Postmodernism and interpretivism: Basic issues
Introduction: basic issues in accountability and Nature
This chapter examines aspects of the debate between interpretivism and postmodernism. This is to understand the ethics of modernity and its recent developments. Traditionally, accounting, accountability, and neoclassical theory are primarily concerned with the reporting of profit from the transformation of natural capital into commodities. The complexity of ecological issues as they relate to business is well illustrated in the debate between interpretivism and postmodernism. These issues were introduced in Chapter 2. The aim of this discussion is to understand the ideology and thinking behind modernity and its recent critiques and developments. Traditionally, accounting, accountability, and neoclassical economic theory are primarily concerned with the efficiency and reporting of profit from the transformation of natural capital into commodities. This gives rise to a neoliberal process which focuses on markets. The neoliberal agenda occurs, however, without meaningful community deliberation about its impact on citizens, communities, and Nature. These issues are now more pressing given that our environment is threatened with many vexing issues to address including global warming, resource depletion, and population growth (Arnold & Sikka, 2001; Bostrom & Cirkovic, 2011).
Over the past 20 years, a postmodern perspective has been influential in criticising Western neoliberal and political thought. Recent corporate scandals point to the need for managers to be subject to heightened accountability and transparency. With this in mind, this chapter uses aspects of the work of Bernstein (2006), Connolly (2015), Taylor (2016), and White (2010) to explore pivotal connections between the concepts of accountability, interpretation and postmodernism (Dingwerth & Eichinger, (2010). The method uses a philosophy of language approach. The role of language in expressing accountability is an area of concern for modern communities. New approaches to accountability are needed.
Utilising resources from various language perspectives, the approach connects discourse ethics with critical accountability. Achieving this task involves new language-based approaches to accountability that relate to our ecosystems. As a precursor, Taylor (1985) reminds us that it is important to ‘note that over the past 150 years, there has been an explosive growth in the science of linguistics’ known otherwise as language theory. ‘Explosive’ is not a hyperbolic term here because like other sciences linguistics is pursued through several mutually contradictory approaches that can be characterised metaphorically as three ‘warring schools’: ‘structuralists in the Bloomfieldian sense, proponents of transformational theories, and formalists’ (Taylor, 1985).
The book refers to Taylor’s work on Bloomfieldian approaches to language to develop ‘interpretation’ and Derrida’s work on ‘becoming’, there is strong prospect of providing fresh insights on the concept of accountability. This is with the potential to offer ways of incorporating a broader set of principles into accountability processes than those based solely on free-markets, individual property rights, and neoliberal economic values.
Political interpretivism could play a large hand in responding to these crises if the agenda were broadened to consider the environment - especially in terms of its meaning and intrinsic value rather than just its economic and instrumental value. These concepts emanate from the philosophy of hermeneutics and interpretivism. From hermeneutics and interpretivism, an expressivist language enables a moral endeavour beyond the constraints of a narrow economic focus. The main aim of the framework is to offer alternative possibilities that enable reflection on the damage unleashed by Western technical procedure (such as accounting, accountability, and modern procedural law).
The interpretivist framework challenges current approaches to sustainability and social and environmental accounting research (SEAR) that often embed assumptions such as commodifying Nature as a reserve for consumption, with little regard for values external to human representation. The book argues critically for transformative action in the form of an evaluative framework embracing discursive priorities for communities to better enable ecological (and thereby moral) understanding. A discussion of the need to have more regard for the meaning and value in Nature is constructed. This is important to emancipating accountability, thereby creating a richer, encompassing role for the lexicon and practice of interpretivism in liberal democracies.
The key idea to keep in mind is that interpretivism advocates a philosophical view that focuses on language as means to meet Nature’s meaning and value. It proposes that the role of interpretation is to guide an engaged public sphere. This is through a public sphere that narrates and reports the conditions of life in a manner which transcends the conventional logic of the economic, particularly the capitalistic.
