| Abstract: | This paper reviews some of the ontological and epistemological issues confronting writers who are currently pursuing a "radical" critique of "mainstream" accounting thought. This burgeoning heterodoxy has a common point of departure, that mainstream accounting relies upon the received wisdom that the veracity of competing theories may be adjudicated through criteria that appeal to the accuracy of their correspondence with the facts of a cognitively accessible external reality. This dualism between subject and object is both implicitly and explicitly challenged by the radical as they draw attention to, in a variety of ways, the projective role of the epistemic subject. But the maintenance of such a critique requires further epistemological self-reflection if incoherence and relativism are to be avoided. To contribute to the development of this heterodoxy, realism is explored as an epistemological haven from which this critique may be pursued and three key implications are explored through reference to the work of radical accountants. |
