Accounting in society? Accounting and society

We argue that accounting as maker of naming and counting statements using visible signs is constitutive from its invention of new ways of thinking and acting, and forms of society that have recognizably modern characteristics. We address discontinuities in thinking, acting and societal forms under the rubric Accounting and Society, and subsequent continuities as aspects of Accounting in Society. We analyze how discontinuities in human thinking, acting and languaging are particularly engendered through accounting’s naming-and-counting statement forms saying things speech cannot: with token accounting doing this as first non-speech-derived statement form and clay-tablet accounting doing so differently as first form of writing and second such statement form, analysing each time discontinuity and continuity interplays. Finally we consider how numerical grading’s invention (circa 1800) translates accounting into Scholastic accounting, launching an ongoing wider and deeper remaking of thinking, acting and valuing, for example challenging gender inequality and shaping modern sports formats.