Account Giving as a Fundamental Social Practice and a Central Sociological Concept: A Theoretical and Methodological Reconceptualisation and a Practical Exploration in a Critical Case. A thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. Steven MacLennan BA (Hons), The Robert Gordon University MRes, The University of Aberdeen 2010 2 Declaration I declare that this thesis, entitled ―Account Giving as a Fundamental Social Practice and a Central Sociological Concept: A Theoretical and Methodological Reconceptualisation and a Practical Exploration in a Critical Case‖ has been composed by me, and has not been accepted in any previous form for a degree in any other institution or university. The work has been done solely by me, and all quotations have been distinguished by quotation marks and the sources of information have been acknowledged. Signed __________________________________ Steven MacLennan April 2010 3 4 Acknowledgements I would like take this opportunity to thank all the people who have enabled me to complete this PhD thesis. To Professor Liz Stanley I owe a huge gratitude. From our initial meeting, in 2006, to enquire whether she might be interested in supervising me, to the constant barrage of ‗final‘ drafts in these past few months, she has been encouraging, motivating and patient. I want to thank Liz for knowing when I needed a good kick up the behind and when I needed reassurance. And, of course, intellectually, she has been an inspiration. I really would not have been able to complete this thesis were it not for her assistance and expertise. Ross Bond also deserves thanks for his intellectual input and for uncomplainingly trawling through the many drafts of this thesis I have made him endure. Claudia Moir, Chris Yuill and Tony Glendinning also deserve thanks. Their enthusiasm for their subject and ability to communicate ideas effectively encouraged me to pursue sociology. I am also indebted intellectually to Kerry Jacobs who provided much of the inspiration for this thesis and took time out of his sabbatical to examine it. I am hugely grateful to the Findhorn Foundation and Community for allowing me access to their facilities and to all my interviewees for their time and for talking candidly to me about their beliefs and values. I would also like to thank my office mates Lucy, Greg, Emre, Angelo and Carrie for providing much needed opportunities to talk through ideas and to have a laugh at ourselves over a couple of drinks, and thanks to Scott for providing the same facility in Aberdeen. To my mother, father and brothers, thank you for encouraging an inquisitive mind and for giving me the support, in every sense of the word, which I needed in order to pursue further education. To Margaret and Brian Crichton, thank you for the office space, lunches, and company on what would otherwise have been a very lonely final year. Also, James, Sara, Mari and Imran and the rest of the UCAN research team at the University of Aberdeen deserve thanks for being understanding and giving me time to complete my thesis without pressure. I would like to give a special thanks to my partner Rhona, first for her formatting skills and eye for detail, but more importantly for her emotional support through every step of the PhD (and Masters and Undergrad before that!). I really would not have been able to complete it without her reassurance, ability to calm me down make me see beyond immediate frustrations and her reminders that I am very lucky to have had such a fantastic opportunity. 5 6 Abstract This PhD thesis argues that accounts are influenced by culture, are a fundamental form of social practice by which interaction is accomplished, and thus a central sociological concept. The focus of the thesis is that accounts of time and money are affected by religious belief. It examines and (re)conceptualises the concept of an account. Accounts are re-theorised as taking two forms: rational and rhetorical, with their mediation emphasised as the feature that makes them empirically different. Studies of accounting in religious institutions are critically examined and complemented using research from a neglected (in ‗financial‘ accounting studies) branch of sociological research about accounts as ubiquitous social practices. Time and money are appropriate phenomena to research sociologically because they are relevant to sociological and financial conceptions of an account as numerically accountable phenomena that also have socially meaningful features. Ethnomethodology and institutional ethnography are deployed as two mutual methodological frameworks for researching the social accomplishment of accounts in small-scale interaction and ways in which a complex of wider ruling relations, through institutional discourses, are implicit in accounting interactions, especially in institutional settings. The thesis forwards a set of theoretically derived propositions to provide an explanation of accounts that explores their social embeddedness more closely than previous work. Briefly, these are that accounts generally, and particularly as applied to time and money, are a key means to make actions visible; are an attempt to promote a morally worthy self; are culturally relative; give information about the social norms of the social collective; always occur at moral and sometimes institutional interfaces; and are ubiquitous social practices. To provide and interrogate an applied example of these theoretically and methodologically derived propositions about accounts of time and money and how these are affected by culture and beliefs, I use observation, participant observation, analysis of community produced literature, and semi-structured interviews in a critical case study of the Findhorn Foundation. Therein time and money are rhetorically accountable; are 7 indicative of the spiritually influenced moral code of the Findhorn Foundation; and the moral code provides for a vocabulary of motives that members use in order present morally worthy selves. The ideal moral self is culturally relative to the Findhorn Foundation and sets itself in opposition to an ideal type of capitalist production, consumption and generally dominant ways of knowing, being, and organising in industrialised western societies. Rhetorical accounts of time and money pervade rational ones at the organisational level and spiritual principles are blended with business acumen. However, although spiritual principles have epistemological and ontological differences (from dominant ways of doing business in the wider society), they need to be commensurable with the extra-locally produced discourses found within the wider society in order to remain legally viable. Furthermore, tensions around inefficient decision-making processes exist. Accounts are tied to multiple (at times competing) moral codes within Findhorn, and also operate within pragmatically set limits involving disposable resources. This thesis is argued to be a valuable contribution to sociological literature around social accounting in general, and in religious institutions in particular, and contributes to the literature concerning social actors' accounts of their social actions, regardless of the specific setting. That is, these findings are 'about social practices' in general. Succinctly, my thesis puts forward a strong case for seeing accounts as a central sociological concept. 8 Preface An age old problem for sociology is how people interpret, organise and make sense of the world around them, and to what extent is it product of the individual and to what extent is it influenced by institutions, structures and cultural norms removed from the individual in various degrees of concreteness and abstractness. The individual does not exist or operate in a vacuum and consequently the meanings the social actor attaches to the manifold phenomena of social life plays an important part in identity formation, definitions of and practices in social contexts, and interpersonal relationships. The role of culture and of the plethora of institutions that have impact upon the social actor, are powerful factors bearing upon the individual. The everyday social world embodied and experienced by social actors in situ involves structure and agency and this dialectic cannot be disentangled. But still, if the researcher is aware of the interplay between the ruling relations, social interaction, local practices, and social structures, then s/he can investigate the social world with sociological methods. These factors all arise in researching accounts, with the vocabularies of motives that are used to claim legitimacy in the account process revealing how structure is reproduced and accomplished by individuals in their everyday lives and social practices. Accounting has in the past been considered a central sociological concept and was theorised in different but related ways by Burke in the 1930s; Mills in the 1940s; and Goffman, Garfinkel and Scott and Lyman among others in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s (these are all discussed in the main body of the thesis). What is common in all these theorists‘ ideas is an emphasis on social actors explaining their actions from their own point of view and subsequently what this can tell social researchers about social interaction, social organisation, social order and morality, and what underlying purposes being called to account and giving an account serves. Another set of scholars from out-with the sociological tradition, and others whose work straddles sociology and finance studies,