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Unveiling a postcolonial neoliberalism: hybridised controls and emancipatory potentials for tea-plucking women in Sri Lanka

Seuwandhi Buddhika Ranasinghe (Faculty of Management and Finance, University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka)
Danture Wickramasinghe (Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK)

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal

ISSN: 0951-3574

Article publication date: 24 December 2020

Issue publication date: 10 March 2021

827

Abstract

Purpose

Drawing on the ideas of postcolonial hybridity and postcolonial feminism, the purpose of this paper is to explore a contextual variant of neoliberalism, which the authors call postcolonial neoliberalism. It unpacks the peculiarities of hybridised practices of management controls therein to reflect on its construction and consequences.

Design/methodology/approach

A seven-month ethnographic study was carried out in a Sri Lankan tea estate to understand both the nature and the practices of these controls.

Findings

Postcolonial neoliberalism has been animated by a hybrid form of management controls encompassing colonial action controls, postcolonial cultural controls and neoliberal results controls. This created an emancipatory space for female workers to engage in some confrontations to attain some compromises.

Originality/value

The message is that the hybridised controls are central to the construction of this form of postcolonial neoliberalism and to its reproduction. However, as these controls accompany a gendered form, female workers find a condition of possibility for some emancipatory potentials within the neoliberal development policy.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This paper forms part of a special section “Neoliberalism and Management Accounting”, guest edited by Professor Danture Wickramasinghe, Professor Christine Cooper and Dr Chandana Alawattage.The authors wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and encouragements, Sonja Gallhofer for her initial inputs in the development of the paper and Chandana Alawattage and John McKernan for their enormous advice which shaped the whole research project. The authors also wish to thank the Adam Smith Business School of the University of Glasgow for funding the first author to undertake this project, the CEO of the plantation company, the manager of the tea estate for the extensive access given and the fieldwork participants, especially the tea plucking women who shared their life stories with us.

Citation

Ranasinghe, S.B. and Wickramasinghe, D. (2021), "Unveiling a postcolonial neoliberalism: hybridised controls and emancipatory potentials for tea-plucking women in Sri Lanka", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 34 No. 3, pp. 651-679. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-12-2018-3785

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited

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