Reading for Displeasure: Why Bother with Social Accounting at All?

ABSTRACT

This short paper comprises a review of six disparate texts: none of which is specifically about accounting or social accounting. There are three principal motivations for doing this. First, the essay celebrates the delight in reading widely and variously and how such reading can constantly challenge – and refresh – our understandings of ourselves as social accounting academics. Second, the paper sets out to explore whether a coherent narrative might be woven from such a range of disparate texts. In doing so, I find I am forced to reflect upon the limits and depths of my assumptions and implicit understandings. Finally, the essay is written – to a degree at least - with new scholars in mind. One of the hardest tasks for such neophytes is systematically engaging with literature and learning to read widely and critically. This paper suggests that it probably matters less what you read than how you read … and the self-reflection and auto-critique that the reading encourages.

Acknowledgements

I am pleased to express my thanks to Helen Tregidga for her support and suggestions in writing this essay.

Notes

1. That essay, in turn prompted me to go back and re-read Hesse’s masterpiece, The Glass Bead Game; not least for the reasons offered in the second quotation above.

2. I think I am correct in identifying over 180 accounting journals in the English language. Even ignoring books and monographs the journals could easily present one with over 3000 articles per year with which to entertain oneself.

3. This organisation of the books is largely artificial but reflects my own active concerns. Selecting material to read must, almost inevitably, reflect one’s personal anxieties. These six books are just a slice of what I have read over the last few months but in their relatively accessible styles and their challenging nature, they seemed to offer a way of illustrating the importance of constantly questioning the way in which we intellectually locate our project. How does one locate books? As widely as possible I would suggest. I identified these texts (following the order in which I review them) as a result of: my own obsessive constant monitoring of publications on planetary data; a journalist I read regularly; my wife Sue’s interest from a Sunday Broadsheet book review; a recommendation by a colleague following a conversation; a project I was involved in; and a gift from a colleague. One is constantly ‘fishing’ for new stimulation and reading which is not oppressively ‘work’.

4. Most readers will be familiar with other series such as the Limits to Growth series of books, the Global Civil Society series, the WWF Global Environmental Outlook compilations and the United Nations periodic publications on such matters as the Human Development Index and The Global Development Goals and so forth.

5. It turns out, apparently, that everything is not awesome – even when you are part of a team.

6. It is my pleasure(?) to acknowledge my gratitude to Markus Milne who passed this book to me.