Accounting assemblages, desire, and the body without organs

Dean Neu, Jeff Everett and Abu Shiraz Rahaman

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 2009, vol. 22, issue 3, 319-350

Abstract: Purpose - This paper uses the ideas and concepts of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and aims to to examine how accounting works in the context of international development. Design/methodology/approach - A case study approach within El Salvador is used. Data sources include archival documents, 35 semi‐structured interviews with field participants, and participant observations. The focus is on the activities of the Inter‐American Development Bank (IDB) and the United Nations Development Agency (UNDP) in the country of El Salvador, showing how complex assemblages of people, technologies such as accounting, and discourses such as accountability come to claim or “territorialize” particular physical and discursive spaces. Findings - The analysis highlights how accounting and its associated actors further the development aspirations of loan beneficiaries; yet at the same time contribute to the “over‐organization” of these actors' social space. Originality/value - The paper illustrates that the concepts of Deleuze and Guattari – assemblage, desire, Bodies without Organs, and lines of flight to name a few – open up for consideration and analysis a series of field‐specific processes that have previously been largely un‐explored within the accounting literature.

Keywords: Accounting; El Salvador; Banks; Loans (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:aaajpp:v:22:y:2009:i:3:p:319-350

DOI: 10.1108/09513570910945642

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal is currently edited by Prof James Guthrie and Prof Lee Parker

More articles in Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().