A decolonial view of the role of accounting in the US management of the Spanish telephone monopoly

Abstract

Latin American decolonial thinking offers an alternative perspective to modern Western thought for the analysis of the role of accounting in relations of power, economic domination, knowledge and subjectivity in corporate capitalism. By applying a decolonial perspective, this paper contributes to previous literature on how conflicting public and private economic interests shape and are shaped by accounting practices. In particular, it analyses the role of accounting in the web of domination and power relations of a foreign company involved in the private management of a monopoly. To that end, it examines the historical case of the private management of the Spanish telephone monopoly at a time when the Spanish concessionary company was a subsidiary of the US multinational, International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation. The analysis of the case shows that the accounting was embedded within a geopolitical system of knowledge that strengthened a colonial matrix of power resulting in the domination of US capital over the Spanish state. This research contributes to a better understanding of how the colonial matrix of power operates through the subalternisation of the population not only in the Global South but also in Europe, imposing the rhetoric of modernity (conversion, progress and development) and exporting it to other latitudes by claiming its universality.