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Existing literature has begun to identify the agonistic and contested aspects of the ongoing development of accountability systems. These “contests” are particularly important during periods of change when an accountability “deficit” has been identified, that is, when existing accountability systems are deemed inadequate and requiring revision. The purpose of this paper is to explore one such set of contests in the case of large technology and social media firms: the so-called “big tech”. The authors focus specifically on “big tech” because of increasing societal concerns about the harms associated with their products, services and business practices.

The authors analysed four US Congressional hearings, in which the CEO of Facebook was held to account for the company's alleged breaches and harms. The authors conducted a discourse analysis of the dialogue between the account giver (Mark Zuckerberg) and account holders (Members of Congress) in the oral testimony at the four hearings.

Two areas of contestation in the dialogue between the account giver and account holders are identified. “Epistemic contests” involved contestation about the “facts” concerning the harms the company had allegedly caused. “Responsibility contests” involved contestation about who (or what) should be held responsible for these harms and according to what standards or criteria.

The study advances critical dialogical accountability literature by identifying two areas of contestation during periods of change in accountability systems. In so doing, they advanced the theory by conceptualising the process of change as underpinned by discursive contests in which multiple actors construct and contest the “problem” with existing accountability systems. The outcomes of these contests are significant, the authors suggest, because they inform the development of reforms to the accountability system governing big tech firms and other industries undergoing similar periods of contestation and change.

The purpose of this paper is to show the changes to date between the apartheid (ideological) and democratic use and management of public space. The abolition of apartheid laws in urban areas led to a great deal of contestation for space and also to new forms of management of public space.

This paper looks briefly at the background which led to public space being “reserved” on a racial basis. It then examines examples of the contestation for space that developed with the relaxation and, finally, abolition of apartheid legislation. It finally provides and discusses some of the solutions that have developed in both the use and management of public space.

Little has been practically resolved in relation to contestation over various aspects of urban public space. Where public space interventions have been private sector led, such interventions are not without their own difficulties.

Generally the paper confines itself to Johannesburg. The paper relies on the personal experience of the author and research of written material – time constraints have not permitted research through questionnaires.

The practical implications of the results to date are summarised and recommendations made for application to other South African towns and cities.

Relatively little is available on the practical applications of the subject matter in South Africa. The paper could be of value in developing further debates, both in South Africa and in world cities subject to mass immigration.

This paper aims to analyse the nature and extent of convergence within the literature of the narrative turn in narrative accounting research.

The paper offers an actor–network–theoretic perspective drawing on Latour’s theory of citation and Shwed and Bearman’s development of that theory to analyse patterns of convergence.

The paper finds that across the exemplars of narrative turn research examined, there is only a limited level of epistemic engagement so that exemplars achieve their status without undergoing trials of strength.

The paper argues that the resources of the relevant academic community are spread so thinly that each seam – each research question, methodology or method and research context – is mined by no more than a small handful of researchers unable to generate a meaningful volume of contestation. Steps are suggested to better focus research activity.

The use of Latour’s theory of citation to analyse patterns of convergence in accounting research is innovative. The paper proposes a substantial change in the community’s approach to narrative turn research on accounting narratives.

The purpose of this paper is to respond to recent debates surrounding the observable proliferation and intensification of controversies and disputes surrounding urban tourism. It argues that coming to terms with conflicts about and around tourism in cities represents an important frontier for research and puts forth some observations about its causes and characteristics, the debates they have sparked and the scholarly engagement with them to date.

Literature from international sources was reviewed to identify key themes relating to conflicts about and around tourism.

The paper outlines important aspects to consider when studying conflicts about and around tourism in cities, including, first, the role of urban tourism’s massive and often rapid growth; second, the fact that backlashes in cities are often less directed against tourism in its entirety than against particular kinds of tourism (or tourists); third, the need to look at contestations surrounding urban tourism not in isolation from, but in firm connection to the more general rise of struggles and protests in and about urban space unfolding in cities worldwide; fourth, the extent to which contestations are linked to the ongoing, and, it seems, accelerating, geographical spread of tourism; and, finally, the need to critically engage with the notion of tourism itself and move beyond essentialising narratives that portray tourism as an altogether distinct, easily separable social phenomenon.

The paper brings together a scattered, although substantive, literature in and around tourism-related conflicts in order to provide points of orientation and inspiration for future research.

Pakistan had never been a place of serious and nuanced debate and contestation of politics of postcolonial critique, that is, the continuity of economic, political, and cultural dependency of newly independent countries (NICs) on ex-colonizers as pointed out by neocolonialism, dependency theory, and postcolonial theory, respectively. Instead, Pakistan is presented by extant liberal academic literature as a “failed nation” and a state dominated by the military and plagued by religious extremism. As opposed to this, through the literary and activists writings of Aziz-ul-Haq, this chapter will try to illustrate how cultural contestation of the nation-building project postindependence from British rule was a lot more complex and interesting in Pakistan. This was so because the nation-building project of Pakistan was, on the one hand, an amalgamation of Indo-Persian, Arab, Indian, and Western colonial and civilizational influences and, on the other hand, entailed suppression of resilient local and national cultures of its constituent nationalities developed over centuries. This was later expressed in ethno-nationalist politics. However, when it came to the politics of the marginalized in the late 1960s, there were important political, theoretical, and literary insights which caused a change in the direction of political practice in Pakistan, which paralleled the politics expressed by writers like Fanon and early Subaltern Studies influenced by the Naxal Movement in India. The contestation and confusion arising from this dialectic also entered Pakistan's literary and cultural sphere. This chapter not only tries to give a different postcolonial critique of the failure of nation-building project in Pakistan but, though at a preliminary level, is an attempt to separate the original postcolonial theory in its radical tradition from contemporary postmodern/poststructuralist postcolonial theory marked with pessimism and resignation.

With only a few exceptions, economic sociology scholarship remains almost silent about illegality and crime in the economy. The implicit premise in the literature on market sociology is that institutional structures and exchanges taking place in markets are law abiding in nature. As a consequence of this legality bias the study of morality in markets has so far only addressed commodities – like human organs, gambling, drugs, alcohol, or tobacco – whose legal status depends on broad social agreements and has excluded markets whose workings are dependent on formally legitimized institutions like property rights, trademark laws, or copyrights. Drawing on seven months of ethnographic research, this chapter addresses the phenomenon of emerging moral justifications in the context of a marketplace for counterfeit and sweatshop-produced garments. In line with Anteby’s proposal on a “practice-based view of moral markets,” it argues that despite the broad moral consensus around trademark laws and the absence of professionals who advocate for legalization, moral justifications views arise from rising aspirations in such illegal markets. The case expands existing understandings of morality and contestation in economic sociology literature and shows its relevance in the context of recent academic scholarship on perceptions of the future as a source of moral justification of market exchanges.

Over the past few years Uber has experienced more controversy than any other digital platform. Looking at the case of Uber in Poland, this chapter distinguishes four arenas in which Uber has been contested: in cities, in public opinion, in the political realm, and in the legal field. Each of these arenas has a different logic and dynamic and also involves different actors and institutions. Nevertheless, the various struggles are connected with each other. Victories and defeats in one spill over into another, providing actors with resources or imposing constraints on them. The author illustrates the connection between various arenas by looking at court cases involving Uber drivers in Poland and shows how those court cases were not only legal events that determined the legality of Uber in Poland but also moral and political events that influenced struggles over legitimacy that were taking place outside the courtroom.

This article examines the borders of memory inherent to a Japanese World Heritage site, and their significance for the 2020 opening of the Industrial Heritage Information Center in Tokyo. The Center was constructed to disseminate information regarding the widely dispersed “Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution”, which was recognized as a “serial site” by UNESCO in 2015. As with the original nomination, the opening of this Centre resulted in stringent protests from South Korea, who sought to have UNESCO consider revoking its original listing of these 23 Industrial Sites as collectively constituting the heritage of the world. This Center materializes a “border of memory” between Japan and South Korea that is the outcome of the displacement and re-siting of the heritage associated with Japan's Meiji Industrial Sites.

Research material is derived from nomination documents, site visits, and newspaper reports in order to contextualize and analyse the disputes associated with this particular World Heritage nomination.

The paper points to how the borders of memory present at heritage sites may shift through contestation. Efforts to fix the meaning of heritage find themselves subverted by connections across such borders of memory.

The paper traces the process by which the geographically-dispersed “Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution” have been collectivized through UNESCO's recognition into a single “border of memory” between Japan and Korea, one which the Information Center subsequently succeeded in materializing and reproducing within Japan's national capital.