Matthew Gill, Accountants’ Truth: Knowledge and Ethics in the Financial World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, 208 pp. $US 35.00 paper (978-0-19-960310-7), $US 99.00 hardcover (978-0-19-954714-2)
The financial system has been shaken to the core, yet its institutions prove largely impermeable to attempts to question and reform them. Matthew Gill’s book has the merit of opening one of the system's many “black boxes” that even a fast growing body of academic research in the sociology of finance has been quite reluctant to address: accounting. The numbers based on which markets operate, their mundane production by bookkeepers, their validation by audit and assurance experts, as well as the various valuation methods which elaborate on such numbers in order to derive so-called “decision-relevant information,” are still largely taken for granted by sociologists. Gill’s book is a refreshing exception. Read more
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