ABSTRACT
The most significant of these categorisations is the divide between ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ accounting history, the latter being described as ‘a loose assemblage of often quite disparate research questions and issues’ (Miller et al. 1991: 396), but characterised by an intensive use of social theory to define research questions and provide a structure for understanding and interpreting the research results. Although the labelling of social theory-driven historical accounting research as ‘new’ was perhaps a sign of arrogance, it helped to expand interest in historical research beyond the relatively small group of specialists who had previously dominated accounting history. Despite the fears of ‘traditional’ researchers that the ‘new’ accounting history was downgrading careful archival research in favour of grand theorising (Fleischman and Tyson 1997), the general tendency of recent years has been for researchers from different ‘streams’ to appreciate the complementary contributions that their respective approaches may make to an understanding of accounting’s past (Fleischman and Radcliffe 2003).
