The Roles of Accounting in Agro-Pastoral Settings: The Case of the Landed Estates of Prince Sambiase in the Mid-Eighteenth Century

Abstract

International literature on agricultural accounting is yet to pay a significant level of attention to the investigation of the roles that accounting can play in the agricultural domain beyond its traditional function of promoting efficiency and rational decision making. Informed by Miller and Power's (2013) analysis of the functions that accounting can have in different socio-institutional contexts, the paper adds to extant literature by studying the roles of accounting in Prince Sambiase's properties, located in Southern Italy, in the mid-eighteenth century. On his lands agricultural and pastoral activities were managed in a semi-feudal setting, combining serfdom and waged labor, barter and monetary exchange, consumption and production. Based on primary and secondary sources, this study focuses on the property lists, inventories, the double-entry bookkeeping system and workers control practices used on Prince Sambiase's estates to document how they were employed as territorializing, adjudicating, mediating and subjectivizing practices.