On the relentless labour of deconstructing domination logics: The case of decolonial critical accounting research in South America

Abstract

Eight years after the publication of our article on participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, this reflexive commentary responds to a recent critique by M. Gómez-Villegas and C. Larrinaga, which claims our study is characterized by a colonial and Anglo-Euro-centric bias, as is found in other critical accounting research. While the two authors criticize our use of a Bourdieusian framework to investigate a technology, participatory budgeting, born and implemented in a region of the Global South, we point to the relevance of using Bourdieu’s critical sociology to think of emancipation, even more so as European thinking is constitutive of Latin American thinking. We extend some of Gómez-Villegas and Larrinaga’s comments to question more broadly the conditions under which critical accounting research and research at large are being produced. Welcoming the diffusion of decolonial perspectives in critical accounting research, we lastly invite all critical researchers to remain alert to the pervasiveness and relentless renewal of capitalist, colonial, and masculine domination logics – including in decolonial research itself.