ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to present practical issues at stake when conducting an ethnomethodological accounting research project. Under this purview, I will borrow from my own experience, i.e. my PhD dissertation which was on accountability and ethnicity in a church setting, focusing on the case of the Salvation Army (Joannidès, 2009). More specifically, I wanted to see how churchgoers practise accountability to God in their day-to-day life through the most basic daily activities. In this respect, I was fascinated by The practice of everyday life, where the author conceives of cultural practices through a thorough observation of how a family in Lyon dwells, travels on public transport, cuts bread, pours wine and eats cheese (de Certeau, 1984, 1988). Initially dealing with a multi-ethnic congregation in Paris, I found at the outset that I would not be able to draw any conclusions if I did not study ethnicity. This led me to explore other congregations, be they in France or elsewhere. This took me to studying seven congregations across four countries (France, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), the country seen just as the place where the ethic group lives. Doing this would allow me to understand the mechanisms of ethnic appropriations of a formally prescribed system of accountability (to God) and also perceive patterns. Although my ethnographic strategy difered from one ethnic group to another, I am only illustrating two ethic groups to which I did not belong: Parisian-Congolese-Brazzaville in France and Vikings in Sweden.
