First Published in 1997. Set in colonial Australia, this explanatory, investigative study examines the dimensions of accounting information prepared for pastoral industry engagement in the Western District of Victoria during 1836-1900 and the local, time-specific environmental factors which shaped these dimensions. Based on examinations of surviving business records, the study provides evidence of the structure and usage of pastoral accounting information in an unregulated financial reporting environment. As an interpretive historical study, it attempts to provide explanations of the accounting practices observed.
The Routledge Companion to Accounting History presents a single-volume synthesis of research in this expanding field, exploring and analysing accounting from ancient civilisations to the modern day. No longer perceived as the narrow study of how a mysterious technique was used in past, the scope of accounting history has widened substantially. This revised and updated volume moves beyond the history of accounting technologies, accounting theories and practices and the accountants who applied them. Expert contributors from around the world explore the interfaces between accounting and the economy, society, culture and the polity. Accounting history is shown to offer important insights into such disparate phenomena as the evolution of capitalism, control of labour, gender and family relationships, racial exploitation, the operation of religious organisations, and the functioning of the state. Illuminating the foundation and development of accounting systems, this updated, classic book opens the field to a new generation of accounting scholars and historians around the world.
Australia's economic history is the story of the transformation of an indigenous economy and a small convict settlement into a nation of nearly 23 million people with advanced economic, social and political structures. It is a history of vast lands with rich, exploitable resources, of adversity in war, and of prosperity and nation building. It is also a history of human behaviour and the institutions created to harness and govern human endeavour. This account provides a systematic and comprehensive treatment of the nation's economic foundations, growth, resilience and future, in an engaging, contemporary narrative. It examines key themes such as the centrality of land and its usage, the role of migrant human capital, the tension between development and the environment, and Australia's interaction with the international economy. Written by a team of eminent economic historians, The Cambridge Economic History of Australia is the definitive study of Australia's economic past and present.
Accounting is frequently portrayed as a value free mechanism for allocating resources and ensuring they are employed in the most efficient manner. Contrary to this popular opinion, the research presented in Accounting at War demonstrates that accounting for military forces is primarily a political practice. Throughout history, military force has been so pervasive that no community of any degree of complexity has succeeded in. Through to the present day, for all nation states, accounting for the military and its operations has primarily served broader political purposes. From the Crimean War to the War on Terror, accounting has been used to assert civilian control over the military, instill rational business practices on war, and create the visibilities and invisibilities necessary to legitimize the use of force. Accounting at War emphasizes the significant power that financial and accounting controls gave to political elites and the impact of these controls on military performance. Accounting at War examines the effects of these controls in wars such as the Crimean, South African and Vietnam wars. Accounting at War also emphasizes how accounting has provided the means to rationalize and normalize violence, which has often contributed to the acceleration and expansion of war. Aimed at researchers and academics in the fields of accounting, accounting history, political management and sociology, Accounting at War represents a unique and critical perspective to this cutting-edge research field.
Foucault and Family Relations: Governing from a Distance in Australia analyzes how notions of property ownership were instrumental in maintaining family stability and continuity in rural Australia, outlining how inheritance and divorce laws functioned to govern the internal relationships of families to assist the state to ‘rule from a distance’. Using a selection of Foucault’s ideas on the “family”, sexuality, race, space and economics this books shows how “property” operated as a disciplinary device, which was underpinned by “technical ideas”, such as surveying and cartography. This book uses legal judgments as a form of ethnography to show how property, as a socio-technical device, allowed a degree of local freedom for owners. This aspect of property allowed the state to stimulate ideas of local freedom to assist in “ruling from a distance,” demonstrating how the rural family as a domestic unit became a key field of intervention for the state as the family represented a bridge to larger relationships of power.
Over the course of the nineteenth century a remarkable array of types appeared – and disappeared – in Australian literature: the swagman, the larrikin, the colonial detective, the bushranger, the “currency lass”, the squatter, and more. Some had a powerful influence on the colonies’ developing sense of identity; others were more ephemeral. But all had a role to play in shaping and reflecting the social and economic circumstances of life in the colonies. In Colonial Australian Fiction: Character Types, Social Formations and the Colonial Economy, Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver explore the genres in which these characters flourished: the squatter novel, the bushranger adventure, colonial detective stories, the swagman’s yarn, the Australian girl’s romance. Authors as diverse as Catherine Helen Spence, Rosa Praed, Henry Kingsley, Anthony Trollope, Henry Lawson, Miles Franklin, Barbara Baynton, Rolf Boldrewood, Mary Fortune and Marcus Clarke were fascinated by colonial character types, and brought them vibrantly to life. As this book shows, colonial Australian character types are fluid, contradictory and often unpredictable. When we look closely, they have the potential to challenge our assumptions about fiction, genre and national identity. The preliminary pages and introduction to this work are available free to download at the Sydney eScholarship Repository: https://hdl.handle.net/2123/16435 Contents Introduction: The Colonial Economy and the Production of Colonial Character Types 1 The Reign of the Squatter 2 Bushrangers 3 Colonial Australian Detectives 4 Bush Types and Metropolitan Types 5 The Australian Girl Works Cited Index About the series The Sydney Studies in Australian Literature series publishes original, peer-reviewed research in the field of Australian literature. The series comprises monographs devoted to the works of major authors and themed collections of essays about current issues in the field of Australian literary studies. The series offers well-researched and engagingly written re-evaluations of the nature and importance of Australian literature, and aims to reinvigorate its study both in Australia and internationally.
This 2-volume work includes approximately 1,200 entries in A-Z order, critically reviewing the literature on specific topics from abortion to world systems theory. In addition, nine major entries cover each of the major disciplines (political economy; management and business; human geography; politics; sociology; law; psychology; organizational behavior) and the history and development of the social sciences in a broader sense.
