Disabling accounting

This paper extends existing analyses of the role of accounting in two dimensions: the construction of bodily identities and of notions of disability. It seeks to make a contribution to both the accounting and the wider literature on disability. Utilising a broadly Marxist approach, the paper explores the origins of UK medical classificatory regimes relating to disability in the transition from feudal to capitalist societies. Such a transformation placed new emphasis on the maximisation of the surplus value of labour from normalised bodies utilising accounting technologies. The paper then explains how UK legislative regimes were designed to support and sustain such classificatory regimes and were, again, reliant upon accounting discourses. Close examination of a critical legislative incident in the 1990s enables the explication of the role of accounting in sustaining such regimes.