Symbolic capital, accounting and caciques in local political life: The charity of Mr Rafael Tenorio (1909–20)

The contributions of accounting to discourses of domination and repression across a variety of times and places have assumed a significant place in the accounting literature. The present study extends this research to early twentieth-century Spain by establishing how accounting provided the means to enhance the position of powerful groups of individuals, known as caciques or chiefs, who dominated rural village life. The caciques were capable of ruthlessly exerting their power to control village life, its politics, economic activities and social relations. Bourdieu’s framework is used to study the relationship between caciques and a charitable organisation which operated during the period 1909–20 in the village of Villalba del Alcor, situated in the province of Huelva, southwest Spain. The study identifies the way in which accounting practices became essential weapons in the political struggle between competing caciques to dominate a field by resorting to the symbolic capital by which accounting practices are characterised. In this particular struggle, the poly-vocal ability of accounting played a key role.