To Örebro University

Neoliberalism rests on a fatalistic rhetoric about more perfect markets, individualistic calculus, and technologies for domination as crucial for the creation of financial value. This neglects any alternative ways of keeping people together, other than through markets, where the erosion of social cohesion is viewed as a natural effect of development. This neoliberal project has been holding accounting studies in a stranglehold, and there is a need for studies on how accounting can create social cohesion and make plural economies possible. This study’s exploration contributes to the theory of relational accounting practices by building a deeper understanding of accounting’s social function and the plurality of economies. Taking Graeber’s revision of Mauss as its starting point, it elaborates on how social relations are created through accounting practices that give rise to different reciprocities that involve morals together with autonomy and democracy, and it also examines when accounting may dissolve such social cohesion. Based on an illustrative case of pre-industrial farmers’ relational accounting practices in 18th- and 19th-century Sweden—consisting of notched wooden sticks used for balancing contributions and rights in the village—the study explains how accounting as a means of balanced reciprocity is important for social cohesion, having peacemaking functions, being important for democratic governance, teaching morality, and creating a sense of fairness. It emphasizes the relevance of Graeber’s revision of Mauss for a deeper understanding of relational accounting practices in certain contexts and as a way to combat the fatalism of neoliberalism.

Hans Järta kritiserade i början av 1800-talet den själlösa användningen av statistik. Hans tankar är aktuella 200 år senare.

This study seeks to overcome the gap between institutions and technology in the literature of the commons. It emphasises the importance of inviting and testing different technologies as actors that are of importance for resolving social dilemmas. In this study, a test is carried out to see if a certain accounting technology mediates factors that facilitate the sustainable management of commons. The technology that is tested in this study regards 'notched sticks' that were used as accounting in self-governed farming villages during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially in upper Dalarna, Sweden, when organising 'new urban commons'. The findings are that the notched sticks did function as mediators, connected in a network that did affect several factors, or conditions, for sustainable management of commons. As such, the technology of sticks was an actor that served in mediating relations, decision-making and transparency. For example, as accounting technology the sticks did change situations with possible individual bounded rationality through the construction of social entities and methods for balancing rights and obligations. Considering how accounting technology can be integrated into institutions, this implies that awareness is needed when changing and implementing technological solutions.

Notches on wooden sticks: the role of non-coin money in village organization

Local money in the form of notched sticks played a significant role in selfregulated organization of exchange in villages in 16th- and 17th-century Sweden. This kind of money is an example of non-coin money that only existed as money of account, or more precisely only as notches on wooden sticks (tally-sticks).

The article argues that it is impossible to speak of local money as an isolated unit. Instead, the money symbolized by notches was interwoven with credit-networks and social relations. This helps to explain how local money made cooperation possible. Moreover, the local money of account was connected to credit systems and social relations, which explains why adoption of modern credit forms as well as changes in social relations were slow to develop in many localities.

Using a perspective based in accounting history and anthropology, which sees money as credit, this article contributes to heterodox theories of money that seeks to explain the functions and social relations of different kinds of money.

The money system linked to the notched sticks can be seen as variation of today’s community currencies that make different social actions possible and which are constructed for special purposes. Often one stick was created for a specific activity. In other words, the farmers created their own money for different purposes. For example, there were turn-taking sticks for ploughing snow, feeding the bull, delivering the post or providing transportation for the local clergy etc. Such sticks were often connected to sticks that recorded failure to deliver services. Persons who had not done their daily work had to do more days of work in the future. Other sticks could be used to remember and calculate how much timber or workdays different farms contributed to buildings such as the common mill or saw and how much of it was used. Such sticks made it possible to calculate and ensure that rights and obligations were distributed according to egalitarian principles. In such cases money as notches was used as calculative money and made possible value reciprocity.

The article is based on ethnographic and historical literature together with the Nordic Museum’s collection of notched sticks, including information about their usage; the Nordic museum’s questionnaires about village organization in the beginning of the 20th century; and private research archives. 

Lokala pengar spelade en central roll i byorganiseringen på 1700- och 1800-talen. Sådana lokala pengar var icke-monetära och förekom bara som ristningar på träpinnar, det vill säga karvstockar. I detta karvstockssystem var de lokala pengarna intimt sammanvävda med kreditnätverk och sociala relationer. Mot denna bakgrund argumenterar författaren för att lokala pengar möjliggjorde olika typer av sociala relationer, men även att sådana pengar kan förklara trögheten i utvecklingen av modernare former av kreditnätverk.