine the role historical evidence plays in the reconstruction of the past, and identify the forms of historical construction and alternate historical methods. We also distinguish between history and social science and summarise the current debate between conventional and critical accounting historians. Publication possibilities are also addressed.
This paper examines specifically a frequently employed purpose of accounting on slave plantations in the antebellum US and the pre-emancipation British West Indies (BWI) -the evaluation of slaves as assets. We attempt to explain why this exercise was undertaken and the processes involved. Slaves were paraded past plantation managers and overseers, often in the company of appraisers and bookkeepers, where narrow distinctions were made on the basis of qualitative information such as physical characteristics and productive efficiency. The paper considers certain comparative features between the two slave environments, such as the greater concern in the BWI with linking valuations to the skill sets of slaves and a valuation premium on male slaves in the US which did not exist in the Caribbean. The paper concludes with a consideration of certain moral issues of slavery, such as the potential implication of accounting and accountants in a repressive regime and the attribution of contemporary morality to an historical epoch long past.
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