Critical Accounting Histories: Exposing Contradictions in Social Reality—Review of Critical Histories of Accounting: Sinister Inscriptions in the Modern Era by R. K. Fleischman, W. Funnell and S. P. Walker

Abstract

This review paper discusses the contribution of R. K. Fleischman, W. Funnell and S. P. Walker's volume on critical histories of accounting to the domain of critical accounting research. The various authors reveal the moral and social dimensions of accounting inscriptions employed as a sinister political tool to promote the ideology and interests of powerful groups and states. In this way, they bridge the gap between present and past by exposing historical injustices that have continued un-debated into the present. The authors provide a wide range of historical accounting records and link their outcomes to current issues by adopting paradigmatic discourses. Yet, a more extensive in-depth theoretical discussion of the main issues that are raised offer useful insights and alternative perspectives to our understanding of particular historical episodes related to accounting.

Keywords:

• critical accounting history
• imperialism
• gender
• holocaust
• exploitation

Notes on Contributor

Elisavet Mantzari is Lecturer in accounting at the Business School of the University of Westminster. She is currently completing her PhD thesis on international financial reporting at the University of Portsmouth. Her research interests include issues in accounting history, accounting theory and international financial reporting.

Notes

¹Nazi Germany's plan to annihilate Jews throughout Europe along with other races that were believed to be sub-humans in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust and the destruction of Jewish communities in continental Europe.

²Government according to Foucault refers to the ensemble of institutions, calculations and tactics deployed to arrange things in such a way that certain ends are achieved (Burchell, Coln, and Miller 1991; Neu and Graham, 2006).