The cosmology of accounting in mid 19th-century Thailand

Abstract

In recent years it has been increasingly recognised that accounting cannot be fully understood without an appreciation of the social and political contexts in which it operates. Religious values and ethical codes form important aspects of the social and political frameworks of most societies. Using the social theory of Marx, Weber, Foucault and Durkheim, accounting researchers have debated the ways and extent to which accounting has been influenced by religion. By analyzing the indigenous accounts of mid 19th-century Siam/Thailand, this article contributes to this debate by demonstrating how accounting was determined by the interaction of socio-religious, economic and political practice. Moreover, it also illustrates how in turn the construction of accounting was constitutive of the Siamese economy, social structure, political governance, and wider Buddhist cosmology. In doing so, this article elaborates an indigenous model of accounting as an alternative to definitions in Marxist, Weberian and other western analytical terms.