Accounting and post-colonial resistance: Affective ambivalence in the international development assemblage

This paper is concerned with the understanding of resistance in accounting research. Using the case of a Southern Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) and its relationships with donors within the international development assemblage, I discuss how the organization, in experiencing mixed feelings towards its donors' managerial discourses and accounting practices, engages in a process of resistance. Such resistance operates amidst a processual interplay of attraction and repulsion towards the colonial opposite. Using Homi Bhabha's Postcolonial Theory (PCT) and its emphasis on the affective dimension in colonial encounters, I find that the NGO's actions are nestled within hybridity and ambivalence, which drive the NGO towards balancing opposing forces to move forward in the assemblage. I contribute to accounting literature by offering an affective understanding of the ambivalence produced by postcolonial relations mediated by accounting, and by reconceptualizing resistance in accounting research as a flux of affects with political implications in shifting relationships. HIGHLIGHTS • Resistance in accounting is re-signified as a processual interplay between attraction and rejection of colonial practices. • The parallel engagement of the subjugated with attraction and rejection shapes its identity and influences its agency. • Accounting creates ambivalence by leading the subjugated to experience ambiguity towards the colonizer’s practices. • Affective charges in donor-NGO relationships help to maintain the parties' cooperation overtime.