Against consensus
Material, symbolic and discursive struggles against accounting
and accountability regimes
Abstract
This paper explores the multiple forms of struggle against consensus. Drawing on Bourdieu’s
theory of symbolic domination, it outlines the negative aspects of consensus and ways to struggle
against it. The paper argues that consensus is less about dialogue and harmony than about social
reproduction of dominant interests denying access to alternative, marginalised voices. A range of
studies documenting struggles against consensus are thus presented. First, I review studies of
reappropriation strategies struggling for equality and social justice. Second, I discuss the
emancipatory potential of micro-politics of resistance, including discursive struggles for identity
recognition and resistance against the colonisation of subjectivities. Third, I examine the subversive
potential of alternative accounts. Social movements have often been presented as able to build
linkages between various forms of struggle, from micro-resistance to organised protest in the public
sphere, and articulate counter-hegemonic narratives. However, I argue that challenging
accountability regimes requires not only collective mobilisation but also cultural capital and
reflexivity to denaturalise domination and move outside consensus. Broadly speaking, I thus aim
to show the value of systemic critique to challenge the universal validity of dialogue, debate and
consensus.
Keywords. Consensus, struggle, resistance, social movements
1
Introduction
Dialogue, debate and the confrontation of divergent viewpoints to build consensus positions
often have very positive connotations, and the idea that consensus building should be a central
value for accounting is a powerful and appealing one. The assertion that accounting should serve
to improve decision-making by enabling comparisons between choices and constructing common
understandings to facilitate communication associates it with all the appearances of rationality. The
premise that spaces of accountability are created to increase both political and economic actors’
responsibility by bringing in a diversity of groups trying to reach general agreement through
dialogue and compromise helps portray accountability as a central value of democratic regimes.
Yet consensus has been the subject of recent criticism. The positive value of consensus is grounded
in a pluralistic conception of society (Brown, 2009; Brown and Dillard, 2013), which assumes that
power is widely diffused so that no individual is able to predominate and consistently influence
social choices. This conception is contradicted by the theory of elites (Mills, 1956) and by the view
that there is a continuing conflict in society between essentially antagonistic classes (Marx, 1890).
To question the positive value of consensus, some have argued that it should not be viewed
as general, jointly-reached agreement, but rather as a form of domination in which alternative
voices are ignored and marginalised groups are denied access. In situations marked by asymmetric
power distribution and structural conflicts between irreconcilable interests and values, it is unlikely
that any consensus could fairly and equally represent all parties involved (Cooper and Hopper,
1987, 2007; Brown and Dillard, 2013). Consensus, then, is not compromise but social reproduction
of dominant interests. It is less about dialogue and debate than about putting certain issues and aims
beyond discussion and contestation (Farjaudon and Morales, 2013). Accounting arguably
participates in obscuring antagonisms and power asymmetries by portraying social interactions as
mere transactions, negotiations and compromises. This is because accounting serves specific
interests (i.e., it operates for the benefit of some groups and to the detriment of others) while
masking the contested nature of its objectives, outcomes, and underlying rationales (Cooper and
Sherer, 1984; Hopper et al., 1987; Hopper and Armstrong, 1991). It redefines disagreements as
complementary stances that can be quantified and hence confronted to build compromises.
This paper thus contributes to a stream of literature questioning the role of accounting in
building consensuses, reinforcing the status quo and furthering the interests of dominant groups.
Precisely, I explore the multiple forms of struggle against consensus. The literature on these
struggles is not itself consensual. Following Marx, some authors argue that social justice and its
improvement should be the goal of struggles for equality (e.g., Rancière, 1995, 1998). Others
remark that a focus on redistribution should not lead to marginalisation of movements and groups
fighting not so much against inequality as to have their proudly-asserted difference recognised
(Taylor, 1992; Honneth, 1992; Fraser, 1995, 2000). Debates have also emerged about the means to
be used in struggles and their relative effectiveness. While traditional struggles primarily target
economic and material conditions, more recent studies have looked at the micro-politics of
resistance (Scott, 1990; Thomas and Davies, 2005), micro-emancipation (Alvesson and Willmott,
1992, 2002; Spicer et al., 2009) and discursive struggles (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985; Spicer and
Böhm, 2007; van Bommel and Spicer, 2011). Several studies brought accounting and
accountability regimes to those debates (Everett, 2004; Brown, 2009; Spence, 2009; Brown and
2
Dillard, 2013). Overall, these studies show that accounting and accountability regimes constitute
important sites of struggle and politics yet participate in the production of feelings of harmony,
cooperation and consensus.
This paper examines the literature on resistance to accounting and accountability regimes to
provide a theoretical basis to understand the multiple forms of struggle against consensus. To
consider both objective and subjective aspects of consensus without enforcing compromise and
falsely collective agreements, I draw on Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic domination (Bourdieu,
1976, 1977, 1980, 1992b). I argue that Bourdieu, having examined both the material and symbolic
aspects of domination and articulated theoretical arguments and empirical evidence of struggles
against consensus, provides a solid framework to study how consensus can be contested. This
framework is complemented by a selective review of more recent studies about social movements
(Benford and Snow, 2000; Tilly, 2008; Tarrow, 2011).
A range of studies documenting struggles against consensus are thus presented. In the next
section, I will argue that accounting and accountability regimes tend to produce consensus despite
social antagonism and exploitation, thereby legitimising unequal distributions. This section will
also provide a critical assessment of social movements studies based on a Bourdieusian reading to
build a framework to study the struggles against consensus. I will continue by examining how
people take action to break general consent to inequality and injustice. In a second section, I review
studies of reappropriation strategies struggling for equality and social justice. In a third section I
discuss the emancipatory potential of micro-politics of resistance, including discursive struggles
for identity recognition and resistance against the colonisation of subjectivities. In a fourth section,
I examine the subversive potential of alternative accounts. Broadly speaking, I argue that
challenging accountability regimes requires not only collective mobilisation but also cultural
capital and reflexivity to denaturalise domination and move outside consensus, and hence aim to
show the value of systemic critique to challenge the universal validity of dialogue, debate and
consensus.
Consensus as reflecting dominant interests
Labour process theory provides one of the most well-developed accounts of how people
struggle against consensus (Spicer and Böhm, 2007). Following Marx (1890) and Braverman
(1974), labour process theorists reject the notion that consensus reflects harmonious relations and
that struggle and resistance are the result of self-interested individuals trying to improve their
situation to the detriment of compromises reached to modernise organisations. Instead, consensus
is understood as an ideological vehicle used to mask the antagonistic, exploitative nature of the
capitalist relations of production (Hopper et al., 1987; Armstrong, 1991) and resistance as a
struggle against inequality and strategy to improve social justice (Cooper and Hopper, 2007).
Capitalism gives rise to an exploitative relationship and hence to an inherent antagonism between
labour and capital in the workplace and beyond. However, if both are structurally locked into a
power struggle over resources, asymmetries of positions lead to inequality and domination. In such
a situation, any consensus reflects the dominant interests, and the struggle against consensus is not
so much resistance as reappropriation by the people subjected to capitalist exploitation.
Instead of assuming social harmony and congruence of interests, labour process theorists
emphasise structural antagonisms – which cast doubt on the possibility of reaching a universally
3
beneficial consensus. However, labour process approaches have been called into question for
paying too little attention to subjectivity (Knights and Willmott, 1989). With their focus on
‘objective’, ‘structural’, and ‘material’ causes of conflicts and dissensus, these studies make it
difficult to take into consideration the subjective, situated, and discursive aspects of consensus.
In order to study the subjective and discursive aspects of accounting controls, several studies
have taken inspiration from the work of Michel Foucault. Instead of assuming structural
antagonisms and objective (conflicts of) interests, Foucault examined how power translates into a
range of techniques, technologies, practices, devices and problematisations, which together
produce discourses that influence subjectivities. Disciplinary power that produces docile bodies
(Foucault, 1975), bio-power that normalises populations (Foucault, 1976, 1981, 1997, 2004b), and
governmentality that shapes practices of governing oneself and others (Foucault, 1984, 2001,
2004b; a, 2008, 2009) all emerge through discourses, techniques and fields of knowledge, and
influence both conduct and subjectivity. Therefore, any consensus reflects hegemonic discourses
and the struggle against consensus is not resistance so much as the shaping of new subjectivities
through articulations of counter-hegemonic discourses.
Several authors have taken inspiration from the work of Foucault to study power not as
something possessed by specific individuals but as something exercised through technologies,
including accounting and control technologies. Most of these studies describe accounting as a
disciplinary power used to make people governable (Miller and O’Leary, 1987) and manufacture
a responsible (Miller and O’Leary, 1990, 1993, 1994) and self-regulating, calculating citizen
(Miller and Rose, 1990; Rose, 1991; Miller, 2001). However, studies of the disciplinary power of
accounting have been criticized for underestimating collective struggles and resistance (Covaleski
et al., 1998; Ezzamel et al., 2001, 2004). With their focus on the ‘enabling’ power of accounting,
these studies also neglect broader domination patterns and say little about how to struggle against
consensus.
Social movements have been presented as a way to reconcile these two approaches, and build
linkages between a variety of struggles to produce counter-hegemonic practices and shake the
consensus (Touraine, 1978; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985; Spicer and Böhm, 2007). Studies of social
movements have examined how movements mobilise both material and discursive resources to
turn specific and localised practices of resistance into collective struggles played out in the public
arena. These studies have underlined that grievances and discontent are not sufficient for
individuals to engage in collective action (Oberschall, 1973; Gamson, 1975; McCarthy and Zald,
1977; Tilly, 1978; Touraine, 1978). Political opportunity analysis (Tilly, 1978; McAdam, 1982),
with its focus on structural and institutional possibilities and constraints, has showed the diversity
of repertoires of contention available for collective action and their evolutions as socio-historical
contexts change (McAdam et al., 2001; Tarrow, 1990, 2011; Tilly, 2008). Resource mobilisation
models (Gamson, 1975; Tilly, 1978; Zald and McCarthy, 1987b; Edwards and McCarthy, 2004),
with their emphasis on the significance of organisational bases, resource accumulation and
collective coordination, highlight the conditions in which a set of individuals with a sense of
injustice can take collective action and hence form a social group with a collective interest (Kelly,
1998). Theories of cognitive framing (Snow et al., 1986; Benford and Snow, 2000; Snow, 2004),
with their emphasis on the construction of meaning and the building of narratives to portray a
situation as unjust, locate blame and suggest lines of action, highlight how this sense of injustice is
4
crafted, maintained and shaped (Gamson and Meyer, 1996; Zald, 1996; Jasper, 1997; della Porta
and Diani, 1999). Broadly speaking, these studies have shown how, by building linkages between
a variety of separate local struggles, social movements can become major actors to destabilise the
status quo (Touraine, 1978; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985; Spicer and Böhm, 2007).
And yet, social movements themselves have been said to produce consensus as much as
dissensus. This is because mobilising bystanders often requires a coherent, unified message
(Klandermans and Oegema, 1987; Gamson, 2004; Smith, 2004). Maintaining a consensus inside
the movement also helps to present a united front when entering into conflicts with external
opponents (Gamson and Meyer, 1996; della Porta and Diani, 1999). This explains why, although
social movements are presented as adversarial in nature, they are also said to rely on consensus
mobilisation (Klandermans, 1984; Klandermans and Oegema, 1987; Benford and Snow, 2000;
della Porta, 2009). As Johnston and Klandermans (1995 p.10) observe, “competing and opposing
actors attempt to mobilize consensus by anchoring their definitions of the situation in the collective
beliefs of various social groups.” Several studies thus observe that mobilisation usually increases
with the negotiation of shared understanding and the building of a collective identity (Gamson,
1992; Melucci, 1995, 1996; Benford and Snow, 2000). Political in nature, social movements try to
replace one consensus by another rather than promote dissensus. This means they tend to favour
consensual critique, for instance by focusing blame and responsibility (Benford and Snow, 2000
p.616), and overlook systemic critique of broad patterns of domination (Crossley, 2002; but see
Kelly, 1998). Trying to access the public sphere, social movements are unlikely to pay attention to
the mundane forms of power that are exerted through technologies of government. Subtle power
exerted through ostensibly technical devices can cause grievances but rarely results in public
outrage.
To address these limitations, Bourdieu’s theorising can be useful to build a framework to
understand the multiple forms of struggles against consensus. In order to register how agents can
struggle against both material (‘objective’) and discursive (‘subjective’) aspects of consensus,
Bourdieu proposed a theory of symbolic domination (Bourdieu, 1976, 1977, 1980, 1992b) and
provided empirical studies of the power effects of consensus (Bourdieu, 1972, 1979, 2002, 2012,
1989a), as well as arguments on how it can be resisted (Bourdieu, 1998, 2001, 2004, 1989b, 1992a).
Bourdieu (1980, 1992b, 1997) studied how the materiality and subjectivity of power intersect
to produce patterns of symbolic domination. To account for the diversity and situated character of
accumulation strategies, Bourdieu examined the multiplicity of fields and capitals. The concept of
“field” means that agents’ objective conditions are not fixed, but defined through relative
valuations of positions in a field that is in a constant process of flux due to the agents’ strategies
and trajectories. The notion of a plurality of “capitals” means that the definitions of stakes and
interests are contingent on a field, as agents struggle to accumulate not only economic capital but
also other forms of prestige and power as symbolically defined in a specific field – the most highlyvalued symbolic capital in one field may well be considered futile in any other field. To account
for the subjective aspects of domination, Bourdieu examined what he called practical knowledge
(Bourdieu, 1972, 1980, 1994) and symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 1977, 1980, 1997). Practical
knowledge means that social structures are embodied through practice as dispositions (habitus)
that influence agents’ perceptions, appreciations and strategies, that is both their conduct and their
subjectivity. Symbolic violence means that specific private interests (of dominant groups) are
5
transformed into “collective interests” that come to be perceived as “universal” (Bourdieu, 1977,
1980, 1994, 1997) and consensual. Through practical knowledge and symbolic violence, unequal
distributions (material domination) are euphemised and hence rendered more legitimate (subjective
domination). Symbolic violence and practical knowledge thus produce asymmetrical consensus by
supporting both positional power and a feeling of equality of opportunities through what Bourdieu
calls misrecognition.
Several authors have built on Bourdieu’s theorising to show that accounting participates in
the definition, emergence and restructuring of fields, shaping dispositions, interests and habitus
(Oakes et al., 1998; Everett, 2003; Neu, 2006; Hamilton and Ó hÓgartaigh, 2009; Alawattage,
2011; Cooper et al., 2011). These studies show that the main barriers to change and struggles
against consensus are misrecognition, symbolic violence, and the embodiment of social structures
into habitus and practical knowledge. Struggling against consensus then means struggling against
its materiality (i.e., questioning perception and categorisation schemes enclosed within taken for
granted classifications and judgment criteria) as well as against its subjectivity (i.e., destabilising
misrecognition and symbolic violence by exposing its arbitrariness). In what follows, I will thus
draw on Bourdieu’s framework to build a theory of resistance to consensus. I will, first, review
studies of struggles for equality, second, assess the value of micro-politics of resistance, and third,
examine the subversive potential of alternative accounts. Further, I will argue that challenging
accountability regimes requires not only collective mobilisation but also cultural capital and
reflexivity to denaturalise domination and move outside consensus. Broadly speaking, I aim to
show the value of systemic critique to challenge the universal validity of dialogue, debate and
(asymmetrical) consensus.
Dissensus as reappropriation and struggles for equality
Bourdieu’s writings can be considered as attempts to uncover the hidden mechanisms of
domination and highlight how social injustice is produced and reproduced. He described social
worlds as fields characterised by systems of positions agents can hold to build strategies of
accumulation. The structure of a field defines which positions offer access to which resources,
dominant positions being defined as those in which people are able to influence the circuits of
capital distribution. As Malsch and colleagues (2011 p.214) note, “The social world is
characterized by relations between agents occupying different positions in a given hierarchical
power structure.” Bourdieu thus developed a theory of fields where material conditions,
asymmetrical positions, and unequal distributions in large part explain the social reproduction of
dominant interests.
Several studies illustrate the role of accounting in promoting unequal distributions and the
reproduction of domination. They show how capitalists use it to influence the production and
distribution of surplus, and managers to reorganise and control work to extract surplus and effort
from the labour force (Hopper et al., 1987; Armstrong, 1991; Bryer, 2006; Cooper and Hopper,
2007; Ezzamel et al., 2008). Accounting also acts as an ideological device, since in producing
reified mystifications that mask (conflicts of) interests and inequalities of power and rewards, it
naturalises and legitimises unequal distributions and the appropriation of surplus by capitalists
(Hopper et al., 1987). As Cooper and Hopper (2007 p.211) put it, accounting “is an ideological
language of calculation directed at employee control.” Accounting thus is implicated in ‘distorted’
6
forms of consensus, where specific interests are promoted yet presented as universal. As soon as
elites are constituted they can use accounting to shape what is to be seen as consensual and what
becomes delegitimised, that is to influence the circuits of capital distribution. Consensus thus
serves to make exploitation, inequalities and exclusion more acceptable, that is to manufacture
consent to domination and injustice (Bourdieu, 2012). Protest against such distorted consensus is
the focus of struggles for social justice and equality.
Hopper and Armstrong (1991), for instance, offer an alternative interpretation to Johnson and
Kaplan’s history of accounting techniques and calculations. They argue that accounting controls
were not driven only by economic imperatives of productivity and efficiency but also by a desire
to control labour, intensify work and appropriate the surplus extracted from such intensification.
As new technologies and organisational forms (or social and institutional changes more generally)
did not go unchallenged, capitalists and managers also used accounting controls to secure
compliance from the workforce. Accounting thus fabricates consensus to secure capital
accumulation and limit labour discontent. More recently, Armstrong (2002) showed that activitybased costing and management techniques create pressure to extend to staff departments the
disciplines of budgetary control and standard costing that used to focus on manufacturing
operations. Ezzamel et al. (2008) argue that accounting metrics are used to restructure work and
discipline activities to deliver shareholder value levels expected by ‘the market.’
Looking beyond the point of production, several studies argue that accounting plays a
significant role in the global restructuring of class relations implicated in what has been called
‘globalisation’, ‘financialisation’ and ‘neoliberalism,’ which has resulted in constant downward
pressure on wages and conditions (Arnold and Cooper, 1999; Catchpowle et al., 2004; Cole and
Cooper, 2006; Cooper et al., 2010; see also Bourdieu, 1998). Arnold and Cooper (1999), for
instance, describe the role of the accounting industry in organising, directing and implementing
privatisations which resulted in dismantling of labour protection, redundancies, lower wages and
less favourable employment conditions. Redundancies mean that skills and tacit knowledge are
lost, and this can have consequences for safety, as observed in the railway industry (Cole and
Cooper, 2006). These policies have also resulted in delegitimising redistribution mechanisms, most
visibly in the introduction of regressive taxation systems (Cooper et al., 2010). They have directly
targeted the field of power, as is most visible through what is usually called ‘new public
management’ and its effects on the accumulation and distribution of wealth in society (Dirsmith
and Jablonsky, 1979; Preston et al., 1992; Oakes et al., 1998; Edwards et al., 1999; Cooper and
Hopper, 2007). These studies show how consensus was slowly built around a specific notion of
public organisation and the way it should be managed and controlled.
One specific setting where neoliberalism did not involve downward pressure but in fact
increased public spending is the so-called ‘military-industrial complex.’ Chwastiak (1996, 1998)
shows that accounting was used by the US government to legitimise wealth transfers from social
services to defence, thus promoting capital accumulation and appropriation by defence companies.
In the process, accounting transformed (nuclear) war from a horrific potentiality into a series of
problems to be solved (Chwastiak, 2001). The introduction of accounting devices such as planning,
programming and budgeting (PPB) into the US Department of Defense converted reflections about
war (including the development and use of nuclear weapons) into mundane questions of cost
effectiveness and resource allocation, thus transforming the unthinkable (such as nuclear war) into
7
ostensibly value-free decision-making. As the author writes, accounting introduced “a rhetoric
which lent rational support to a highly irrational act. By masking the human and social costs of
war, PPB turned the preparation for violence into a process free from emotions and moral
judgements” (Chwastiak, 2001 p.516).
The above-mentioned studies illustrate the role of accounting in promoting unequal
distributions and the reproduction of domination. They also suggest that accounting and control
can manufacture consent to exploitative employment relations (Burawoy, 1979). However,
Bourdieu relates circuits of distribution and relations of domination to the configuration of fields.
He also argues that, shaped by agents’ strategies, struggles, and trajectories, fields are in a constant
state of flux. As Neu (2006) put it, fields are characterised by “enduring yet changeable patterns of
social relations.” This means that, although potentially very stable, unequal systems of positions
are also marked by some fragility. The material conditions of domination should not lead us to
overlook conflict and resistance (Covaleski et al., 1998; Ezzamel et al., 2004).
As Ezzamel et al. (2004 p.270) remind us, the influence of accounting techniques is
“mediated by workers’ willingness to embrace, or at least support, their operation.” As they noted
in a subsequent paper, even managers responsible for implementing accounting controls can resist
the devices used to secure their compliance: “the seductive appeal of high salaries and lucrative
share options did not necessarily succeed in buying their unqualified commitment” (Ezzamel et al.,
2008 p.130). As Bryer (2006 p.559) observes, “Conflicts inevitably arise in the accounting process
because capital buys labour power from workers, including management, whose interests may not
coincide with those of capital.” This raises the question of the dialectics of consent and resistance
in the struggle against consensus. Researchers have observed very different modes of struggle
against domination and exploitation, from ‘goldbricking’ (Roy, 1952) and the ‘fix’ (Roy, 1954) to
organisational ‘misbehaviour’ (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999) and ‘sabotage’ (Brown, 1977).
Although descriptions of informal resistance remind us how mundane and widespread struggles
for reappropriation are, trade unions arguably remain the most important actors in organized
workplace resistance and negotiating working conditions with representatives of capital (Cooper,
1995; Spicer and Böhm, 2007).
Several studies have addressed the issue of how, and whether, union officials should use
accounting information (Owen and Lloyd, 1985; Bougen et al., 1990). Accounting has even been
presented as a way to manipulate trade unions. For instance, Ogden and Bougen (1985 p.221)
argued that “disclosure of accounting information [to trade unions] serves as a means of ideological
recruitment, aimed at educating trade unions in managerial terms about organizational objectives
and the problems confronting the organization in pursuing them.” Oakes and Covaleski (1994)
showed how some union leaders in the post World War II United States supported accountingbased incentive plans (which can have detrimental effects on employment and working conditions,
see Ezzamel et al. (2008)) as a way to counteract more engineering-based incentive plans (such as
piece rates for example). Ezzamel et al. (2004) also describe a case where, although worker
resistance is widespread, the position of shop stewards is ambivalent, which leads to an
exacerbation of the struggle, involving more direct action from workers.
As well as its use in relation to unions, several authors argue that accounting translates
political struggles for reappropriation into consensual technical issues, thus favouring the
manufacture of consent to social injustice. For instance, Knights and Collinson (1987) describe a
8
situation where workers are unable to contest accounting numbers. Management thus use
accounting to enforce a script on management-labour discussions, and hence to enhance managerial
control over workshop activities and secure labour collaboration (Bougen, 1989). Fogarty and
Radcliffe (1999 p.526) also note that accountants promoted the use of accounting in ‘industrial
relations’ as a means of reducing unrest. As Oakes and Covaleski (1994 p.579) put it, “these studies
ask whether workers are able to “see through” or challenge management’s representations of an
organization’s financial position or labor costs.” Since the inherent features of accounting make it
difficult for workers to challenge its underlying representations (Morgan and Willmott, 1993), it
should be no surprise that most of these studies conclude that accounting information tends to
favour managerial interests to the detriment of labour and unions while reducing the workforce’s
ability to engage in struggles for reappropriation. As Cooper (1995 p.176) argued, “there is
probably only the remotest possibility that accounting could have a revolutionary potential.” This
is because accounting generally provides legitimacy for the exercise of managerial authority and
tends to obscure the inherently antagonistic nature of labour relations.
However, against the idea that accounting can only be used in the interests of management
and capital, McBarnet et al. (1993 p.82) argued that accounting can be used strategically, as
opposed to consensually, that is as a weapon in adversarial disputes: “In a way similar to the lawyer
advocate in the adversary legal system, where evidence is presented, examined and cross-examined
and arguments are used in a partisan way in the interests of the client, accounting figures are
constructed, deconstructed and used by conflicting interests in the struggle for economic
ascendancy.” Other studies have examined whether and how accounting itself can be contested.
Berry et al. (1985), for instance, in the context of mine closures in the UK, showed how using
alternative assumptions to build alternative accountings could have led to different decisions, and
argue that political decisions are legitimised by masking the questionability of such assumptions.
Preston et al. (1992) describe a case where accounting devices fabricated to promote new public
management in the UK National Health Service were contested and eventually rejected. They note:
“Resistance is not just a negative force. It offers the proponents of the initiative opportunities for
redefinition and new fabrications” (Preston et al., 1992 p.579). And yet, studies of resistance to
accounting usually describe only limited results (Armstrong, 1985; Berry et al., 1985; Dent, 1991;
Scapens and Roberts, 1993; Ogden, 1995; Oakes et al., 1998; Ezzamel et al., 2004; Ezzamel and
Burns, 2005; Gendron et al., 2007; Mueller and Carter, 2007; Ezzamel et al., 2008; Gleadle and
Cornelius, 2008).
This is where researchers (and maybe intellectuals more generally) can play a role: they can
provide new ways of seeing, identify ‘objective interests’ and contest the seeming technicality of
accounting (Cooper, 1995; Neu et al., 2001; Cooper et al., 2005). Neu et al. (2001), for instance,
describe two cases where researchers tried to intervene to question the neutrality of accounting
numbers produced to legitimise political choices. Research itself has been said to influence the way
accounting is understood. Functionalist approaches tend to reinforce its appearance of technicality
and hence reproduce the status quo, while more radical, dialectic and reflexive approaches should
help unmask its role in shaping social processes and hence serve to trigger more substantive change
(Cooper, 1983; Armstrong, 1991; Cooper et al., 2005). Historical and comparative studies describe
alternatives to accounting controls and show that what is taken for granted could have been
otherwise. This questions consensual conceptualisations of management and relegates them to
9
dominant interpretations that have proved successful, in specific time-space horizons, in silencing
alternative possibilities. However, several authors argue that as well as research, the struggle
against consensus should build on social movements, and even sometimes on creation of new
movements (Neu et al., 2001; Shenkin and Coulson, 2007; Spicer and Böhm, 2007; Cooper et al.,
2010).
These studies highlight the role of accounting in producing social injustice, privileging
specific interests, and participating in the reproduction of domination. They are important for the
struggle against consensus as they draw our attention to conflicts and struggles in social processes
(where more conventional theories tend to focus on harmony and cooperation), and the
beneficiaries of consensual positions (Cooper and Hopper, 2007 p.211). Unmasking hidden
mechanisms of power, they have sought to demystify accounting’s claims to neutrality and thus
expose how accounting is implicated in articulating the power of capital (Armstrong, 1991 p.5).
These studies illustrate the major impacts accounting controls can have on people’s work and life,
including deskilling (Loft, 1986; Cooper and Taylor, 2000; Armstrong, 2002), reduced wages and
conditions (Catchpowle et al., 2004; Cooper et al., 2010) and redundancies (Arnold and Cooper,
1999; Ezzamel et al., 2008). They thus offer valuable insights into the dark side of consensus, and
the possibilities of fighting consensus.
However, Bourdieu (1980, 1992b, 1997) argued that patterns of domination are produced at
the intersection between materiality and subjectivity. This is because social structures are embodied
as dispositions that influence agents’ perceptions and appreciations (Bourdieu, 1972, 1980, 1994).
The subjective aspects of domination thus help explain how unequal distributions are rendered
more legitimate, that is why struggles against consensus are often considered unrealistic.
Dissensus as micro-politics and struggles over identity
Instead of assuming that people struggle against what threatens their ‘objective’ interests, or,
in the language of social movements, that grievances are sufficient to mobilise resources for
contestation, Bourdieu argued that interests are neither stable nor predefined, but rather constructed
and designated through struggles for symbolic power. This is because domination works through
the embodiment by agents of specific dispositions that influence their perceptions and
appreciations, including their conception of what goes in their interest. For Bourdieu, power works
through the incorporation of arbitrary consensuses into agents’ habitus. This subjective dimension
of power makes organised, class-based struggles against consensus and unequal distributions more
difficult since, as Lukes (1974 p.27) put it, “The most effective and insidious use of power is to
prevent such conflict from arising in the first place.” Subtle forms of power and domination thus
target agents’ dispositions and subjectivity to encourage them to perceive it as unreasonable to
struggle against consensus (Bourdieu, 1980, 1992b).
Several studies illustrate the links between accounting, control and subjectivity (Knights and
Collinson, 1987; Knights and Willmott, 1989; Alvesson and Willmott, 2002; Knights and McCabe,
2003). Their argument is that accounting and control technologies influence the reflexive relations
through which people come to know themselves and become tied to a certain identity. Maybe the
most convincing illustration of how techniques of control influence the subjectivity of
organisational participants in order to produce consensus can be found in the study by Covaleski,
Dirsmith, Heian and Samuel (1998). They examine management programmes in large accounting
10
firms, and find that these programmes are aimed at controlling both the behaviour and identity of
partners, transforming them into managed and self-managing individuals. Consensus is reached by
forging what the authors call “corporate clones”. Formal techniques, such as management by
objectives, produce norms and measure deviations from these norms to influence the partners’
conduct, but these techniques also act as a reminder that these partners work for a company and
are not autonomous professionals. Along with such disciplinary techniques, the authors study
techniques of the self, such as mentoring, which directly target partners’ subjectivity and selfidentity through self-examination and avowal. These techniques encourage partners to better know
and change themselves and their identity – the norm does not specify a target to reach but conveys
what it is to be a partner, and hence constitutes a way to shape a new self. Controlling techniques
thus influence individuals’ subjectivity as much as their behaviour. As the authors say, they show
“how control is enacted at the level of constituting the subjectivity of firm partners, in the realm of
their identities, and plays out in their goals, discourse, social relations, and actions” (Covaleski et
al., 1998 p.322).
More recently, Knights and McCabe (2003) examine how central management personnel in
a call centre try to reconstitute employee subjectivity through the ideology of teamworking and
autonomy. Alvesson and Kärreman (2004) also observe how norms and ideology are used in
consulting firms as a form of “cultural engineering” geared, to varying extents, towards shaping
organisational members’ self-identity. The “colonisation of subjectivities” has been said to
manufacture consensus inasmuch as it can remove opposition by individuals who are participants
in their own subjugation, not because they are coerced, threatened or rewarded but rather because
they experience strong identification with ideologically defined goals and values (Willmott, 1993;
du Gay et al., 1996; Thomas and Davies, 2005; Whittle, 2005). This is how accounting and control
mechanisms targeting identity and subjectivity can produce consent and limit resistance to
dominant interests.
As Alvesson and Willmott (2002 p.622) argue, there is an “increased managerial interest in
regulating employees ‘insides’ – their self-image, their feelings and identifications.” However,
following Giddens (1991), they consider that individuals actively produce narratives of themselves
rather than being completely subjugated. Attempts to control the identities of employees are, at
best, precarious and contested (Ezzamel and Willmott, 1998). The individual’s subjectivity
therefore constitutes one of the key arenas in which struggles against consensus take place (see
also Gendron and Spira, 2010). If identity becomes a target of control technologies – through
processes that Alvesson and Willmott (2002) refer to as “identity regulation” – employees can also
produce alternative accounts of themselves – this is what they call “identity work”. The question
is whether these alternative accounts disrupt or reproduce asymmetrical relations of power
(McCabe, 2011).
Studies of the subjective dimension of power have started paying attention to what has been
called ‘micro-politics’ of resistance. According to these approaches, informal micro-practices are
more effective than overt and direct actions to undermine technologies of power directed at
controlling one’s subjectivity (Gabriel, 1995, 1999; Thomas and Davies, 2005; Spicer and Böhm,
2007). These studies typically involved in-depth explorations of the complexities of identity
politics in the workplace (Covaleski et al., 1998; Knights and McCabe, 2000, 2003; Ezzamel et al.,
2001, 2004).
11
Several authors have examined the micro-dynamics through which employees contest
dominant interests (for instance those defined by management as organizational goals) and
portrayed identities as a source of, and a site for, resistance (Covaleski et al., 1998; Ezzamel et al.,
2001, 2004). This includes considerations of how employees resist the colonisation of their
subjectivity through outright rejection, feigned acceptance or pragmatic negotiation of
organisational identity (Covaleski et al., 1998; Knights and McCabe, 2000, 2003; Ezzamel et al.,
2001, 2004; Thomas and Davies, 2005) and the expression of dissatisfaction through detachment,
cynicism and ambivalence (Gabriel, 1999; Fleming and Spicer, 2003; Whittle, 2005; Spicer and
Böhm, 2007). As Thomas (2009 p.174) remarks, “These moments of micro-political resistance are
both contingent and processual, occurring as individuals confront and reflect on their own identity,
recognizing contradictions and tensions, and in doing so unsettle and subtly shift meanings and
understandings.”
To understand struggles against cultural and ideological controls, Fleming and Spicer (2003)
emphasise the critical role of strategies of “distancing”. Studies of how workers resist managerial
attempts at controlling their subjectivity through distancing have highlighted a variety of tactics,
including disdain and lukewarmness (Covaleski et al., 1998), irony (Collinson, 2002, 2003),
scepticism (Knights and McCabe, 2003), fantasy (Gabriel, 1995), ambivalence (Gabriel, 1999),
and cynicism (Fleming and Spicer, 2003; Fleming, 2005; Whittle, 2005). The disruptive potential
of these tactics has been widely debated. For instance, cynicism has been described as a
conservative force, an ideological phenomenon that serves to reproduce relations of power by
giving people the impression of autonomy while in fact they are conforming to dominant
expectations (du Gay and Salaman, 1992; Willmott, 1993; Gabriel, 1999; Fleming and Spicer,
2003). More generally, “when we dis-identify with our prescribed social roles we often still
perform them—sometimes better, ironically, than if we did identify with them” (Fleming and
Spicer, 2003 p.160 italics in original). And yet, dis-identification is not without effect since,
although it does not affect material conditions and provokes a counterfeit sense of selfdetermination (Willmott, 1993), when power works through attempts at shaping subjectivities and
manufacturing consent, distancing destroys passive and naïve acceptance of the dominant
interests1.
Covaleski et al. (1998), for instance, claim that subjects can deform, transform, bend, and
divert to their own purposes the disciplinary practices and relations within which they are
enmeshed. However, in the case they study, individuals trying to struggle against managerial
controls employed the very same discourse (“client service”) and technique (mentoring) as those
used in attempts at controlling their subjectivity. It should be no surprise, then, that they observe a
fundamental transformation of identity despite active resistance. Ezzamel et al.’s (2001, 2004)
study of worker resistance, although largely focused on organised, overt, class-based struggles
1
Remarking that power can work subtly through dis-identification, Fleming and Spicer (2003, 2007; see also Contu,
2008) argue that subjective resistance could then work through what they call over-identification. Taking inspiration
from flannelling and working-to-rule strategies, where workers comply strictly with official procedures to illustrate
how much informal arrangements are needed (Roy, 1954), Fleming and Spicer (2003) claim that “believing too much”
in managerial discourses could lead to disruptive consequences (and illustrate their claim with situations where
employees take customer service policies too seriously).
12
against management efforts at work intensification, also includes reflections on how people can
draw on their feeling of identity to contest and divert hierarchical accountability. As they put it:
[Workplace struggles are] both formally and informally organized, sometimes planned, overt and systematic
(e.g. Beynon, 1984) but often spontaneous, disparate and covert, organized by agents acting collectively or
as individuals motivated by clearly defined aims and objectives, or by contingent or expedient considerations
in specific personal situations or local circumstances (see Jermier, Knights, & Nord, 1994). (Ezzamel et al.,
2004 p.274)
In the plant they study, workers try to preserve the identity as ‘autonomous’ selves they
developed at a time when organisational control was based on a ‘responsible autonomy’ principle,
against new accounting and control technologies. According to the authors, “workers struggled to
develop, extend and defend a sense of themselves as independent self-managing and resourceful
agents who were better able to work productively in the absence of management control” (Ezzamel
et al., 2004 p.275). The main aim of such resistance was to remain ‘independent’ yet ‘work
productively’, which arguably demonstrates strong consent to capitalist interests of productivity
and value appropriation.
Beyond identity politics, James Scott provides an extensive account of what he calls
‘infrapolitics’, that is the “wide variety of low-profile forms of resistance that dare not speak in
their own name” (Scott, 1990 p.19). Scott argues that ‘hidden transcripts’, or offstage dissent that
remains concealed in more public situations, serve to create and defend a social space in which
alternatives to public transcripts (social reality as defined and enforced by the powerful) can be
voiced. Those hidden transcripts thus involve discursive attempts at regaining dignity in the face
of insulting public transcripts, through practices ranging from hidden criticism to more elaborate
dissident subcultures. Dominant groups, then, become vulnerable to hidden transcripts that subtly
shift meaning to reaffirm material antagonisms and the need to struggle against social injustice,
exploitation and dominant interests. Disguised resistance also involves more direct action that,
although concealed, can have political and material consequences. For instance, Scott (1990 p.140)
mentions the tactics used by Solidarnosc in Poland in the late 1980s, which ultimately led to the
1989 revolution. Clandestine actions, such as poaching, pilfering, tax evasion and intentionally
shabby work are also mentioned. Infrapolitics and hidden transcripts thus involve creating a space
both to regain discursive freedom and find common ground to build collective disruptive action. It
is important to note, however, that infrapolitics focuses on subtle resistance against overt violence
and domination, rather than fighting subtle power aimed at controlling subjectivity.
Strategies of micro-politics of resistance have been criticised for side-stepping the collective
struggles at work in the wider realms of society (Contu, 2002; Fleming, 2005; Spicer and Böhm,
2007; Courpasson et al., 2012) and giving a false sense of agency, thus hampering more substantive
struggles (Willmott, 1993; Alvesson and Willmott, 2002; McCabe, 2007, 2011). Fleming (2005
p.47) argues that if it fails to connect everyday tactics to broader flows of domination, microresistance can become a “harmless safety valve rather than a meaningful challenge to power.”
Thomas (2009 p.174) speaks of “low levels of disturbance” but considers micro-resistance can still
weaken the hegemonic grip of dominant interests by creating spaces for alternative identities and
meanings. In a more critical appraisal, Contu (2002, 2008) speaks of “decaf resistance” and
describes such practices as carnivalesque forms of resistance, that pose no threat to the dominant
13
order and in fact end up providing a channel for the very order that they seem to transgress 2. As
Burawoy (1979) long ago argued, some forms of resistance have the unintended consequence of
maintaining domination because they are pursued in a way that undermines more meaningful and
effective strategies of opposition. “This is because through [micro-resistance] we engage and
reproduce, rather than resist, unequal relations” (McCabe, 2011 p.433).
Studies of the micro-politics of resistance are important in struggling against consensus as
they draw our attention to everyday, hidden practices of resistance (Thomas and Davies, 2005).
These studies illustrate how individuals draw on understandings of themselves as resources that
can be used to resist attempts to redefine their understandings of their occupational identity and
work practices through accounting and accountability regimes. However, others tend to give a more
pessimistic view of the possibilities one has to draw on one’s identity and escape the frames of
accountability (Roberts, 1991, 2009; Shearer, 2002; Messner, 2009). Instead, they have typically
portrayed accountability regimes as able to shape identity. This is because “the way in which a
demand for accountability is framed impacts the individual’s self-understanding as an accountable
subject” (Messner, 2009 p.928). One can question the categories, meanings, and classifications
used to frame accountability demands, but as long as they are regarded as legitimate, useful or
influential by distant authorities one has to take them seriously (Roberts, 2009). This is why
management by objectives (Covaleski et al., 1998), school funding frameworks (Neu, 2006),
school rankings (Sauder and Espeland, 2009), shareholder value and financialized modes of control
more generally (Morales and Pezet, 2012; Alvehus and Spicer, 2012) have all been described as
disciplinary and normalizing devices, able to influence subjectivities. Beyond identity politics,
struggling against accounting and accountability regimes implies altering and challenging subtle
forms of power enclosed within symbolic systems. This means questioning what Bourdieu called
symbolic violence.
Dissensus as subversion and struggles over meaning
Bourdieu argue that symbolic domination works subtly through defining the resources,
interests and strategies necessary to reach powerful positions: this frames agents’ strategies and
possibilities (without determining them, in a non-reflexive way) by focusing their feel for the game
(illusio) on specific stakes. Bourdieu’s conceptualisation thus illustrates both material and
symbolic mechanisms through which dominant interests, social hierarchies and unequal
distribution of resources are reproduced, asymmetries in power positions stabilised and elites
constituted. Symbolic systems (including language) are important in that respect as they are the
means through which people perceive, define, interpret and communicate specific (hierarchies of)
interests (Whittle and Mueller, 2011). As Alawattage (2011 p.6) put it, symbolic systems are “the
means through which social hierarchies are established and reproduced.” This means that interests
can be constructed or redefined in ways that tend to reproduce the consensus. This is why Bourdieu
2
In fact, Scott (1990 pp.185–188) anticipated this critique and remarked that many revolts had originated at carnivals.
This, he argues, is because subtle forms of resistance happening behind the scenes are not just fantasies serving to
dissipate energies in rhetorical battles but also rehearsals that can be used for offstage creation of a collective that will
later be able to engage in more direct action.
14
argues that language and symbolic systems are instruments not only of knowledge and
communication but also of domination.
Several authors built on Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic violence to argue that accounting
controls work subtly, through language and the construction and use of knowledge (Oakes et al.,
1998; Everett, 2003, 2004; Neu, 2006; Farjaudon and Morales, 2013). For instance, Oakes et al.
(1998 p.258) show that a device such as business planning “provides and sanctions legitimate forms
of discourse and language and thus serves as a mechanism of knowledge that produces new
understandings of the organization”. By promoting new vocabularies, assigning specific empirical
content to abstract concepts (Dent, 1991), and specifying what can be documented and what can
be ignored, accounting constructs “the seeable” and “the sayable” (Oakes et al., 1998) and separates
what is important from what is not.
These struggles over meaning are not neutral; changing positions of power relate to strategies
to enforce “authoritative definitions” of contested concepts (Everett, 2003). Significant concepts
then become “sites of struggle” in the battle to monopolise the legitimate right to name, and
accounting vocabularies encourage changes in interpretive schemes, discourses and practices
(Hopwood, 1987; Neu, 2006; Oakes et al., 1998; Shenkin and Coulson, 2007). Powerful actors use
accounting to create and specify meaningful categories and enforce their own logic as consensual
and universal, such that they monopolise access to legitimate instruments of expression (Farjaudon
and Morales, 2013). Changing categories of perception and schemes of interpretation further means
altering the principles of appreciation (Bourdieu, 1972, 1979, 1980). As a symbolic system,
accounting is thus a technology of distinction that influences the criteria for establishing value and
judgement (Farjaudon and Morales, 2013).
Several authors have explored resistance and struggles against domination mechanisms
targeting systems of meaning and expression (Martin, 1990; Parker, 2002; Everett, 2004; Thomas
and Davies, 2005; Spence, 2009; Thomas, 2009; Archel et al., 2011). These studies often took
inspiration from studies of social movements. Social movements typically try to problematize
consensus and advocate for change, and hence fight (over meaning, language and symbols) to
provide a sense that collective action is both desirable and possible. Theories of cognitive framing
(Snow et al., 1986; Benford and Snow, 2000; Snow, 2004), in particular, examined how social
movements portray a situation as unjust, locate blame and suggest lines of action. They emphasise
the need to build articulations between interpretive orientations to foster participation in a
movement (Snow et al., 1986), meaning that most people will not support a social movement
organisation unless they perceive minimal alignment between their interests, values and beliefs and
the organisation’s purported goals and activities. Social movements achieve such frame alignment
by shaping definitions of the situation (diagnostic), of what should be done (prognostic) and of
reasons to engage (motivations) (Benford and Snow, 2000). Several studies thus highlighted how
this sense of injustice is crafted, maintained and shaped (Gamson and Meyer, 1996; Zald, 1996;
Jasper, 1997; della Porta and Diani, 1999).
Other studies show that movements employ framing strategies in attempts to connect their
rhetoric both to participants’ understandings and to broader culture (Touraine, 1978, 1984, 2005;
Klandermans, 1984; Klandermans and Oegema, 1987; Johnston and Klandermans, 1995; Melucci,
1995, 1996; Jasper, 1997). This is how, it has been argued, imagined communities (Anderson,
1991) are turned into collective actors (Gamson, 1992, 1995, 2004), meaning that cognitive
15
framing is required to move people from localised micro-resistance towards collective struggles in
the public arena. Gamson (1992) argued that as well as framing a situation as unjust, a movement
needs to produce and maintain a belief that change is desirable and attainable through mobilisation,
that is to provide a sense of agency. Agency is important insofar as participants have to believe it
is possible to trigger social change through collective action, which means going against the view
that “nothing can be done” (i.e., that “there is no alternative” or that only others can make it
happen). As Turner and Killian (1987 p.241) also noted, “Because the objectives of social
movements, in contrast to other forms of collective behavior, are to bring about lasting social
change, the sense that it is possible to correct the situation necessarily involves at least some
rudimentary image of a workable set of alternative arrangements.”
These studies highlight the role of meaning construction and change in fostering participation
and mobilisation. Beyond frame alignment, the strategic use of language is crucial to build
convincing accounts. Literature thus paid increasing attention to the role of language to either
legitimise or delegitimise change (Creed et al., 2002; Vaara, 2002; Phillips et al., 2004; Suddaby
and Greenwood, 2005; Vaara et al., 2006; Erkama and Vaara, 2010). For instance, Suddaby and
Greenwood (2005) argue that dissensus and legitimacy struggles are played out and settled through
the strategic use of persuasive language, or rhetoric. They emphasised the role of rhetoric in
legitimising institutional change by delegitimising what used to be taken for granted. If consensus
is the product of symbolic work then individuals and groups have to skilfully exploit discursive
and rhetoric resources to problematize consensus and make it look less desirable, proper and
appropriate.
These studies have shown how issues can be framed in specific ways to advance or resist
change. More generally, studies of social movements argue that grievances and goals are not given
but shaped through the constitution and transformations of a movement. However, rhetorical
struggles and narratives are convincing inasmuch as they are framed using concepts and arguments
consistent with broader discourses (Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005; Erkama and Vaara, 2010),
some discourses being more likely than others to problematize consensus and trigger social change
(Vaara, 2002; Morales et al., forthcoming). Several authors thus argued that resistance should be
viewed as a constant process of adaptation, subversion and reinscription of discourses. They
generally assume that individuals can see through ideologies and discourses and hence subtly shift
meanings to deflect symbolic domination. Resistance, then, builds on the spaces that emerge
through discursive contradictions and tensions to create, appropriate and transform discourse
(Thomas and Davies, 2005). Laclau and Mouffe (1985) also argued that even hegemonic discourses
are decentred structures in which meaning is constantly negotiated and constructed (see also
Phillips and Hardy, 1997; Hardy and Phillips, 1999; Torfing, 1999), and that articulations can be
developed to produce counter-hegemonic discourses (see also Spicer and Böhm, 2007; Spence,
2009; van Bommel and Spicer, 2011). In sum, if consensus is discursively shaped, then struggles
against consensus take the form of dissensual voices and articulations that shift meanings and create
spaces for alternative discourses and practices.
Parker (2002) for instance, posits that discourses contesting management can have disruptive
consequences inasmuch as they deny managerialism as a hegemonic model of organisation. And
yet, strategies to build counter-hegemonic discourses are not always successful. For instance,
Archel et al. (2011) describe a multi-stakeholder consultation process that offered spaces for
16
polyphony and “heretic discourses” yet lead to the institutionalisation of a dominant discourse (see
also Morales et al., forthcoming). However, accounting researchers examined and assessed the
emancipatory potential of various ‘alternative accounts’, including performative parody (Everett,
2004), counter accounting (Gallhofer et al., 2006; O’Sullivan and O’Dwyer, 2009), critical
dialogic-informed engagements (Bebbington et al., 2007), and activist anti-accounts (Spence,
2009).
These studies highlight the role of language, rhetoric, and the displacement of meaning in
building, sustaining and legitimating alternative accounts with enough persuasive and seductive
power to mobilise against consensus. In other words, to trigger social change, subversive accounts
need to delegitimise consensus and legitimise alternative models of collective action. However,
focused on meaning-making and negotiation, these studies tend to overlook taken-for-granted,
naturalised schemes of classification and perception that play a significant part in the manufacture
of consent to the status quo. The subversive power of alternative accounts then depends on their
ability to denaturalise consensus.
Moving outside consensus
Individuals, groups and organisations that form a movement can contest and reframe issues
and ways of interpreting them, but they very seldom question doxic, non-reflexive assumptions
about the social world (Bourdieu, 1972, 1980, 1992b, 1997). To produce subversive effects,
alternative accounts then should draw on discursive latitude available that allows to increase
reflexivity, thereby ‘ambiguizing’ and disrupting doxic assumptions to achieve political effect
(Everett, 2004; see also Spence, 2009). Reflexive counter-narratives have thus been advanced as
possibilities to debunk corporate rhetoric, subtly change meanings, and destabilise consensus.
Reflexivity is crucial to build subversive accounts because, beyond discursive framing and
meaning-making, accounting, accountability regimes and auditing can produce what Bourdieu
calls misrecognition. For instance, Oakes et al. (1998) examined how managerial controls such as
business planning articulate taken-for-granted categories of distinction that inculcate new formats
in an attempt to shape organisational participants’ subjectivity while retaining all the outward
appearances of rational, neutral instruments, and hence produce misrecognition and symbolic
domination. As Oakes et al. (1998 p.272) note, “The power of pedagogy lies in its ability to name
things in a way that diminishes the possibility of resisting because the process appears neutral and
normal—‘technical’.” Everett (2003) shows how, following the introduction of comprehensive
auditing in Canadian parks, auditors were able to claim political neutrality while enforcing devices
that, since they produce and legitimise unequal distributions of capital and may imply a shift in
what constitutes the public interest, are in fact promoting a political agenda. Claims such as value
neutrality, used to produce a sense that changes are universally relevant responses to technical
issues, are related to the exercise of symbolic violence. Auditing thus facilitates (physical, symbolic
and discursive) colonisation of the field of cultural goods by the economic field, changing (the
value of) capitals, subjectivities and habitus. Radcliffe (2008) goes further, arguing that
government auditing not only provides a stream of managerial diagnoses resulting in an abrogation
of political debate, but is also complicit in maintaining public secrets. Examining auditing reports
of the Cleveland (US) City Public Schools, Radcliffe eloquently shows that auditing problematizes
public action around financial issues amenable to managerial resolution when all parties involved
17
know, although they pretend not to (and know they must not know), that the problems are related
to social issues, in this case poverty, inequality and segregation. Discursive constructions of what
can be known and said are thus built to maintain social reproduction, unequal distributions of
cultural capital and segregation in education.
The main consequence of symbolic domination is that it produces and simultaneously
legitimises an unequal distribution of capital (Oakes et al., 1998; Everett, 2003; Alawattage, 2011).
Power asymmetries are misrecognised because dominant interests are designated as consensual,
while disruptive strategies are considered interested (Whittle and Mueller, 2011). This is because
symbolic domination ensures its own reproduction by transforming specific private interests (of
dominant groups) into “collective interests” that come to be perceived as “universal” (Bourdieu,
1977, 1980, 1994, 1997) and consensual. The point of view of the dominant presents and imposes
itself as a universal point of view (Cooper et al., 2011 p.746). Principles claiming universal validity
in turn serve as symbolic weapons in the struggles to define legitimate interests (Bourdieu, 1977,
1997; Neu et al., 2001; Cooper et al., 2011). Establishing distinctions between what can be
considered consensual and what is designated as interested, accounting (re)defines the allocation
of stakes and interests to be pursued, helping to reproduce dominant interests and the constitution
of organisational elites (Farjaudon and Morales, 2013). Integrating abstract knowledge into
objectified accounting measurements has the potential to change organisational processes
substantially without triggering much resistance, because the mechanisms of change are hidden
and misrecognised. Even actors whose position is devalued can participate in activities that
undermine their own capital, without realising that they have created the conditions for their loss
of control (Oakes et al., 1998).
Examining how accounting controls produce misrecognition is a way to connect everyday
practices within organisations and institutional fields to broader flows of domination. The above
mentioned studies suggest that accounting exerts symbolic violence by establishing a language that
favours dominant representations, a set of distinctions that create power asymmetries and devices
perceived as objective. By designating consensual stakes and legitimate instruments for use in
debates and negotiations, accounting shapes the perceptions of what is and is not reasonable. This
means that, through a discourse of consensus that discredits struggles as irrelevant and
unreasonable, accounting promotes dispositions that discourage dominated groups from resisting
the reproduction of dominant interests (Farjaudon and Morales, 2013). It also has important
repercussions for pluralist societies, as contesting the antagonistic character of the political realm
(downplaying disagreement, difference and conflict) promotes consensus-oriented
conceptualisations of democracy and hegemonic definitions of interests to the detriment of both
the politics of redistribution and the politics of recognition (Brown and Dillard, 2013).
An ability to see through symbolic violence is what is required to question accountability
regimes. This raises the question of access to what Bourdieu calls cultural capital. This is important
because, to influence accounting and accountability regimes at field level, the dominated typically
have to learn to speak the language of the dominant, which in itself produces “objective complicity”
and symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 1976, 1977, 1989a, 1992b, 1997, 1991). This is how symbolic
domination shapes the type of power effective in a field to the point that only those strategies
consistent with dominant interests can lead to accumulating enough cultural capital to be heard at
field level.
18
Bourdieu insisted on the notion of cultural capital to refine our understanding of what counts
as resources in public arenas. Many studies have assumed that people engage in social movements
to have their voices heard in public arenas when they lack access to other conventional means of
influence, such as political institutions (Lipsky, 1968; Gamson, 2004; Taylor and Van Dyke, 2004;
Meyer and Lupo, 2007). They thus tended to portray such movements as weapons in the hands of
the weak against the powerful. This also explains why so much attention has been given to
“extrainstitutional” means used to access the public sphere, including violent and illegal actions
(Tilly, 1978; Elsbach and Sutton, 1992; McAdam et al., 1996; Jasper, 1997; Morrill et al., 2003;
Taylor and Van Dyke, 2004), with certain movements trying to subtly navigate between
confrontational and more consensual tactics to win media attention, maintain legitimacy and keep
open the possibility of negotiation with institutional actors (Elsbach and Sutton, 1992; Gamson and
Meyer, 1996; Jasper, 1997).
And yet, as Edwards and McCarthy (2004 p.117) remarked, “middle-class groups remain
privileged in their access to many kinds of resources, and, therefore, not surprisingly social
movements that resonate with the concerns of relatively privileged social groups predominate and
the mobilizations of the poor groups are quite rare in advanced industrial democracies.” This is
because accessing the public sphere (even simply desiring access) requires social and cultural
capital (Crossley, 2002). Beyond “everyday institutionalized patterns and practices that deny social
groups participatory citizenship” (Hobson, 2003 p.3), Bourdieu stressed both the dispositions and
cultural resources necessary to access public arenas. More than weapons of the weak, social
movements are viewed as sites for conversion of different species of capital into symbolic capital
to be invested in the public sphere, where movement participants enjoy unequal positions,
dispositions and capital. This explains the role played by intellectuals (Zald and McCarthy, 1987a;
della Porta and Diani, 1999) who can invest the cultural capital accumulated in relatively
autonomous fields (Bourdieu, 1989b).
This is why Bourdieu suggested the construction of what he called collective intellectuals.
Several studies have illustrated and examined in depth how accounting researchers can intervene
in the public sphere (Sikka et al., 1995; Neu et al., 2001; Cooper et al., 2005; Shenkin and Coulson,
2007) and engage with others to build collective intellectuals (Cooper, 2005; Cooper et al., 2011;
Cooper and Coulson, forthcoming). Specifically, researchers can benefit from the relative
autonomy of their field of practice and access to cultural capital (both as owners and producers),
but also from their sensitivity to deconstruction, contestation and multiple framing of issues. This
is why there have been calls for researchers to engage in critical performativity (Spicer et al., 2009).
Bourdieu believed in the power of critical research to unmask domination patterns and struggle
against misrecognition. Whenever power and violence can be recognised as such, resistance can
follow traditional methods of direct action and reappropriation. In other words, researchers are well
positioned to interconnect material, discursive and symbolic resources, to engage in both organised
and informal politics, and hence to participate in the articulation of counter-hegemonic discourses
(Spicer and Böhm, 2007).
Conclusions
In this paper I have sought to explore how consensus is resisted. Although critical studies
offer valuable insights into misrecognition and the way consent to unequal relations is
19
manufactured, they also provide convincing illustrations of the possibilities of struggling against
consensus.
Labour process theorists in particular have described the variety observed in reappropriation
strategies, ranging from informal and mundane actions to more organised workplace resistance and
political intervention. However, with their focus on objective, material causes of dissensus, they
have tended to overlook subjective discursive struggles. Other researchers, mostly influenced by
the work of Foucault, have addressed this issue and examined how power translates into a range of
techniques, practices, and problematisations that produce discourses influencing both behaviours
and subjectivities. They have argued that the production of counter-hegemonic discourses and
micro-practices of resistance could help to reach (micro-)emancipation even though consensual
discourses (such as managerialism, financialisation or neoliberalism) have become (almost)
hegemonic. While recognising that discourses could very well remain powerless so long as people
can subtly shift meanings and dis-identify, some authors have nevertheless argued that these forms
of low-level resistance can remain largely undisruptive. This is because they tend to stay at the
level of infrapolitics, whereas disruption is more likely at the level of overt, organised struggles in
the public sphere.
To understand how the multiple forms of dissensus can be articulated into contentious
politics, I introduced studies of social movements. These studies illustrate the constraints but also
the plurality of forms and possibilities for the struggle against consensus. They have stressed that
disruptive movements of contestation should: (1) pay attention to political opportunities and the
diversity and relative effectiveness of repertoires available; (2) create organisations to mobilise
resources and facilitate collective coordination; and (3) frame issues in the light most likely to help
mobilise people, build a sense of collective interest and portray direct action as both meaningful
and desirable. However, these studies have tended to overlook broader patterns of domination and
paid scant attention to how contestation can be downplayed by misrecognition. Also, due to their
focus on the public sphere (studying movements articulating grievances in the public sphere or
attempting to gain access to it), they have so far been reluctant to take into consideration the
mundane forms of power that are exerted through technologies of government. Subtle power
exerted through ostensibly technical devices can cause grievances but rarely results in public
outrage.
To address these limitations, I built on Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic domination. To refine
our understanding of accumulation strategies, Bourdieu’s notion of a multiplicity of fields and
capitals seems promising. The concept of fields means that material conditions are not fixed but
defined through the relative valuations of positions, which are constantly modified by actors’
strategies and trajectories (themselves influenced by people’s perceptions of these positions). This
means that fields are in a constant state of change, although powerful actors are usually the best
positioned to gain advantages from emerging conditions (Bourdieu, 1980, 1989a, 1992b; a). It
should be no surprise, then, that most studies have documented changes that increased inequalities
and primarily served powerful actors (Bourdieu, 1989a, 1992a; Oakes et al., 1998; Everett, 2003;
Neu, 2006; Farjaudon and Morales, 2013). And yet, Bourdieusian studies offer insights into how
struggles against patterns of domination emerge and are sustained. Bourdieu’s analysis of the
habitus and misrecognition, and their connection to the symbolic reshaping of stakes and interests,
also help explain the subjective aspects of domination and their influence on dispositions and
20
strategies. Further, Bourdieu’s study of symbolic violence exerted through classification schemes
and other devices perceived as technical and objective illustrate the significant role of reflexivity
and systemic critique to denaturalise patterns of domination. Finally, the concept of cultural capital
explains the limits of movements trying to access the public sphere and highlights the role
collective intellectuals can play to destabilise consensual accountings and accountability regimes.
I thus argued that, taken together, Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic violence and studies of
social movements help refine the conceptualisation of collective intellectuals as crucial actors to
build linkages between material, symbolic and discursive struggles against consensus, and to
connect micro-practices of resistance with more organised protests in the public sphere in order to
destabilise domination patterns. An ability to exploit strategically discursive and rhetorical
resources is required to question accountability regimes, but struggling against accounting and
accountability regimes also implies altering and challenging subtle forms of power enclosed within
symbolic systems. In these struggles, cynicism, although it constitutes a weapon against naïve and
passive endorsing of discourses, risks becoming so hegemonic itself that it undermines any power
of judgement. Although any (counter-)hegemonic discourse can be criticised and its power effects
exposed, cynic assessments could lead to nihilism and non-performativity (Spicer et al., 2009).
Critical performativity then means providing positive accounts of working alternatives to mobilise
against consensus and draw on dissensus to create pluralistic, agonistic public spaces. Reflexive
accounting research cannot only seek to undermine and expose alternative accounts as mere safety
valves serving to distract attention away from real issues and provide legitimacy to hegemonic
discourses. Instead, critical accounts should strive to articulate and re-present new ways of
accounting and demand accountability fostering both equality and diversity, that is social justice in
a fragmented, dissensual world.
21
References
Ackroyd S. and Thompson P. (1999), Organizational misbehaviour, London, Sage.
Alawattage C. (2011), The calculative reproduction of social structures – The field of gem mining in Sri
Lanka, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, vol.22, n°1, pp.1–19.
Alvehus J. and Spicer A. (2012), Financialization as a strategy of workplace control in professional service
firms, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, vol.23, n°7–8, pp.497–510.
Alvesson M. and Kärreman D. (2004), Interfaces of control. Technocratic and socio-ideological control in
a global management consultancy firm, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.29, n°3–4, pp.423–
444.
Alvesson M. and Willmott H. (1992), Critical Management Studies, London, Sage, 248 p.
Alvesson M. and Willmott H. (2002), Identity regulation as organizational control: Producing the
appropriate individual, Journal of Management Studies, vol.39, n°5, pp.619–644.
Anderson B. (1991), Imagined communities. Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, London,
Verso.
Archel P., Husillos J. and Spence C. (2011), The institutionalisation of unaccountability: Loading the dice
of Corporate Social Responsibility discourse, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.36, n°6,
pp.327–343.
Armstrong P. (1985), Changing management control strategies: The role of competition between
accountancy and other organisational professions, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.10, n°2,
pp.129–148.
Armstrong P. (1991), Contradiction and social dynamics in the capitalist agency relationship, Accounting,
Organizations and Society, vol.16, n°1, pp.1–25.
Armstrong P. (2002), The costs of activity-based management, Accounting, Organizations and Society,
vol.27, n°1–2, pp.99–120.
Arnold P. J. and Cooper C. (1999), A Tale of Two Classes: The Privatisation of Medway Ports, Critical
Perspectives on Accounting, vol.10, n°2, pp.127–152.
Bebbington J., Brown J., Frame B. and Thomson I. (2007), Theorizing engagement: The potential of a
critical dialogic approach, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol.20, n°3, pp.356–381.
Benford R. D. and Snow D. A. (2000), Framing processes and social movements: An overview and
assessment, Annual Review of Sociology, vol.26, pp.611–639.
Berry A. J., Capps T., Cooper D., Ferguson P., Hopper T. and Lowe E. A. (1985), Management control in
an area of the NCB: Rationales of accounting practices in a public enterprise, Accounting, Organizations
and Society, vol.10, n°1, pp.3–28.
Van Bommel K. and Spicer A. (2011), Hail the snail: Hegemonic struggles in the slow food movement,
Organization Studies, vol.32, n°12, pp.1717–1744.
Bougen P. D. (1989), The emergence, roles and consequences of an accounting-industrial relations
interaction, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.14, n°3, pp.203–234.
Bougen P. D., Ogden S. G. and Outram Q. (1990), The appearance and disappearance of accounting: Wage
determination in the U.K. coal industry, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.15, n°3, pp.149–
170.
Bourdieu P. (1972), Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 429 p.
Bourdieu P. (1976), Les modes de domination, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, vol.2, n°2,
pp.122–132.
Bourdieu P. (1977), Sur le pouvoir symbolique, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, vol.32, n°3, pp.405–
411.
Bourdieu P. (1979), La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement, Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 670 p.
Bourdieu P. (1980), Le sens pratique, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 475 p.
Bourdieu P. (1989a), La noblesse d’État. Grandes écoles et esprit de corps, Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit,
566 p.
22
Bourdieu P. (1989b), The Corporatism of the Universal: The Role of Intellectuals in the Modern World,
Telos, vol.81, pp.99–110.
Bourdieu P. (1991), Langage and symbolic power, Cambridge, Polity Press.
Bourdieu P. (1992a), Les règles de l’art. Genèse et structure du champ littéraire, Paris, Editions du Seuil,
481 p.
Bourdieu P. (1992b), Réponses. Pour une anthropologie réflexive, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 268 p.
Bourdieu P. (1994), Raisons pratiques. Sur la théorie de l’action, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 246 p.
Bourdieu P. (1997), Méditations pascaliennes, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 391 p.
Bourdieu P. (1998), Contre-feux. Propos pour servir à la résistance contre l’invasion néo-libérale, Paris,
Raisons d’Agir, 125 p.
Bourdieu P. (2001), Science de la science et réflexivité. Cours du Collège de France 2000-2001, Paris,
Raisons d’Agir, 238 p.
Bourdieu P. (2002), Le bal des célibataires. Crise de la société paysanne en Béarn, Paris, Editions du Seuil,
266 p.
Bourdieu P. (2004), Esquisse pour une auto-analyse, Paris, Raisons d’Agir, 142 p.
Bourdieu P. (2012), Sur l’Etat. Cours au Collège de France (1989-1992), Paris, Raisons d’Agir/Seuil, 657
p.
Braverman H. (1974), Labor and Monopoly Capital, New York, Monthly Review Press.
Brown G. (1977), Sabotage. A Study in Industrial Conflict, Nottingham, Spokesman Books, 396 p.
Brown J. (2009), Democracy, sustainability and dialogic accounting technologies: Taking pluralism
seriously, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, vol.20, pp.313–342.
Brown J. and Dillard J. (2013), Critical accounting and communicative action: On the limits of consensual
deliberation, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, vol.24, n°3, pp.176–190.
Bryer R. (2006), Accounting and control of the labour process, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, vol.17,
n°5, pp.551–598.
Burawoy M. (1979), Manufacturing consent. Changes in the labor process under monopoly capitalism,
Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 286 p.
Catchpowle L., Cooper C. and Wright A. (2004), Capitalism, states and ac-counting, Critical Perspectives
on Accounting, vol.15, n°8, pp.1037–1058.
Chwastiak M. (1996), The wrong stuff: The Accounting Review’s forum for defense clients, Critical
Perspectives on Accounting, vol.7, n°4, pp.365–381.
Chwastiak M. (1998), Star wars at the bottom line: The accounting forum for defense contractors,
Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.23, n°4, pp.343–360.
Chwastiak M. (2001), Taming the untamable: Planning, programming and budgeting and the normalization
of war, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.26, n°6, pp.501–519.
Cole B. and Cooper C. (2006), Deskilling in the 21st century: The case of rail privatisation, Critical
Perspectives on Accounting, vol.17, n°5, pp.601–625.
Collinson D. L. (2002), Managing Humour, Journal of Management Studies, vol.39, n°3, pp.269–288.
Collinson D. L. (2003), Identities and insecurities: Selves at work, Organization, vol.10, n°3, pp.527–547.
Contu A. (2002), A political answer to questions of struggle, Ephemera, vol.2, n°2, pp.160–174.
Contu A. (2008), Decaf resistance. On misbehavior, cynicism, and desire in liberal workplaces,
Management Communication Quarterly, vol.21, n°3, pp.364–379.
Cooper C. (1995), Ideology, Hegemony and Accounting Discourse: A Case Study of the National Union of
Journalists, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, vol.6, n°3, pp.175–209.
Cooper C. (2005), Accounting for the public interest: public ineffectuals or public intellectuals?,
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol.18, n°5, pp.592–607.
Cooper C. and Coulson A. B. (forthcoming), Accounting activism and Bourdieu’s “collective intellectual”
– Reflections on the ICL Case, Critical Perspectives on Accounting,.
Cooper C., Coulson A. and Taylor P. (2011), Accounting for human rights: Doxic health and safety practices
– The accounting lesson from ICL, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, vol.22, n°8, pp.738–758.
23
Cooper C., Danson M., Whittam G. and Sheridan T. (2010), The neoliberal project. Local taxation
intervention in Scotland, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, vol.21, n°3, pp.195–210.
Cooper C. and Taylor P. (2000), From Taylorism to Ms Taylor: The transformation of the accounting craft,
Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.25, n°6, pp.555–578.
Cooper D. (1983), Tidiness, muddle and things: commonalities and divergencies in two approaches to
management accounting research, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.8, n°2/3, pp.269–286.
Cooper D. J., Everett J. and Neu D. (2005), Financial Scandals, Accounting Change and the Role of
Accounting Academics: A Perspective from North America, European Accounting Review, vol.14, n°2,
pp.373–382.
Cooper D. J. and Hopper T. (2007), Critical theorising in management accounting research, In C. S.
Chapman, A. G. Hopwood, M. D. Shields (eds), Handbook of management accounting research, Oxford,
Elsevier, pp.207–245.
Cooper D. J. and Hopper T. M. (1987), Critical Studies in Accounting, Accounting, Organizations and
Society, vol.12, n°5, pp.407–414.
Cooper D. J. and Sherer M. J. (1984), The value of corporate accounting reports: Arguments for a political
economy of accounting, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.9, n°3–4, pp.207–232.
Courpasson D., Dany F. and Clegg S. (2012), Resisters at work: Generating productive resistance in the
workplace, Organization Science, vol.23, n°3, pp.801–819.
Covaleski M. A., Dirsmith M. W., Heian J. B. and Samuel S. (1998), The Calculated and the Avowed:
Techniques of Discipline and Struggles over Identity in Big Six Public Accounting Firms, Administrative
Science Quarterly, vol.43, n°2, pp.293–327.
Creed W. E. D., Scully M. A. and Austin J. R. (2002), Clothes Make the Person? The Tailoring of
Legitimating Accounts and the Social Construction of Identity, Organization Science, vol.13, n°5,
pp.475–496.
Crossley N. (2002), Making sense of social movements, Buckingham, Open University Press, 207 p.
Dent J. F. (1991), Accounting and organizational cultures: A field study of the emergence of a new
organizational reality, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.16, n°8, pp.705–732.
Dirsmith M. W. and Jablonsky S. F. (1979), MBO, political rationality and information inductance,
Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.4, n°1–2, pp.39–52.
Edwards B. and McCarthy J. D. (2004), Resources and social movement mobilization, In D. A. Snow, S.
A. Soule, H. Kriesi (eds), The Blackwell companion to social movements, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing,
pp.116–152.
Edwards P., Ezzamel M. and Robson K. (1999), Connecting accounting and education in the UK:
Discourses and rationalities of education reform, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, vol.10, n°4,
pp.469–500.
Elsbach K. D. and Sutton R. I. (1992), Acquiring Organizational Legitimacy Through Illegitimate Actions:
A Marriage of Institutional and Impression Management Theories, Academy of Management Journal,
vol.35, n°4, pp.699–738.
Erkama N. and Vaara E. (2010), Struggles Over Legitimacy in Global Organizational Restructuring: A
Rhetorical Perspective on Legitimation Strategies and Dynamics in a Shutdown Case, Organization
Studies, vol.31, n°7, pp.813–839.
Everett J. (2003), The politics of comprehensive auditing in fields of high outcome and cause uncertainty,
Critical Perspectives on Accounting, vol.14, pp.77–104.
Everett J. (2004), Exploring (false) dualisms for environmental accounting praxis, Critical Perspectives on
Accounting, vol.15, n°8, pp.1061–1084.
Ezzamel M. and Burns J. (2005), Professional Competition, Economic Value Added and Management
Control Strategies, Organization Studies, vol.26, n°5, pp.755–777.
Ezzamel M. and Willmott H. (1998), Accounting for Teamwork: A Critical Study of Group-Based Systems
of Organizational Control, Administrative Science Quarterly, vol.43, n°2, Special Issue: Critical
Perspectives on Organizational Control, pp.358–396.
24
Ezzamel M., Willmott H. and Worthington F. (2001), Power, control and resistance in “the factory that time
forgot,” Journal of Management Studies, vol.38, n°8, pp.1053–1079.
Ezzamel M., Willmott H. and Worthington F. (2004), Accounting and management-labour relations: the
politics of production in the “factory with a problem,” Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.29,
pp.269–302.
Ezzamel M., Willmott H. and Worthington F. (2008), Manufacturing shareholder value: The role of
accounting in organizational transformation, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.33, n°2-3,
pp.107–140.
Farjaudon A.-L. and Morales J. (2013), In search of consensus: The role of accounting in the definition and
reproduction of dominant interests, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, vol.24, n°2, pp.154–171.
Fleming P. (2005), Metaphors of resistance, Management Communication Quarterly, vol.19, n°1, pp.45–
66.
Fleming P. and Spicer A. (2003), Working at a cynical distance: Implications for power, subjectivity and
resistance, Organization, vol.10, n°1, pp.157–179.
Fleming P. and Spicer A. (2007), Contesting the Corporation. Struggle, Power and Resistance in
Organizations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 227 p.
Fogarty T. J. and Radcliffe V. S. (1999), Extending practice: Accountants’ constructions of the industrial
relations arena in the USA, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol.12, n°5, pp.525–560.
Foucault M. (1975), Surveiller et punir, Naissance de la prison, Editions Gallimard, 360 p.
Foucault M. (1976), Histoire de la sexualité, tome 1, La volonté de savoir, Paris, Editions Gallimard, 211
p.
Foucault M. (1981), L’évolution de la notion d’ “individu dangereux” dans la psychiatrie légale, Déviance
et Société, vol.5, n°4, pp.403–422.
Foucault M. (1984), L’éthique du souci de soi comme pratique de la liberté, In Dits et écrits, tome 4, Paris,
Gallimard, pp.708–729.
Foucault M. (1997), “Il faut défendre la société”. Cours au Collège de France (1975-1976), Paris,
Gallimard/Seuil, 283 p.
Foucault M. (2001), L’herméneutique du sujet. Cours au Collège de France (1981-1982), Paris,
Gallimard/Seuil, 540 p.
Foucault M. (2004a), Naissance de la biopolitique. Cours au Collège de France (1978-1979), Paris,
Gallimard/Seuil, 355 p.
Foucault M. (2004b), Sécurité, territoire, population. Cours au Collège de France (1977-1978), Paris,
Gallimard/Seuil, 435 p.
Foucault M. (2008), Le gouvernement de soi et des autres. Cours au Collège de France (1982-1983), Paris,
Gallimard/Seuil, 382 p.
Foucault M. (2009), Le courage de la vérité. Cours au Collège de France (1983-1984), Paris,
Gallimard/Seuil, 351 p.
Fraser N. (1995), From redistribution to recognition? Dilemmas of justice in a “PostsocialistAge,” New Left
Review,.
Fraser N. (2000), Rethinking recognition, New Left Review,.
Gabriel Y. (1995), The unmanaged organization: Stories, fantasies and subjectivity, Organization Studies,
vol.16, n°3, pp.477–501.
Gabriel Y. (1999), Beyond happy families: A critical reevaluation of the control-resistance-identity triangle,
Human Relations, vol.52, n°2, pp.179–203.
Gallhofer S., Haslam J., Monk E. and Roberts C. (2006), The emancipatory potential of online reporting:
The case of counter accounting, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol.19, n°5, pp.681–
718.
Gamson W. A. (1975), The strategy of social protest, Homewood, Dorsey Press.
Gamson W. A. (1992), Talking politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 272 p.
Gamson W. A. (1995), Constructing social protest, In H. Johnston, B. Klandermans (eds), Social movements
and culture, London, UCL Press, pp.85–106.
25
Gamson W. A. (2004), Bystanders, public opinion, and the media, In D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule, H. Kriesi
(eds), The Blackwell companion to social movements, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, pp.242–261.
Gamson W. A. and Meyer D. S. (1996), Framing political opportunity, In D. McAdam, J. D. McCarthy, M.
N. Zald (eds), Comparative perspectives on social movements. Political opportunities, mobilizing
structures, and cultural framings, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp.275–290.
Du Gay P. and Salaman G. (1992), The cult[ure] of the customer, Journal of Management Studies, vol.29,
n°5, pp.615–633.
Du Gay P., Salaman G. and Rees B. (1996), The Conduct of Management and the Management of Conduct:
Contemporary Managerial Discourse and the Constitution of the “Competent” Manager, Journal of
Management Studies, vol.33, n°3, pp.263–282.
Gendron Y., Cooper D. J. and Townley B. (2007), The construction of auditing expertise in measuring
government performance, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.32, pp.101–129.
Gendron Y. and Spira L. F. (2010), Identity narratives under threat: A study of former members of Arthur
Andersen, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.35, n°3, pp.275–300.
Giddens A. (1991), Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Cambridge, Polity
Press, 256 p.
Gleadle P. and Cornelius N. (2008), A case study of financialization and EVA®, Critical Perspectives on
Accounting, vol.19, n°8, pp.1219–1238.
Hamilton G. and Ó hÓgartaigh C. (2009), The Third Policeman: “The true and fair view”, language and the
habitus of accounting, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, vol.20, pp.910–920.
Hardy C. and Phillips N. (1999), No Joking Matter: Discursive Struggle in the Canadian Refugee System,
Organization Studies, vol.20, n°1, pp.1–24.
Hobson B. (ed) (2003), Recognition struggles and social movements. Contested identities, agency and
power, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 337 p.
Honneth A. (1992), The struggle for recognition. The moral grammar of social conflicts, Cambridge, Polity
Press.
Hopper T. and Armstrong P. (1991), Cost accounting, controlling labour and the rise of conglomerates,
Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.16, n°5–6, pp.405–438.
Hopper T., Storey J. and Willmott H. (1987), Accounting for accounting: Towards the development of a
dialectical view, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.12, n°5, pp.437–456.
Hopwood A. G. (1987), The Archaeology of Accounting Systems, Accounting, Organizations and Society,
vol.12, n°3, pp.207–234.
Jasper J. M. (1997), The art of moral protest, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 514 p.
Johnston H. and Klandermans B. (1995), The cultural analysis of social movements, In Social movements
and culture, London, UCL Press, pp.3–24.
Kelly J. (1998), Rethinking industrial relations, London, Routledge, 177 p.
Klandermans B. (1984), Mobilization and Participation: Social-Psychological Expansisons of Resource
Mobilization Theory, American Sociological Review, vol.49, n°5, pp.583.
Klandermans B. and Oegema D. (1987), Potentials, Networks, Motivations, and Barriers: Steps Towards
Participation in Social Movements, American Sociological Review, vol.52, n°4, pp.519.
Knights D. and Collinson D. (1987), Disciplining the shopfloor: A comparison of the disciplinary effects of
managerial psychology and financial accounting, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.12, n°5,
pp.457–477.
Knights D. and McCabe D. (2000), “Ain”t misbehavin’? Opportunities for resistance under new forms of
“quality” management, Sociology, vol.34, n°3, pp.421–436.
Knights D. and McCabe D. (2003), Governing through Teamwork: Reconstituting Subjectivity in a Call
Centre, Journal of Management Studies, vol.40, n°7, pp.1587–1619.
Knights D. and Willmott H. (1989), Power and Subjectivity at Work: From Degradation to Subjugation in
Social Relations, Sociology, vol.23, n°4, pp.535–558.
Laclau E. and Mouffe C. (1985), Hegemony & Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics,
London, Verso, 197 p.
26
Lipsky M. (1968), Protest as a Political Resource, American Political Science Review, vol.62, n°4, pp.1144.
Loft A. (1986), Towards a critical understanding of accounting: The case of cost accounting in the U.K.,
1914-1925, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.11, n°2, pp.137–169.
Lukes S. (1974), Power: A Radical View, London, Palgrave, 192 p.
Malsch B., Gendron Y. and Grazzini F. (2011), Investigating interdisciplinary translations. The influence
of Pierre Bourdieu on accounting literature, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol.24, n°2,
pp.194–228.
Martin J. (1990), Deconstructing Organizational Taboos: The Suppression of Gender Conflict in
Organizations, Organization Science, vol.1, n°4, pp.339–359.
Marx K. (1890), Le capital. Critique de l’économie politique, Livre Premier : Le procès de production du
capital, Presses Universitaires de France, 940 p.
McAdam D. (1982), Political process and the development of black insurgency, 1930-1970, Chicago, The
University of Chicago Press.
McAdam D., McCarthy J. D. and Zald M. N. (eds) (1996), Comparative perspectives on social movements.
Political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and cultural framings, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 426 p.
McAdam D., Tarrow S. and Tilly C. (2001), Dynamics of contention, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 387 p.
McBarnet D., Weston S. and Whelan C. J. (1993), Adversary accounting: Strategic uses of financial
information by capital and labour, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.18, n°1, pp.81–100.
McCabe D. (2007), Individualization at work? Subjectivity, teamworking and anti-unionism, Organization,
vol.14, n°2, pp.243–266.
McCabe D. (2011), Accounting for consent: Exploring the reproduction of the labour process, Sociology,
vol.45, n°3, pp.430–446.
McCarthy J. D. and Zald M. N. (1977), Resource mobilization and social movements: A partial theory,
American Journal of Sociology, vol.82, n°6, pp.1212–1241.
Melucci A. (1995), The process of collective identity, In H. Johnston, B. Klandermans (eds), Social
movements and culture, London, UCL Press, pp.41–63.
Melucci A. (1996), Challenging codes. Collective action in the information age, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 441 p.
Messner M. (2009), The limits of accountability, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.34, pp.918–
938.
Meyer D. S. and Lupo L. (2007), Assessing the politics of protest. Political science and the study of social
movements, In B. Klandermans, C. Roggeband (eds), Handbook of social movements across disciplines,
New York, Springer, pp.111–156.
Miller P. (2001), Governing by numbers: Why calculative practices matter, Social Research, vol.68, n°2,
pp.379–396.
Miller P. and O’Leary T. (1987), Accounting and the construction of the governable person, Accounting,
Organizations and Society, vol.12, n°3, pp.235–265.
Miller P. and O’Leary T. (1990), Making accountancy practical, Accounting, Organizations and Society,
vol.15, n°5, pp.479–498.
Miller P. and O’Leary T. (1993), Accounting expertise and the politics of the product: Economic citizenship
and modes of corporate governance, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.18, n°2–3, pp.187–206.
Miller P. and O’Leary T. (1994), Accounting, “economic citizenship” and the spatial reordering of
manufacture, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.19, n°1, pp.15–43.
Miller P. and Rose N. (1990), Governing economic life, Economy and Society, vol.19, n°1, pp.1–31.
Mills C. W. (1956), The Power Elite, New York, Oxford University Press, 423 p.
Morales J., Gendron Y. and Guénin-Paracini H. (forthcoming), State privatization and the unrelenting
expansion of neoliberalism: The case of the Greek financial crisis, Critical Perspectives on Accounting,.
27
Morales J. and Pezet A. (2012), Financialization through hybridization: The subtle power of financial
controlling, In I. Huault, C. Richard (eds), Finance: The discreet regulator. How financial activities
shape and transform the world, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp.19–39.
Morgan G. and Willmott H. (1993), The “New” Accounting Research: On Making Accounting More
Visible, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol.6, n°4, pp.3–36.
Morrill C., Zald M. N. and Rao H. (2003), Covert political conflict in organizations: Challenges from below,
Annual Review of Sociology, vol.29, pp.391–415.
Mueller F. and Carter C. (2007), “We are all managers now”: Managerialism and professional engineering
in UK electricity utilities, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.32, pp.181–195.
Neu D. (2006), Accounting for public space, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.31, pp.391–414.
Neu D., Cooper D. J. and Everett J. (2001), Critical accounting interventions, Critical Perspectives on
Accounting, vol.12, pp.735–762.
O’Sullivan N. and O’Dwyer B. (2009), Stakeholder perspectives on a financial sector legitimation process:
The case of NGOs and the Equator Principles, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol.22,
n°4, pp.553–587.
Oakes L. S. and Covaleski M. A. (1994), A historical examination of the use of accounting-based incentive
plans in the structuring of labor-management relations, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.19,
n°7, pp.579–599.
Oakes L. S., Townley B. and Cooper D. J. (1998), Business Planning as Pedagogy: Language and Control
in a Changing Institutional Field, Administrative Science Quarterly, vol.43, n°2, Special Issue: Critical
Perspectives on Organizational Control, pp.257–292.
Oberschall A. (1973), Social conflict and social movements, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall.
Ogden S. and Bougen P. (1985), A radical perspective on the disclosure of accounting information to trade
unions, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.10, n°2, pp.211–224.
Ogden S. G. (1995), Transforming frameworks of accountability: the case of water privatization,
Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.20, n°2/3, pp.193–218.
Owen D. L. and Lloyd A. J. (1985), The use of financial information by trade union negotiators in plant
level collective bargaining, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.10, n°3, pp.329–350.
Parker M. (2002), Against Management. Organization in the Age of Managerialism, Cambridge, Polity
Press, 250 p.
Phillips N. and Hardy C. (1997), Managing Multiple Identities: Discourse, Legitimacy and Resources in the
UK Refugee System, Organization, vol.4, n°2, pp.159–185.
Phillips N., Lawrence T. B. and Hardy C. (2004), Discourse and Institutions, Academy of Management
Review, vol.29, n°4, pp.635–652.
Della Porta D. (ed) (2009), Democracy in social movements, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 300 p.
Della Porta D. and Diani M. (1999), Social movements. An introduction, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 345
p.
Preston A. M., Cooper D. J. and Coombs R. W. (1992), Fabricating budgets: A study of the production of
management budgeting in the National Health Service, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.17,
n°6, pp.561–593.
Radcliffe V. S. (2008), Public secrecy in auditing: What government auditors cannot know, Critical
Perspectives on Accounting, vol.19, n°1, pp.99–126.
Rancière J. (1995), La mésentente. Politique et philosophie, Paris, Galilée, 188 p.
Rancière J. (1998), Aux bords du politique, Paris, Gallimard, 262 p.
Roberts J. (1991), The possibilities of accountability, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.16, n°4,
pp.355–368.
Roberts J. (2009), No one is perfect: The limits of transparency and an ethic for “intelligent” accountability,
Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol.34, pp.957–970.
Rose N. (1991), Governing by numbers: Figuring out democracy, Accounting, Organizations and Society,
vol.16, n°7, pp.673–692.
28
Roy D. (1952), Quota Restriction and Goldbricking in a Machine Shop, American Journal of Sociology,
vol.57, n°5, pp.427–442.
Roy D. (1954), Efficiency and “the fix”: Informal intergroup relations in a piecework machine shop,
American Journal of Sociology, vol.60, n°3, pp.255–266.
Sauder M. and Espeland W. N. (2009), The Discipline of Rankings: Tight Coupling and Organizational
Change, American Sociological Review, vol.74, n°1, pp.63–82.
Scapens R. W. and Roberts J. (1993), Accounting and control: a case study of resistance to accounting
change, Management Accounting Research, vol.4, pp.1–32.
Scott J. C. (1990), Domination and the Arts of Resistance. Hidden Transcripts, New Haven and London,
Yale University Press, 251 p.
Shearer T. (2002), Ethics and accountability: From the for-itself to the for-the-other, Accounting,
Organizations and Society, vol.27, pp.541–573.
Shenkin M. and Coulson A. B. (2007), Accountability through activism: Learning from Bourdieu,
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol.20, n°2, pp.297–317.
Sikka P., Willmott H. and Puxty T. (1995), The mountains are still there: Accounting academics and the
bearings of intellectuals, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol.8, n°3, pp.113–140.
Smith J. (2004), Transnational processes and movements, In D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule, H. Kriesi (eds), The
Blackwell companion to social movements, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, pp.311–335.
Snow D. A. (2004), Framing processes, ideology, and discursive fields, In D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule, H.
Kriesi (eds), The Blackwell companion to social movements, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, pp.380–412.
Snow D. A., Rochford E. B., Worden S. K. and Benford R. D. (1986), Frame Alignment Processes,
Micromobilization, and Movement Participation, American Sociological Review, vol.51, n°4, pp.464–
481.
Spence C. (2009), Social accounting’s emancipatory potential: A Gramscian critique, Critical Perspectives
on Accounting, vol.20, n°2, pp.205–227.
Spicer A., Alvesson M. and Kärreman D. (2009), Critical performativity: The unfinished business of critical
management studies, Human Relations, vol.62, n°4, pp.537–559.
Spicer A. and Böhm S. (2007), Moving Management: Theorizing Struggles against the Hegemony of
Management, Organization Studies, vol.28, n°11, pp.1667–1698.
Suddaby R. and Greenwood R. (2005), Rhetorical Strategies of Legitimacy, Administrative Science
Quarterly, vol.50, n°1, pp.35–67.
Tarrow S. (1990), The phantom at the opera: Political parties and social movements of the 1960s and 1970s
in Italy, In R. J. Dalton, M. Kuechler (eds), Challenging the political order. New social and political
movements in Western democracies, Cambridge, Polity Press, pp.251–273.
Tarrow S. G. (2011), Power in movement. Social movements and contentious politics, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 328 p.
Taylor C. (1992), Multiculturalism and “the Politics of Recognition,” Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Taylor V. and Van Dyke N. (2004), “Get up, Stand up”: Tactical repertoires of social movements, In D. A.
Snow, S. A. Soule, H. Kriesi (eds), The Blackwell companion to social movements, Oxford, Blackwell
Publishing, pp.262–293.
Thomas R. (2009), Critical management studies on identity. Mapping the terrain, In M. Alvesson, T.
Bridgman, H. Willmott (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, pp.166–185.
Thomas R. and Davies A. (2005), Theorizing the Micro-politics of Resistance: New Public Management
and Managerial Identities in the UK Public Services, Organization Studies, vol.26, n°5, pp.683–706.
Tilly C. (1978), From mobilization to revolution, New York, McGraw-Hill, 349 p.
Tilly C. (2008), Contentious performances, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 235 p.
Torfing J. (1999), New theories of discourse. Laclau, Mouffe, Zizek, Oxford, Blackwell, 342 p.
Touraine A. (1978), La voix et le regard, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 310 p.
Touraine A. (1984), Le retour de l’acteur. Essai de sociologie, Paris, Fayard, 350 p.
29
Touraine A. (2005), Un nouveau paradigme. Pour comprendre le monde d’aujourd’hui, Paris, Fayard, 365
p.
Turner R. H. and Killian L. M. (1987), Collective behavior 3rd (first edition 1957)., Englewood Cliffs,
Prentice-Hall, 414 p.
Vaara E. (2002), On the Discursive Construction of Success/Failure in Narratives of Post-Merger
Integration, Organization Studies, vol.23, n°2, pp.211–248.
Vaara E., Tienari J. and Laurila J. (2006), Pulp and Paper Fiction: On the Discursive Legitimation of Global
Industrial Restructuring, Organization Studies, vol.27, n°6, pp.789–813.
Whittle A. (2005), Preaching and practising “flexibility”: Implications for theories of subjectivity at work,
Human Relations, vol.58, n°10, pp.1301–1322.
Whittle A. and Mueller F. (2011), The language of interests: The contribution of discursive psychology,
Human relations, vol.64, n°3, pp.415–435.
Willmott H. (1993), Strength is ignorance; Slavery is freedom: Managing culture in modern organizations,
Journal of Management Studies, vol.30, n°4, pp.515–552.
Zald M. N. (1996), Culture, ideology, and strategic framing, In D. McAdam, J. D. McCarthy, M. N. Zald
(eds), Comparative perspectives on social movements. Political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and
cultural framings, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp.261–274.
Zald M. N. and McCarthy J. D. (1987a), Organizational intellectuals and the criticism of society, In Social
movements in an organizational society. Collected essays, New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers,
pp.97–115.
Zald M. N. and McCarthy J. D. (eds) (1987b), Social movements in an organizational society. Collected
essays, New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers, 435 p.
30