The Visual and Material Dimensions of Legitimacy: Accounting and the Search for Socie-ties
通过分析罗马、文艺复兴和现代三个时期的会计记录，研究会计的对称性如何作为一种美学代码，将社区成员联系在一起形成“社会纽带”，并探讨了视觉和物质维度如何帮助社会行动者理解自身在社区中的位置和关系。
The aim of this article is to contribute to the literature on legitimacy by investigating its material and visual dimensions. By drawing on studies on rhetoric as a means of composing visions of social order and on an historical analysis of accounts in three paradigmatic eras (Roman times, Renaissance and Modernity), it shows how symmetry in accounts constituted an aesthetic code which tied members of a community together in ‘socie-ties’. We investigate the rhetorical process of ratiocinatio and explore how the visual and material dimensions of accounts provided social actors with an opportunity to explore their positions and ties within a community. This process augmented social actors’ understanding of their current relations by reducing them to a series of entries in an account, thus allowing them to reflect on what it meant to be a legitimate member of a society.