Editorial: international perspectives on race and gender in accounting's past: an introduction

This special issue reflects the continuing commitment by Accounting History to interrogate accounting in terms of the broader context in which it operates and so expose its long-standing enmeshment in race-based and gender-based systems of inequality. The special issue also reflects the journal's

attempt to respond to the now deafening calls for greater spatial and temporal diversity in historical research in accounting (see for example Carnegie & Potter, 2000; Cannona, 2004; Annisette, 2006). The contributions that constitute this issue in many respects (though not all) begin to counter the observed biases in extant accounting history research, which have prompted these repeated calls. Although the institutional affiliation of the contributors is still marked by a predominance of US, UK and Australian based scholars (Anderson, 2002; Williams & Wines, 2006), these countries do not dominate the settings for their studies. Instead the contributions herein include the under-researched settings of Asia and Africa along with the more familiar European ones. Further, the authorship of the contributions is overwhelmingly female and, in addition, private sector accounting does not reign as the principal object of study. Critically, of the almost 250 citations recorded in this issue, less than 50 emanate from accounting or business history journals. This statistic is in striking contrast to Anderson's statistics, which sparked the critique that accounting historians draw upon a very narrow literature base - one that is predominantly within the ambit of accounting and business history - and Walker's call for greater engagement across disciplines (Anderson, 2002; Walker, 2005, p.235). Of course, this departure is in itself reflective of the fact that the theme of the issue is, by its very nature, interdisciplinary.

A special issue dedicated to scholarship on race and gender in accounting's past could not have been produced at a more opportune time. Recently scholars examining accounting's involvement in racial and gendered practices of division have noted some degree of stagnation in both fields. Feminist scholars have recently suggested a need for widening the international scope of gender studies; broadening the contexts within which we explore the relationship between gender and accounting as well having called for a reappraisal of the feminist theories that have been utilized in accounting history scholarship (Chopra, 2004; Anderson-Gough et al, 2005; Walker, forthcoming). Meanwhile, in my own reflection on historical research on race and accounting, I have noted that by its overly narrow focus on accounting's complicity in acts of racial discrimination, exploitation and annihilation, accounting history research has made little impact on our understanding of contemporary racial and ethnic phenomena (Annisette, forthcoming). In the light of these recent commentaries on the state of play of race and gender in accounting history, the timeliness and relevance of the four contributions that follow is undeniable.

Hammond, Arnold and Clayton's contribution is an answer to a much longed-for analysis of accounting's involvement in the racial dynamics of South Africa. Moving away from a focus on discrimination, which so dominates the literature, their study draws on the sociology of memory to explore the role of oral history in selectively preserving memory, thereby encouraging forgetting. From their analysis of the publication Experiences in Transformation: Work in Progress, as published by a white-owned South African CA firm, they conclude that the firm portrays a partial and fragmented account of the South African past - a portrayal that serves to diminish the deep social and economic divisions that apartheid created. For them the omissions and general stance of the publication very much reflect South Africa's official "forget and moveon" approach to dealing with its difficult past. The authors suggest that this approach is also evident in the conduct and tone of the country's well-known Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They render an informed discussion of the various ways in which countries have previously dealt with their "difficult pasts" - silence; reconciliation; retributive justice - and identify the set of power relations that support one outcome over the other. In so doing, they reveal the complexity of the South African case given the country's local and global political economy. The study raises important questions about the future racial dynamics in South Africa if the approach adopted is at a variance with that demanded by the victims of apartheid. It also makes an important methodological contribution. For in highlighting the vast contrasts in the themes prevalent in Transformation's oral histories with those emerging from their current South Africa research (Hammond et al., 2006), the study serves as a clear warning that oral history's much-celebrated potential to present the experiences of the marginalized and oppressed (Hammond & Sikka, 1996) can be easily subverted when employed by oppressor groups to produce a distorted view of those experiences. The contribution, therefore, is a powerful reminder that all history is by definition, partial and that none can legitimately claim methodological superiority over another. Oral history is a method and thus can be adopted by official agents of history, and can be imbued with political and ideological biases not unlike the "tainted" official records that it sometimes purports to correct (Falola & Jennings, 2003, p.xv).

Unlike that chosen by Hammond Arnold and Clayton, the context of Lippman and Wilson's study - Nazi Germany - has already been subject to the interrogation of accounting historians (see for example Funnell, 1998; Walker, 2000). Lippman and Wilson, however, focus on an unexplored but important site in this context - that of slave labour operations managed by Nazi state-run entities and German corporations. They describe in shocking detail how accountants used their knowledge and expertise to ensure that these facilities were efficiently and effectively run - meaning that every aspect of the Jewish internment - including their death - was cost effective and turned in a profit. The study reveals a widespread exploitation of concentration camp victims by well-known German corporations thus highlighting capitalism's tight fusion with social injustice involving people deemed to be "racial others". Given accounting's close relationship with capitalism, it is surprising that in the sizeable literature pointing to the complicity of German professions in the Jewish Holocaust, accountancy still remains relatively un-scrutinized. A major concern of Lippman and Wilson is to resolve the knotty issue of accountants' culpability in this event. Pointing out that German accountants (both those working in these camps as well as their counterparts in the wider society) were well aware of the horrific activities perpetrated against the Jews, the authors explore a number of logics to examine the issue of accountants' culpability - in particular those advanced in Fleischman et al. (2004) and Oldroyd et al. (2005). In the end they suggest that the principles set forth by the rulings of the International Military Tribunal hold much store in resolving the issue.

Turning to the special issue's gender contributions, Rutterford and Maltby aim to provide a much richer understanding of women's past relationship with accounting through a study of Victorian-era women's investment activities. They examine a number of cases of investments made by English women during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and compare these cases with the findings of recent surveys of women's attitudes as investors - the latter of which consistently shows a gender effect. On a number of fronts Rutterford and Maltby's study makes an important contribution to accounting history. First, they illustrate the potential richness of the private sphere and the home as sites for capturing women's involvement with accounting. They employ a varied array of underutilized archival material including women's diaries, wills, share registers and correspondence archives revealing the potency of these sources in conducting historical work in accounting. Second, by demonstrating how factors such as marital status, wealth, education and access to information influenced the investment behaviour of Victorian women, they show in another important way how historical work can enrich our understanding of contemporary phenomena. Third, the authors provide additional evidence to challenge the separate spheres thesis as the study demonstrates that Victorian women's involvement with economic activity was far more complex and varied than previously suggested and often involved a close linkage between the social and the economic.

Finally, Komori's contribution marks an important step toward redressing the Anglo-Saxon bias in extant historical research on gender and accounting. Drawing on a wide range of socio-historical studies, including those on the role and position of women in Japan, the Japanese family and business enterprises as well as studies on household accounting, Komori explores the changing relationship between women and accounting in Japan across five historical epochs - pre-modern; modernization; industrialization; war-time and post-war periods. Each period is marked by a significant social change, which, in turn, according to Komori affected the role and position of women and their relationship with accounting. The study provides some stunning contrasts between Japan and England with respect to women's historical relationship with accounting. In contrast to observations to date that in nineteenth century England, accounting was used to constrain and control women's "extravagant" spending (Walker, 1998; Rutterford & Maltby, this issue), Komori points out that in pre-modern Japan accounting was the means by which Japanese women managed and controlled the behaviours of men who were socially constructed as extravagant and imprudent. She explains that during the modernization era the Japanese family and home were constructed as public sites. This is in stark contrast to the western notion of the home as occupying the domain of the private. Consequently, Japanese women were denied roles outside the home so as not to neglect their "public" duty in the home. They were, therefore, schooled in household accounting as part of this household management public service. Thus, by the late nineteenth century accounting was already considered part of a woman's role. Compare this with nineteenth century England where women were constructed as impulsive and irrational and were, therefore, considered unsuitable for accounting work (Kirkham & Loft, 1993; Rutterford & Maltby, this issue). Industrialization was marked by discourses to transfer women out of the home into clerical jobs. Importantly, Komori suggests that the construction of clerical work as a feminine occupation was a deliberate state-sponsored project aimed at promoting industrialization and, in contrast to the case of England (Kirkham & Loft, 1993), was not a by-product of the professionalization of accountancy.

Finally, in the post-war period Komori shows how household accounting records emerged as a source of power to Japanese housewives who in their roles as consumers used household accounting records as a political weapon to influence public policy. The underlying objective of Komori's investigation is to highlight the danger of employing a western lens to analyse a non-western historical context. One of the reasons why western perspectives have proven limited in enhancing our understanding of the position of women in Japan, as the author argues, is because western gendered dichotomies - private vs. public and family vs. work - do not apply in the Japanese context. Critical to Komori's study - and hence to understanding gender relations in Japan - are the widely accepted notions in Japan of the household as a public space and the family unit as an essential unit through which the state could exercise its power and realize its objectives. According to Komori by characterizing the home, "as a public place where private feelings should be forgotten" Japanese governments have purposefully constructed the household as a key agent in Japan's modernization and industrialization and Japanese women, having bought into this idea, seek autonomy and status in the household rather than outside.

In closing, the four contributions in this special issue have served to open up accounting history research in quite a number of different and welcomed ways. Hammond, Arnold and Clayton highlight that potentially emancipatory methodologies like oral history can become captured by oppressor groups, thereby limiting their potential to give voice to the subaltern. Komori's study highlights that some of the taken for granted assumptions embedded in western theoretical lenses - such as the home as a private sphere - can lead us to faulty conclusions when applied to non-western contexts. Rutterford and Maltby show the richness of "private" sites in producing more comprehensive accounts of accounting's past, while Lippman and Wilson illustrate how a microlevel analysis can provide greater nuance to our understanding of the role of accounting and accountants in human suffering.

REFERENCE

References

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AUTHOR_AFFILIATION

Marcia Annisette

York University, Canada

AUTHOR_AFFILIATION

Address for correspondence: Marcia Annisette, Schulich School of Business, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada. E-mail: mannisette@schulich.yorku.ca