Accountability, Philosophy and the Natural Environment

Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
	Notes
	Bibliography
Part I: Critical accountability
1. Key themes in accountability research
	Defining interpretivism
	Applying interpretation
	Objections and contrary opinions
	Aims and objectives
	Environmental dilemmas
	Environmental sustainability and neoliberalism
	Limiting neoliberalism in the Anthropocene
	Notes
	Bibliography
2. The art of interpretation and Nature
	Key perspectives - modernity's baggage
	The art of interpretation and modern politics
	Interpretivism and Nature
	Frameworks and methods - the ideal type
	Frameworks and methods - the ideal type and stopping points
	Interpretivism - basic terms and ideas
	Accounting and interpretivism
	Conclusion
	Notes
	Bibliography
3. Markets, the business case, and interpretivism
	Introduction
	The business case for sustainability
	Neoliberalism and Nature
	Limits of instrumental reason and business approaches to sustainability
	Sustainability and the business case
	Challenging economic sustainability and the business case
	Recent environmental and social accounting developments: interstitial accounts
	Further interpretivist responses to business and the dilemmas of modernity
	Blind loyalty to capitalism or challenging it through the ekklesia?
	The early liberal social accounting model
	Conclusion
	Notes
	Bibliography
4. Postmodernism and interpretivism: Basic issues
	Introduction: basic issues in accountability and Nature
	Postmodernism and Nature
	Postmodern environmentalism and accountability
	Accountability and the postmodernism
	Recent developments: Martin Messner, accountability, and postmodernism
	Postmodern engagements with interpretivism: the politics of reconciliation
	Taylor's and White's search for middle-ground between open-world and closed-world thinking
	Conclusion
	Notes
	Bibliography
5. The public sphere, corporations, and society
	Introduction
	Accountability and civil society
	Accountability and the human dimension
	Accountability, management, and knowledge
	Conclusion
	Notes
	Bibliography
6. External relations: Re-engaging the company with the community in which it operates
	External relations, re-engaging the community with the community in which it operates
	Engaged agency and practical reason
	Improving corporate relations
	Rebuilding the corporation from the inside out - the role of the public sphere
	Conclusion
	Notes
	Bibliography
Part II: Philosophical perspectives
7. Basic concepts in accountability research: Key accountability theorists and issues
	Introduction: Key accountability thinkers shaping modern accountability
	Bentham and Mill
		Bentham: Gallhofer-Haslam (2019) to Goodin (1992) and back again
		Mill's utilitarianism and its view of Nature
	Kant and accountability
	Rawls and accountability
	Habermas's critical philosophy
	Critical theory
	Critical perspectives on accounting reform proposals
	Critical theory and its challenge to interpretivism
	Conclusion
	Notes
	Bibliography
8. Basic issues in accountability: Interpretivism, openness, and transparency
	Some basic themes between decision usefulness and emancipator accounting
	Utilitarians Bentham and Mill - some further problems and prospects
	More problems with utilitarianism
	Gallhofer and Haslam: from Bentham to Laclau and Mouffe's postmodernism
	Conclusion
	Notes
	Bibliography
9. Liberal accountability: Current environmental and social challenges and policy
	Introduction
	Further objections and contrary opinions
	Accountability and decision-usefulness
	Environmental accountability and transparency
	Justice and accountability
	Applying Rawls and Kant to accountability and environmental ethics
	Rawls' model of justice and primary goods
	Consensus and self-respect
	Closeness
	Transparency
	The justice model for environmental accounting (Quietism)
	Greed and altruism
	Present and future generations and other sentient life forms
	Arbitrating through accounting
	Accounting and accountability
	Recent developments in liberal accountability thought
	Conclusion
	Notes
	Bibliography
10. Critical and radical accounting and accountability: Basic philosophical issues in accountability research
	Introduction
	Laughlin's Habermas: accountability and judgement
	Habermas and Taylor – a succinct introduction to language
	Background sources: Habermas and Taylor
	Differences between Habermas and Taylor
	The sacred and the secular
	Combining differences in a postmodern world
	Conclusion
	Notes
	Bibliography
Part III: The environment
11. Deep Ecology and interpretivism
	Introduction
	Basic definitions
	Origins of Deep Ecology
	Features of deep ecology
	Deep Ecology and Nature
	Deep ecology and structure
	Conclusion
	Notes
	Bibliography
12. Deep Ecology, community, and interpretation
	Introduction
	Some philosophical implications of Deep Ecology
	Mysticism and Deep Ecology
	Undemocratic and authoritarian: eco-terrorism and anarchism
	Pragmatism: Deep Ecology lacks a process for achieving environmental and social change
	Conclusion
	Notes
	Bibliography
13. Perspectives on Deep Ecology: Basic issues
	Introduction
	A middle way: a focus on interests
	A middle way: biocentric egalitarianism?
	Deep Ecology and the biocentric ethic
	Conclusion
	Notes
	Bibliography
14. Deep Ecology and interpretation: Social Ecology and how people relate to the world
	Communitarian, Deep and radical ecology
	Social ecology and nature
	Marxism and critical theory's response to social ecology
	Interpretation, Deep Ecology to radical critique
	World disclosers and Nature
	Ecological politics and moral theory
	Conclusion
	Note
	Bibliography
15. Perspectives on Nature: An environmental values perspective
	Introduction
	The current dominant discourse and the EVP
	Transformation involving an EVP
		Further problems with the business case
	Accountability as a secular (anti-realist) discourse for Nature
	Engaged agency - an EVP
	Biomimicry and transpersonal ecology
		Applying the EVP: accounting in communicative action for Natural assets
		Account 1: the interpretivism of Perkiss and Tweedie
		Account 2: basic issues in communication and the public sphere
	Deep ecology and the politics of Nature
	Conclusions: enchanting the public sphere
	Notes
	Bibliography
16. New directions for environmental democracy
	Bibliography
Index