The "inequal" consequences of applications of accounting technologies to I-Nikunau

Abstract

Applications of accounting practices associated with colonialism, imperialism, business involving circular labour migration, etc. in the Pacific have had consequences for the circumstances of Pacific peoples, some good and some bad, but most leaving them with a share of economic value, political power, social status and cultural refinement smaller than what accountors obtained. This thesis is illustrated by reference to Nikunau Atoll and elsewhere that the I-Nikunau (i.e., indigenes of Nikunau) Diaspora reside, that is Tarawa Atoll, other islands and metropolises around the Pacific, Great Britain, etc. I draw on an analysis of the changing circumstances of this People since 1800 and a critical study of the accountings affecting them, in situ and from a distance, for example, in London, Rome, Melbourne, Washington, Wellington and Manila. The circumstances in question may be classified as geographical, demographical, economic, environmental, biological, nutritional and corporeal, political, spiritual, educational, social, organisational, distributional, cultural, and societal. The accountings relate to industrial hunting of marine life, trading for copra, mining for fertiliser, religion making, civilising and developing people through colonial governance, developing and emerging their economy with aid from neo-imperial organisations, and migrating people for reasons of overpopulation, sea-level rise and a distant need for agricultural and urban service labour. The consequences of these accountings which I analyse and discuss are distinguished using the same adjectives used to class circumstances, and so consequences which accounting has had for, for example, the geographical circumstances of the study identity are referred to as “geographical consequences”. This way of seeing, and referring to, consequences as a series of branches-of-knowledge-type categories, as distinct from using a list comprising good or bad, or favourable or unfavourable, adjectives, such as beneficial, genocidal, etc., seems to hold great possibilities for how consequences of accounting might be analysed by other researchers in other contexts.