Periphery and centre in comparative perspective: Opportunities for accounting praxis

In their paper On the Centrality of Peripheral Research and the Dangers of Tight Boundary Objects, the authors call for a more ambitious accounting research programme. However, their call whilst is difficult is also perhaps hard to pin down. The article needs to be disseminated and debated, because it crystalizes for accounting research a fundamental moral position in knowledge production within a liberal capitalist society. As such. Different perspectives and indeed voices should be included and a certain egalitarianism sponsored. In a liberal capitalist society this is a good in itself (Rawls, 2009; Appiah, 2017). Surely many would argue this is the role indeed the essence of the University? We readily take up the paper’s invitation and are gratified by the professionalism and commitment of the authors. Accounting scholarship, like all parts of liberal capitalist society, requires constant vigilance and reform to approximate these liberal ideas of voice, inclusion, and equal participation. However, the paper is not merely for a liberal position ought to be. Rather the authors also insist that including voices from the periphery will lead to better scholarship. In other words, they argue that peripheral research possesses an intrinsic characteristic that can alter and improve accounting research. In this reply, we will set aside what makes it hard to resist – its appeal to a level playing field, fairness, inclusion, voice – and try to isolate this stronger claim if not for the superiority of peripheral scholarship, then at least for its salutary effects on central scholarship.