Enabling, enacting and maintaining action at a distance: An historical case study of the role of accounts in the reduction of the Navajo herds

The role of accounting in enabling action at a distance has received considerable attention in the accounting literature. In this paper we examine the role of accounts in the actions taken by government officials in Washington, DC to reduce the size of the Navajo livestock holdings on their reservation in the southwestern United States in the 1930s. We examine the role of accounts in three acts: first in enabling action at a distance, second in enacting action in the local setting and finally, in shoring up, or maintaining action when things go wrong. We argue that in order to understand the role of accounts in these three acts, it is necessary to examine the conditions of possibility within which they emerge, the network of agents who adopt and give them life and the way in which they become entwined with various and shifting strategies. We also examine how action taken in Washington, DC had profound consequences for the Navajo when attempts were made to enact actions taken at a distance on the reservation.