From moral evaluation to rationalization: accounting and the shifting technologies of credit

The purpose of this essay is to stimulate an examination of the nature of consumer credit and accounting's role in its techniques of operation. The site of this examination is the US department store of the 1920/1930s. Our study, informed by Foucauldian concepts of disciplinary power and governmentality, reveals that a new mode of record keeping played a decisive role in the creation of an alternative to local knowledge in the granting of credit. This manifested itself in new accounting techniques, particularly, the analysis of age-based accounts receivable. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.