Accounting in Conflict: Globalization, Gender, Race and Class: Volume 19

This chapter analyses the emergency policy responses that the European Union made during the summer of 2015 to manage the significant numbers of migrants entering Europe. The chapter employs Broadbent’s (1998) ideas of ‘accounting logic’ to analyse these policy actions. The chapter argues that there are multiple and complex reasons why people migrate, and why in this instance people are prepared to risk their lives by taking perilous journeys. An ‘accounting logic’ leads to decisions being based mainly on financial inputs and expected outputs rather than on the social and humanitarian needs of migrants and refugees. Despite the significant amount of resources provided by the European Union, the crisis continues. The risks associated with employing an accounting logic are that it may preclude a full understanding of situations by silencing other values and logics.

The social role of women in Brazil is subject to significant change in both capacity and scope. While women constitute the majority of the population in Brazil, they account for 40 per cent of the workforce, and thus, they remain comparatively invisible in public life. This is evident in political representation, as although Brazilian law stipulates that political parties must reserve at least 30 per cent of their nominations for women for legislative elections, this does not occur in reality. Furthermore, despite Afro-descendant Brazilians constituting the majority of the population, in the Chamber of Deputies, for instance, there are only 9 per cent Afro-descendant representatives. Therefore, this study focuses on understanding issues of political representation of Afro-descendant women in political spaces in Brazil – a country where politics is still predominantly white and male. Thus, despite a rhetorical position of an ‘open country’ with opportunities for all, the whiteness and masculinity of Brazilian politics illustrates the degree of mythology concerning the rhetoric of Brazil’s racial democracy. We employ a qualitative research approach in this study and we employ an oral-history-informed post-structuralist approach. We focus our empirical analysis on in-depth interviews with an Afro-descendant female accounting professor who was elected to an important political position. We argue that discussions about democracy in Brazil go beyond formal aspects of civil rights, as our study highlights the necessity of reshaping political processes to engender greater female and Afro-descendent participation, to engender both groups to seek political careers as well as to encourage political parties to include more female and more Afro-descendent candidates. The ultimate goal of such institutional reform is a reformation of ‘racial democracy’ as Afro-descendent women interact with, stand and succeed in Brazilian elections.

Globalization has brought about migration and the transnational movement of people from different backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, using different languages, and has thereby facilitated intercultural interaction and re-interpretation of lived experiences. Gender research in accounting is also influenced by globalization, which has created a platform where different cultures can meet and interact, and where knowledge can be synthesized from the work of authors from various different countries. Building on my own research experiences and their outcomes, this study examines the globalization of gender research in accounting by tracing the development of research on the relationship between Japanese women and accounting. The experiences of Japan highlight that knowledge in accounting, including gender-in-accounting studies, historically flows from West to East. The language, concepts and framework in existing Western-led accounting studies translate and visualize the history and phenomena in a Japanese context to be shared within the international accounting arena.

This study demonstrates that this process provides a body of interesting evidence from Japanese contexts in the fields of history, household accounting and professionalization. Accounting played an enabling role for women in Japan, while positioning women to act as catalysts for social change. Questions arise regarding the potential for such findings (from the East) to flow to the West and be accorded equal status to Western-led accounting research. The study concludes by discussing, in terms of achieving sustainable and innovative knowledge creation in accounting, the importance of herstory in understanding local culture and its integration into ‘global’ academic research.

This chapter contributes to literature illustrating accounting’s impact in making things governable, thinkable, and knowable. Although critical accounting research has been exemplary in examining consequences of its practices on vulnerable populations, there has been a scarcity of investigation regarding incarcerated populace. This chapter begins the process of exploring neoliberal discipline, rule, and calculative techniques intersecting with gender, race, and class in prisons. For this disenfranchised population the construction of the “feared and deviant other” is of particular significance. A crime-control dynamic mythologizing and dreading the criminal has become so institutionalized that discourses justifying surveillance, dominance, and injustice have become normalized, in which accounting takes part. We are particularly interested in the impact for incarcerated women who are shackled, sterilized, and at risk, modes of control that are extraordinary. As such, the dynamics of knowledge creation challenges us to ask what initiates visibility and transformation. We suggest the narratives of incarcerated women are potential devices in this process, and add to an emerging literature revealing the emancipatory possibility of alternative, or counter-accounts. Seen as tools of resistance and change, we give voice to their narratives. As their accounts demonstrate resilience and power, we reject an inevitability of silence. Rather, these critical accounts provide pathways for thinking differently and aspiring for a change, as the social never disappears.

The intention of this chapter is to examine race and racism in the accounting industry in the context of neutrality. Objectivity and impartiality minimize the space for alternative voices, too often unheard from the margin, that speak of a differing racialized professional existence for the Black accountant. A Critical Race Theory (CRT) of accountancy is called for among a number of takes in the genre of Critical Accounting to begin a process of unpacking systemic processes within the profession, which encourage homogeneity and exclusion.

Belief in professional colorblindness as impartiality where race is concerned is critiqued as a tool of domination that fosters injustice because it hides racism from the institution while simultaneously allowing racist practice to go unchallenged.