The interface of power and charity in the government of poor: A case from the Italian context in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
ISSN: 0951-3574
Article publication date: 21 October 2013
Abstract
Purpose
Within the interface between power and charity, the purpose of this paper is to enhance an understanding of the role of charities in the administration of poor in local government and to explore how accounting operates in such a context. In this investigation, the paper considers accounting, referring to both financial and non-financial information, inserted in a complex of technologies accomplishing the “government of poverty”.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on a historical study referring to the case of MIA, an Italian charity, investigated during the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries, adopting Foucault's “governmentality” framework in a diachronic perspective. This approach, coordinating views coming from Anglo-Foucauldian scholars with alternative Foucault effects expressed in Dean's works, represents a novelty of this investigation.
Findings
The paper shows the interface of power (municipality) and charity (MIA) in the “government of poverty”, in a context of ancien regime, pointing out how this interplay was a key element within the “discourse of poor”. The pivotal function of MIA as an “agency of police” and the constitutive role of accounting as a technology of “government of poverty”, representing a social practice able to allow the preservation of the social equilibrium, emerge.
Research limitations/implications
The research is based on a single case study and it shows the need for both comparative and interdisciplinary analysis in order to increase an understanding of the interface of power and charity in ancien regime contexts, as well as in contemporary situations of crisis or emergencies.
Originality/value
For the first time in the accounting history literature, the work presents an extension of “governmentality” analysis into the domain of the “government of poor” through a series of Municipality Orders and their operationalisation by a charity, which adopted accounting to realise a control on people and resources contributing to reach local government equilibrium aims. The work also offers a reference within the contemporary accounting literature in relation to the debate about the role of charities or similar non-profit organizations in the context of the current financial crisis affecting the world, or in situations of emergencies.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Lee Parker and two anonymous referees as well as David Alexander, Garry Carnegie and Massimo Sargiacomo for their helpful comments. Participants at 6th Accounting History International Conference, Wellington, August 2010; XVIe Journees d'histoire de la comptabilite et du management, Nantes, Mars 2011; 34th European Accounting Association Annual Congress, Rome, April 2011; Critical Perspectives On Accounting Conference, Clearwater, July 2011; Accounting Renaissance. Lessons from the crisis and looking into the future. Learning from Histories and Institutions, International Conference, Venice, November 2011, also provided valuable comments on earlier iterations of the article.
Citation
Servalli, S. (2013), "The interface of power and charity in the government of poor: A case from the Italian context in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 26 No. 8, pp. 1306-1341. https://doi.org/10.1108/AAAJ-05-2013-1360
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2013, Emerald Group Publishing Limited