Indeed, ‘they do things differently there’

Abstract

‘Why study the past? Those of us who pursue historical research or teach courses in history will not be lost for a response to this question. It is a question frequently posed to authors who submit manuscripts, re-phrased more pointedly as ‘why is your study of interest?’ At some stage, every researcher must respond with more than ‘because it is’. One might respond with citation counts, downloads and the ‘impact’ metrics that litter the research landscape as indicators of value and interest. On a more basic level, the response to ‘why history’ is dynamic as we confront and navigate the past. In his introduction to The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited, David Leventhal (2015) discusses how the past became foreign, arguing that until recently – in historical terms – historians viewed the past as something ‘as though just then occurring (p. 6)’. As Leventhal notes, ‘the past ain’t what it used to be (p.9).’ Indeed, our own discipline and this journal bear witness to this truism. Nonetheless, where dynamism exists, there is also continuity. History may interface with other disciplines, adopt and adapt theories from areas of social science, dabble (or more than dabble) with Cliometrics, but it remains history. We can look to the many hyphenated histories, some of which have come and gone, been transformed or drifted in and out of fashion. Patrick Manning (2003) has expressed thoughtful optimism about history’s continuity amidst on-going debates, change and innovation. In this issue, we have studies which represent the diversity of our scholarship and the space for such diversity within our journal. In their examination of community building amidst the amalgamation of Milan and Corpi Santi, Enrico Guarini, Francesca Magli and Alberto Nobolo demonstrate how accounting change and innovation took place due to external forces but also underscore the role played by internal actors engaged in this institutionalisation process. When discussing this study with the author team, I suggested that they reflect on their conclusion. While I am not a huge proponent of ‘lessons for today’, it was a question that I asked them to contemplate. The final paragraph of their study encapsulates their response. Its emphasis on community building in light of efforts to restrict boundaries and borders is a thoughtful commentary and one which makes their study all the more relevant in current circumstances. In a very different study, Martin E. Persson and Stephan Fafatas bring renewed and welcome attention to the work of Harold C. Edey, thanks to a chance encounter in the archive, specifically Edey’s one-act play used to explore the issues of profit determination during periods of changing prices. The play is of interest on many levels from its treatment of on-going issues of accounting measurement, its innovative pedagogy, and as a reminder of how accounting theory and ‘big questions’ do matter – elements that appear lost in the current training of accounting (doctoral) students. The study has benefitted from engagement with Edey’s colleagues and former students, enabling the authors to take advantage of their insights and perspectives on both Edey and the development of accounting thought, in particular with respect to the place of the London School of Economics and Political Science in this development in the period following World War II.