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One of the most dramatic ways that the systemic imbalance in our societies has been revealed has been the pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-19 virus.
The pandemic has shown us how accounting affects our lives.
The inventory (for example, of infected people), which is the simplest form of accounting, acquires unimaginable power when it is impregnated with a value and provide it with an objective.
From an accounting perspective, the experience of the pandemic is nothing more than a new indicator of our historical tendency to combine the social with the numerical.
The reduction of humanity to the number
There are many examples of how, since its inception, the nation-state has used various accounts to frame its subjects and demand their responsibilities (fiscal and military, above all). But it’s not the only case. We can see this same dynamic in other institutions, like the Church, for example.
We can dig even deeper into the past. We do not know the meaning of the marbles found in the tombs of Pinilla Trasmonte (Burgos), but they clearly lead us to some kind of quantification of the deceased: his wealth, his social position, his relatives?