The State of Ohio's Auditors, the Enumeration of Population, and the Project of Eugenics

Seminar abstract

In 1856, the State of Ohio began an enumeration of its population to count and identify people with disabilities. This paper examines the ethical role of the accounting profession in this project, which supported the transatlantic eugenics movement and its genocidal attempts to eliminate disabled persons from the population. We use a theoretical approach based on Levinas to show that the self is generated through engagement with the Other, and argue that this engagement is built on a sense of responsibility to and for the Other. We show that successive waves of legislation relied on State and County auditors along with Township clerks and assessors to conduct the mechanics of the enumeration of the population, which focused on the identification, categorization, and counting of the disabled people of the State. The financial expertise and structures of the State were engaged in the execution of this mandate, which remained in place for over a century and supported a program of institutionalization. We consider the ramifications of this for our understanding of the ethical role of public sector accounting in the United States over this period, which has been under-explored.

How to attend this seminar

This seminar is free to attend with no need to register in advance.

We welcome you to join us online on Wednesday 2 November 2022 at 2pm.

Speaker bio

Professor Vaughan Radcliffe

Vaughan Radcliffe is Professor of Managerial Accounting and Control at the Ivey Business School. He is a Past President and former Research Committee Chair of the Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA), the publisher of the Financial Times ranked journal Contemporary Accounting Research. He is a member of the Council of the American Accounting Association. He is Editor of the Journal of Governmental and Nonprofit Accounting, a journal of the American Accounting Association. He is a winner of Ivey's school wide MBAA teaching award for excellence in MBA teaching; he is also a multiple winner of the school’s Research Merit award.

His work has appeared in Accounting, Organizations and Society; Contemporary Accounting Research; the Journal of Business Ethics; Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal and others. Professor Radcliffe has served as an Editor of Contemporary Accounting Research and is a member of six editorial boards including Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, Accounting, Organizations and Society, and Contemporary Accounting Research.