حفظ "اهداف بحرانی" در طی یک چشم انداز تئوریک پست مدرن در تحقیقات حسابداری

This essay argues that a postmodern perspective on critique expands rather than diminishes the space for political engagement in critical accounting research. Wolin’s (1991) characterization of “postmodern politics" is used as a typos to situate accounting in a postmodern political context. We provide examples of accounting over the four moments that Wolin describes: the delegitimization of power; a minimalist sense of the justification of power; the elevation of competence as a principle virtue; and, the blurring of distinction between public and private life. If Wolin’s schema of postmodern politics has descriptive validity, then it may provide a useful way to think about the shape and character of critical research in accounting. To that end, we broadly outline some of the ways in which we think two of the foremost social theorists of our time—Jürgen Habermas and Michel Foucault—may have intellectual resources to contribute to those interested in pursuing Wolin’s schema in order to advance a critical theoretic literature of accounting.

What we have offered in this essay is a minor contribution toward advancing the notion that “critical intent” can be maintained within a postmodern theoretical perspective in critical accounting research. We sought to do that in two ways.First, we paraphrased Wolin’s notion that “postmodern politics” differs from modern politics on four counts: a delegitimization of power; a minimalist sense of the justification of power; the elevation of competence as the principal political virtue;and, an obliteration of the distinction between public and private life. We offered admittedly paraphrastic examples of these moments in an accounting context.Second, we broadly outlined some of the ways in which we think two of the foremost of commenting on them. Instead, their influence on me remains retrospective, a contribution reached when I was no longer at the age of intellectual “discoveries”. And I don’t even know . . . I realized how the Frankfurt people had tried ahead of time to assert things that I too had been working for years to sustain. . . . As far as I’m concerned, I think that the Frankfurt School set problems that are still being worked on. Among others, the effects of power that are connected to a rationality that has been historically and geographically defined in the West, starting from the sixteenth century on. The West could never have attained the economic and cultural effects that are unique to it without the exercise of that specific formof rationality. . . . (1991, p. 117). When I recognize all these merits of the Frankfurt School, I do so with a bad conscience of one who should have known them and studied them much earlier than was the case.Perhaps if I had read those works earlier on, I would have saved useful time, surely: I wouldn’t have needed to write some things and I would have avoided certain errors. At any rate, if I had encountered the Frankfurt School while young, I would have been seduced to the point of doing nothing else in life but the job of commenting on them. Instead, their influence on me remains retrospective, a contribution reached when I was no longer at the age of intellectual “discoveries”. And I don’t even know whether to be glad or feel sorry about it (ibid., pp. 119–120). At least critical accountants should “be glad about it”. One Habermas and one Foucault are far more valuable than two of either of them in confronting the challenges posed by locating critical accounting research in a postmodern political context.As a final point, Wolin probably has less use for Foucault within this typos of “postmodern politics”. He is, after all, strongly critical of much of Foucault. Be that as it may, it is of no consequence to us or to this essay. Reading Wolin, Foucault and Habermas together in this way donates critical force to all of us. That’s the point of what we do.