Beyond accounting: the possibilities of accounting and "critical" accounting research

Tony Puxty was prominent amongst those critical scholars who have explicitly sought to go beyond accounting in attempting to contribute to the development of an accounting that would be more enabling and emancipatory. He was engaged in a rescuing critique of modernity which gave some recognition to accounting's possibilities. In this paper, we build upon Tony Puxty's related concern to explore the ethics of accounting research, which equates to a concern with evaluating accounting research in general. Our focus is upon “critical” accounting research. Some reflections upon the meaning of “beyond”, including drawing insights from the work of Umberto Eco, help us to add to the growing literature that has been asking awkward and provocative questions of that accounting research commonly labelled as critical. Our concern is to build upon those contributions to critical accounting research which in our view further the task of realising an emancipatory accounting and to negate or redirect the influence of more problematic work that has been done. We place emphasis upon some ways forward for a critical accounting research which we hold will contribute further to the project of seeking out an enabling accounting that can help rescue and reshape modernity