New accounts : Towards a reframing of social accounting

Abstract

This paper is a speculative and exploratory essay on the emerging field of social accounting. In essence, the paper explores whether the fact that most social accounting has, traditionally at any rate, being promulgated by accountants might be a partial explanation for its self-disciplining limitations and, arguably, its weak inroads into discourse and practice. Through the lens of Erik Olin Wright’s work, the paper reconsiders the potential of the social accounting project(s) and argues for the importance of accounts as a means of interstitial transformation as a complement to the traditional privileging of accounts directed towards symbiotic transformations.