Accounting practice and the historic turn: performing budget histories

Abstract

The central project of this paper is to reveal alternative performances of history in municipal budget-making practices, and to theorize historiography as a dramatic actor in those practices. The historic turn, a decade after its introduction, is in need of a variety of empirical illustrations of its theoretical concepts. This includes investigating how ANTi-History, with its amodern orientation, informs debates around actor-network theory and historiography. ANTi-History is demonstrated within what is typically a positivist environment (municipal budgeting). The accountant persona has been theorized as ‘boring bean counter’ or ‘trustworthy custodian’ of assets. This paper avoids both of these generalizations, instead constituting the accountant as dramatic and historically situated. This notion is brought to life by considering ongoing budget disputes between the municipality of Halifax and the historic community of Africville. The physical infrastructure of Africville was destroyed by the municipality, and the people of Africville relocated in the name of urban revitalization. This sets the stage for stories of historical neglect, historical aggression, and historical romance. These serve as exemplar dramas of heterogeneity and history-as-an-actor. The Africville budget stories may be seen as milieus performing as histories that are nested in one another. When we see that milieus pass into each other it is easier to articulate that ontological politics is at play, providing a space for critique. By positing that accounting is dramatic, this paper problematizes competition for budget resources. Municipal managers should recognize that they (whether they realize it or not) use history and traces of the past to develop durable images to unify actor-networks. Such unified images are necessarily fictions. Budget managers are encouraged to question their histories and see accounting practice as dramatic historical performance rather than uncritically seeing it as mundane administrative practice.

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