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AAAJ
18,5 Accounting for the public
interest: public ineffectuals or
public intellectuals?
592
Christine Cooper
Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

Abstract
Purpose – To present a case for accounting and finance academics to have a more active social role.
Design/methodology/approach – A range of published works by “public intellectuals” on praxis
is presented. Each theorist could be considered to be an eminent theoretician in their own right; what
marks them out is that they have developed their theories by active engagement.
Findings – The economic and political interests of the world in which academics operate are
perpetuated by the creation of a breed of intellectuals who encounter significant challenges not only to
questioning the status quo but, perhaps more importantly, to venturing outside of the academy. Yet,
arguably there has never been a more important time for academics to do just that. Academics are
armed with the necessary theoretical and research skills to bring coherence to fledgling movements
and to enable them to overcome the barriers created by the myths perpetuated to hamper social
protest.
Originality/value – This paper offers practical and theoretical advice to enable and encourage
accounting and finance academics to enrich their work by active engagement with the social problems
of the time.
Keywords Public interest, Accounting, Social dynamics
Paper type Conceptual paper

[The “anti-globalisation” movement] is driven by the suspicion that companies, forced by

Accounting, Auditing &
Accountability Journal
Vol. 18 No. 5, 2005
pp. 592-607
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0951-3574
DOI 10.1108/09513570510620466
stock markets to strive for ever greater profits, are pillaging the environment, destroying
lives and failing to enrich the poor as they promised. And it is fuelled by the fear that
democracy has become powerless to stop them, as politicians are thought to be in the pocket
of companies and international political institutions are slaves to a corporate agenda
(Harding, 2001).
John Dewey[1], a major figure in American intellectual history and founder of the
American Association of University Professors (AAUP) wrote on it inception in 1915
that (Tierney, 2001):
Professors have been trained to think of the pursuit and expression of truth as a public
function to be exercised on behalf of the interests of their moral employer – society as a whole
(Dewey, 1980).
A 1915 statement of AAUP similarly stated that the “responsibility of the university
teacher is primarily to the public” (AAUP, 1915, p. 26). This vision of academics as
The author would like to acknowledge John Donatich for bringing her attention to this
malapropriatism (“public innefectuals”) though his part in the forum on public intellectuals, New
York City, 2001 (see www.thenation.com/).
having a “public interest” role may seem to any observer of academics, in the Public
twenty-first century, to be rather dated and certainly not reflective of the practice of the ineffectuals or
average modern day academic. In a world which has seen the proliferation of
significant new social movements, academics may seem rather a conservative force. intellectuals?
Said (2001, p. 7), for example, states that:
. . . it is sobering and almost terrifying to contrast the world of academic intellectual discourse
. . . in its generally hermetic, jargon-ridden, unthreatening combativeness, with what the
593
public realm all around has been doing.
Said’s concern that academics are locked into a jargon fuelled world sealed off from
what is happening outside, will be felt by many. However, taking a more optimistic
view, there is the possibility that, perhaps galvanised by the recent growth in social
movements and increasing global wealth inequalities, there is a small but increasing
number of academics who believe that academics should play a more active public role.
Tierney (2001), for example, argued that contemporary academics are not private
intellectuals who have a sinecure for life and no public responsibilities. In a similar
vein, Rorty (1998a, p. 82) wrote that:
All the universities worthy of the name have always been centres of social protest. If
American universities ever cease to be such centres, they will lose their self-respect and
the respect of the learned world (cited in Tierney, 2001).
But, what does it mean for a “university to be the centre of social protest” and how can
academics discharge their public responsibility to their “moral employers”? I believe
that there are several important elements to this. The first is that at the very least,
academics should engage in the public debates on the problems confronting
contemporary societies. Secondly, academics should become involved in social
movements. Indeed there is an essential unity between the two. Following Said (2001,
pp. 18-19) I also believe that:
. . . the academics role is dialectically, oppositionally to . . . challenge and defeat both an
imposed silence and the normalised quiet of unseen power wherever and whenever
possible. For there is a social and intellectual equivalence between this mass of
overbearing collective interests and the discourse used to justify, disguise or mystify its
workings while, on the other hand, preventing objections or challenges to it.
In other words, that it is an academic’s public duty to participate in public debates and
to challenge, for want of a better word, ideologies which serve to hide power relations
and hold-back legitimate social protest.
Academics who have engaged in public debates and involved themselves in social
movements have commonly been described as public intellectuals. The term public
intellectual has antecedents in the Russian tradition of the intelligentsia and in the
French post-war role of the “intelletuel engage”[2]. There are of course many competing
terms which could be used (see Said, 2001) rather than “public intellectual”; Gramsci
(1971) for example, described two different types of intellectuals, “traditional” and
“organic”. The former directly relating to contemporary academics derives ultimately
from past and present class relations and conceals an attachment to various historical
class formations. While “organic” intellectuals relates to the thinking and organising
element of a particular fundamental-social class and are not related to any particular
AAAJ profession. Neither fits with comfortably with my idea of an intellectual who actively
18,5 engages with public life.
Well known “public intellectuals” include, among others, Ralph Miliband, Caryl
Phillips, bell hooks, Angela Davis, Cornel West, Edward Said, Pierre Bourdieu, Helene
Cixous, Terry Eagleton and Noam Chomsky. In many ways the role of the public
intellectual is uncomfortable. Said is reported as saying that an intellectual’s mission in
594 life is to advance human freedom and knowledge but that earlier in his life he found
this role difficult since this mission often means standing outside of society and its
institutions and actively disturbing the status quo (Lightman, 2000). Consistent with
Said’s belief that academics should challenge dominant discourses, Chomsky is said to
be infuriated by how the intellectual classes use their skills and knowledge to prop up
power rather than for what he sees as the intellectual’s duty – questioning it
(Kingsnorth, 2002). In a similar vein, Bourdieu (1998, p. 125) encouraged academics to
tackle neo-liberalism which he described as “a return to a sort of radical capitalism
answering to no law except that of maximum profit”. Bourdieu (for a more in depth
discussion of Bourdieu’s work, see Everett and Neu, 2000) believed that by actively
intervening to try to bring about progressive social change, academics could develop
their theoretical understanding. In a similar way to Bourdieu, Eagleton sees a place for
theory. To him, theory divorced from practice, is worse than useless, it is obfuscating.
He castigates “the mandarin jargon of academia” and demands that his fellow “radical
academics . . . have a certain political responsibility to ensure that their ideas win an
audience outside senior common rooms” (Morning Star, 2003). Said (2001, p. 24) too has
concerns about the neo-Hegelian idea that it is possible to overcome contradictions
through theory alone:
In short, I find myself saying that even heroic attempts (such as Fredric Jameson’s) to
understand the system on a theoretical level or to formulate what Samir Amin has called
delinking alternatives, are fatally undermined by their relative neglect of actual political
intervention in the actual, existential situations in which as citizens we find ourselves,
intervention that isn’t just personal but is a significant part of a broad adversarial or
oppositional movement.
The importance of theory (aligned to practice) in bringing about social change could
place academics in a central position in the building of social movements. Social
change requires more than activist campaigning and street movements (Callinicos,
2003) it requires coherent ideological articulation. Indeed, it is only possible to talk
about a global “movement” if it has found ideological articulation in a body of critical
writing produced by intellectuals. Effective social movements require unifying
coherent theoretical underpinning. Of course, this begs the question as to which
theoretical perspective should be drawn upon and developed.
Boltenski and Chiapiello (1999) considered how various theoretical perspectives
have been used in the renewal of social criticism in France. They argue that
postmoderism’s theoretical perspective actually hampered the avant-garde struggle
against neo-liberalism. Their key concern with postmodern theories was that while
they were concerned with gender and race issues, they frequently denied the
importance of the material or the economic. More recently some postmodern writers,
for example, Richard Rorty, have begun to turn their attention towards wealth
inequality. Indeed, Rorty’s (1998b) more recent work highlights the need to pay
attention to the growing economic divisions in American society. Naomi Klein who
wrote No Logo, examined the “new turn to the material” (Klein, 2000, p. 124, emphasis Public
added): ineffectuals or
The abandonment of the radical economic foundations of the woman’s and civil rights intellectuals?
movements by the conflation of causes that came to be called political correctness
successfully trained a generation of activists in the politics of image, not action. And if the
space invaders marched into our schools and communities unchallenged, it was at least
because the political models in vogue at the time of the invasion left many of us ill equipped to 595
deal with issues that were about ownership than representation. We were too busy analysing
the pictures being projected on the wall to notice that the wall itself had been sold.
This section has argued that academics have a public responsibility which can be
discharged by bringing their theoretical understandings to bear on contemporary
social issues. However, it is important that academics should not stay in their “ivory
towers” writing theoretical academic papers without engaging with the real world.
Academics should draw upon theoretical perspectives which are concerned with the
economic and material aspects of society. Academics could provide invaluable support
to developing social movements and yet there is a dearth of public intellectuals. The
next section will consider why it is that we have so few “public intellectuals”.

Why are there so few public intellectuals?

It has been noted that despite the theoretical and research skills of academics and their
public interest role, that academics have typically “retreated back into the academy”.
Eminent writers such as John Donatich (2001), Russell Jacoby (2001) and Alex
Callinicos (1999) have all lamented this fact. There are many overlapping reasons for
this “retreat”. In part, the retreat comes from what might be described as “academic
work overload” and in part, from pressure within the academy to conform to norms
which reinforce the status quo.
In the USA, Russell Jacoby (2001, p. 2) thinks that the contemporary academic
system is breeding a new generation of intellectuals who are unsuited to challenging
the status quo:
My argument was that, in fact, these generations of public intellectuals have diminished over
time. For good reasons. The urban habitats, the cheap rents, have disappeared – as well as
the jobs themselves. So the transitional generation, the New York intellectuals, ends up in the
university. I mention Daniel Bell as a test case. When he was getting tenure, they turned to
him and said, “What did you do your dissertation on?” And he said, “I never did a
dissertation”. And they said, “Oh, we’ll call that collection of essays you did a dissertation”.
But you couldn’t do that now. Those of that generation started off as independent
intellectuals writing for small magazines and ended up as professors. The next generation
started off as professors, wrote differently and thought differently.
The US academic accounting field is fairly hostile to public intellectuals. The American
Accounting Association sets out one of its “shared purposes” as “excellence in
accounting research” yet this rather laudable aim seems to be based on a very narrow
view of what constitutes research excellence. This view typically eschews academic
work which uses theoretical perspectives developed in almost any academic field save
economics. For example, the majority of research in accounting is premised on a
rational expectations model. Yet Kanhneman, who was joint winner of a Nobel Prize in
2002, has demonstrated (as a psychologist) that individuals behave in ways less
AAAJ rational than orthodox economists believe they do. His research shows not only that
18,5 individuals sometimes act differently than standard economic theories predict, but that
they do so regularly, systematically, and in ways that can be understood and
interpreted through alternative hypotheses, competing with those utilised by orthodox
economists (Stiglitz, 2002). Despite such important work, there is much pressure on
new faculty not to challenge the status quo through the introduction of competing
596 theories.
In the UK, there is the serious problem of the under-funding of Higher Education
that has had the effect of putting huge pressure on academic time. Annual funding per
student has halved in real terms from £11,000 20 years ago to £5,500 now. In terms of
pay, there has been 40 per cent erosion in academic and related staff pay over the past
20 years compared with average earnings. Student numbers as a proportion of
academic staff are higher, as are demands to produce refereed journal publications and
bureaucratic “quality” paper trails. UK academic staff (as academics in many other
countries) are struggling to survive their everyday lives let alone, trying to set out to
change the world. In any case, it is probably the case that throughout the world, the
duties of a public intellectual will put a fourth major responsibility (aside from
research, learning/teaching and administration) onto the shoulders of academics
(Levine, 2001). Since time is finite, something else will probably have to give: sleep,
household chores, shopping and relationships (Pinker, 2000).
In many countries now, new academics begin their careers with huge debts.
Certainly, for many, it will take years to pay off the eight or so years of student debt
built up while obtaining a PhD. Burdened with such debt, it isn’t surprising that young
academics might be concerned about “rocking-the-boat” too much and sticking to
“safe” research perspectives and arenas. It is surely a fact that no one receives tenure
for public engagement work. But, it is still the case that tenured academics are among
society’s freest and most secure employees. Levine (2001) argues that it is largely an
academic’s own fault if they do not become a public intellectual. Perhaps the burdens of
academic life would be lessened if we found local issues, which we believe, are worthy
of our very precious time and articulate these to our research and publishing.
Isn’t this all a question of “what can we get angry about?” Christopher Hitchens
(2001, p. 10) said:
People used to say, until quite recently, using the words of Jimmy Porter in Look Back in
Anger, the play that gave us the patronizing term “angry young man” – well, “there are no
good, brave causes anymore”. There’s nothing really worth witnessing or worth fighting for,
or getting angry, or being boring, or being humorless about. I disagree and am quite ready to
be angry and boring and humorless. These are exactly the sacrifices that I think ought to be
exacted from oneself. Let nobody say there are no great tasks and high issues to be
confronted.
I too believe that there are many issues which could and should be taken up by
academics. Accounting and finance’s role at the heart of the Western economic and
political system places academics in a rather unique position if they want to fulfil their
role to their “moral employers”. What should we be angry about? Individuals reading
this will clearly have their own concerns. The following section expands upon my
expressed concerns about material inequalities; I think that it is important for
academics to break down the myths of our contemporary age, promote a recognition of
and find potential solutions to gross inequalities, and ensure that our students leave Public
university with the ability to be sceptical and to give a voice to the disadvantaged. ineffectuals or
Setting academic anger in an economic context
intellectuals?
Any public intellectual must be aware of the social, economic and political context
within which they are operating. Major political and economic changes have been
impacting upon the world in the last 25 or so years. These changes have affected the 597
nature of public intellectuals. We need to understand this in order to act in a political
way. It has been argued that the age of specialisation, and the commercialisation and
commodification of everything in the newly globalised economy has done away with
“old fashioned public intellectuals”. The notion of an intellectual has always has
“public realm” connotations and the public sphere has been seriously devalued in
recent years (Said, 2001). Both the disappearance of public intellectuals and their
reappearance can be understood within a changing economic and political context.
We have also seen neo-liberal intellectuals in the ascendancy. As Said (2001)
explains, we must not be misled by the effusions of Thomas Friedman, Daniel Yergin,
Joseph Stanislas, and the legions who have celebrated globalisation, into believing that
the system itself is the best outcome for human history. In the past 25 years, phrases
like “the free market”, privatisation, less (as opposed to more) government, and other
phrases like them, which have become the orthodoxy of globalisation, their counterfeit
universals, are the staples of dominant discourse, designed to create consent and tacit
approval. From that nexus emanate such ideological confections as “the West”, the
clash of civilizations, traditional values and identity (perhaps the most overused
phrases in the global lexicon today). All these are deployed not as they sometimes seem
to be, as instigations for debate, but quite the opposite, they are used to exploit the deep
bellicosity and fundamentalism that work to stifle, pre-empt, and crush dissent
whenever the false universals face resistance or questioning. The main goal of this
dominant discourse is to fashion the merciless logic of corporate profit-making and
political power into a normal state of affairs, “that is the way things are”, in the process
rendering rational resistance to these notions into something altogether and practically
unrealistic, irrational, utopian, etc. (Said, 2001).
We are increasingly told that the freedom we all want demands deregulation and
privatisation and that the new world order is nothing less than the end of history. A
new generation of academics have been educated in a world in which market
fundamentalist orthodoxy is mainstream. The next two sections sets about opposing
these myths on theoretical and empirical grounds. These sections set the work of
public intellectuals within an economic context. They also address the paralysing
syndrome so widespread in today’s world which emits pressures against questioning
the status quo.

Breaking down the myths

The dominant forms of accounting and finance research throughout the developed
world have been premised on very dangerous myths. These myths are dangerous
because they have been used to the detriment of millions of people worldwide. Joseph
Stiglitz, who could be described as a pro capitalist, Nobel prize winning chairman of
president Clinton’s council of economic advisors, chief economist at the world bank,
IMF officio, and professor of finance and economics at Columbia, is perhaps an
AAAJ excellent example of an academic who has had a chance to develop his theoretical work
18,5 in practice. His work with the World Bank led him to see how the unquestioned
following of untested academic myths had a devastating impact on millions of people.
He believes that the IMF was hijacked in the early 1980s by the “market
fundamentalists”, who preach an extreme variant of capitalism that had never been
tried anywhere in the developed world. They formed a new Washington Consensus
598 between the IMF, World Bank, and US Treasury about how developing economies
should be run. This began during the early 1980s when some third world nations
needed funds because of a five-fold increase in oil prices and a similar jump in dollar
interest payments. Instead of debt relief, they received structural adjustment plans.
The particulars would vary from nation to nation but in every case they had to remove
trade barriers, sell national assets to foreign investors, slash social spending and make
labour flexible, that is, crush unions (Hari, 2003).
Tanzania is a fairly typical example of a country that had to implement a
structural adjustment programme. The financial rescuers required Tanzania to
charge for previously free hospital visits. This cut the number of people treated in
the three big hospitals in Dar es Salaam by 53 per cent. Tanzania was also told to
charge school fees – school enrolment is now down from 80 per cent to 66 per
cent. The IMF and the World Bank have effectively controlled Tanzania’s economy
since 1985. Their experts wasted no time in cutting trade barriers, limiting
government subsidies and selling off state industries. According to bank watcher
Nancy Alexander of the Washington-based Globalisation Challenge Initiative, in
just 15 years Tanzania’s GDP dropped from $309 to $210 per capita, the literacy
rate is falling and the rate of abject poverty has jumped to 51 per cent of the
population (Palast, 2000)
Stiglitz said, “I saw first hand the devastating effect that globalisation can have on
developing countries, and especially the poor within those countries . . . decisions were
often made because of ideology and politics . . . IMF remedies failed as often as they
worked”. IMF structural adjustment programmes led to riots and hunger in many
countries; even when the results were not so dire, even when they managed to eke out
some growth for a while, the results went disproportionately to the better off, with
those at the bottom sometimes facing even greater poverty. Stiglitz believes that the
neo liberals used Russia as their own personal chemistry set to test out their extreme
theories; and the results are now clear for all to see (Hari, 2003):
The disturbing thing is that in Iraq, the current administration is replicating all the failures of
what happened in Russia (Hari, 2003).
Stiglitz also excoriates the intellectual incoherence of the IMF’s own behaviour. “The
IMF is always preaching free markets, but their major business is bailing out Western
banks and intervening in exchange rate markets! Their whole business is government
intervention” (Hari, 2003). There is as yet a dearth of academic literature in accounting
on the actions of the World Bank or the IMF and of the impact of their activities
throughout the world. Yet myths prevail that globalisation is “a good thing” and that
markets are “natural”. The next section deals briefly with empirical work, produced by
academics and others, which has served to question these myths.
Globalisation is a “good” thing and markets are “natural” Public
The World Bank issued a report that estimated that abolishing all trade barriers could
boost global income by $2,800 billion and lift 320 million people out of poverty (World
ineffectuals or
Bank, 2001). The myth that capitalism is the best economic system for promoting intellectuals?
world economic prosperity is reified in our everyday lives. For example, Noreena Hertz
(2001, p. 10) stated that:
Capitalism is clearly the best system for generating wealth, and free trade and open capital 599
markets have brought unprecedented economic growth to most if not all the world.
One immediate response to such statements would be to argue that it is not possible to
equate human development with economic growth. Another response might be to point
out that the gini[3] coefficient is 66 (Elliott and Denny, 2002). However, it would still be
possible for neo-liberals to argue that their agenda has helped the poor over the last 20
years despite the growth in inequality. For example, it has been argued that the new
world capital markets and free trade have “brought about an unprecedented increase in
living standards”. (Brittan, 2000).
Palast (2000) produced statistics which shed doubt on the myth that the extreme
variant of capitalism which has dominated since 1980 has produced unprecedented
increases in living standards through economic growth (see Table I).
During the period 1960-1980, which was dominated by statist and socialist welfare
policies, more than a decade of life expectancy was added to virtually every nation on
this planet. However, since 1980, life under structural adjustment is brutish and
shorter. Since 1985, the total number of illiterate people has risen and life expectancy is
falling in 15 African nations (Palast, 2000).
Research by the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) demonstrated similar
failings in the “globalisation” era (Weisbrot et al., 2001). It compared the era before
globalisation (1960-1980) with the globalisation/marketisation era (1980-2000). The
CEPR used four indicators to compare economic performance over the two periods.
These were the growth of income per person, life expectancy, mortality among infants,
children and adults; and literacy and education.
For each indicator, countries were divided into roughly five equal groups according
to what level the countries had achieved by the start of the period (1960 or 1980). The
main findings were:
.
Growth. The fall in economic growth rates was most pronounced and across the
board for all groups or countries. The poorest group went from a per capita GDP
growth of 1.9 per cent annually in 1960-1980, to a decline of 0.5 per cent a year in
the 1980-2000 period.
.
Life expectancy. Progress in life expectancy was also reduced for 4 out of the 5
groups of countries with the exception of the highest group[4].

Latin America Africa

1960-1980 73 per cent growth 34 per cent growth

Since 1980 Less than 6 per cent 2 23 per cent
Source: Palast (2000) Table I.
AAAJ .
Infant and child mortality. Progress in reducing infant mortality was also
18,5 considerably slower during the period of globalisation than over the previous
two decades.
.
Education and literacy. Progress in education also slowed during the period of
globalisation.

600 The above analysis concerns non-Western countries. However, the trend of the rich
getting richer while the poor get poorer is also happening in the West (see Montague,
1994) where even the middle classes are becoming less secure about their futures. This
is happening at a time of economic growth. Krugman (2002) analysed tax data from the
USA as follows:
These days 1 percent of families receive about 16 percent of total pre-tax income, and have
about 14 percent of after-tax income. That share has roughly doubled over the past 30 years,
and is now about as large as the share of the bottom 40 percent of the population. That’s a big
shift of income to the top; as a matter of pure arithmetic, it must mean that the incomes of less
well off families grew considerably more slowly than average income. And they did.
Adjusting for inflation, average family income – total income divided by the number of
families – grew 28 percent from 1979 to 1997. But median family income – the income of a
family in the middle of the distribution, a better indicator of how typical American families
are doing – grew only 10 percent. And the incomes of the bottom fifth of families actually fell
slightly.
Therefore, those in the most needy section of US society actually saw their average
incomes fall in the marketisation period of 1979 to 1997. This fall in real incomes could
not be tied to decreased productivity by US workers. Writing in 1994, Krugman
pointed out that the average per capita productivity of US workers increased 25 per
cent between 1973 and 1993, yet real wages for young men without a college degree
dropped 20 per cent during the same period (Montague, 1994). The stark everyday
reality for working class men, women and children in the USA is reflected in figures for
infant mortality. While the USA spends more than other countries for health care, it
ranked 16th in infant mortality among the 21 wealthiest nations. If only whites were
counted, it would rank 12th (Montague, 1994).
For comparative purposes, it is possible to look to Sweden which has operated on a
more welfare state style regime during a period when most of the rest of the World
were marketising (Krugman, 2002). Sweden’s GDP per capita has been estimated to be
roughly comparable with that of Mississippi. Yet life expectancy in Sweden is about
three years higher than that of the USA. Infant mortality is half the US level, and less
than a third the rate in Mississippi. Functional illiteracy is much less common than in
the USA. The main driver of Sweden’s better performance is a greater equality of
incomes despite the fact that Sweden has a lower average income than the USA. The
rich in the USA are so much richer. The median Swedish family has a standard of
living roughly comparable with that of the median US family: wages are if anything
higher in Sweden, and a higher tax burden is offset by public provision of health care
and generally better public services. And as you move further down the income
distribution, Swedish living standards are way ahead of those in the USA. Swedish
families with children that are at the 10th percentile – poorer than 90 percent of the
population – have incomes 60 percent higher than their US counterparts. And very few
people in Sweden experience the deep poverty that is all too common in the USA.
 Krugman (2002) believes that the reason conservatives engage in bouts of Public
Sweden-bashing is that they want to convince us that there is no trade-off between ineffectuals or
economic efficiency and equity – that if you try to take from the rich and give to
the poor, you actually make everyone worse off. But the comparison between the intellectuals?
USA and other advanced countries doesn’t support this conclusion at all.
Thus far, it has been argued that comparisons between the period 1960-1980 in
which socialist welfare policies were more prevalent and the period since 1980 601
which has seen the use of market fundamentalist economic policies demonstrates
that while the rich have become richer during the latter period, the poor have
become poorer. In terms of the economics of the two periods, it should be
remembered that the earlier period was to some extend blighted by the 1970’s oil
crisis.
The CEPR report also demonstrates that rates of output growth per head actually
fell during the period when free-market orthodoxy would predict the opposite.
According to the theorems of neo-classical economics, the liberalisation of capital and
product markets should have caused growth to accelerate. Other studies have found
the same failures in the globalisation era. For example, John Weeks (2001, pp 272-3)
states that:
The country groups that introduced the globalisation policies to the greatest degree faired the
least well in the 1990s relative to previous decades (the OECD, the Latin American and the
sub-Saharan countries); the best performing group since 1960, East and South-East Asia,
entered into a severe recession in the 1990s; and the group whose growth improved in the
1990s without recession, South Asia, was that which least adopted polic[I]es of deregulation,
trade liberalisation and decontrol of the capital account. The hypothesis that those policies
foster growth, is unconfirmed; that is, it is a myth of globalisation.
A number of academics bear some responsibility for the perpetuation of these myths.
The ideology of structural adjustment programs and the reification of the market come
from “first rate” universities. Indeed, Stiglitz described the IMF as full of “third-rank
students from first rate universities” (Elliott, 2003). That such models prevail,
especially in America’s graduate schools, despite evidence to the contrary, bears
testimony to a triumph of ideology over science. Unfortunately, students of these
graduate programmes now act as policy makers in many countries, and are trying to
implement programmes based on the ideas of market fundamentalism, without local
knowledge, and opposing all government programmes on principle. Moreover, they do
not have the theoretical open mindedness to see other possibilities.
Similarly, the Real World Economic Outlook[5] expresses a concern that a cabal of
like-minded people dominates global economics:
Sadly economics, as taught today, is not just dismal science; it is a dreary discipline. Little
more than a subdivision of applied mathematics, it is based on assumptions that do not hold
in reality and which have scant relevance to our complex diverse, real world. The obsession
with a) the promotion of economic efficiency achieved through government by markets; b) the
self-interested optimising behaviour of individuals; and c) the wisdom of usurious financial
markets, means that, today, the economics taught in universities ignores reality and is narrow
and exclusive (cited in Elliott, 2003, p. 25).
It seems that we are not equipping our students with the tools to make the world a
better place. Many universities in the west also teach students from countries likely to
AAAJ be confronted by IMF policies. It would certainly be helpful to them if they were
18,5 enabled to critically evaluate and understand them (Elliott, 2000).
How have we arrived at a state of affairs in which we teach our students theories
which are so potentially damaging to the world? Market fundamentalism has had an
impact on the poor everywhere not simply in those countries which have been
subjected to structural adjustment policies. Yet the myths still remain and the poor are
602 becoming increasingly poor. One potential way of overcoming this could be to give a
voice to the poor. This is dealt with briefly in the next section.

The elevation of the voice of the poor

The evidence above suggests that not only is the gap between the rich and the poor
growing but also that many millions of people are becoming worse off. In this context,
an intellectual’s role is to present alternative narratives and other perspectives on
history than those provided by combatants on behalf of official memory, who tend to
work in terms of falsified unities, the manipulation of demonized or distorted
representations of undesirable and/or excluded populations, and the propagation of
heroic anthems sung in order to sweep all before them (Said, 2001).
In an interview with John Kenneth Galbraith, Stephen Bernhut (2003) asked what is
it going to take for someone, either an individual or an institution, to really do
something about closing the rich-poor gap? Galbraith replied:
This is the most important question that could be asked, because the American political scene
for a long while succeeded in covering up the different political aspirations for the rich and
the poor and what was happening in favour of one or the other. If anyone wanted to
emphasize anything, it was what was being done for the poor – not just Democrats but
political leaders in general. Now, surprisingly, I didn’t ever expect it, we have an open social
and political support for wealth and for preserving the incomes of the rich – protecting the
incomes of the rich and enhancing them. This is a development which I repeat again I never
foresaw, and few of us foresaw, and it is very, very clear the abruptness, the openness with
which a policy for the rich is pursued in Washington, and everything from taxation to foreign
policy is something I never expected. I thought we had that problem rolled into the
background. Now it’s the most urgent political issue there is.
What is it going to take to reverse that?:
I’ll leave that to the next generation. But at a minimum, it requires some extensive and better
elevation of the voice of the poor. This is not something that will come through kindness. It
will come through changing political attitudes and through action.
It is certainly to Galbraith’s credit that he is able to reflect upon his own work in such a
manner. What is perhaps more creditable is his recognition of the importance of
changing political attitudes through action. The previous two sections have set out the
economic and political context in which academics operate and emphasised the
importance of breaking down myths and telling a different story. The next section
develops the theme of managing the challenges of acting as a public intellectual.

Managing the challenges of acting as a public intellectual

In the light of the foregoing, it may be evident that much needs to be done. But, we
cannot all become a Chomsky, a Said, or a Bourdieu, so what can we do? Bourdieu
suggests that we search for areas in which there is the possibility of “collective Public
invention”. He continues by saying that: ineffectuals or
. . . the whole edifice of critical thought is thus in need of critical reconstruction. This work of intellectuals?
reconstruction cannot be done, as some thought in the past, by a single great intellectual, a
master-thinker endowed with the sole resources of his singular thought, or by the authorized
spokesperson for a group or an institution presumed to speak in the name of those without
voice, union, party, and so on. This is where the collective intellectual (Bourdieu’s name for 603
individuals the sum of whose research and participation on common subjects constitutes a
sort of ad hoc collective) can play its irreplaceable role, by helping to create the social
conditions for the collective production of realist utopias. (Said, 2001, p. 25).
Earlier, but in a similar vein, Mills (1959, p. 186) wrote that an intellectual’s job is to
“help build and strengthen self-cultivating publics”. Wright Mill’s self-cultivating
public is one in which ordinary citizens can genuinely participate in the democratic
process. To achieve this authentic participation, society needs to be educated both
theoretically and empirically, be able to participate in public debate, have their voices
heard and to genuinely believe that they can make a difference through participation.
The work of public intellectuals is frequently at its best when its dominant concerns
are at the local level. As Levine (2001, p. 1, citing Dewey, 1927, p. 213) explains:
. . . even if we are mainly concerned about national issues, we should want as many people as
possible to experience democracy firsthand in local politics. John Dewey wrote that the home
of democracy is the “neighbourly community”.
Levine (2001) goes on to argue that very famous intellectuals are not necessarily the
best people to promote local “self-cultivating publics”. Arguably their energies would
be better spent addressing larger national audiences, although I suspect that many well
known public intellectuals also involve themselves in more local issues. Instead, Levine
(2001) believes that we need intellectuals who can contribute something distinctive to
discussion and civic action in particular places or within specific organisations. I agree
with this and would recommend that academics develop their theoretical perspectives
and research skills by engaging in local public issues. The caveat here is that local
issues should always be set within the context of the political, economic and social
structures which are in place. “Local” could be in the geographical sense but could also
be taken to mean an interest in a particular issue. In any case, the boundaries between
local and international (let alone national) are now blurred. Several years ago Patricia
Arnold and I did some research on the privatisation of a port in Kent, England (Arnold
and Cooper, 1999). For me, this was local research in the sense that the port was located
in the area where I grew up; but we received e-mails and letters from around the world
about this research. The web has in this sense, made the local, international. A few
other recent examples of public intellectual activity in accounting research could be
Prem Sikka’s work with the ACCA and with the Association for Accountancy and
Business Affairs (AABA); the politics of Debt and Deficit in Alberta by Cooper and
Neu (1995) Patricia Arnold’s work in Decatur (Arnold, 1998); Cooper and Taylor’s
(forthcoming) work in Scotland on tuition fees, and Hammond and Streeter’s (1994)
work on racism and the accounting profession. I believe that the most effective of this
work is theoretically driven, engages with local groups or social movements and sticks
to high levels of academic rigour.
AAAJ While academic rigour is imperative, academics should not restrict themselves to
18,5 giving advice on purely technical matters. Public intellectuals should argue about ends
and goals and attempt to shape public opinion and the law (Levine, 2001). Political
questions are always normative. It might be possible for an accountant to give
information on the best way of reducing a tax liability (a technical matter) but a public
intellectual will have an opinion on who should pay taxes and who should benefit from
604 them. Recently I carried out some research into abolishing the Council Taxation system
in Scotland with Mike Danson and Geoff Whittam. This research was facilitated and
initiated by Tommy Sheridan MSP as part of a drive to promote a more progressive
taxation system in Scotland and is now a bill which is due to be debated in the Scottish
Parliament. It was important to ensure that the financial implications of changing the
taxation system were thoroughly and carefully researched. However, each of us also
supported and understood the progressive social implications of a change in the
taxation system. I am not arguing here that academic knowledge should entitle anyone
to any special rights; the Bill will pass or fail according to the political system and the
political momentum behind it.
This section has made a few suggestions as to where and how academics might find
the potential for political intervention. It has been suggested that they might begin at a
“local” level and offer their research skills and expertise to social movements.

Conclusion
This essay considered the role of academics in the promotion of the public interest. It in
some senses follows Terry Eagleton’s opinion that there is a difference between
academics and intellectuals. Academics concern themselves with ideas and are
confined within industrial production units known as universities; whereas
intellectuals concern themselves with the bearing of ideas on a whole social order
and seek to reside within the public sphere[6]. I have argued that, given the harrowing
impact of market fundamentalism on the everyday lives of millions of people, arguably
there has never been a more important time for academics to become public
intellectuals, not least because of the role which they can play in building social
movements. Academics are armed with the necessary theoretical and research skills to
bring coherence to fledgling movements and to enable them to overcome the barriers
created by the myths perpetuated to hamper social protest.
Academics are fortunate in the sense that they have the choice of paths – academic
or intellectual. Eagleton (2004) writes that neither path is easy:
Intellectuals are weird, creepy creatures, akin to aliens in their clinical detachment from the
everyday human world. Yet you can also see them as just the opposite. If they are feared as
sinisterly cerebral, they are also pitied as bumbling figures who wear their underpants back
to front, harmless eccentrics who know the value of everything and the price of nothing.
Alternatively, you can reject both viewpoints and see intellectuals as neither dispassionate
nor ineffectual, denouncing them instead as the kind of dangerously partisan ideologues who
were responsible for the French and Bolshevik revolutions. Their problem is fanaticism, not
frigidity. Whichever way they turn, the intelligentsia get it in the neck.
Weird, creepy, detached, eccentric, ineffectual, dangerous, fanatical?? The public
perception of academics places them at the extreme ends of the “normal” spectrum.
Moreover, accounting academics have their own professional stereotypical image to
overcome. Yet accounting and finance academics have a “competitive advantage”
ahead of many other disciplines in the possibility of their becoming public intellectuals. Public
The centrality of accounting and finance to act as an arbiter of public and private ineffectuals or
decision making places the expertise of the accounting or finance academic at the
centre of public policy making (Cooper et al., 2005). Accounting is an academic field intellectuals?
that relates directly to political issues and public opinion. In short, accounting and
finance academics will be welcomed with open arms by the many groups who are
striving to make the world a better place. 605
Notes
1. John Dewey is considered to be one of the few Americans of the twentieth century who “. . .
can be acknowledged on a world scale as a spokesman for mankind” (Dykhuizen, 1973, p.
xv). See also Ecker (www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/dewey/dewey.html).
2. www.um.dk/udenrigspolitik/copenhagenseminars/conclusion96/socsum18.asp
3. The Gini coefficient uses a scale of zero to 100, where a zero is a completely equal country
and 100 is a country where one person has all the money (Elliott and Denny, 2002).
4. Reduced progress in life expectancy cannot be explained by the AIDS pandemic.
5. Published by Palgrave Macmillan.
6. For readers who wish for alternative visions of academics, see for example, Posner (2001)
and Mannheim (1936).

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