Accounting for artisanal fishing as a situated, oral, and ancestral practice

Resumo

This article aims to understand how accounting practices are socially constituted and mobilized in the daily lives of artisanal fishermen on Marajó Island. Accounting literature tends to marginalize knowledge originating from outside institutionalized spaces, particularly knowledge linked to oral tradition, ancestry, and traditional territories. Research on accounting practices in Amazonian contexts is scarce, which hinders the recognition of plural rationalities and limits epistemological advances in the field. This study broadens the epistemological scope of accounting by valuing historically marginalized knowledge. By demonstrating how traditional communities organize their productive activities based on their own management principles, the study contributes to recognizing legitimate forms of accounting practice that remain largely invisible, particularly in peripheral contexts. The article provides a framework for rethinking accounting on pluralistic bases and proposes including local epistemologies in research, professional training, and curriculum development. Thus, it contributes to critiquing rational-instrumental hegemony and strengthening accounting practices sensitive to territories and communities. The study employed a qualitative methodology based on oral history as a research strategy and content analysis as an analytical technique. Data were collected through interviews with artisanal fishermen from Marajó Island, respecting their ways of life, languages, and forms of knowledge transmission. Two analytical categories were identified: accounting as empirical and adaptive knowledge and accounting as ancestral knowledge. The fishermen use their own accounting knowledge, which is linked to oral tradition, experience, and community life. This knowledge fulfills the functions of controlling, planning, and organizing fishing activities. These practices adapt dynamically to context; for example, the rhythm of the tides structures catch schedules. The findings suggest situated accounting, which has a structure that differs from that provided by normative models. Situated accounting articulates empirical and contextual knowledge with everyday management. This study contributes to the debate on decolonizing accounting by recognizing legitimate forms of management in community contexts.