Accounting and Conflict in the City: The Sheffield Tree Campaign, Counter-Accounts, and Bakhtinian Dialogics

Abstract

This article contributes to our understanding of the use of counter accounting in social movements, through consideration of Bakhtinian dialogics as a theoretical framing. We explore counter and dialogic accounting in a significant socio-political conflict in the city of Sheffield, UK. Our case covers a public–private partnership (PPP) highway maintenance scheme entailing conflict over a tree-felling scheme in the city. The city-based case had an organized and focused campaign, aligning a plurality of interests in opposition to the tree-felling. This coordinated campaign opposed local authority actions that sought ostensibly to save money. Our study shows how local activist groups produced dialogic counter-accounts of the symbolic and ecological importance of street trees, elevating the environment and community concerns above Sheffield City Council's monologic focus on money and contracts. The campaign's success in halting the tree-felling scheme also helped foster conditions for broader grassroots-led democratic reform in the city. Research on the city context vis-à-vis counter and dialogic accounting is rare.