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This essay argues for a a radical interactionist framework using autoethnographic tools as well as critical feminist perspectives. Not all “masculine” systems are necessarily all “evil” and “feminist” systems are not unambiguously good, devoid of context. The vantage point from which I engage Lonnie Athens’ work on radical interactionism is rooted personally and professionally: as a woman of color who was formerly a tenured Associate Professor of English and Humanities turned joint Juris Doctor in Law and Women’s Studies Graduate and Teaching Fellow in Women’s Studies.

An autoethnographic exploration of critical pedagogies, as practiced by law professors, concretely shows that a radical interactionist framework more accurately describes the fluctuating borders of power in the classroom. In addition, feminist critiques against Athens’ work, as evidenced, for example, by Deegan’s critique of the “patriarchal” type of “Chicago pragmatism” practiced by Mead, suffer from similar simplistic binaries as Noddings’ “ethic of care” – which reduces gender to sex, and unconditionally idealizes the “feminine” as “feminist.” Most importantly, this biologically determinist perspective does not take into the account the lived realities of lesbians and women of color, for whom the principle of domination is always, already a part of the worlds into which they are flung.

This chapter closes with an examination of how an acceptance of the radical interactionist principle of domination combined with an intersectional approach, rather than a binary of gender, could yield fruitful results in new areas of application, such as international human rights, and critical race theory and criminal law.

This investigation/report/reflection was motivated largely by the occasion of the first Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (CSEAR) “Summer School” in North America.¹ But its roots reach down as well to other recent reflection/investigation pieces, in particular, Mathews (1997), Gray (2002, 2006), and Deegan and Soltys (2007). The last of these authors note (p. 82) that CSEAR Summer Schools were initiated in Australasia, at least partly as a means to spur interest and activity in social and environmental accounting (SEA) research. So, too, was the first North American CSEAR Summer School.² We believe, therefore, that it is worthwhile to attempt in some way to identify where SEA currently stands as a field of interest within the broader academic accounting domain in Canada and the United States.³ As well, however, we believe this is a meaningful time for integrating our views on the future of our chosen academic sub-discipline with those of Gray (2002), Deegan and Soltys (2007), and others. Thus, as the title suggests, we seek to identify (1) who the SEA researchers in North America are; (2) the degree to which North American–based accounting research journals publish SEA-related research; and (3) where we, the SEA sub-discipline within North America, might be headed. We begin with the who.

My title comes from Blanche Geer's (1964) famous paper ‘First days in the field’. When she was about to do the preliminary fieldwork for the project that became Becker, Geer, and Hughes (1968) on liberal arts undergraduates, she reflected on her own student ‘self’. That young woman had a taste for ‘milkshakes and convertibles’ (p. 379), which to Geer as an adult woman seemed incomprehensible and foreign. Being British, my life has never included any enthusiasm for milkshakes or convertibles which do not figure in UK culture, but the phrase has always enchanted me, and I have always wanted to use it as a title. This autobiographical reflection is in two main parts. The first half is a reflexive examination of my current life and scholarly work. In some ways that will seem to be the self-portrait of a somewhat uni-dimensional workaholic with an uneasy relationship with the symbolic interactionist intellectual tradition. The second part of the piece is an account of my family history, childhood and adolescence spent with my eccentric mother, and the reader is invited to understand the choices made in adulthood as largely contrastive: designed to ensure my life was as unlike my mother's as possible. Just as Geer looked back to her college years and found her youthful self strange, I look back to my childhood and see a very different person.