Imagining Otherwise: Conceptualising Sustainability in an Era of Extractivism Through an Agonistic Feminist Lens: A Response to Gendron (2024)

ABSTRACT

This article explores the tension between sustainability, accounting and governance from an agonistic pluralist perspective adopting feminism as a methodology. Inspired by a commentary by Gendron (2024, in this issue) on the trustworthiness of science in the light of industry sponsorship of academic institutions, this article questions more deeply the acceptance of an extractive mindset which weaves into the organising of society as it influences what topics to prioritise and what to leave out of the mainstream narrative. The article draws in particular from the work of Mouffe (2000, 2013; see also Laclau and Mouffe, 2014) and Davis (2016). These studies, alongside other work, in particular by Black and Indigenous scholars, seeking to dismantle the oppressive bodies of capitalism, colonialism, racism, and patriarchy, have inspired my own reflections for this article. While these are all complex issues in and of themselves, which need further exploration beyond the rich body of existing literature, discussing them together and in relation to sustainability provides an opportunity to realise the equivalences in the struggles and encourage the formation of solidarity.

KEYWORDS:

• Agonistic pluralism
• feminist theory
• sustainability accounting
• extractive industries
• gender equality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 At the time of writing the conference has been postponed to December 2024 ‘due to the travel advisory warning issued by the US Department of State in relation to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East’ (AAA n.d.).

2 Yves briefly mentions his concern regarding gender inequality in Saudi Arabia in a footnote. However, without formulating the link between the struggles, this concern seemed too far outside the main issue he raised.

3 In 1970, weapons she had owned were involved in a courthouse takeover aimed at freeing three Black prisoners. Although Davis was not present at the court and stated that she did not know about the event at the time, she was charged with kidnapping, murder and conspiracy. She was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List. She went underground but got caught and imprisoned for over sixteen months. She claimed innocence in all charges and gained global support. In 1972, the all-white court pledged her to be found not guilty on all three charges (Mejias-Rentas 2023).

4 Davis states, ‘it makes no sense to imagine eradicating anti-Black racism without also eradicating anti-Muslim racism’ (Davis 2016, 48). Lorde (2007) makes a similar point.

5 Despite the continuous inspiration provided by Black feminists, their work still remains vastly under-acknowledged even within feminist literature (see for instance hooks 1994, 2014; Lorde 2007; Olufemi 2020).

6 A large portion of mainstream accounting research on sustainability is concerned with measurement of incremental corporate performance on isolated social or environmental indicators and its relationship to financial performance. It subscribes to the notion that the increase and maximisation of financial capital is desirable. I therefore understand it to be (in general) a part of the larger hegemonic capitalist discourse.

7 Kurucz, Colbert, and Wheeler (2008) characterise four types of the business case: (i) cost and risk reduction, (ii) competitive advantage, (iii) reputation and legitimacy, and (iv) synergistic value creation. See also Schaltegger and Burritt (2018).

8 This notion of corporate-centered incremental performance is also reflected in the international sustainability standards, for instance those issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), see for instance Cooper, Romi, and Senkl (2022) for a critique of the ISSB and Cooper et al. (2023) for a discussion of the Canadian context. Open letters by members of the CSEAR community have criticised the ISSB approach to sustainability reporting (Adams et al. 2020; Cho et al. 2022).

9 It is then debatable whether there is a notable difference of corporate sustainability from corporate social responsibility (see for instance McWilliams and Siegel 2003; Margolis and Walsh 2003; Waddock and Graves 1997, among others) in the sense that it focuses either on isolated actions or indicators that go beyond the traditional set of (financial) accounts, for instance, energy usage, carbon emissions, employee turnover, release of toxic chemicals into air, water or land, etc. (see for instance, Ott and Schiemann 2023; Clarkson et al. 2008; Cormier and Magnan 2015). In fact, the concepts are often lumped together (e.g. Christensen, Hail, and Leuz 2021; Dinh, Husman, and Melloni 2023).

10 I acknowledge that CSEAR members (just like AAA members) are not a homogenous group. For those engaged in more critical (or alternative) accounting research, sustainability requires a critical engagement with the planet’s carrying capacity and therefore with its boundaries (Sobkowiak, Senn, and Vollmer 2023; Dey and Russell 2014). This work directly or indirectly connects with what Raworth (2017) calls the ecological ceiling and the social foundation. It requires a holistic approach, an acknowledgement of the complexity of an interrelated, interdependent system.

11 Davis highlights that the isolated depiction of heroic figures such as Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr works to make invisible the efforts of many people who have worked collectively and over long periods of time to achieve social change. This act of individualisation therefore reduces the perceived power and agency of the masses.

12 In terms of the agonistic thought, alliances which connect ‘interested parties who articulate the contested issue in the action space, i.e. got together around the meanings of the key signifiers that form the political frontier’ (Dillard, Shivji, and Bianchi 2023) are called chains of equivalents (George, Brown, and Dillard 2023; Tanima, Brown, and Hopper 2024).

13 A similar point has been made by Robyn Maynard when she writes that

the currency of the concept of a universal ‘we’ (…) has always been a violent exclusion relying on who is a historical subject, who is considered a full human, a national citizen, with Black and Indigenous communities, of course, written out of the very boundaries of the concept. It’s perhaps the final insult that you and I, our respective communities, only enter, exceedingly belatedly and only abstractly and contingently, into the universal ‘we’ once it is time to identify the architects of the climate disaster, only to disappear from it again in the next headline, though, etc. (Maynard and Simpson 2022, 19)

14 Mouffe refers to Gramsci’s notion of ‘hegemony through neutralization’ or ‘passive revolution.’

15 In accounting, see for instance Cooper (2015).

16 Laclau and Mouffe (2014) are therefore talking about the hegemonic struggle as the back and forth of creativity of people and capitalism.

17 It is worth emphasising that the various demands within a chain of equivalences might be in conflict with each other. They do not automatically converge and therefore need to be expressed politically (Mouffe 2013, 74). The ‘recognition of the constitutive character of social division and eradicability of antagonism’ is what Mouffe (2013, 18) calls the moment of the political.

18 Among CSEAR members, in particular those who would identify as critical or alternative accounting researchers.

19 Leanne Betasamosake Simpson includes the following context in footnote 8 on page 255 of the cited book: “I am using Two Spirit and queer (2SQ) as an umbrella term in this book to refer to all Indigenous Two Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, and gender-nonconforming people. See http://www.nativeyouthsexualhealth.com/ for more information. Hunt writes,

‘Two-Spirit is used by some Indigenous people to describe the diverse roles and identities of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, trans and/or gender-fluid Indigenous people in North America. At the 1990 Winnipeg gathering of the International Gathering of American Indian and First Nations Gays and Lesbians, ‘Two-Spirit’ was chosen as a term to move away from the anthropological term ‘berdache’ in describing Native queer identities and communities. Following this usage, and that of some recent Two-Spirit scholarship, I choose to capitalise this term’; ‘Witnessing the Colonialscape,’ xv. I include the term queer in 2SQ to recognise that not all Indigenous queer people use the term Two Spirit to identify themselves. Lesbian elder Ma-Nee Chacaby presents a different understanding of the term Two Spirit (…).”