The farm as an accounting laboratory: an essay on the history of accounting and agriculture

Abstract

The shop, the factory, the office: these appear, to the popular imaginary, as natural sites for accounting, and for accountants. They are the places where accounting is usually said to be invented and practised, the places where accounting sustains business. The shop stands for commerce, which reportedly saw the emergence of double-entry bookkeeping in the so-called ‘commercial revolution’ of the early-modern times. The factory stands out as the chief target of management accounting from the nineteenth century and its ‘industrial revolution’. The office is where accounting clerks work, but also itself an object of productive accountability in the ‘service economy’ of the twentieth century.