Examining visibilities and invisibilities within poverty-related accounting research

Purpose: To analyse poverty-related literature within the field of accounting and outline a future research agenda.

Design/methodology/approach: We identify and collect poverty-related research within accounting before drawing on the writings of Brighenti (2007, 2010), in particular the notion of “field of visibility”, to analyse the literature.

Findings: Drawing on Brighenti (2007; 2010), we identify what exists in the literature as fields of visibility about poverty-related accounting academic knowledge. By analysing these fields of visibility, we also begin to interrogate the invisible – that is, what may be, but is not (yet), an object of attention and consideration. It is through this process of analysing the visible and interrogating the invisible that we discuss knowledge within the field, its implications, and propose possible future research avenues.

Originality: Analysing the literature through Brighenti (2007; 2010) enables us to contribute to the poverty-related accounting literature through considering both visibilities and invisibilities. In addition, we contribute to methodological approaches to literature reviews within accounting through outlining an approach which departs from the structured literature reviews and their variants which are becoming increasingly popular in accounting yet are often limited in their potential to provide sufficient relevant insights into some topics.