Understanding cultural capital and habitus in Corporate Accounting: A postcolonial context

Linguistic Tensions in a Professional Accounting Field: English Linguistic Capital, Hierarchy, Prestige, and Distinction Among Accountants†

“…Typically, British colonies have either kept English as an official language, or continued to utilize it. In Jordan, the colonial effects persist, today, through unequal access to English in education (Aburous 2016). Meanwhile, meanings attached to Arabic have been changing over time.…”

“…They found that the English linguistic capital of different nationality groups acts in both: creating social bonds as a common language-especially sharing the client's language-and introducing an "othering" between the different nationality teams in the firm. Turning to our own context, the Jordanian accounting profession, Aburous (2016) focuses on macro-level processes of Westernization and attributes the expansion of English in Jordan to colonization and missionary-led education. Aburous argues that English language use, alongside wider forms of Westernization, is influential in processes of exclusion and inclusion.…”

“…In the accounting profession literature, several studies draw attention to the mobilization of English globally as an instrument of power, hierarchy, inclusion, and exclusion (cf. Aburous 2016; Detzen and Loehlein 2018; Hammond et al 2009; Spence and Brivot 2011). While many insights are gained from these studies, research is in its early stages, mainly focusing on either historical events related to the development of national professional bodies during or immediately after colonization (Hammond et al 2009; Spence and Brivot 2011) or on the contexts of large professional services firms based in the West (Detzen and Loehlein 2018).…”

The accountancy profession and emerging economies

“…Syrian accountants to this extent repeated this rhetoric and seemed on the surface little concerned with the Western nature of IFRS. Indeed, as in the literature, Syrian accountants advocated the full adoption of IFRS quoting demands by multinationals, financial markets and ostensibly foreign investors (Aburous, 2016). However, beneath the surface, embedded in the narratives advocating IFRS, were veiled calls for wider change to address both political and economic isolation as well as also internal corruption and State control over the accountancy profession in Syria.…”

“…Such research has revealed how globalisation, with its international governance institutions and arrangements (including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and international trade agreements) often results in promoting -or even imposing -narrow capitalistic, Anglo-American accounting practices and thought in non-Western and emerging contexts. In these contexts, local professional accountancy bodies act mainly as promoters or facilitators of UK and US based qualifications, standards, training and education (Bakre, 2004(Bakre, , 2005(Bakre, , 2007Gallhofer et al, 2009;2011;Kamla et al, 2012;Aburous, 2016). Despite these advances in the literature, critical and contextual explorations of the development of the accountancy profession and the socialisation of professional accountants outside Western contexts are still underdeveloped.…”