Commenting on a commentary?

Critical Perspectives on Accounting 15 (2004) 232–247

Commenting on a commentary? Making methodological choices in accounting Paolo Quattrone Departamento de Econom´ıa de la Empresa, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Calle Madrid, 126 Getafe, 28903 Madrid, Spain Received 30 August 2001; received in revised form 20 May 2002; accepted 3 June 2002

Abstract The paper speculates on the validity of claims made from a constructivist and relativist perspective and how these relate to the debate on whether relativism is for or against change. It also addresses a related issue concerning whether the form of presentation of the arguments made is irrelevant to the relativist stand chosen. These questions and concerns relate to Alan Lowe’s paper that, in performing a critique of Richard Laughlin’s ‘Middle Range’ paper, adopts a constructivist perspective and follows an orthodox style of writing academic papers. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Methodology; Reflexivity; Accounting; Narratives; Story-telling

1. Prologue As I normally do when I arrive at my department, I head directly to the post room anxious to discover surprises that should make my life happier (money would be one of those!). I am normally disappointed by my mail box: either empty or at best full of useless publicity material and suspicious internal mail which invites more work to do. That day it was different, there was a big envelope sent to me by David Cooper . . . . Once opened, I had a paper in my hands . . . it seemed to me almost a material object (a bit contradictory for a constructivist writer) with all its references and well-argued statements. David asked whether I was willing to write a commentary on Alan’s paper. “A commentary?! Gosh!”—I exclaimed in silence. A series of epistemological problems came to my mind. The invitation to write such a commentary was tempting, but was it possible? I thought: “How can I write a commentary E-mail address: [email protected] (P. Quattrone). 1045-2354/$ – see front matter © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S1045-2354(03)00066-2

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from a constructivist perspective? Where do I stand and who am I to write a commentary?” In that moment I was forced to face all the epistemological issues I have been confronting since I left the comforting arbour of realism. My anxiety grew when I saw the names of the distinguished scholars who had also received the same invitation . . . . On my way to the office I thought: “uhmm . . . this could be a good opportunity clarify my thoughts and, last but not least, a golden (and probably a unique!) possibility to have a paper published along with that company!”. There was enough there to convince me to accept the offer. My epistemological doubts were momentarily put aside, my panic started to diminish, and I started to work. Reading Alan’s paper offered me the chance to think and address some of the epistemological issues which I have been struggling with and that I hope are of some interest for the reader as well. This paper seeks to answer, or at least to speculate on, questions such as the following: “Why (and how) should a constructivist claim be more valid than another, if constructivism is professed from a relativist perspective?” Moreover, it speculates on whether this question even makes sense from this perspective. The paper also explores a corollary question from this constructivist stand: “How (and why) should one make claims from a constructivist perspective?” In other words: “When a paper is presented and the arguments made, is the form of presentation irrelevant to the relativist stand chosen?” These matters concern reflexivity, and consider issues of writing (academic) pieces of work. Further, as I will elaborate, the two questions are intrinsically related. These questions and concerns relate directly to Alan’s paper that, in performing a critique of Richard Laughlin’s ‘Middle Range’ paper (1995), itself adopts a constructivist perspective, yet follows an orthodox style of writing academic papers. A final point before closing this prologue. On the one hand, the present paper is a Commentary on Alan’s work because I will make some comments on it and ask some questions which will probably receive an answer in the future. On the other, it is not a commentary on Alan’s paper because reading it was only a pretext and an opportunity to present to the accounting audience a series of methodological issues which I have been facing and that I hope are of some interest for others. One cannot make a comment on something, remaining neutral and, by the same act of commenting it, I have translated Alan’s paper. In this sense this paper is not a ‘Commentary’ but a ‘Commentary?’ (and this is how I will often address it), where the question mark emphasises that it is not directed at Alan’s piece as if it was a defined object but rather it intends to address a series of issues raised by my reading of Alan’s work. 2. Issues: making a commentary from a constructivist perspective A few years ago, I started to write a paper which sought to place the production of accounting knowledge in Italy in its ‘institutional and social context’ and which adopted a constructivist perspective. I thought (and still do) that the project is interesting because it was a way of reflexively looking back at my academic origins and at accounting itself. I was trying to do what the Sociology of Knowledge (SK) did when it turned its attention to Scientific Knowledge, thereby becoming Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK). To some extent that still unfinished attempt is similar to what Alan Lowe has done in his paper. The problems I faced, though, were epistemological: during my reading for this exercise, I came

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across scary passages and comments such as those which follow: [SSK] case studies revealed the appropriateness of methodological relativism. Within the first few nanoseconds of the relativist big bang, nearly everyone realised that the negative levers were equally applicable to the work of the sociologists and historian themselves. (Collins and Yearley, 1992, p. 304) The same authors commented on the principles of reflexivity and symmetry as follows: Typically [. . . ] the sociologist knows less than the natural scientist, while the sociologist of science knows still less. Those engaged from day to day with the problem of reflexivity would, if they could achieve their aims, know nothing at all. We might say that SSK has opened up new ways of knowing nothing. (1992, p. 302) That was even scarier because what I wanted to say on Italian academia (and probably on academia tout court) was not very flattering and could have been easily dismissed simply by quoting these two short passages. The unhappy outcome would be multifaceted. Firstly, my complicated critique (made of reflexive terms, interdisciplinary approaches and philosophical ideas) could become the easy target of a much simpler critique! This would reinforce the status of academics rather than weakening it. Then, I would be marked as a non-credible academic and, last but not least, I would have wasted my time. So the question became: Where do we stand when we make our claims? Where do we stand when we interpret the world we are embedded in? What value can be granted to a deconstructive interpretation that is, in turn, open to deconstruction? These questions touch the core issues of SSK and the debate which has followed the turn to science of the sociology of knowledge. Pickering (1992) and Woolgar and Ashmore (1988) outlined the chronological change in attitude of sociological studies, highlighting how SK has become SSK, and pointing out the epistemological implications that such a turn has implied. Once SSK has shown the power of applying sociology to hard sciences to demonstrate how ‘scientific’ claims are nothing but claims, SSK’s principles1 became tools ready to be directed to social sciences as well. The problems began when researchers started to realise that what SSK achieved could have been applied in a reflexive turn to SSK itself. Woolgar (e.g. 1988a, 1988b, 1991) has argued that SSK was embedded in a very modernist framework of representation, acting at a distance on what was constructed as science. It maintained the conventional separation between the object investigated and the investigating subject. In so doing it replicated what Modern Science has been doing for centuries: not taking the problem of reflexivity seriously. Woolgar stated that: unfortunately, the discovery of a new object (technology) provide[d] a convenient way of further avoiding the question of reflexivity. (1991, p. 29) It was a way of maintaining the separation between object/subject, shifting the attention of SSK to another field of study, maintaining the validity of the claims but failing to address the 1 Conscious that providing a definition can be seen as a sort of black-boxing (Lee and Hassard, 1999), i.e. an attempt to make the reader believe that what s/he is reading has a clear and uncontroversial meaning, nevertheless I follow Bloor (1976) in identifying the main principles that SSK should adopt as: Causality, Impartiality, Symmetry and Reflexivity.

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main problem of this stream of studies: turning to itself the powerful methodological principles it had devised, yet still maintaining credibility. For Woolgar, reflexivity constituted the main issue SSK should cope with from a constructivist and relativist perspective. The debate which followed these critiques was endless and occupied entire books and special editions of academic journals.2 However, it is useful to present these issues here because they make the reader aware of the potential weaknesses of constructivist approaches. These approaches are fascinating because they try to subvert taken for granted assumptions about what we believe (and are made to believe) is reality. However, even though both Alan and I find constructivism interesting to the extent of writing papers based on those tenets, still the problems remain and need to be faced. Relativism and self-contradiction are the issues at stake here (Latour, 1988). Reflexivity, if the critique to SSK applies, becomes a synonym of relativism and this recalls the worries that the irruption of post-modern thinking caused not only in philosophy and sociology of science but also in organisational and accounting studies. The dispute between Foucauldians, ‘post-modernist’ and historical materialist (see Neimark, 1990, 1994; Hoskin, 1994; see also Arnold, 1998; Froud et al., 1998; Miller and O’Leary, 1994, 1998) and the debate on modernity and post-modernity (e.g. Arrington, 1997; Cooper, 1997) are clear examples of how scary relativism can be. The questions have often been of the kind: Do post-modern (and relativist) approaches enhance the status quo rather than enable change? Once one becomes constructivist,3 how can s/he escape the empasse of relativism, take positions and change the world, making a claim which is not questionable? Let’s discuss the issues entailed by the above questions one at a time. So, is it worthwhile debating on whether a theory is for/against change and stability? 2.1. Reflexivity, relativism and the status quo Latour (1988, 1991a), writing on the implications that a reflexive project might have in terms of relativism, argued that the problems of sociological accounts of natural (and social) knowledge reside exactly on the divide which make these accounts possible: society, on one side, and nature, on the other. Callon and Latour (1992) argued that it is through practices that divides, such as nature and society, are constructed. Drawing on the constructed distance between these two poles reinforces the power of Modern Science exactly because this dichotomy is the outcome of the modern project itself. It means recognising the validity of the project and reinforcing that already powerful set of allies called Modern Science, rather than questioning it. The divide is the problem rather than the methodological device to study Science. If one wants to challenge this powerful network of Knowledge it is through studying the practices that have permitted such a formation rather than by relying on it in the hope that we can understand how and why Modern Science has come to be recognised as such. This is analogous to the divide between change and stability and an analogous argument can be made for categories, such as ‘change’ and ‘status quo’. Quattrone and Hopper (2001) 2 I do not think extensively reviewing this debate in this ‘Commentary?’ is fruitful. Those who are interested can look at: Callon et al. (1986); Knorr et al. (1981); Woolgar (1988b) and the list of references provided therewith. 3 I prefer phrasing it this way rather that saying that: ‘one has adopted a constructivist stand’, otherwise I would rely on another dichotomy.

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have argued that recognising the difference between ‘change’ and ‘status quo’ assumes the existence of a unique reality within which it is easy to judge whether a ‘thing’, be it an organisation or a state of mind, has ‘changed’ or remained the ‘same’. A constructivist study “on change” is a contradiction in terms because it assumes that there are entities which can be susceptible of moving from one clearly identifiable status (in time and space) to another. Thus the question is: “Who is able to identify that status?” If instead, one recognises that there are multiple worlds, times and spaces (Law, 1997), it is difficult to argue that such things like change and stability exist. It is, again, through practices (managerial in our case) that the barrier between change and stability is constructed. It is through incomplete attempts to organise (through organisings) that this barrier is constructed. Paradoxically, calling for studies which enhance change is a contradiction because such a call, relying on the dichotomy rather than challenging it, recognises the power of a network (of humans and practices), which has become so powerful to impose a notion of status quo and change, rather than deconstructing it. The likely and undesirable effect of this methodological approach is that individuals are overwhelmed by such a power rather than responding positively to it; worse, they could even admire and fall in love with it. Voltaire’s Candide is an enlightening example in this direction: without his trip, Candide would have continued to believe that he lived in the best of all possible worlds. It was only by becoming conscious of the possibility of other parallel universes that he became aware that that was not the case. The likely result of professing that there is a reality ‘out there’ (be it capitalism, academia or mafia), and then claiming that it is possible to ‘change it’, is passivity and conformity to norms rather than challenging them.4 If instead one becomes aware of the existence of multiple worlds, the possibilities for seeing things in a different way become infinite, and a matter of active choice. A reality ‘out there’ is a construction, a network made of humans and non-humans. To discover the trick of reality construction we have just to follow the actants (e.g. Callon, 1981, 1991; Latour, 1991b, 1999; Latour and Woolgar, 1979). This is much more disruptive than trying to disrupt something. In Latour’s words: We want to describe and expose the politics of explanation, but without replication and without adding another discipline to the plethora already striving for existence; we want to be at once more scientific than sciences—since we try to escape from their struggles— and much less scientific—since we do not wish to fight with their weapons. Our quandary is similar to that of a non-violent pacifist who still wishes to be ‘stronger’ than a violent militarist. We are looking for weaker, rather than stronger, explanations, but we still would like these weak accounts to defeat the strong ones. (1988, p. 165) Change and stability are thus part of the problem rather than the Last Judgment on whether a theory is good or bad (another modernist trap!). It is through studying practices 4 Really a footnote . . . . Being Sicilian, I am always struck by journalists’ reports which, explicitly or implicitly, criticize those who comply with the requests of Pizzo, i.e. an amount of money which the Mafia asks for ‘guarantying the safety’ of their business (a thing that in civil countries is guaranteed by the state). How could they do differently, if the only possibility that they can envisage is one of being killed by such a monster called Mafia?! It would probably be better then to profess that such a monster is nothing but a network of people (humans) and guns, bribery and so forth (non-humans) which are all kept together but, in alliances which can be strong or fragile? People can be defeated, put in prison, killed. Guns can be destroyed and bribery can be fought. Mafia can’t (interestingly, the etymology of the term comes from the Arab Maff`ıa which means: “it does not exists”).

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which construct the idea of stability and change that paradoxically the existence of change is denied but its achievement made possible. Certainly there are, in small or broader scales and networks, attempts at closures, to make order in, and sense of, our daily behaviour. They are linear attempts to make order and, like Burrell (1997) states, ‘linearity kills’ not only ideas but also people. So there will always be a need for deconstructing these attempts and this need is much greater when these attempts are larger, when they enrol a larger number of allies, and then seem to become dominating, thereby silencing other voices. However, as Law (1997) states these attempts are always partial and it is just a matter of discovering through which practices they are performed.5 2.2. Practices, the (human) being and the empasse of relativism The arguments made in the previous section lead to the second set of issues: what are the ways to escape form the empasse of relativism? Here, the style of Lowe’s article needs examination. I have responded to the first question about relativism and change by emphasising the value of focusing on practices. Now this proposal is applied to the practice of writing academic articles. Writing reflexive pieces that introduce each section of this ‘Commentary?’ is certainly a way of having fun (at least from the author’s perspective) but it is also a way to provide the reader with insights on how and why the author intends to argue what s/he is writing. Further, as reflexive exercise, it is also a way to deconstruct the author’s claim (whether or not this is needed for the exercise). I personally overcame the empasse in which I found myself at the beginning of this paper through the practice of being an academic. I did so when, walking to my office, I thought that through writing this piece I could clarify my ideas and have a golden opportunity to publish and enhance my career. And I declared it up front. This was my way of closing my endless internal debate which could have otherwise paralysed me. Certainly, complete closures are impossible and, it has been argued, the closure of a system of knowledge (or its openness) cannot be demonstrated without making some elements of the interpretation unproblematic (see Hofstadter, 1979). Thus, choosing the starting point of the theorisation process is, to some extent, a matter of faith. Certainly, what an author does and believes is related to the role that s/he believes/wants to have within societies and academic groups. To some extent, then, this is also a matter of politics. Certainly, whether the portraits that academics provide and construct are fair is something that only the writer can know. To some extent, then, this is also a matter of ethics. Of course, as Rorty argues, it would be a “mistake to think of somebody’s own account of his behaviour or culture as epistemically privileged” (1982, p. 202, quoted in Czarniawska, 1998, p. 21). Thus, it is not a matter of reaching the truth of the story through an empirical testing of the self. It is ethical because it relates to the role we may want to have in society and academia (politics) and to 5 Why should practices be preferred to, for example, culture? Because ‘practices’ give the idea of something in the making which, as such, is in a continuous and indefinite state of flux, whereas ‘culture’, for example, may lead us to believe that there is a well-defined, or at least definable, thing such as ‘an Italian’ or ‘an organisational culture’ (see the tempting studies of Hostede and the critique by McSweeney, 2002). See also Pickering (1992).

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what we believe is worth working and living for (faith). Some others may see the matter in a reverse order, meaning by faith something which is concerned with our ‘being academic’, by politics something which is concerned with our ‘being citizens’, and by ethics something which is concerned with our ‘being human beings’. The list of dimensions could probably be continued ad infinitum, but in any case it is our choice, our way of practicing our being that momentarily closes the circle and enables us to move on. In this sense I think that the questions on whether one is for or against change is probably misleading and there is only one way of escaping from the empasse of relativism: ours.6 Is this reflexivity? And if it is, of which kind? Latour discusses two kinds of reflexivity: meta-reflexivity and infra-reflexivity. Both concern the way in which a text is written. The first “is based on the idea that a text [. . . ] is to be naively believed by the reader” (1988, p. 168) and to avoid this, Latour argues, writers such as Derrida follow nothing but a methodology, with the only undesirable effect of rendering the text “unfit for normal consumption [and] less interesting” (ibidem). Using this methodology is like using statistics or econometrics to make the reader believe that scientific accounts written in this way are more reliable than those written as if they were pieces of journalism. Whereas meta-reflexivity is based on an inflation of methods, infra-reflexivity calls for their deflation (Latour, 1988). Methodology is replaced by style and what is left is just a narrative, a story (not a scientific account). A story which is in “your hands and lives or dies through what you will do to it”. This is a commitment to style, rather than methods, which is ethical at the same time because, from this perspective, each description is in itself an explanation (Latour, 1991b). Once again, we are back to ourselves and to our practice of being. So it is through the analysis of practices that we can become reflexive and tell interesting stories. Going back to the topic of whether Alan is being reflexive I fear that the way his paper is written does not help in answering this question (see the following section) and the following analogy may help to explain my assessment: First, you unreflectively and routinely brush your teeth twice a day. Then you realise that it is a mere habit and proceed not to brush your teeth at all. Finally, you realise that reacting to habits in this way is counter-productive so teeth-cleaning starts again—this time not as habit but as a self-conscious choice. The interesting point is that there is no obvious way for an onlooker to distinguish between the first and the third option. (Woolgar and Ashmore, 1988, p. 6, drawing on Cohen and Taylor, 1976) So they conclude that texts which do not look reflexive (first stage of teeth brushing) may actually be (third stage). Let’s go back again for a moment to the question whether Alan’s text and analysis are reflexive and, if so, of which kind: meta-, or infra-? Before turning to Alan’s paper it is necessary to argue that the way in which a paper is written (how) is intrinsically linked to the reason why it is written: each description is an explanation (Latour, 1991b). I first discuss why I believe this. 6 This is inspired by a song: “There’s only one way of life and that’s your own” (The Levellers, Levelling the Land, 1992). This does not imply that the chosen way is the ‘right’ one. However, being profoundly aware of the inescapable reductionism of choices should hopefully make people more reflective on the consequences of these choices.

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3. Further issues: writing a commentary from a constructivist perspective Recently I came across the following: [in scientific articles, c]onstant reference is made to methodological rules formulated by other scientists; and many of the authors’ actions are not described at all, but are simply depicted as instances of these abstract formulae. (Gilbert and Mulkay, 1981, p. 282) Writing and publishing academic papers have become a sort of “production line”,7 where the construction (fabrication?) of academic papers has become quite simple: a series of ‘cases’ are transported as on the production belt and then a machine (often a PhD supervisor!) encapsulate them in a theoretical framework. Bam! The paper is ready for consumption and delivery to the academic market! What the paper production process does is going against the following principle: The analyst cannot be detached from his object in any straightforward sense, precisely because it is this distinction, the separation between analysis and the object, which is the lynchpin of—the fundamental rationale for—science itself. (Woolgar, 1988a, p. 13; emphasis added) The above argument may seem trite to many accounting scholars. At least since Tinker et al. (1982) and Hines (1988) the objectivity of the researcher is no longer believed and accounting is no longer “supposed to provide a neutral representation of economic reality” (The Financial Times, of 4 October 1990 cited in Sikka and Willmott, 1997, p. 149). However, probably because Scientific Knowledge is what academic journals are requested to fabricate, the separation between analysis and object is still quite widely used in writing academic papers. Academic orthodoxy, for which many academic journals and their referees act as spokespersons, requires us to present and write our ideas in a very straightforward way (see Woolgar, 1981). A paper needs to provide a review of what has been said in the literature on a given topic, then the critical issues are identified, a methodology to treat them is applied, a case is presented and a solution is finally offered. The concluding section is usually the only one where repetition and perhaps even speculation are allowed. This procedure, which is part of the institutionalised practice of writing academic papers, is noting but the practical and ‘textualised’ corollary of the very modern dichotomy between the knowing object (the writer and her/his methodology) and the investigated object (for example, the case data, a financial database or a paper to be commented on). Writing a paper with this structure enacts those dichotomies which are said to characterise the project of modernity: object versus subject; theory versus practice, nature versus society, science versus literature. As Callon, Row and Rip argue, this way of writing helps to create a distance between the argument of the paper and the world out there: The particular importance of texts in science lies in the fact that they constitute a central political tool for the scientist-entrepreneur: in the text a structured world is built up that 7 This comment was made by Anthony Hopwood in opening the workshop on “New Trends and Innovations in Management Control Practices and Theories” held in Brussels in 2000.

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encapsulates the world-building activity of the scientist and allows him/her to act on others at a distance. (1986, p. 10) This is achieved through many institutionalised devices, amongst them the methodological section.8 However, methods and the methodological section are not neutral tools that can be used: When science is our target [of analysis, t]he relationship between our subject (science) and its representation (our portrayal of science) will depend on the method we deploy. But if we accept method as a means of regulating the connection between our object and its representations, we then draw upon a concept which is part of the object we wish to represent. In this way our efforts to study science assume some of the very features of scientific enquiry we set out to reveal. The character of our object (science) shapes the character of our investigation (our method) and hence the nature of our representation (portrayal of science). (Woolgar, 1988c, p. 21) How can we escape from this epistemological issue? What the sociology of translation and actor-network theories have taught us is to look at practices, at how things are done and fabricated in practice. Is this a new form of realism and positivism? Maybe. The issue is that once we abandon the idea that there is a difference between the analysis and the object, between theory and practice, then the distinction between the description and the explanation becomes fuzzy, and in the end, they become part of the problem to be addressed, rather than the solution to it. Latour argued that there is no difference between: The empirical and the theoretical, between ‘how’ and ‘why’, between stamp collecting— a contemptible occupation—and the search for causality—the only activity worthy of attention. Yet, nothing proves that this kind of distinction is necessary. (1991b, p. 129) I would also add (Quattrone, 2000) that there is no distinction between meta-theory, theory and practice, which are all co-produced rather than existing out there. It is through looking at chains of alliances, translations, enrolments, interessments and so forth that we can describe how reality is fabricated, thereby providing a strong explanation. Paradoxically, the more we describe the better we explain. But is this realism? In his observation of a scientific expedition aimed at defining the border between the forest and the savannah in the Amazon region, Latour said that to understand how reality is fabricated “More reality has to be taken into account” (1999, p. 114), more details on the technologies and scientific practices that these scientists used in their scientific task are needed. The more we get closer to reality, the better we understand how it is fabricated. The more we describe the better we explain. So why do we need a methodological section if how something happens is reciprocally linked to why it happens? This is even more important if we look at scientific and academic practices. Can we use a methodological section to explain how science is made, if this method is why science is made and, again, identifies the problem to be addressed, rather than the solution? The above arguments are not new and indeed are already quite well known to some accounting audiences. So why then are we still asked to write scientifically? Would not be better to just write stories (Latour, 1988)? Barbara Czarniawska, for example, has called for 8 The list of these devices is quite long: the structure of the paper and the division in sections with clear headings (Woolgar, 1988a); quotations (Czarniawska, 1998); tables (Latour and Bastide, 1986).

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narratives in management and organisational studies in many of her works (e.g. 1998, 1999). Stone (2001) calls for recovering a long ago forgotten practice in accounting journals (even in The Accounting Review!): writing accounting tales, which provide much greater insights on the complexity of accounting practices rather than formulas and diagrams that, by definition, are much more reductionist. Stone’s reference list indicates that there have been many calls for narratives and attempts to write in a narrative style but these have remained almost unheard. Obviously, the way in which we write depends on the institutional setting in which we are embedded (Callon et al., 1986), so if we write in disciplines such as accounting we are then asked to be rational and organised because this is the norm and the dominant notion of accounting. We write in this manner probably also because the current view of science in many academic disciplines is still under the influence of positivist and realist visions of the world and the modern project is still alive and kicking, especially in universities, and striving to maintain the separation between literature and science (Czarniawska, 1998).9 However, as Czarniawska argues, “science is not separated from literature by an abyss” (1998, p. 7). The description of a story (i.e. literature and novels) is intrinsically related to the explanation of that story (i.e. science and academic papers). The only difference that can be made is whether these stories are ‘interest-ing’ (i.e. be able to make people interested) or not, and this is probably a criterion which may replace conventional validity, intended as the correspondence between a story and a supposedly ‘out there’ reality. Czarniawska, drawing on Rorty, put it this way: The correspondence theory of truth is untenable because the only thing with which we can compare statements are other statements [. . . ]. Words cannot be compared to worlds. (1999, p. 26) Sciences aim to represent a reality but what they manage to do, at best, is translate arguments and stories. Methodological sections and literature reviews probably do the same thing: they become spokespersons for others’ work. Then, if one wants to look at the fabrication of academic papers, reviews, rules and methods do not help us reach the objective of describing/explaining academic work. Rather, it seems that one needs to look at that network in which the author and the university are placed and not to limit this endeavour to a paper and its rhetorical devices, however complicated they are. This is discussed in more detail in the Epilogue of this ‘Commentary?’

4. Epilogue: Alan’s paper . . . at last When I was doing my doctorate in Italy, I took a course on (Italian) accounting history. Reading some of the articles in the reading list which commented and reviewed the history of Italian accounting thought, I often came across pieces of work which charged one of the most famous Italian scholars, Fabio Besta, of being a na¨ıve positivist. Yes, he was the founder of the modern and scientific Italian Ragioneria (the Italian proxy for the English term ‘accounting’), but he was epistemologically (meta-theoretically) and theoret9 Another example is writing applications for funding, where the utility of the research is always asked and rarely believed (Rip, 1986).

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ically na¨ıve. Even worse was the judgment on Besta’s fellows. Whereas there was a sort of respect towards the founder, the same treatment was not reserved to the second and third generation of the followers of Besta’s approach: “Besta’s school played an important and fundamental role in accounting history but history is the place where its theories should be relegated”: this was the kind of message one could read into these articles. Thanks to the advice of my PhD supervisor, I went to the small library of my department, which had everything published in Italian on Ragioneria since the end of the 19th century until the 1960s, and I started to read the originals. I soon found out that Besta was no so na¨ıve . . . yes, he was positivist (Spencer inspired part of his work) but his work had nuances of relativism and idealism. I came to the conclusion that it is very often better to read the original sources rather than literature reviews. The picture I come to draw of Besta and his fellows was much better than the portrayal other Italian accounting historians had made. I then started to ask myself why and how this was the case: “How is that work which was in my opinion valuable, not only if contextualised in its time but in broader terms, could be misread, discharged and mistreated so easily? And above all, why?” There seemed to be something more in that attempt to demolish an entire school of thought than a ‘mere’ concern with knowledge issues. I lately found out that the answer did not lie merely in theoretical or meta-theoretical issues but concerned the very issue of being an academic and getting power and visibility within that restricted circle called academia. It was then a matter of looking at what being an academic meant in that context rather than simply looking at the theoretical findings that those books illustrated and proposed. It was a matter of investigating the practices of theorising rather than just theories. The above recollection addresses questions of literature reviews, of political struggles and academic discourses. It thus concerns the two sets of related issues I have discussed in this paper: making claims, writing academic papers, and the relations between the two. Alan’s paper is an inspirational source for the arguments of the present paper. His piece states that it: has two aims: first, to provide a brief review of developments in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK); second; to apply an aspect of SSK theorising which is particularly concerned with the construction of scientific knowledge. (First paragraph of the Introduction; emphasis added) So this quote brings us back to the issues discussed so far: making reviews, applying a certain set of knowledge to something else (which, in this specific case, is the construction of academic accounting knowledge), and, in so doing, creating a distance between the subject and the object under investigation. Amongst those whose research has been inspired by the sociology of translation, the Italian dictum traduttore/traditore (translator/traitor, see Callon, 1986, p. 24ff) is nowadays trite. What a literature review does is similar to what translation does: Translation is a definition of roles, a distribution of roles and the delineation of a scenario. It speaks for others but in its own language. (Callon, 1986, p. 25) Translation is indeed a way of making people interested, of trying “to impose a structure upon others” (Law, 1986, p. 70). This is also how a literature review can be viewed. When

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one writes a literature review, or is asked to do so by a referee or a PhD supervisor, s/he is automatically betraying the ‘originals’ and blackboxing a series of ideas in a set of categories chosen by the writer (or by another author who has done this exercise earlier). The review sets up a scenario, assigns a role to writers and their articles and, in the end, prepares the stage for the entrance of the main protagonist of the story, which is often our own article and ideas. This is also what I have done in this ‘Commentary?’, and there can be few excuses for that! Law, in the analysis of the textual structure of a ‘scientific’ article in biochemistry, states: The paper written by the biochemist is, like many papers, divided into a number of standard sections. There is a brief ‘Summary’, an ‘Introduction’, a section entitled ‘Materials and Methods’, and a couple of pages of ‘Discussion’. There is a long list of references— twenty-nine in all. The purpose here is to illustrate the claim that a paper may be seen as a sequence of interessements in which heterogeneous forces are marshalled to move a wide range of readers through a particular series of positions, so there will not be an exhaustive analysis of the article in question. (1986, p. 73) This leads my argument to the possibility, and effects, of applying a theoretical framework or a method to something else. As stated in the previous section, this is also a way of creating a distance between the problem and the solution, between the analysis and the object. Thus, the question is: Is what Alan has done different from what Modern Science has been doing for centuries (and from what very likely both Richard Laughlin’s Middle Range paper and this ‘Commentary?’ have done)? And above all: Where does he stand when he makes his claims? Cannot his own analysis be turned to his paper too? As stated earlier, it is virtually impossible to see whether a text is reflexive or not (the teeth brushing example). Certainly the structure of Alan’s paper leaves room for suspicion. It firstly sets the scenario describing the Quine-Duhem thesis. Then it introduces and classifies SSK, preparing the entrance of Latour’s rules and principles (notably, 1987). Finally, these are applied to Laughlin’s Middle Range paper (1995) and a conclusion summarising the paper is provided along with some implications for future research. Certainly, it is difficult to assert that Alan’s paper is entitled to make its claims and analysis in the same manner that an anthropologist would, i.e. drawing on the difference and distance that separate the ‘civilised observer’ from the ‘uncivilised observed’ (Woolgar, 1988c, p. 15).10 In the end and at least to my eyes, both Richard and Alan are part of the same circle of reflexive/critical accounting researchers, although probably from different perspectives. Certainly, Alan’s paper often refers to Collins’ works and Collins argues that the validity of the empirical project of the SSK relies on the very scientific argument that their ‘experiments’ and analyses can be replicated. This paradoxically would provide SSK with a validity since its deconstruction can be applied to SSK itself.11 Is this the plot Alan is trying to pursue? Is Alan’s strategy of writing a way for arguing that what commentaries 10 For those who have not read Woolgar or seen directly the cover of the book Observers Observed, the photograph portrays an anthropologist (Malinowsky) writing a report on a tribe in a tent in a forest while the observed (the tribesmen) are looking at him. Some are also looking at the camera taking the picture from inside the tent. The question then is: who is observing who in this photograph? Another example of reflexivity of this kind is in Velasquez’s painting Las Meninas (the Prado Museum, Madrid), discussed at length by Foucault (1970). 11 But see the arguments of Callon and Latour, and above all the dispute between them and Collins and Yearley, in Pickering (1992).

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do give them a different status and validity that other works do not have? I do not know the answer, but it is time for Alan to declare his purpose. Yet, while it is time for Alan to speak for himself, we also have to recognise that this will not be a true representation of his self, but again a translation (people, like facts, do not speak for themselves). It is therefore also reasonable to move to his practices of theorising and while I certainly cannot do this fully, I can point to a form of analysis of the practices of theorising when academic and scientific papers are put under scrutiny. There is no distinction between meta-theory, theory, and practice, thus there is no solid ground from which one of these levels of knowledge can be considered as superior to others. If the investigation of the construction of academic knowledge is limited to theoretical and/or meta-theoretical issues, and not extended to practices, one leaves out from the complex enterprise of fabricating knowledge probably the most interesting part: the practice of theorising (Quattrone, 1997). It is through these practices that notions such as theory and epistemology come to assume a specific status and occupy a privileged space from which they can act-at-a-distance on a supposed detached realm, i.e. the realm of empirics (Latour, 1987). If theories are seen also as results of practices of theorising, a completely new set of issues need to be put under scrutiny. For example, it is necessary to look at the institutional affiliation of the researcher who is proposing a specific contribution, his/her belonging to a specific network of scholars, school of thought and research traditions, the power struggles within academia, the organisation of the university system and its recruitment procedures and unwritten norms, the pedagogical, political and social choices related to higher education, and so forth. In Alan’s case (he is just an explanatory example) it would be interesting to look at the potential contrast and/or synergies between the established network of critical scholars to which Richard Laughlin belongs, and the attempt of those accounting scholars inspired by the sociology of translation to create a new space (and time) for their own research, from which it is then possible to claim that accounting research has progressed.12 It is the description of this activity (how research is undertaken) which explains the reason why research is carried out and academic papers published. This can be done for several reasons (‘political’, ‘ethical’, ‘religious’, to name but a few), but they need to be described in order to be explained. This act of description is not neutral as it always involves categorisation (theory and explanation). “Let us go back to the world!” (Latour, 1988, p. 172; but also 1999).13 Let’s put aside issues of meta-reflexivity, methods and the alike for a while. Let’s make stories interesting, bringing in the complexity of being an academic through a reflection on what that currently means. Rather than concentrating our efforts on the analysis of theories and meta-theories, we probably should go back to the academic world and look at the practices of being an academic and what this entails. Many academics know that being a Professor means Professare,14 i.e. to profess a credo, which hopefully takes into serious consideration our role within contemporary organisations and societies from a reflexive 12

On scientific endeavours as successful acts of spacing and timing see Isabelle Stengers on http://www. emp.uc3m.es/∼quattron/conference/Communities.doc. See also Bourdieu (1984, 1989). 13 This strongly smells of realism again, I agree. This is how Latour treats the issue: “If you sneer at this claim and say ‘this is going back to realism’, yes it is. A little relativism takes one away from realism; a lot brings one back” (1988, p. 173). 14 I owe this etymological analysis both to Professor Claudio Lipari, my Doctorate supervisor, who taught me this first, and to Trevor Hopper, who reminded me of this later.

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point of view. Being an academic means seriously questioning emerging taken-for-granted ‘realities’, as well as our own assumptions, because “words are important”,15 and they can kill the thoughts of others and have other material effects. In this sense and at least for me, being an academic is a matter of faith, of politics and, in the end, of ethics. If the above arguments are ‘applied’ to Alan’s paper, he should have looked at Richard Laughlin’s practice of theorising, involving a larger set of human and non-humans allies in its analysis (see, for example, Jones and Dugdale, 2002, on the emergence of ABC). Alan’s paper concludes that: “[it] is not an attack on German Critical Theory but express a sincere anxiety about the need for, and nature of, a debate over research motivation”. I personally share this anxiety. I have tried to make it clear at the beginning, recalling and reconstructing my feelings when I opened David Cooper’s letter: I wanted to tidy my ideas up, I wished to have a paper published in Critical Perspectives on Accounting along with those written by the invited distinguished scholars. In writing it I discovered that I also wanted to have some fun in writing this piece, and reflect on what academics are in contemporary societies. A final reflexion. It is very likely that the issues I have raised in this paper are still embedded in a modern tradition, at least as much as the responses I can get to them. Alan’s responses will probably be ‘right’ and I will then be ‘wrong’. However, the issues I tried to raise in this ‘Commentary?’ are intended to hit the audience rather than Alan’s piece. Thus, if I get the ‘right’ answer from Alan I can always claim that this was not a commentary on his work but only a ‘Commentary?’ . . . still I enjoyed writing it and I now have a publication in good company!

Acknowledgements I would like to thank David Cooper for his comments on a previous draft of this paper and for his help with the English language.

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