Doing missionary work: The World Bank and the diffusion of financial practices

This study uses the metaphor of a financial mission to explore how World Bank lending practices contribute to the globalization of financial practice. Through the use of interviews with key participants and archival documents pertaining to a World Bank education project in Latin America, we analyze how financial/accounting practices came to be diffused to this particular site. The study highlights not only how Bank lending practices attempt to implant accounting practices and discourses into distant fields but also the slippage, accommodation and resistance that is inherent in these attempts to change the habitus of such fields.