The calculative reproduction of social structures – The field of gem mining in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Drawing on Bourdieu's political economy of symbolic forms and symbolic power, and on an ethnography of gem mining rituals in Sri Lanka, this paper aims to provide an empirical illustration of the connection between calculative practices and the social structure of capital. It shows how capital is socially structured around particular fields of reproduction, how the field-specific organisation of capital is implicated in the presence and absence of calculative and control practices, and how calculative templates and procedures, as symbolic systems, simultaneously perform interrelated but distinct functions of cognition, communication and domination. The paper advances the argument that calculative templates and procedures constitute a field-specific logic and they are the symbolic means through which structural properties of the social systems are cognised, communicated, reproduced and transformed into a set of practical dispositions that orient day-today work practices, domination and resistance.

Participatory budgeting in a Sri Lankan urban council: A practice of power and domination

“…It is discernible, however, that the extant accounting literature has drawn on either one or more of these elements and is subject to a common criticism for the failure to embed all three concepts or to balance their use into a single study (Ahn, Jacobs, Li &, Moon, 2014;Cooper and Coulson, 2014;Everett 2004;Farjaudon and Morales, 2013;Hamilton and Ò hÒgartaigh, 2009;Malsch and Gendron, 2013;Neu, 2006). The piecemeal use of these elements is envisaged as a caveat and mentions are made that such attempts may lead to a misunderstanding of Bourdieu's 'relational approach' (Alawattage, 2011). There is a scope in accounting research to exploit fully Bourdieu's relational approach.…”

“…It is evident that much of the accounting work based on Bourdieu's concept of the field has striven to investigate the use and reproduction of various forms of capital and the way such forms are implicated in the selected accounting phenomena (for field-specific studies see e.g. Everett, 2008;Alawattage, 2011;Neu, 2006).…”

“…In such a context, accounting techniques such as PB can have the potential of being symbolic systems allowing these politicians to accumulate and redistribute various forms of capital and offering them the opportunity and capacity to exert domination, control and symbolic violence (see e.g. Alawattage, 2011;Farjaudon and Morales, 2013). Teasing out the real practice in the name of PB, this study contributes to Bourdieusian-based accounting work on LDCs.…”

“…In a similar vein, Alawattage (2011) has used the field-specific properties of habitus, doxa, bodily hexis, and capital to illustrate how calculative practices and the social structure of capital in the gem mining rituals in Sri Lanka are connected to each other. With some exceptions (see e.g.…”

“…This may result in the undermining of the emancipatory potential of PB in a field of grassroots politics. Implicit in both views is, however, the importance of considering field-specific logics ingrained in PB practices so as to understand the actual motives and outcomes of PB in emerging and lessdeveloped countries (see also Alawattage, 2011).…”