Studies on accounting and emancipation have hitherto
revealed the role of quantitative technologies in giving visibility
to negative elements of social functioning and disclosing
the plight of the repressed (Gallhofer & Haslam,
1997). By contrast, the case examined here has focused
on the performance of accounting as an emancipatory technology.
The rural rehabilitation programme was founded
on the concept of supervised credit and this emphasized
the practice by client families of mandatory accounting
in the guise of farm and home planning and farm family record
keeping. The preparation and analysis of these documents
reveal the application of accounting prescriptions
on a substantial scale, at various levels of government,
but especially in household-family systems.