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According to Best (1995, p. 270), ours “is an age devoid of emancipatory vision” (cited in Gallhofer & Haslam, 2003, p. ix). In Accounting and Emancipation we aim to impact upon the present in that our concern is to explore how accounting may be positively aligned with a (positive) notion of emancipation. In the process of exploration, we draw upon and intervene in debates from the social sciences and humanities (especially debates pertaining to emancipation), radically question existing practices and ways of seeing and engage with multiple accountings and agencies in various modern contexts. Aside from the motivating concern to search out an emancipatory vision vis-a-vis accounting, we hold that the relation between accounting and emancipation and how it may constitute a positive alignment are matters that are complex, multifariously shaped and notably fluid. Thus, another factor motivating our study is the need to keep such matters under review.

We elaborate an interpretation of the critical discourse analysis of Norman Fairclough illustrating this in focusing upon struggles over takeovers legislation in New Zealand. We indicate the more general applicability of such analysis in the area of financial and accounting regulation.