MAKING ACCOUNTING KNOWLEDGE: PEERING AT POWER

Academic accounting's gravitation toward the norms of the academy has included the incorporation of peer review practices as the primary means by which scholarship is accepted for publication, and thereby elevated to the official knowledge of the discipline. Surprisingly, the acceptance of peer review has lapsed into a taken-for-granted safeharbor. This paper uses the theoretical template of modern social theory to challenge the making and sanctioning of accounting research. Ideas from Kuhn are rejected in favor of those grounded in Giddens and Foucault in order to focus more clearly upon the consequences of peer review rather than its process characteristics.