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Accounting and racial violence in the postbellum American South

Stephen P. Walker (University of Edinburgh Business School, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK)

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal

ISSN: 0951-3574

Article publication date: 30 August 2023

Issue publication date: 1 October 2024

88

Abstract

Purpose

The paper aims to explore the relationship between accounting and racial violence through an investigation of sharecropping in the postbellum American South.

Design/methodology/approach

A range of primary sources including peonage case files of the US Department of Justice and the archives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are utilised. Data are analysed by reference to Randall Collins' theory of violence. Consistent with this theory, a micro-sociological approach to examining violent encounters is employed.

Findings

It is demonstrated that the production of alternative or competing accounts, accounting manipulation and failure to account generated interactions where confrontational tension culminated in bluster, physical attacks and lynching. Such violence took place in the context of potent racial ideologies and institutions.

Originality/value

The paper is distinctive in its focus on the interface between accounting and “actual” (as opposed to symbolic) violence. It reveals how accounting processes and traces featured in the highly charged emotional fields from which physical violence could erupt. The study advances knowledge of the role of accounting in race relations from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, a largely unexplored period in the accounting history literature. It also seeks to extend the research agenda on accounting and slavery (which has hitherto emphasised chattel slavery) to encompass the practice of debt peonage.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to the guest editors and the reviewers for their suggestions for improving the paper. Helpful comments were received from attendees at staff seminars at IE Business School; School of Accounting, Economics and Finance, University of Portsmouth; and University of Aberdeen Business School.

Citation

Walker, S.P. (2024), "Accounting and racial violence in the postbellum American South", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 37 No. 7/8, pp. 1820-1846. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-01-2023-6245

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited

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