The narrative and its place in the new accounting history: the rise of the counternarrative

Abstract

Traditional history has sought to provide narrative accounts of the past which can be accepted as factual, devoid of fictions and therefore true. This image has come under strong attack from new historians who denounce the narrative as a literary convention which mixes fiction (myth) and fact rather than being a model of an extant, discoverable reality. The narrative is also accused of being the means of privileging some accounts of history and thereby enhancing the position of social élites. This paper rejects condemnation of the ability of narrative history to provide reliable renditions of accounting’s past and promotes the role of narrativity in the “new” accounting history. It is shown that new accounting history, whilst critical of the results of traditional accounting history, currently still finds merit in the narrative as both the form in which historical events occur and as a means of telling alternative stories or counternarratives.

Citation

Funnell, W. (1998), "The narrative and its place in the new accounting history: the rise of the counternarrative", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 142-162. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513579810215446