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The roles of accounting in the racial organization of work

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  • Ramírez-Henao, Driver Ferney
  • Sánchez-Guevara, Alejandro

Abstract

This paper analyzes the links between accounting, race, and labor control from a critical perspective. For this purpose, a decolonial perspective is adopted. In particular, the colonial matrix of power is used to analyze a case of labor precarization in a sugar mill in the geographic valley of the Cauca River in Colombia. The study assumes that the precarization of individuals/peoples in contexts with a colonial legacy is fundamentally associated to classification/hierarchization processes based on race, knowledge, being, and territory (Quijano, 2000; Walsh, 2008; Segato, 2014). This paper contributes to a better understanding of the role of accounting in labor precarization in environments with a colonial legacy, showing that, unlike previous literature has proposed, accounting exercises multiple roles in the same organizational time and space, with these roles not necessarily being subordinated to whether the geopolitical realities of the Global South or the Global North are analyzed. Considering the case analyzed, when accounting wishes to control the labor of salaried and non-racialized people, it predominantly exercises its constitutive and transformative role in order to make labor more efficient-profitable, while at the same time it can exercise a reproductive and representative role by (re)creating over-exploitation mechanisms on non-salaried and racialized people to maintain an unequal-racist-discriminatory social order.

Suggested Citation

  • Ramírez-Henao, Driver Ferney & Sánchez-Guevara, Alejandro, 2024. "The roles of accounting in the racial organization of work," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:crpeac:v:98:y:2024:i:c:s104523542300117x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2023.102661
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Colonial matrix of power; Precarization; Labor control; Modernity/coloniality; Race; Geographic valley of the Cauca river-Colombia;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Accounting
    • M42 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Auditing
    • M49 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Other
    • J40 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - General
    • J43 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Agricultural Labor Markets
    • J70 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - General

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